Festive and Fiery - A Christmas Colour Explosion!

First off, I don't think it's any secret that I'm a drama queen, so I don't think that it's going to come as a surprise that it didn't take me long to create a video tutorial for this dramafest:

I LOVE how this turned out (full face pic at the end of the post), so I really hope you like it too :) It goes without saying that The Electric Palette is the focal point of this look - but the other absolute stars are the e.l.f. HD cream blush and the e.l.f. cream eyeliner. I love these products and they have permanent places in my 'makeup essentials' (and my heart).

As I mention in the video, I really feel like this season is the ultimate in terms of being able to experiment with colour, and more daring looks. If you're typically a 'neutrals & nudes' sort of gal - this is your time to mix it up! If you're a colour-junkie like me, then you're probably already in your element :)

So the product breakdown is as follows:

Eyes:

Urban Decay Primer Potion (anti-ageing)

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil (milk)

UD Naked 3 Palette - 'Limit' on crease

UD Smoked Palette -  'Kinky'  & 'Freestyle' as blending/transition shades

UD Electric Palette - 'Slowburn' (inner), 'Jilted' (outer) & 'Urban' (outer V & above crease)

e.l.f cream eyeliner - Black - mahoosive winged liner on upper lashline

UD 24/7 Liquid Liner - 'Perversion' (lower lashline)

UD 24/7 Glide-On Pencil - 'Empire' (waterline and a little on outer top lashline)

Eyelure Volume 100 Lashes

UD Naked Flushed Palette: Highlighter (inner corner highlight and mixed with Naked3 'Strange' for brow highlight.

Face:

Smashbox Colour Correcting Primer - Green

UD Naked Skin Beauty Balm applied with Urban Decay's Good Karma Optical Blurring brush

Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation Stick applied with Urban Decay's Optical Blurring brush

UD De-Slick Mattifying Powder (using giant fluffy powder brush from Barry M)

e.l.f. HD cream blush - 'Headliner' applied with e.l.f. small stipple brush

Lips:

Maybelline Baby Lips (applied before makeup started)

Revlon Colorburst Balm Stain - '001 - Honey' - a beautiful nude to complement any bold eye look.

I really hope you liked the look and the video - if you have any comments, questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you! You can tweet me at @CharleyShadow or just comment on this post or the YouTube tutorial!

Have a beautful day, lovelies!

Char xx

Festive Gold with a Berry Lip

Howdy!

I have finally done it - I've made and uploaded my very first YouTube tutorial, where I show you how to get the below eye look.

I'll be honest with you- I know my photos aren't amazing. I'm aware that the camera I filmed the tutorial on isn't the best, but personally, to me the person in the video/photo is more important than the quality of the picture. I've seen YouTubers and Bloggers alike who have amazing super sharp HD cameras, but it's done nothing to improve either patchy makeup or a poor explanation. I don't mean to be mean - my point is I've always thought that if your content is sub-par, no amount of fancy technology is going to help you.

Anyway, I created a fun, festive look that I think would look great against lots of different skin tones and eye colours! I've shown this with a berry lip, but of course you could pair this with a nude or a rosy, more natural pink :)

Here's a very quick breakdown of the products used.

-Urban Decay Primer Potion (Anti Ageing)

-NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil (Milk) as base on lid and browbone

-Urban Decay Original Vice Palette - 'Laced'  (crease/transition),  'Penny Lane' (outer half of lid),  'Blitz' (inner half of lid), 'Anonymous' and 'Laced' mixed (to blend out dark colour above crease)

-Urban Decay Vice 2 Palette - 'Toxic' and 'Coax' mixed (very outer corners of lids)

-Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette - 'Blackheart' (outer V & blended above crease)

-ELF Cream Eyeliner (Black)

-Urban Decay 24/7 Liquid Liner in 'Perversion' (Applied over cream liner)

-Eyelure Volume Lashes (No. 100)

-LAQA & Co Lip Lube (No name on product, but I believe it's 'Menatour')

-Naked Flushed Palette Highlighter (Brow and Cheekbone highlight)

I'd love it if you'd like to pop over to my little corner of YouTube and have a nosey at my tutorial, and any shares, likes or feedback will be hugely appreciated!

Have a beautiful day lovelies!

Charley xxx

Bobbi Brown foundation routine!

