Well good afternooooon!

My nails have had a serious lack of attention recently. I got into such a good routine of painting them weekly but I literally just have not had time to squeeze them in. Grrrrrrr! Between work, uni, placement and life in general my blogging regime has really taken a back seat which makes me really sad, although I'm trying my best to fit it in between where ever I can. 

Anyway, yippee I managed to squeeze in painting my nails this week. Granted they were super quick and done in about 15/20 minutes, but still I feel they turned out quite alright do you?

 I picked this nifty little pack of gems up from primark a few weeks ago for just £1. Who even knew that primark sold nail art items? I certainly didn't. I was chuffed to pieces and shall be looking in there again to see if I can grab some more nail art bargains. I mainly fancied using the stars but I'm sure I'll find use for the others.

These nails were inspired by bonfire night. The glittery colour and stars remind me of all the lovely fireworks I've been seeing. The nail polish I used was just two coats of OPI 'On her majesty's secret service' which I do believe is from the 'Skyfall' Collection. Its a lovely glittery black colour that isn't really done justice in the photos. It really is full of beautiful colours in the specks of glitter.

Let me know what you think to these simple and super quick nails. The next few nail art posts might also be super quick nails for those who haven't got much time on their hands (mwahahahaha pun intended).

e.l.f. Blush in Blushing Rose Review | KatieLewLa

Helloooo my lovelies :)

A few weeks ago the lovely e.l.f. team were kind enough to offer me the opportunity to try out a few of their products that took my fancy. I've actually never tried anything from e.l.f. before but have heard a lot of great things about them from fellow bloggers. I had a search on their website for some items I might like to try and a few days later I received a nice little package with all the items I'd asked for. Amongst those items was the little gem below which I'm going to do a quick review of....

I chose this particular colour as it's a darker shade for the autumn/winter months and also has a golden glitter tone to it which immediately caught my eye. Some say it's a good dupe for NARS oasis which is very similar. (not that I'll ever justify parting with that much cash to be able to compare the two). 

The packaging is simple and neat with a handy little mirror for if you're on the go and the price is astounding at just £3.75. First impressions are very very good. Now the first time I used this blusher I made the simple mistake of swishing my blush brush across it far too heavily handed and ended up looking like quite a pilac with ridiculously rosy cheeks. Not a good look! Easily fixed with a lot of buffing, but let's just say I won't be making that mistake again! The blush is so heavily pigmented and easily transferable onto a blush brush that you barely even need to sweep across it. Impressive right? I certainly thought so. I can see this blush lasting me for a very long time as I barely have to use any product. The colour on is a really lovely rosy pink with a gold shimmer, which is perfect for my warmer skin tone. I have been grabbing this every time I've been applying blusher recently and I'm not a massive blusher fan so that says something for me! It lasts well enough for me and I don't find it rubs off too easily. All in all it's quite a winner! I will definitely be purchasing more e.l.f. blushers in the future if this one is anything to go by. I'm sold!!!

Thank you to e.l.f. for helping me discover this little gem of an item :) You can see their great selection of blushers on the website http://eyeslipsface.co.uk/en/restofworld/blush/blush/invt/83130

Anyone else have a love for e.l.f. blushers and what are your favourite shades? (any recommendations for warm skin tones will be greatly appreciated)

Hope you enjoy.

Lush Aqua Marina cleanser review | KatieLewLa

Good morning my lovelies. 

Apologies for the lack of love on KatieLewLa recently. I've started my second year of my masters degree this month which has been rather hectic. It's safe to say that life has been keeping me on my toes as of late which is pleasing. But you'll hopefully be pleased to know that I've discovered some awesome photo editing software on my mobile, so I'm currently experimenting with that in between my busy schedule. I'm hoping this will be a fix for the withdrawal symptoms I'm having from getting snap happy and photo edit crazy and will mean I can post for all you lovely people more often! Win win! (If it works)

Today's post is on a cleanser I've been trying for the past few weeks. That is..... (you probably guessed it already) the lush Aqua Marina fresh facial cleanser. 

