If you were to ask me what my style was, my answer would be comfortable and cosy. Nothing lets me express this more than the cold weather that has hit the UK - a wonderful excuse to pull out my copious amount of knitwear. They're super easy to style - my go to choice is jeans or denim skirts fyi. I love snuggling up in a warm jumper or cardigan, whether it be frumpy or stylish, and today I am going to show you my pieces!

Note - Unfortunately, these items were bought years ago, or are handmade by my very clever mother. Therefore, I have linked 3 alternatives at varying price points for each piece so you can buy similar items if you want :) 

Chunky, long cardigans (Though mine is basically a coat and blanket in one hehe)

I basically wear this everyday, and more in the last couple of weeks as my heating had broken (well my radiator was full of air as we later found out 😂- we could have filled loads of balloons with the amount of air the guy who fixed it let out!). It is very thick and heavy with a rolled neckline and cable pattern in a maroon colour (one of my favourite colours to wear in autumn). My mum made it a couple of years ago following a pattern in her Prima Magazine. I will try and find out what issue it was, though she probably pulled out the pages she needed and threw the rest of it away.

Alternatives:
Romwe, Light Grey, Chunky Cardigan, £9.18 (on sale): https://goo.gl/xL3LOu 
QED London, Grey Cardigan, £22 (on sale): https://goo.gl/majGYL
Fat Face, Roslin Cardigan, £55-58: https://goo.gl/4edCki

Thick Jumper

A new addition my mum brought up to me a couple of weeks ago when she visited, having just completed it. It's toasty warm and a lot less bulky than my blanket-cardy. The pattern she used was in a Rowan Book (I'll find out which one when I go home) and she used Katia Peru wool in no. 26. As it is woollen I have to wear long-sleeved tops underneath so it isn't itchy, but that is what you get with woollen products. The more wool in wool the warmer but the itchier it will be, while the more cotton/polyester fibres in the wool, the less itchy but cooler it will be :) Something to keep in mind when either knitting or buying a woollen clothing item.

Alternatives:
New Look, Turtleneck, £9.99: https://goo.gl/cMNv2Z
Willow and Page, fluffy pale link jumper, £32: https://goo.gl/V7pbPm
Jigsaw, Navy Plain Jumper, £159: https://goo.gl/9bOIW8

Oversized jumper

This was the best purchase I made last year. The jumper is from Zara's Knit collection and is pretty oversized :) While it isn't the warmest item, due to it not being that thick and being draughty due to it's over-sidedness, it's great to just throw on and go.

Alternatives:
H&M, navy turtleneck, £24.99: https://goo.gl/Z6K4BZ
Pull&Bear, super batwing and oversized jumper, £29.99: https://goo.gl/YWcc3l
Topshop, cocoon sleeved jumper, £42: https://goo.gl/PC92bO

Cable knit jumper

I've had this for years. Its from Apricot and more cropped than the other woollen items in my wardrobe. It's also not as warm as my handmade items so you do have to wear tops under it in the cooler weather. I love the cable pattern and pockets on the front and it's thinness and cream colour mean its a great transition piece into the warmer weather in spring.

Alternatives:
BooHoo Cream Jumper, £15: https://goo.gl/zbYrpE
Urban Outfitters Crew Neck Jumper, £42: https://goo.gl/bGPZMgAran Sweater Market,100% wool (so should be much warmer than polyester/cotton) jumpers, £58.69 (on sale): https://goo.gl/psOVGW

So, party season's coming up, whether it be Christmas or going clubbing in town with your mates,
here are 3 eye makeup looks, that take 10 minutes max to achieve aimed, at all abilities :)

Look 1: All Over Bronze

Difficulty: Easy

Look 2: Smokey Glitter

Difficulty: Much harder than the other two, depends on how comfortable you are using eyeliner, and will take up the full 10 minutes.

May I introduce to you the best eyeliner I have ever done in my life!! Inspired by the eyeliner look Sam uploaded on PixiWoo this week (although I was planning on creating a look like this anyway), this is ideal for those whose eyeliner gets accidentally too thick when trying to even it out and can go with any lip colour you want!