Well, well, well. I don't know what to say. Even if I did, my mouth is currently full as it is eating my words and a teensy slice of humble pie. A few posts ago, I came out of my foundation-hating closet. Since then, I've discovered something wonderful and life/face-changing. The Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation Stick. I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to just even out my skin tone a little, as my face was looking a bit blotchy. I crept into John Lewis (I can't stride in with confidence. Deep down I feel that I'm not posh enough to be in there, and I'm afraid they already know) and quickly spotted my target- Bobbi Brown. I'd read a few reviews of the new 'Skin' formula Foundation Stick, so I definitely wanted to have a cheeky tester. One colour-match session later, I was walking out with No.3- 'Beige'.

My issues with cream foundations previously were:

a) potentially thick, cakey-looking makeup
b) fear of my skin breaking out into turbo-acne

My terror has been quashed; the texture of the Skin Foundation Stick is pure, silky, buttery, smoothness. Both lightweight and natural, my skin FEELS naked but looks flawless.

So let's get to it!

Moisturiser: Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream - LOVE IT. If you have dry skin, GET IT!
Primer: Smashbox Photo Finish Colour Correcting Adjust (green) Primer -Life-changing wonderment.
Foundation: Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation Stick in Beige, drawn on in stripes and buffed out with the Urban Decay Optical Blurring Brush.
Contour: Urban Decay Naked "Flushed" palette (bronzer only) on temples, hairline and hollows of cheeks, using a Sephora Kabuki brush.
Blush: e.l.f. HD Blush in 'Headliner' using the e.l.f. Studio small stipple brush. If you haven't used used this before, you really need the TINIEST little blob (the size of a grain of rice) on the back of your hand, work it into the brush fibres, then stipple and buff onto your cheeks. This product has a lovely soft sheen to it, so you may not need a highlighter.

That's pretty much it for the face! For the photos below, I've added mascara (Rimmel ScandalEyes Rockin' Curves in Extreme Black), tightlined with my UD 24/7 pencil in 'Perversion' and applied e.l.f.'s SPF15 lipbalm in 'Pink'.

Step 1: Moisturised

Step 2: Primer (I know, sexy green slime on my face)

Step 3: Bobbi Brown tiger-stripes!

Step 4: Buffed, blushed and contoured! Mascara time with this crazy-looking wand.

Step 5: That gust of wind was actually me batting my Rimmel-tastic super long lashes.

YAY! Flawless photo-finish skin!

Electric shock: Urban Decay's new masterpiece!

On Good Friday I had the pleasure of attending Urban Decay's Electric "Secret Launch" party in Cardiff. Lots of other beauty bloggers have already covered the event itself, such as Rachel and the gals at CSI Beauty Blog, but what I wanted to talk about was the product itself. Since learning of its imminent launch a couple of months ago- I had been frantic with anticipation. When I THEN learned that my local Urban Decay stockists would be holding the "secret" (not so much of a secret for anyone who follows @UDCardiff on Twitter) launch party, I was like a child waiting for Christmas. So let's not hang about, we all know that I raced straight from the event to Debenhams, to buy my palette, and here it is (apologies for its appearance, I literally couldn't wait to get my mitts on/into it.

From the unmissable outer casing to each of the buttery soft, pigment explosions inside, there is nothing cautious about this palette. Everything about it screams "LOOK AT ME" and you can't help but stick your fingers into the pans (clearly - sorry again about that) to see if the colour payoff is as unbelievable as it looks - the answer is yes.

At this point, there are a couple of things to remember. The first - and maybe most important - is that NOBODY needs to look at this and try to figure out where they would wear a fuschia, cyan and acid-green eye look (everywhere, obviously). If you like a neutral eye, this could be the teensy pop of brightness you were looking for, to spice things up. If your day-to-day is a straightforward winged liner, why not use these? Applied alone with a wet brush, or to boost the impact of a colourful pencil liner, you could really stir up your go-to look!

The second biggie to remember: these are NOT eyeshadows, or should I say not JUST eyeshadows. These are pressed pigments. Do not feel restricted to using these on your lids! Why not put the beautiful orange-red 'Slowburn' or gorgeous hot pink 'Savage' through their paces as blusher? Why stop there? If you're feeling really adventurous, go for one of the other colours! Better yet, do what I did and make yourself some custom lip colours? Mix and match different amounts of different colours to create some bold lip looks! I have a blog post in the pipeline regarding that, as it happens.

I think I'm going to walk away now before I destroy what's left of my furiously-typing fingers!

Watch. This. Space.

Have a beautiful day, Lovelies!

Char xx

Eyeko Skinny Liquid Eyeliner

Hello there!

Wow, so it's been quite a few days since my last little blog adventure.

Well anyway, I'm back now, and I'm doing a sort of on-the-fly review of the Eyeko Skinny Liquid Eyeliner that I received in my February Birchbox.