I'm aware the quality transferred from my phone isn't amazing but I think it's liveable isn't it?

So let's start with the positives. Or the pro's as we like to call them. Firstly the staff in lush are what I would call "spot on!" They are so helpful and couldn't give me enough of their time in helping me choose the right cleanser for me. Top marks for the customer service! 

Secondly the array of ingredients listed in the fresh facial cleansers are pretty darn wonderful and pleasing to the reader (which happens to be me, a beauty product addict) so it's always a relief to see a selection of natural ingredients with no harmful chemical nasties in there such as sulphates and parabens. I don't know about anyone else but I immediately think, yessss my skin will thank me for this. Just a few of the appealing ingredients in Aqua Marina are patchouli for brightening, seaweed and clay for oil absorbing, aloe vera for its pesky spot soothing properties and sea salt for its gentle natural exfoliation. The list of yummy ingredients goes on but I won't keep you too long. At £6.35 for 100g it isn't a bad price either and I would say that it would last you around a month if you don't use too much.

Onto the slightly annoying.....

The consistency of this cleanser is quite tricky and time consuming to work with. I'm a simple girl who likes a fast and easy to apply cleanser so that I don't need to spend more time than needed removing the day from my face. So I take a pea sized amount of aqua marina in the palm of my hand, add a small amount of water and gently begin to work it into a paste. When you have your desired consistency you can begin to massage it into the face. It does rub in quite nicely and I found it had quite a tingly, cleaning effect whilst gently massaging it in. I don't feel the makeup removal quality is very impressive but if you don't mind double cleansing then I guess it's not an issue worth crying about. If you're looking for quick and easy makeup removal I don't feel that this is it. It did leave me with a squeaky clean sort of feeling which is good for those with oilier skin but still for some reason I was never satisfied. Unlike other cleansers I've used I still didn't feel convinced that my skin was as clean as it could be but I stuck with it.....

After sticking with it for around 3/4 weeks I must say I was feeling quite let down. My chin and forehead had broken out with really sore under the skin spots, and I was not a happy bean at all. I eventually decided after all that hard work and making a chalky mess of my sink, that this cleanser was just not for me. As much as I wish it was. I still have quite a sufficient splodge left in the tub and I might use it as more of a facemask every now and then to use it up, but as a cleanser it just didn't cut it for me. It's kind of put me off trying another lush cleanser as it's too much like hard work and not enough paid off for it to feel worth it (sad face). It's not all that often I feel this disappointed with a product but unfortunately my skin just did not agree with it. I think for those with oilier skin this could be good for its oil absorbing qualities. Dry and more sensitive skins I would possibly steer clear as I feel it's aimed more at problematic skin but for me it caused more of a problem than I began with.

Sorry lush. I still love you, however I think I'll stick to bath and shower items for the time being....

Please do let me know about your experiences with lush cleansers. 

Hope you enjoy. 

Boots & Lush Beauty Haul | KatieLewLa

Hello there my lovelies :)

I took a trip into town today to buy one thing! ONE THING! Who actually ever goes shopping and comes back with only one beauty product?? Not meeeee. I can't help it. It's like I get sucked in by this vast array of beautiful new, exciting, bargain products. In my defense all the items I bought were on offer and I actually didn't spend a great deal even though it might appear so :)

Lush Aqua Marina Cleanser

My skin is having a bad time again at the moment and since Lush's cleansers are pretty much all natural ingredients I thought I'd give one a bash. The sales assistant was most helpful and tested out a few different cleansers on my hands to see which I might be better suited to. Since my skin is quite prone to spots recently we settled on Aqua Marina for it's many spot fighting ingredients such as Kaolin, seaweed, aloe vera and sea salt and also patchouli oil which is a natural ingredient to help protect from scarring. I haven't tried any of the lush cleansers before although I am an avid lush fan.

L'Oreal 3 in 1 purifying micellar solution

Since running out of Bioderma I'v been on the hunt for a cheaper alternative. Since many a beauty blogger have mentioned this and with it conveniently being reduced to only £3.33 I thought why the hell not? I've used it once today and so far I'm quite impressed with its capabilities.

Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer

A cult product amongst beauty bloggers which is why I can't live without a tube of this miracle concealer. It's my absolute go to for covering pesky under eye circles like mine....

Botanics Cleansing Toner All Bright

I've seen a few people mention this as being a good alternative for the Pixi Glow Tonic and since I'm a bargain beauty buyer I thought I'd give it a whirl. It was reduced to just over £2 which is an absolute bargain for 250ml

So when wandering through boots I spotted that Lee Stafford had a HUUUUGE offer on 3 for £12 :) I absolutely could not under any circumstance resist this treat. Since 1 of the items I've been lusting over alone is £11.99 I would have been crazy not to take full advantage of this offer.
Lee Stafford Beach Babe Sea Salt Spray Recently I've been enjoying scrunching my hair on it's 3rd day before washing. I only straighten my hair once on the 1st day so by the 3rd day, although it holds well, my hair does have a slight natural wave to it. I'm embracing the wave recently with dry shampoo and some salt spray and a few people have mentioned their love for this so I figured I'd give it a test :) Watch out for my salt spray waves on instagram on Wednesday!
Lee Stafford here come the curls creme lite One of my best kept secrets is that I have naturally pretty unruly curls. A few times in the past few weeks I've let my hair air dry into this curly mass of frizzy ringlets and seeing this decided that it might help me to pull off au naturale curls minus the frizz. I'm hoping for miracles :) It claims to be lightweight so doesn't weigh curls down, but rather makes them more bouncy and lively without the frizz. Fingers crossed!
Lee Stafford Hair Growth Leave in Treatment I am an absolute LOVER of the lee stafford hair growth treatment. I've reviewed it previously (here) and have recently rediscovered that I can't live without it so when I saw that they also offered a leave in treatment from the range I just HAD to snap it up! If it's anywhere near as good as the treatment then I'm sold and will re-purchase it forever! Enough said! hehe.

NOTW- Ladybug Love | KatieLewLa

Good Afternoon my lovelies :)

This week I've been feeling the love for the bugs. I met a friendly grasshopper whilst grazing in the garden and was landed on by a ladybug or two!

Step 1- Choose a lovely red colour. (I have also seen these done in other colours which look pretty darn cool too) I used an FCUK polish which annoyingly doesn't have a name :( It came in a set for christmas & I've just found it here for only £3!! BARGAIN ALERT! (p.s I love the quality of these polishes)

Step 2- Add accent nails to your thumb and ring finger (or any that take your fancy) using a red glitter polish. I used OPI in 'you only live twice' which I believe is from the Skyfall collection.

Step 3- Create the seen shape using a striper polish or simply using a black polish and nail art brush. I find it easiest to hold the striper brush on and then move the nail accordingly rather than trying to keep a steady hand. I used the models own nail art pen in Black.

Step 4- Time to add all those spots :) 2 white spots for eyes, followed by two black spots for the pupils (try not to make your poor ladybird boz eyed like I did hehe) Then add black polka dots wherever else you like. You can experiment to your hearts desire with the spots. Make them as large or as small as you like!

I managed to give mine a 3D effect by adding quite thick blobs with the spotting end of my models own nail art pen. Remember to make sure to leave them to dry before applying the topcoat otherwise the 3D spots might sink & your little ladybugs won't look so life like.

Hope you like my little creatures! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Remember you can see all my nail art designs on my instagram before they're posted on my blog! Click the link. 

Bourjois Color Boost Lip Crayon Review | Orange Punch | KatieLewLa

Good evening lovelies :)

Today's review is of the fairly new and much talked about Bourjois Color Boost Lip Crayon in Orange Punch. Unfortunately this was the only one that really stood out to me as the rest are Red's & Pinks which are not my colour at all. (Not a lover of pinky shades) Hopefully there will be more releases for A/W with a wider variety of shades that I'll find more appealing as I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I like this one.