Lip Colour: Rimmel Apocalips in 304 Eclipse

Lip Colour: Discontinued (or at least since repackaged) H&M Lipstick in Love That Red.  Any true red is a dupe for this (i.e. not cool (blue) or warm (orange) toned)

Lip Colour: Rimmel Apocalips in 600 Nude Eclipse

To create this I took my trusty Soap and Gory Supercat Pen Liquid Eyeliner in Black. I started by mapping out the wing drawing a line as a continuation of my lower lash line. I then created a wing from this line by drawing a line from near the top of the line to somewhere along the inner ⅓ of my lash line (I normally finish in the middle of my lash line so this will thicken the wing). To fill in the wing as I drew that second line I used the edge of the pen, not the tip - I will do a video on this one day by the way because this is so hard to explain :) - and then went back with the tip of the pen to fill in any gaps. Using the tip of the pen I followed the inner lash line, extending it past my tear duct until it was in line with the bottom of my tear duct where I then connected the liner to my lower lash line. This creates the pointed inner corner that I went back and filled in. I then took a black pencil eyeliner (in this case, my favourite Estée Lauder Pure Color Intense Kajal Eyeliner in 01 Intense Black) and placed it in my water line, smudging it onto my lower lash line so the pencil smoothly joined the base of the liquid liner cat flick. TaDa! You're done.

My base makeup stayed the same for all three looks:

Primer: I didn't use primer as I was wearing this to photograph, not to actually go out in - hence the jumper. However, a good primer and/or setting spray is essential to help your makeup last all night :)
Foundation: Nars Sheer Glow
Powder: Rimmel Stay Matte
Concealer: Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer over the top of the concealers in the MUA Conceal and Brighten Kit
Eye Primer: MUA Pro-Base Eye Primer
Mascara: Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara (waterproof version)
Contour/blush colour: Benefit eyeshadow in Soft Shoulder
Brow Powder: Shade 3 in Avon's Tiger Eye's Palette (discontinued as limited edition, yet to find a dupe, let me know if you know of one cause I don't know what I'm gunna do when I run out 😭)
Brow Gel: Collection Colour Lash Mascara in 1. Clear

I know I'm late on the bandwagon (or what ever the phrase is) here, but I am finally the owner of the much raved about, very beautiful Fortune Favours the Brave Palette by Make Up Revolution and BritishBeautyBlogger. It comes with a mix of 30 matte, shimmery and baked shades and costs just £9.99 (with free shipping if you get it at Superdrug with your Health and Beauty card- gotta save your mulla as a student haha). This means each shades is costing you just 33p! The pans are smaller than usual (see comparison with my thumb below) but this is probably to keep costs down and to fit them all in a non-huge palette. Although it is a little bigger than usual, it is not as big as, say, a Morphe 350 palette, meaning that it is a great palette to take with you on your travels - the colour range means you can create loads of different looks without having to pack a tonne of makeup :) As you can see, the colour range runs from light pinks to purples, blues, greens and browns as well as highlight shades. 

Back of the outer packaging (box) (the front of the box is the same as the inner main palette's cover below) Front of the packaging (it's so beautiful!!) Back of Packaging

I love that all the shadows were given names, as far as I'm aware Makeup Revolution don't normally name their shades... It makes it so much easier to refer to shades as a blogger, provided I don't loose the plastic sheet with them on... Also, note how small the pans are in contrast to my thumb. They are smaller than regular pans, but ah well :)

Artsy photo cause blogger 😂

Now what is the all important pigmentation like you ask?? Well maybe because it was super hyped about I was expecting it to be better than it is, especially as I have the Iconic 3 Palette so can compare it against other Revolution palettes. The colours are a bit hit and miss in some areas, and to get the best payoff, as always, you will need to use a primer, or at least moisten the lid area in some way, for instance by using concealer on the lid if you don't own primer. Originally I wanted to swatch each colour on my eyelid with and without primer but when I tried I quickly remembered that my terrible phone camera doesn't do the colours justice... Instead I've done a couple of examples so you can see what I was getting at, as well as some arm swatches. Note about arm swatches. 1) to keep it as even as possible I applied with the same brush each time (removing as much of the previous product as possible) and brushed the brush in each pan 4 times before switching onto my arm using the same amount of pressure each time(this sounds like my A Level biology coursework XD). 2) You can apply a lot more pressure with the brush when applying them to your arm than on your eye hence the fact the pigmentation looks out of this world. Believe me when I say that when it comes to applying onto your lid, they will not look as good as they look on your forearm.

Swatches of every shade, laid out as they come in the palette so you can workout what every colour is. This picture is every shadow applied with a primer underneath. By comparing this to the swatches on my eyelids, you can see what I was getting at about how misleading they are about the colour intensity of the shadows.

