Post Holiday Blues

Hello you lot, have you missed me? I've missed you. I got back from France last night, and am currently in limbo all out of sync with the weather and holiday frame of mind. Sigh. We had an amazing time, and a week wasn't enough. I nearly cried like a small child when we arrived in Edinburgh to see people bundled up in coats and the rain drizzling around us. But I did get some amazing French goodies, so I will apologise in advance for the onslaught of reviews that is heading your way. First up though, a picture of some patisseries, just because.

YUM. Every second street has a patisserie or boulangerie that puts our bakeries to shame. They are like works of art, and taste amazing. I'm making myself want to go back just looking at this picture. So lets move on. As I'm sure you will be surprised to hear, I managed to control myself at Duty Free and only bought from the MAC counter. I was trying not to spend a fortune before even getting on the plane, so decided to just buy a lipstick...then an eyeshadow blending brush.

So I figured, everyone bangs on about Mac Angel, I really need to see what the fuss is all about. It's a Frost Finish, which I didn't know as it's always portrayed as a perfect nude shade. Also Kim K's favourite (YAWN). As a beauty blogger of sorts, I really should own some of these cult shades to see what I think about them, contrary to following the hype I tend to want to disprove it, maybe my little inner rebel coming out!

As I'm unable to keep things for long without using them, I only waited to get on the plane before taking pics of this. You can only image what I'm like on Christmas Day. Yep, I'm basically an overgrown child. In the bullet this looks like a dusky rose pink with brown undertones. I wouldn't say that the frost finish is very obvious for this shade at all, you really have to peer at the bullet to see the shimmer and it isn't obvious at all on.

This is pretty heavily swatched as I found that it wasn't very highly pigmented on the skin.

Am I blown away by this? No, not really. It's a pretty colour, very wearable but doesn't pack enough of a punch for me. It's a bit too...vanilla. But I'll add it to the collection and I'm sure it will get used at some point. The brush I bought was another Pixiwoo inspired purchase, those girls are no good for my bank balance. A lot of my eyebrow brushes are from various sets, and tend to be smaller in size. I had seen this brush being used by Sam in a couple of smokey eye videos and liked how it softened out the look.

This is the MAC 217 Blending brush, the Pixiwoo girls always seem to keep theirs very clean but looking at these bristles I don't see myself managing to keep this clean at all. In France the weather was so warm that all my eyeshadow and other makeup seemed to slide down my face so I ended up wearing just BB cream and mascara, so I will need to try this out and get back to you on it!

Speaking of the weather, I had a couple of little sun tan lotions to try out while I was away, so just wanted to mention these briefly.

We have Hawaiian Tropic Silk Hydration and Green People sun lotion with tan accelerator. These are both SPF 15, which is what I would normally use. The Hawaiian Tropic has "ribbons" of hydration throughout the product. The packaging is lovely and you can see the swirled effect through the plastic. It smells delicious, as do all their products, although this is floral rather than fruity. Your skin is indeed left soft and protected but I got rather annoyed at this products as it separated if you didn't use it for over 6 hours or so, meaning that you squirted out a sort of yellow oil and the cream separately. It was fine if you just shook it back together but I wasn't a fan overall. This is £14.99 for 180ml.

The Green People's packaging is dull as ditchwater, but the product is 98% natural in origin and smells of essential oils. It was just a bog standard white cream but certainly did the job. I put this on my legs to attempt to get them to change colour at all as they are very stubborn, and did see a slight difference, but nothing major. If you are into natural products I would definitely recommend this product. It is £17.95 for 200ml.

Anyway guys, it's good to be back, you will be hearing about France for the next couple of posts then I promise to shut up about it! If you want to know, I was in the Limousin region near Limoges :)
xx