Fake Tan Disasters!

During the summer months sales of fake tan must absolutely sky rocket because literally everyone is wearing it. It's always nice to have a gorgeous tan in the summer and so deserve a little help when you struggle to tan naturally, but sometimes this can go hideously wrong! I have tried to compile a list of some of the dodgy tan mistakes I have seen so far this summer.

1. Patches/ streaks in your tan
I know this is a very common one that we have all been guilty of at one point or another, but I have seen some extreme cases recently! One of them was a girl who was wearing a strapless dress and had obviously tried to apply her tan herself and failed... There was a big white patch in the center of her back where she had reached from every side as best she could but couldn't quite reach the middle. Lesson to learn - if you're not a contortionist, get someone to help you!

2. A shade that just doesn't suit you
Again, another pretty obvious one. If you are naturally very pale, going for the darkest shade of tan is just not going to suit you. It's a sad fact but it's true, this is the reason why I never go higher than a medium because it just wouldn't look right. My best friend is exceptionally pale (we call her the porcelain queen) and has always used the lightest shade of tan. One day I suggested using my tan just to see how it would look on her, it looked odd... Naturally sunkissed is the look you're aiming for remember.

3. Oompah Loompah tan 
I thought I may as well get all the obvious ones done and out the way first. I don't understand how still now, with sooo many choices for fake tan out there, people still end up looking orange. I don't think it is to do with the quantity of tan put on but the tan used because I have piled the St Tropez on before and it didn't look orange. Therefore, if you have found yourself resembling a carrot recently, let me know what tan you used so that I can avoid it in future!

4. Applying tan on a very hot day...
This is one that in hindsight seems pretty obvious but actually I wouldn't have thought of to be a bad idea before. The other day as I walked through town I saw a girl who had obviously slapped on the fake tan that morning and then been sat down somewhere in the very hot weather. You know what it's like when it's stupidly hot and you are sat in a chair, the backs of your knees get sweaty... Her tan would have looked lush if it wasn't for the fact that there were white diamond shapes on the back of her knees where her tan was obviously very fresh and the heat had made her sweat and the tan had 'washed off' from behind her knees - NIGHTMARE! I learnt the importance of doing your tan the night before right there! Poor girl.

5. Using a separate fake tan for your face
Now I do do this myself, I like to think the face tanner is gentler on the skin than the body one and so I like to use that instead (although there is probably no difference between the two). Which is fine if you match the shades up properly, horrific if you don't! I have been guilty of this in the past and the pictures weren't attractive...where I went wrong is that one was an instant tan and the other was one that developed (the body one). So I looked ok when it was all applied and I went to bed, the next morning my body looked a very obviously different shade to my face and where I had rubbed it in roughly around my neck, it looked a bit odd. A bit of heavy duty foundation though and it was just about passable, oops!

6. When the tan goes through your mitt and stains your hand
This has happened to me too many times! I'll use one mitt for ages and then one time I'll go to use it and the tan will leak through and dye my hand without me even noticing. I then take the mitt off when I've finished to find dark patches of tan all over my hands. It's a difficult look to pull off. I have been told to wear a latex glove under the mitt though to stop this happening in the future.

7. Getting fake tan all over your carpet, furniture, bed sheets...!
Ok, so this isn't a disaster in the way of everyone is going to see it, but it is a personal disaster in my opinion. No matter how careful I try to be I somehow end up getting some amount of fake tan on my carpet when applying it. It may just be me being a bit kack-handed but is probably why I have been told I am only allowed to apply tan whilst stood in the bath... The bed sheets one is kind of obvious,the solution is to buy black sheets then you can't see the evidence, yay no whinging from your mum! But furniture though...don't apply tan and then sit on the sofa, my friend has left a perfect print of her body on the sofa. Oh dear!

So they are the worst fake tan disasters that I know of. Feel free to comment if you have any more! Have you done/ witnessed any of these yourself?

*Binky London Nail Polish*

*PR Sample*

I received these 2 nail polishes from the new Binky London collection last week and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked them. Binky, in case you weren't aware, is the Binky Felstead of 'Made in Chelsea' fame and although  I love her on the program, I was worried that these polishes would be a bit...gimmicky. You know how you see some celebrities go and try their hand at their own make-up line etc and it's just a bit wrong? That was my concern, but actually they are kind of lovely.

