Lush Sleepy | Review

This Lush product has been so popular over the past year or so that at times it has been so hard to get. It's popular due to a blog post which stated that Sleepy helped them sleep at night, and it was sold out in shops near me for months, and I was dying to try it. I'm a huge fan of Lush's body lotions, there's something so soothing and moisturizing about them. This is definitely one of my faves. 

Now I'm not a massive fan of lavender, I find the scent overpowering a lot of the time. Yet with Sleepy, I feel like the lavender is just the right amount and it's a scent that I actually like. Lush has a whole range of product's scented like this, all based off the Twilight bath bomb, which is great for a soothing and relaxing bath. I personally don't think this product helps me sleep but I do think the scent has relaxing qualities to it that can add to it. The product is creamy and easy to lather and smooth into your skin, leaving it soft with a gentle lavender scent. 

   

It's no wonder that this product is popular and I know that I'll be repurchasing again in the future. 
Has anyone else tried this or any similar products from Lush? What do you think?

Soph X Revolution Highlighter Palette

If you're anything like me then you're a sucker for a shiny new highlighter or highlighter palette. I love most highlighters that I've tried but I am in love with this palette. This palette is a collaboration with Sophdoesnails, a Youtuber, I've linked to her channel if you've never watched her before, shes wonderful, and Revolution makeup. She has an eye shadow palette as well but I have so many eye shadow palettes I couldn't bring myself to get another. Now I've never had a highlight specific palette before, it's always been a contour style palette so I was very excited to have a play with all the different shades in the palette. It's also so affordable but wonderful, I think it was only ten Euro.

I'm not sure if the highlighter shades have names or not, as they don't on the packaging but there is five baked really shimmery shades and three pressed slightly less shimmery shades. There's a white shimmer shade, a purple toned one, a gold toned one, a rose gold toned one, and the other three are slightly more pink toned. My favourite is the first one in the palette the white shimmer one, I also like the purple toned one, the second on the second row. As I'm usually a pale person lighter highlighters suit my skin tone more, and I use the other shades as blush and other parts of my cheeks rather than my cheek bones.

The product is very pigmented and spreads easily over the cheeks. I like that there is so much variation in the shades, which means that there is something that will suit everyone and it also opens up some experimentation with shades, which I like to do. They're all just so pretty. 

The swatches are in order, the top row followed by the second. 

Has anyone else tried this and loved it like me? What are your favourite highlighters?

February Favourites | 2018

I love the alliteration of the title of this post. I have not done a favourites video in a long time, usually because I'm that person who uses the same products all the time. Yet, over Christmas I've gathered a lot of new products to try out so I thought I'd share the things that I've been loving for the past while. 

I'm going to start with beauty favourites, so during Christmas I had the NYX lipstick calendar, which contained 24 NYX mini lipsticks, which I love, there's only about two or three that I would never wear. I decided to pick my three favourites from them to share with you. The first one is a butter lipstick in the shade Root Beer Float, which is a purple toned pink, but it's a dark nude colour when  on the lips. This is like a regular lipstick with a soft finish. The next lipstick is the NYX lip lingerie in the shade Exotic, which I have had a full version before and loved, this is a dark pink/red liquid lipstick, and these are my favourite liquid lipsticks I own. And the last NYX lipstick is the soft matte lip cream in the shade Copenhagen, which is a deep purple red, matte lip colour. I love that they are all minis too, so easy for travel.

The next beauty products are from Tanya Burr, I'm not too sure if they're only from her Christmas range or not. The first is a lip gloss in the shade Cranberry Melt, I'm not massively into lip glosses, but recently I've been into more subtle shades, of which this is although it looks a deep red colour. Also her nail varnish in the shade festive red, which I think the two are a good combination.

The next few things are perfume and scent related. The first one is from Zoella's Christmas range, it's a body mist aptly called Snow'ella. This body mist is very calming and smells fresh, floral and minty. I like it because it's a little subtle. The other perfume I've chosen for my favourites is Lady Million, this is the female branded version of One Million, which I love. I'm very bad at describing scents but you can click on the link if you're interested in a proper description. It's always one of my favourites and a staple scent.

