They Call Me Mr Balmbastic

I rarely wear lip colour. That is in part because I've always done my eyes up, and there's only so much makeup you want to frighten your colleagues with at 10am on a Monday, but mostly it's because my lips just plain do not like it. They are sensitive little fuckers, and they need careful handling. I've lost sleep over it. OK, maybe not - let's all hope not - but it's still annoying, and for those of you with the same problem, there are remedies out there and here are a few I've found. 

SATURDAYS ARE MY FAVOURITE: Bourjois Volume 1 Seconde mascara

New feature! Working title... Anyway this is a sort of empties review, but rather than going through everything and saying whether or not we will repurchase it, every Saturday we will post about one thing we have repurchased that week. Basically, guaranteed positive review, because these are our favourite products (see what we did with the title there?)

The Artist Formerly Known As Noll

Last week, as you may have seen on our Twitter (and if you’re not following it yet, what are you waiting for?!), I was the makeup artist on set of our close friend’s film. We were filming in our old secondary school (terrifying for all concerned) and I also had to act (more terrifying for all concerned), as well as pretty up/ugly up the beautiful faces of our friends from the wonderful improv comedy group Giggle Loop.

REVIEWSDAY: Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat

Nail varnish is not really my strong point, I love it and my nails aren't bad but I cannot keep it on for longer than a couple of days so I am on a never-ending quest to try to find something that stops it chipping, or peeling off entirely (see below...)
Attempt number one on the blog is Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, and spoiler alert - quest ongoing.

I Don't Want To Dye Alone

So this is my first proper post and it's a biggie... I will probably cover hair dyeing generally over a few posts, this one is just the process I use every month or two to keep up the colour for now. In the future I will do some other posts on things like my colouring history, how not to bleach your hair, different semi-permanent dyes, permanent dyes, and possibly braving the hairdresser, if I ever do that.
To start with here is a before picture - massive roots, faded red in the middle, bleached a bit at the ends. This is the result of having not permanently dyed my hair for ages, and a bad attempt at bleach ombre. I essentially use semi-permanent dye to cover all of this up until I can be bothered to sort it out properly... 

The dye I use at the moment is Adore Shining Semi-Permanent Hair Color. I have used Bleach London but I will probably save a proper review of that for another post, but in short I use Adore because it lasts a lot longer (and I'm lazy). The colours I used this time are Ruby Red, Crimson and Violet Gem.
There is also a beautiful picture of the dye bottles, brush and mixing pot, a shower cap, and trusty plastic gloves.


So anyway, on with what I actually do. First things first, cover everything. Even with so-called semi-permanent dye (permanent on some surfaces, who knew), this is super important. I use a waterproof table cloth thing on the floor, I wear the same old enormous t-shirt every time, as modelled below, and cover my skin. 
This stuff seriously stains skin. I put vaseline all round my hairline and wear gloves the entire way through, until it is quite well rinsed out. This is the one thing about this dye that is a bit of a pain, because you have to try to apply it without getting it on your scalp. Despite having done this several times now, I still have not got a failsafe method and usually have some pink patches on my head for a while afterwards. 

Usually I use a brush and mixing tub (see above), which came with a bleaching kit once, but this time I mostly ended up just using my fingers while my head was upside down and it was easier to avoid my scalp, if you ignore the back of my head (completely stained).

I used three colours this time because last time I used just crimson and violet gem, and it came out very purple-y on the top, so this time I had ruby red on the roots, then blended crimson in on the lengths and then violet gem on the ends. Because it's semi-permanent it blends together very well and I don't need to worry too much about harsh lines. This is the main reason I use it - it's idiot-proof, speaking as an idiot who tried to bleach ombre her own hair (not so blendable). 

Anyway once it is actually applied (really soaked through), it is time to process. I leave it on for quite a while, because there is no ammonia so it doesn't damage the hair. On the bottle it says to heat process, which I take to mean blasting it with a hairdryer. I put a shower cap over the top to stop it drying out, heat it for five minutes-ish and then hope that my head retains the heat enough by itself because I've got too hot. The shower cap also means you can wander about doing whatever you want without having to worry about it. 
I leave it for about 45 minutes, then rinse in cold, cold, cold water. Super important. This dye washes out, that's what it does, but there's a bunch of things that slow it down, and the biggest of these is using cold water. Hot water it just washes right out. I am actually going to do another post about looking after dyed hair but as part of the process this is super important! So I rinse until I get bored (it says until it runs clear but that just never happens) then shampoo and condition and then done!
As you can see, it is nice and bright, purple-y towards the end and blends in my roots a bit better. The non-ammonia dye also makes hair quite shiny, bonus! 

So I hope that was kind of interesting, I know there's a whole lot of stuff floating around the internet at the moment about bright hair things but there's always more to add. Probably.
I will do my dyed hair maintenance post in a couple of weeks to show what it's like then and how it has faded :)
xxx

REVIEWSDAY: Rimmel London Wonder’full Mascara

unlikely animal friendship

unsettling eyeball closeup

Fun fact: I tried this mascara for the first time on the train, because I overslept, because I am a mess.

Hi!

Hi =) I’m Noll (on the left there).

The other week I fell down the stairs and hit a wall so hard that I scraped all the skin off my knee. Three days later, I tripped while skipping too close to a kerb, fell in the gutter and hurt the same knee again. Two days after THAT I fell up some stairs (it’s a thing) and hurt myself a third time. But physical incompetence aside, I can do a smoky eye and winged eyeliner in seven minutes and I’m super excited to show you how. I’ll also talk a lot about skincare, possessed as I am of skin that is super pale and more sensitive than a twelve-year-old, and you may well find the odd fashion post in there as well. Probably go to someone else for advice about stairs.

That’s really what I’m doing here – my daily life is a mess. I, as a human being, am a mess. But I’m pretty good at makeup, and obsessive enough that I will try all the new products so you don’t have to. Makeup makes me happy (so do hairless guinea pigs, 90s TV crime dramas and cups of tea, but we decided that blog would be too niche) and blathering about it is a fun distraction from all the falling over, so here we are xxx

Hello, I’m Poppy, I’m the other one. I am 23, (quite) recently left university, in a stop-gap job, not sure what I’m doing with my life, and have already changed my life plan several times just this year, but as with Noll, I always have a face full of makeup. I also spend far too much money on makeup and clothes, and a lot of time on the internet reading about them, so figured writing a blog about it all would go some way to justifying both of those things. 

I am also pretty invested in my hair, which is currently red-ish, but has been auburn, ginger, red-blonde ombre, pink and purple along the way (ignoring my natural mousey colour and an unfortunate blue-green accident) so I will probably be doing a fair few posts about that too. Some other things I like are food (eating everything and baking cakes), dad music and fashion, so I may also subject you to lists of places to eat in London, recipes, playlists and some flat-lays xxx

We hope you enjoy!