The shades that I was sent is a blue - which has a metallic sheen to it - and a  pink- which has a slightly more gel like finish to it - and they look gorgeous in the bottle and strangely go really well together, not sure if that was intentional but the colours really do compliment each other, perfect for future nail art ideas, always good for me! Sadly I couldn't find any shade names, which I thought was a bit odd?

The brush is of a good quality. It is thicker and flat and shaped at the tip, which is perfect for painting the entire nail. It was slightly streaky in the metallic finish so you had to be a bit more careful with that one, but the pink was incredibly simple to apply and looked great. The above picture is also after just one coat, you can imagine how great and bold these look after a standard two coats.

Durability wise, I applied the pink shade to my toes about 5 days ago and there has been no chipping from what I can see, and I have been wearing sandals all week! It looks so bright and girly and just perfect for the summer. I really do think these are pretty damn good. For a celebrity product, I like it an awful lot.

Ok so the bottle I think tries to copy Rimmel a little bit too much, with the Union Jack and little crown detail, but it is quite appealing. Nothing too over the top but enough that it doesn't look a bit bog standard and boring.

Overall I have liked these a lot more than I thought I would. They tick all the right boxes for me at least. There are 31 polishes in the Binky London collection with many different shades and finishes - including gel effect, denim effect and metallics - to choose from and so really is worth having a look at.  Order these, and other shades, here.

*Kooky Neon Nail Wraps*

*PR Sample*

I was recently contacted by The Beauty Partnership to ask me if I would try some nail wraps. For those who regularly read my blog, you will understand that I am a massive fan of nail art!! And so I couldn't resist, especially when they told me that they were neon nail wraps, exciting!

So here are the wraps that I was sent:

They are really neon pink, cheeatah print wraps. The brightness of them doesn't seem to photograph well because in real life they look incredibly luminous, but the camera didn't quite seem able to capture that. I know, a bad workman always blames his tools!! But they did look impressive in the packet. Really gorgeous!

The only thing that disappointed me slightly was that on the application instructions it stated to 'Cleanse and dehydrate each nail plate using Kooky dehydrator' which I had not received in my pack. This would worry me that you would need to order that seperately and it is not made clear, hopefully when you purchase these from the website they will send you the dehydrator as part of the pack. I'm hoping it will not make too much of an impact on the application and durability of these nail wraps!

Other than that little blip, they were incredibly easy to apply. I used one strip to do two nails, one on the right hand and the corresponding one on the left. In this way it means that they match up better, luckily they were good sized strips. They were incredibly easy to apply smoothly to the nail, buff on to the nail and remove the excess length. I would definitely recommend these for ease of application. As you can see, they look gorgeous on the nail!

The instructions didn't advise to apply clear polish over the top so I am trying to stick to them as much as possible to really test how good they are. I find the real test with nail wraps is whether they catch and start to peel off when you shower. I washed my hair with these on this morning and there seems to be no sign whatsoever that these are beginning to come off. I leave for holiday on Thursday so I'll keep you updated on how they survived! But I have very high hopes :) But they are so comfortable to wear, you don't even notice them on. Unlike some that I tried once before that started peeling off in minutes and I was so concious of them all day - nightmare!

Now, a little bit about the brand. These wraps are from Kooky Nail Fashionistas who describe their wraps as 'micro thin, high performance vinyl film designed to cover the nail plate' and a big part of their campaign seems to be that they are heatless...I don't know a great deal about nail wraps but I have dabbled with them in the past and I have never known them to require heat for application? Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to be a big point for them. But anyway, they're described as incredibly hardwearing and from what I have experienced so far, they aren't wrong.

Their Summer 2014 collection is called the 'Neon Me' collection, and the wraps I received are from that. They have a wide range of wraps though, and in all honesty they are gorgeous. I would happily wear about 90% of them, my favourites being the 'Front Row Ticket' wraps - lush! There is such a large variety of patterns and colours and also textures (which are new to the brand) so I do believe there is something for everyone.

Each set of nail wraps is £5.00 and includes 16 different sized wraps. It concerns me that on the documentation that they sent me it says 'wrap print may differ slightly from image shown' but I am hoping this is them just covering their backs and being overly cautious... For more info or to purchase go here.