As some of you will already know, my greatest makeup love is eye makeup, but more than anything, I am a FIEND for a good eyeliner. That goes double for liquid eyeliner, so as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to see this little treasure in my Birchbox. 

Historically, I've not been an enormous fan of liquid eyeliners with a sort of felt-pen nib. I often find them too chunky, and the product itself too inconsistent and streaky. BUT I always maintain that it's worth trying everything once, because you'll never know what might turn out to be a keeper!

I've been using the pen to line my eyes for work for the last couple of days, with no primer/setting spray, or indeed, any other makeup. I have to say, it holds up pretty well. It's not as waterproof/smudgeproof as my beloved Urban Decay 24/7 liquid eyeliner, but actually, because of that, it gives a less stark overall look, softening up what might otherwise be quite a harsh cat-eye/winged liner. Also, due to having a pen-like nib, rather than a brush, it's much easier to apply quickly, while I'm on the move, which I LOVE. 

The staying power is obviously much better on the top lashline than it is on the bottom, as my eyes are on par with Niagara Falls in terms of general wateriness, but at the end of the working day, there's always a hint of a smokey line under my lashes, so all is not lost. The liquid liner itself isn't totally opaque, and does apply a tiny bit unevenly, but I feel that you wouldn't notice this unless you were standing inches from my face, and specifically scrutinising my eyeliner! Also, bonus points for the fact that the nib isn't chunky and awkward, and applies a smooth, precise line.

I think if I had to score it, I'd rate the Eyeko Skinner Liquid Eyeliner at around 8/10, if only for the convenience of the product!

I would LOVE to show you photos of this in action, but unfortunately, my eyebrows look a hot mess right now as I'm trying to grow them back a bit thicker. I am not willing to subject you to the horror of an up-close and personal shot of my general eye area just yet!

I hope you enjoyed my little review! If you're interested in my non-makeup life, I am currently participating in a head-to-head challenge with my friend Scott on my other blog, the progress of which can be followed on our Facebook page! The current challenge (as surprisingly chosen by Scott) is candle-making! I'd love to build up some more support for Team Charley, so I will love you forever if you'd pledge your allegiance over on Facebook!

Have yourself a beautiful day, Lovelies :)

Charley xx

Goody Bun Spiral

Hi there, Lovelies!

I actually already gave this the very briefest of overviews in my 'Payday Beauty Gifts' post, but it's such a great product, I felt like I needed to share the love a little more.

The Goody Bun Spiral looks like this...

So you're basically looking at a pretty sturdy coil of metal with a diameter of around 2-3 inches, this one is a sort of dark, gunmetal colour, but it also comes in a lighter gold-ish colour that's better for blonde hair. The base of the coil has two little purple-ish nobbles on the ends.

You can do a basic bun in one of two ways:

You can sweep all your hair back as if you're doing a ponytail (high, low, middle, side- whatever takes your fancy), but just twist it all into a bun, then twist the bun spiral into it, in a clockwise direction and with the purple nobbles facing your scalp. That's fairly straightforward!

The way that I choose to do it is to actually secure my hair into a ponytail first, using a hair elastic, THEN sweep it around itself to make the bun and add the bun spiral in the same way as before. I also muss the bun up a little, for a dishevelled look, but use a couple of little hair pins to control any chunks of misbehaving hair.

The only reason that I do choose to style in the second way is because my hair is quite fine, flyaway and is cut in layers, so for me, the bun itself isn't quite dense enough to make me confident that the spiral would stay in. That said, I do usually use this right after I've washed and dried my hair, so my hair is obviously quite shiny at that point and provides a lot less resistance.

After this, all I do is ad a quick couple of spritzes of hairspray - I favour TRESemmé 'Freeze Hold' spray to tame my crazy flyaways and I'm good to go! This is a great way to quickly- and I really do mean 'quickly' -  style your hair for work or play, and it's equally at home as part of a more formal look!

I'm going to a wedding in a couple of months, and I'm thinking of going for a full head of tight-ish curls, then using the bun spiral to create a soft, messy updo. I will definitely be road-testing this look before then, so I'll keep you posted on how that goes, and perhaps do a quick photo-tutorial if you're interested? If you are, or you'd like to see a variety of looks done with this, let me know! You can comment below, or tweet me at @CharleyShadow - I'd love to hear from you!

Have a beautiful day!

Charley xx

Beautiful Nude Nails

Happy Saturday!

Today, I thought I'd share my latest favourite nail look. First of all though, I'm going to give you a quick explanation for a couple of things.