   

On to other non-beauty related favourites over the past month. If I did a favourites in January my top favourite would be the Greatest Showman film and soundtrack. If you haven't seen or listened to anything from this yet, what are you doing with your life? I know there's a handful of people that dislike it, but they're wrong. The only thing I disliked was a few of the plot structure and flow, but overall, the experience, atmosphere and the production of the film was amazing. Also I absolutely love all the cast, Hugh Jackman being my favourite. The composers and lyricists who made La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen created the music for this film so you'll know straight away it's amazing. If you want to check out my cover of This Is Me, you can watch it here.

Another favourite is watching films and TV shows from DisneyLife rather than Netflix recently. If you don't know what DisneyLife is, it's a Netflix purely for Disney productions, and who doesn't love a good Disney film? It's also safe to say over the past few months that I've more than likely watched them all.

My last favourites are the Malteasers mini Teasers, which I didn't have any left for the photos, ooops. These are small versions of the Teasers bar, I think they originally come from the Christmas celebration tins. You could get these in little chocolate boxes for Valentines for which I happily received, and they are amazing and so cute.

What's everyone else's favourites been over the past month? Let me know!

The Body Shop Shea Collection

If you've followed me for a while, you'll know that I really like the Body Shop products and I'm slowly trying them all out. I prefer the Body Shops shower products a little more than Lush's, although I prefer Lush's bath and skin products, of which I review way too much of. Over the past few moths I've gathered a collection of Body Shop products, all of which smell divine. The Shea collection is one that has a very subtle scent compared to the other products, but it smells really nice for showering as it's not as overpowering as the rest. I think it also makes a good gift choice because of that, as more people would like the scent. Here's a few of the products I have from this range. 

My favourite of the Shea Products is the Shea shower cream, I love using these in the shower as they foam up very well and a little product goes a long way and you get so much out of a bottle. The Shea scent isn't overpowering but it smells very fresh and clean which is something you'd want.
I also love the Shea soap, you can't really go wrong with a bar of soap, although I wouldn't use it in the shower it's great for leaving in your bathroom for hand washing, and it also leaves the same fresh scent lingering in the room.
The next product is the Shea body butter, which is my least favourite. I prefer in shower body butters as I find other ones a little bit more sticky and slimy. This isn't very interesting, although I find it moisturizing, it's not my favourite body butter to go for, yet it's very good quality.
The last product is the Shea body scrub, which I prefer to the body butter. It contains salt to exfoliate your skin and it also moisturizes which is like a two in one product, it also doesn't leave your skin sticky which is something I look for in a product.

This scent range is one of my favourites due to being so subtle, which means it's harder to feel sickened or tired by an overpowering scent, which makes it one of my favourites, almost like a classic scent.
Has anyone tried these products before? What do you think of the scent?

Subculture Palette | Review

Yes, I know the hype over this palette is long over, but I have a habit of buying products long after everyone else buys them. It's partly because if I still want it after a long period of time I know that I still want it, and I get to read more reviews and see if it's worth it. I've seen a lot of reviews about this product with people not liking it, the main reason is that it has a lot of fallout compared to its counterpart, the Modern Renaissance palette, but although I agree with that, I still have a lot of love for the product and thought I'd still give my own review. 

The ABH Subculture palette, along with the Modern Renaissance palette, are both two palettes that have stood out to me as ones that I needed to have. The selection of colours in each is amazing, and so different to others out there. Although I think the Modern Renaissance palette is more versatile in terms of neutral, bright and normally more wearable shades, I loved and love the contrasts and choice of colours in the Subculture palette. Admittedly, I don't wear darker colours often as I'm always afraid of not being able to blend them right or making a mess. Yet I thought that the colours in this would be great for experimenting and seeing what I could come up with, which might be a good blog post idea for the future, let me know what you think.