The new exercise class that will near kill you, but keep you coming back for more!

This class is called Les Mills Grit series. It is apparently based around the Insanity Workout (you may have seen the late night/ early morning adverts for Insanity?) and it is tough, so so tough!

 As you can see, I used the picture for Grit rather than a picture of myself actually doing this class. This is solely because they look a lot more glamorous than I do during a Grit class. I'm usually bright red and sweating profusely within about 5mins and I really don't think anyone wants or needs to see that really! So I thought it would be best to show it with all these lovely beautiful people that look like they are having much more fun than I do mid-Grit...!

There are 3 different classes for Grit - Plyo, Strength and Burn. So far I have only done 2 Strength classes (the only ones they have run on a Thursday morning at my gym over the last 2 weeks as I have only just braved going to one) so I can only really comment on that class for now, but hopefully over the next couple of weeks I'll get to do the other two also. Strength involves a quick warm up which includes burpies (a lot of them), low rows with a weight bar, squats with weights and push presses. These are done at high repetitions over 2 minute intervals and it definitely warms you up, I am usually looking a delightful shade of beetroot after just the first 2 minutes of burpies, lovely. In case you aren't sure what a burpie is, you do a squat down then put your hands on the floor and jump back and do a press up then jump your feet back in and stand.

The main body of the Strength class is doing a lot of high repetition toning exercises, so a lot of squats, jumping lunges (are they called scissor lunges?), low rows etc but at quick bursts of high reps. I thought this didn't sound too difficult, especially as it is only a 30 minute class, but it is by far the hardest I've ever done. I have never so genuinely felt that I was going to puke and pass out at the same time! But I absolutely loved it.

The great thing about Grit is that it has such fast results. Doing high intensity training does give you fast results anyway, but this has been the best work out for me. I did a class yesterday morning and already this morning I could feel aches in muscles I never thought I had. Aches are good! Ok, so i struggled to lift my arms to wash my hair this morning but that's a small price to pay....!

In all honesty though, it is an excellent new class to try if you're thinking about changing up your routine slightly. Don't worry about struggling in it because EVERYONE is struggling, that's just how it is. I would definitely recommend it, or at least look in to it. It is slightly addictive as well, once you have been once you want to keep going back because you just know it is doing wonders for your fitness, despite the fact it feels like torture for that half hour you're in there!

Have any of you tried this class yet? Do you have places locally that are offering it and you have been considering going? All comments are welcome :)

W7 - Budget but brilliant!

If you had read my earlier post on how I struggle to get on with face powders (here) then you will know that my skin can be a bit of a pain for finding powders that have that 'you but better' effect. I want a powder that looks natural but also gives a good coverage. Then I came across this little beauty from W7 - W7 Sheer Loose Powder.

As you can see from the photos, the powder comes in a screw-top plastic pot that has holes in so you can dispense a small amount of product to pick up with the brush so it doesn't get too messy! I would suggest being sparing with it on your brush as it does have really good coverage and when I first tried it I thought it would be a bit rubbish and require loads to get any coverage and ended up looking slightly mental, so less is more!

It does come with a brush but I personally don't think it is that brilliant. The bristles are a bit stiff and not particularly soft and it doesn't seem to pick up the product brilliantly well so I prefer to use my Real Techniques Multi-Task brush to apply this. It is so simple to sweep over the face and blend across.

You can see from the pictures of it brushed on my hand that it gives a very soft appearance to the skin and goes far to cover imperfections such as those fine lines. I really do think it is a very good product and use it a lot. Especially seeing as I know it will be very cheap to replace!

W7 is a brand that is often stocked in Next (I bought my Urban Decay palette dupe by W7 from Next) but is also available on websites such as Fragrance Direct. They do some really good dupes of high-end products such as Benefit boxed blushers and OPI polishes. Ok, they aren't of quite the same quality as the high-end counterparts but they are very good for the teeny price you are paying for them. I would definitely recommend giving some of their products a try.

Real Techniques brushes - late to the party!

Despite all the raving reviews about how amazing Real Techniques brushes were, I never actually purchased any to see for myself. Well, except one silicone eyeliner brush, which I really liked, but never got anymore.