Swatches without primer. As you can see with the darker shades, there is little difference in the shade intensity - but when on the eyelid the difference is massive. The lighter colours do benefit from the addition of a primer though. One thing I was impressed by was the black shadow- it's the one I accidentally smudged. Look at how intense the colour was post smudging; some poorer quality eyeshadows can look intense then disappear when smudged to nothing. Good work Makeup Revolution!

Shimmer eyeshadow (I think I used Brave) No primer on the right, with primer on the left. Look at how less patchy and more intense the colour is on the left - I know my poor camera quality makes it hard to see, but believe me, the difference was considerably more noticeable in comparison to on my forearm in real life.

To give you an idea what the matte and baked shadows are like. The blue is the baked shadow skylight which I'm really not a fan of- for me the blue is too bright (or at least doesn't go with my skin tone) and the gold doesn't go; I would have preferred a bronze shimmer. The matte shade on the right is Latte if I remember correctly. I was really impressed with this shade. Normally mattes struggle in palettes but it applied and blended really easily :)

Here are some looks I created with the palette while playing with it in the last week. I created a neutral pink look, a blue look (that looks quite grey. I don't know why, potentially because I took it after wearing it for a few hours cause I forgot to wear it straight away) and a green look (which was surprisingly my favourite haha). The glitter on the centre of my lids faded quite fast, which I have come to notice with a lot of drugstore eyeshadows after Sam of PixiWoo pointed it out in her high end v highstreet videos. They don't crease too badly (although the blue look did more than the other two), I use the MUA Pro-Base Primer if you're interested, which was quite surprising and a nice bonus :) My lids aren't that oily but eyeshadow does generally crease by the end of the day...

I don't know what this pose is XD. I keep finding myself pouting since watching Candice on Bake Off and I don't know why haha. Anyways, this was created using some of the green shadows. And I don't even know what's going on with my hair, it doesn't like to lie flat 😂

This was a blue look, but looked much greyer by the time I remembered to photograph it a few hours later... Worth noting from this picture though that the centre of the lids had one the of the bronze/gold shadows on and that after a few hours it had completely faded off - lets play Where's Wally but with the bronze shadow on my lids haha

A pinky, bronze look. A bit more day time friendly than the other two looks I created. Definitely something I'll be reaching for in the spring time!

So overall, how would I rate this palette?? Pigmentation wasn't as amazing as expected from the hype but still good once I got used to the palette. I have never used baked shadows before so don't know how comparable they are to others on the market, but they aren't my favourite shades in the palette although they look beautiful in the palette - New World looks like marble😍. The greens and purples are probably winners for me personally and I know I will be hitting pan on them before long bwahaha. Please don't even attempt to use the brush. It is the WORST brush I have ever used in my life. Honestly. it does nothing and the flat brush fails to pick up any product at all. I'm keeping it for special effects work cause I can afford to ruin it haha.

Pigmentation: ★★★☆
Lasting Quality: ★★★★
Colour range: ★★★★★
Value for Money: ★★★★☆

(☆= half a star fyi)

Hope you enjoyed my FIRST EVER review. I would love feedback about how I can improve these, what you would like to know about products I review in the future, so please leave constructive criticism in the comments below.

Have you ever tried the palette? What did you think of it? Or have I tempted you to buy it? Lets have a natter in the comments section :)

June xx

disclaimer: I was not paid to feature this product by anyone. I bought this with my own money and it was my own decision to review it. Neither am I a fan of the blog "BritishBeautyBlogger" meaning I don't feel obliged to love this palette as a fan of the creator of it. In fact, to show my ignorance of the blogging world, I had never heard of her before this palette.

So I have a confession...

All throughout my teen years, I made YouTube style videos and never published them anywhere... I'll just let you judge me for a bit.

Done? Fab!

Anyways, one of the last videos I made and the one I am most proud of was a Zombie style makeup made in 2014 - 2 years ago! Feels like yesterday haha. As much as I would love to put the video up I am not 100% sure that I have the right permissions music wise despite using copyright free music, as the copyright free-ness might only apply to if you're uploading to YouTube. Instead, here is a screenshot step by step tutorial on how to create this look :)

1) Pale your face

Well isn't this a flattering angle (I was applying foundation to my neck FYI)

Apply a cool toned foundation a few shades too pale for your face. Remember to apply to your neck, over your lips and onto your ears- you are dead, there should be no sign of you having a working circulatory system XD. If you have a green tinted primer you could apply this as well. By applying too much you may find that you get a sickly green tint to your skin - this will only add to the dead look you're going for! For full on dedication, apply to any exposed skin :)

If you don't want to buy cheap pale foundation you're only going to use once or you are too pale for cheap foundations (I feel your pain) you could see if you can get a sample of foundation colour changers such as the Colour Changing Drops by the Body Shop, a sample of a more expensive super pale foundation or by using white face paint. And don't worry about using a high coverage foundation - I don't think Zombies are renowned for clear skin.