   

There's eleven matte shades and three shimmer shades in this palette, and it comes with a a mixture of light and dark colours that seem a little odd with each other. The actual pigmentation of this product I like, yes I agree that there is a lot of fallout, as you can see from having been used in the photos, yet if you are gentle with the product, it's not too bad. Maybe they've changed the formulation since its first release. The product is creamy and powdery at the same time, which makes it easy to blend and mix together. I find that even a little product is very pigmented and they come out the same colour as in the pan.

My favourite shades from the palette are Edge, which is a bright yellow, which is similar from ones in the Modern Renaissance palette. I also like Untamed, a green and dark blue pigment, Cube, which is an iridescent white with a colourful shimmer, and Electric, which follows its name, a sparkly gold yellow. I like to use this palette especially on nights out and I've loved trying different combinations out so far.

   

The swatches above are of the top row of the palette, in order, Cube, Dawn, Destiny, Adorn, All Star, Mercury, and Axis.

These swatches are of the second row in the palette, in order, Roxy, Electric, Fudge, New Wave, Untamed, Edge, and Rowdy.

Has anyone tried this palette before? What do you think of the shade range and pigment?

Lush Love Boat Bath Bomb | Review

Every time Lush releases new products I feel like they just get better and better. When they released their new valentines range I wasn't sure which one to get but after seeing them in person I fell in love with the Love Boat bath bomb. The bath bomb smells of citrus and also has a floral scent which is just so springy and different from their other products and the Christmas ones that were just out.

   

The bath bomb is like its name and it's in the shape of a boat. It has pastel colours on it, blue, pink and yellow at the bottom and it has a love heart at the front of the boat. If you hold the boat in a certain way when you're putting it in the water, it will float around like a boat, you can see in my photos I failed in doing so. If you hold the bottom bit in for a while until it starts fizzing a little bit and let go, it can float, you might need some practice as mine was falling backwards too much but not bad for a first attempt. It melts and fizzes in a pastel blue and pink and as the bottom melts a yellow fizzes into the mixture. The colours are so pretty together and the scent is so fresh and bright, if you can call a scent bright. When it finishes fizzing and the colours settle it turns the bath a rose red colour which is also very pretty.

   

Has anyone else tried this bath bomb from the Valentines range or anything else? What should I try next?

Snapshots of Berlin | Travel Diary

Once again, it's been so long since I've written a blog post. I was so ready to get myself back on track and having regular posts but the whole month of January was just not a great month in many various ways that I won't get into and now is the first chance I've really had to start blogging again. I know I missed the start of 2018 blogging wise but I'm hopeful this will be a good year, not just for me but for everyone too. Near the end of December, I traveled with my boyfriend to Berlin and it was so wonderful around the Christmas period with all the Christmas markets. I know the trip was a month ago now but I thought I'd still share my photos just because I love seeing peoples travel photos and I love having a photo diary for myself to look back at.

The best thing about visiting Berlin around Christmas is their Christmas markets. There is literally so many around and they sell so many cute items and amazing food, I'm dreaming of it right now. This is one of the bigger markets at Alexanderplatz and we visited this almost everyday that we were there. They also had an ice skating rink, which was so nice and a cheap activity to do.

We visited a lot of historical sights and museums, as you do, and our hotel was about a five minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate which is such a pretty monument and street.

We visited Check Point Charlie and other various parts of the Berlin wall, but I definitely found Check Point Charlie and the museum very interesting historically.

The East Side Gallery was something I really wanted to visit and I loved the artwork, it was so different to what I imagined it to be. The historical and artistic combinations in Berlin are amazing, it makes it such an interesting city. There are also a lot of vegan food places around this area if that's something you're interested in.

This market has a wonderful band and atmosphere at night, I had eggnog for the first time here and I will probably never drink it again after, the mulled wine is a better choice.

We didn't actually go up the TV tower, partly because it was very foggy each day we were there, and also I'm not the biggest fan of heights, but I do think it looks great in photographs.

Rememebering all the Christmas markets is making me want it to be Christmas all over again, every where you look is just so pretty and the city was just buzzing with life.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my travel diary, it's long overdue. If you want to check out more of my trip you can watch it on my Youtube channel here. 

Has anyone ever been to Berlin before? What's your favourite places?