I was mooching around TK Maxx (which is becoming a favourite for beauty related items, you can get some absolute bargains in there!) a couple of days ago and came across the Real Techniques Travel Essentials Brush Set for £6 off and so I had to buy it to see for myself. I was certainly not disappointed!!

Within this set is l-r: the Essential Foundation brush, Domed Shadow brush and Multi Task brush. They are all of extremely good quality and although I haven't used the shadow brush very often as I don't really wear eyeshadow on a day to day basis, I have used the other 2 pretty much every day. They are just brilliant, far better than my old brushes, which were a bit rubbish to be honest.

I use the foundation brush to apply my liquid foundation and it applies it like an absolute dream. With my old foundation brush I would have to go over my whole face with a sponge after as it would leave brush streaks but this doesn't require you to do this at all. I think it's because the old brush was crappy, plastic-y synthetic bristles were as this feels much higher quality. Loved it instantly!

I use the multi-task brush for applying my setting powder over my liquid foundation. It is so soft on the skin and picks up a good amount of product and buffs beautifully.

I can't fault any of these brushes, they really are great. They even come in this case which can be set as a display case (above photo) or even folded as a protective travel case, perfect!:

Getting this set has really warmed me to using Real Technique brushes and I do have my eye on many more! It's my birthday next week though so I have to force myself to walk away from them in the shops just in case the little birthday fairies bring them for me... All fingers and toes are now crossed!

Have you tried any RT brushes? What were your opinions on the brand? Or maybe you can suggest some other good ones for me to try? All comments are very much welcomed :)

Real Techniques Travel Essentials brush set is £20.99 in Superdrug here - but as I said, keep an eye out in TK Maxx for some great bargains! I got mine for £14.99

Glossybox July

I was actually pretty impressed with this month's Glossybox. I had been starting to go off it, but actually they really pulled their socks up this month (in my opinion). I even think that this was much better than Birchbox's July offering. Very happy indeed!

So the contents of this month's box included Carmex Moisturizing Lip Balm, Absolute New York Eyeshadow Primer, Bellapierre Lipstick, Color Club Nail Polish and NYC Cream to Powder Blush Stick.

I had never previously heard of this brand before getting it in my Glossybox so it is completely new to me and I wasn't biased when trying it. I really liked this as it had a great consistency and shade, plus I liked the soft doe-foot applicator. In the picture you can see on top where it is just applied and beneath where it has been blended (barely visible). It has a slight shimmer to it, so slight it is barely noticeable but I do think it means it highlights slightly which is always nice. I haven't tried it out to see if it does prolong my eyeshadow but based on application etc, it is winning. I shall write a post on this soon!

This polish is one that was specifically created for Glossybox, and so is an exclusive. I get that the shade is aimed to fit the theme of 'Stars and Stripes' but I just think it's not brilliant for summer. It's too dark and more of an autumn/ winter shade for me. A red or white would have been better for ticking both the theme box and the season box. Regardless, it is a great nail polish, as is expected for Color Club and I will definitely be putting it away to use in the colder months.

There isn't really a great amount you can say about Carmex. It's a great lip balm and I do use it a lot (I have three tubes of the stuff at home!) so I am a real fan of it, it just doesn't really set your world alight does it? Glad to have extra but would have preferred something a little more exciting! Also, if I'm being picky, I would have preferred the squeezy tube version. The only thing with having the pots is that you can it all under your nails when getting the product out the pot!

I'm so in love with this lipstick! I had found that with a lot of the lipsticks that came in these subscription boxes, they were a bit rubbish. The pigmentation was always really weak and they were a bit...pointless. But not with this Bellapierre offering! It is a highly pigmented, vivid red shade and I just love it! It applies really smoothly and is very moisturising and even stays on for a good couple of hours before reapplication is needed and is just a bright, cute, girly shade.Raving about this!!

Now this is the product I thought I wouldn't really be interested in, but oh how wrong I was! I always think of NYC as being a bit cheap and rubbish, this is definitely not rubbish. It applies so easily to the skin, the top picture is just one swipe across the back of my hand with the stick then the second is it blended in. It is a lush shade that isn't too over the top and the whole concept it just great and easy to use. I will definitely be using this a lot over the summer, especially as it is so handy to do on the go!

So that was my box for July, have you tried any of these? Or do you subscribe to Glossybox and received different products? All comments are very welcome!