2) Hollow out your face



So I don't know about you, but zombies aren't known for a youthfully plump face. So lets contour the heck out of our faces!



Taking a grey or taupe eyeshadow, place under your cheekbones and down to your jaw line when you get a couple of inches from your nose/mouth. Also apply to your temples, jaw line, nose, around your eyes and on your neck and collar bones. Then take brown-green and deep purple eyeshadows and apply on the shading near the edge of the face and around the eyes for a bruised, rotting effect.

3) Lets make skin!



Taking a SFX skin substitute (such as liquid latex, 3rd Degree or in my Case Parts A and B of Skin Tite- this is the kit I used) that you know how to remove properly and use safely(!), follow the instructions if you need to mix two parts together or colour to match your skin tone. (That sentence makes no sense 😂)



Then apply to your skin. I used lollypop sticks for this as you will wreck any brush that goes near this stuff, let alone the fact that brushes aren't really the best tool to apply it.  I apply in oval, oblong and patchy shapes over my cheeks, across the side of my nose, down my neck and on my forehead. When it starts to get a little tacky and thicker as it dries (depending on what you use), push the product in the centre of the shapes to the edge of the shape to create a raised edge to the wound. Make sure that the outside edge of the wound is blended into your skin so it is only a raised edge on the inside edge, making it look more realistic. When the product has set you can move onto adding colour!

This part is all about you experimenting and having fun. There are products you can that can tighten the skin in certain areas to make it look scarred. Basically mess around to create an uneven surface to your skin. Add prosthetic boils for instance, just remember to blend everything into your own skin! Not everything has to be an open wound. See where your imagination takes you :)

4) Adding blood!



Yay this is the fun bit!! Taking a deep red colour (not bright red! - the most unrealistic blood colour ever. If you don't have one, mix in some brown or black into your bright red colour) and apply in a blotchy, messy pattern over the wounds you have created. I used the flat edge of another lolly pop stick to make it as messy as possible. This is not fill in the gaps. Go out side the lines, cause blood will bleed onto the surrounding skin irl. Then take darker reds and apply on top to add depth. Apply black with the thin edge of a lollypop stick or a cocktail stick to the inside edge of the wounds add depth to the wound. You can use your fingers to blend colours, and use greens and yellows to add a rotting effect if you so desire :) Have fun with it and experiment.

darken the edges of wounds to add depth. Splatter Blood everywhere. If I did this again, I would go even crazier with the blood and cover my face in the stuff by flicking fake blood onto my face with an old toothbrush for instance XD

If you don't have the grease paint colours I used from my kit, you could mix colours from face paint  - though have a clear gloss at hand to apply over the top or to mix into them to make the blood look wet, as face paint dries matte. You could also use fake blood such as Fresh Scab by Ben Nye for varied texture or from the kits by MakeUp revolution if you are looking for a cheaper alternative. There are also numerous fake blood recipes online. Lipstick and tinted lip glosses are great cheap alternatives - and super easy to get hold of seeming as dark lips are on trend atm. I wouldn't recommend using liquid lipsticks though cause they may stain your skin. I haven't tried it, but you could try adding powder to a thinner fake blood to make it clumpy to recreate blood clots or thick, drying blood... Let me know if you try it and it works!

5) Finishing touches


Blacken your lips with black eyeshadow to make them look deader, add contacts if you have any (unlike me), darken areas further, apply brow gel against the direction of your brown hair growth to mess them up, mess up your hair, add blood to your outfit... Go wild!!

Here are some pictures of my finished look, plus what it may have looked like had I dared to use contact lenses...

I really need to get some contacts, I would look so much more zombie-esque! Also Can we just appreciate the camera quality! Ah I do miss the days I had access to my dad's DSLR.

I also wanted to add this picture on the end of a more extreme version of this look, using the same wound products and techniques, that I created in 2013, to give you some more inspiration...