If you've been reading my posts, and/or have subscribed to Charley Shadow, first of all THANK YOU! I really appreciate your support. I'm so new to this particular world of blogging, and it means so much to me that you've chosen to be part of my little journey :) Secondly, you've probably noticed that I've been quite inconsistent. I don't yet have any regular features, and I don't post at the same time every week. I really don't want any of you to think that it's because I can't be bothered. Some of you may know that I run two blogs, and my other one- 'Charley Says', which is a general/lifestyle blog - has been suffering too.

On top of trying to keep up my commitment to both blogs, I have been going through a fairly stressful time at work. The last few weeks especially, I seem to have been doing nothing but going in and out of various meetings, where I get told I 'might' be made redundant but 'nothing's set in stone, business as usual' e.t.c. It's fairly unsettling. On one hand, I don't want to lose focus and drop the ball at work, but on the other, I've definitely been preparing myself for having to find a new job. With this in my mind constantly, I've been updating my wardrobe to include more 'interview-appropriate' options. I've also been experimenting with my day-to-day style, just trying to polish up my image a bit. When the weekend comes around, I'm spending so much time trying to update my CV, trim any fat from my online presence and keep an eye on possible employers' websites, that I've just let my blogging slip.

They say that the first step is admitting you have a problem. So I AM going to try to be more consistent in posting, but as I've put myself on a no-buy until the end of March, there are unlikely to be any hauls, aside from Birchbox (writing up my February Birchbox breakdown later today, for anyone who's interested). Now that THAT is all out of the way, I'm going to crack on with what was supposed to be a 'short and sweet' blog post!

The first and most important thing is that I am addicted to Barry M nail varnishes. For any nail varnish/polish junkie, they are an absolute must. I follow no trends with my nails, I just paint the colour or design that appeals to me that day! So a couple of months ago, I was in Boots, raiding the Barry M stand, and saw a beautiful pinkish-beige nude (If you want to pick it up after reading this, it's called MNP4 - 'Nude Vanilla'). I'm such a fiend for brights, that it's never occurred to me to have a nude nail. Anyway, I was pretty taken with this one, so I grabbed it. When applying it later, I realised that it was from the Matte Nail Paint collection, which I hadn't noticed when I grabbed it, which is silly because it's written on the bottle fairly clearly. I was a tad disappointed. I LOVE a matte bright colour, because it definitely adds some interest. However, I felt that with a nude, it might look -from a distance- as if I have no fingernails!

This fear turned out to be unfounded, it looks lovely, but I feel like I hit the jackpot when I paired it with my SUPER GLOSSY SHINY WONDER that is my Nails Inc. Caviar Topcoat (which featured in my 'New Year Favourites' post. The pictures below aren't great (sorry, I'm currently sat in Starbucks, writing this, and realised I'd failed to take decent photos beforehand, what a silly sausage!) but I think you can see what a gorgeous - and interview-friendly ;) - look you get with these little wonder-paints! I used the corresponding Nail Caviar basecoat underneath, two coats of the Nude Vanilla, then two coats of the topcoat.

Please excuse the state of the Caviar Topcoat bottle. I recently had a bit of a handbag-nail-varnish-breakage situation, and poor old Topcoat got covered in turquoise glitter polish (I almost cried, it was my favourite nail varnish, which is why I was carrying it around with me), so I've tried to clean her up the best I can!

ANYWAY, that somewhat long-winded post is just about done I think!

Thank you for sticking with me through that saga, and have yourself a beautiful day, Lovelies!

Much love!

Charley xx

Healthy, Hot & Homemade: Tomato Soup!

Happy Saturday!

Since last time, I waxed lyrical about diets that (in my opinion) are dreadful ideas, let me share with you a cheeky little food knowledge...

Years ago, I heard about an experiment whereby one group of people were given a healthy meal with good proportions of meat and vegetables, and another group were given the same meal, but in soup form. Hours later, scans were taken of the participants' stomachs - the 'solid food' group's stomachs were empty, but the 'liquid food' group's stomachs were still half full, meaning that it was a much longer time before they felt inclined to snack!

I honestly can't tell you the details of this - I have tried to find a website or a source to confirm the story, but I am REALLY struggling. If I ever DO find one, I will update this post with the link!

Anyway, at the time, I was a) intrigued and b) newly enrolled with Weightwatchers, as I had put on a lot of weight in University, and still had about a stone left to lose. I decided to have a crack at making soup.

This turned out to be a pretty awesome idea for several reasons...

• Soup is easy to make in bulk, and portion out for the week ahead.
• It's a great way to include vegetables that you may not usually like. For instance, I really REALLY don't like carrots, but I use them in this! I find that they neutralise the sharpness of the tomatoes. I also don't hugely enjoy raw tomatoes, but I LOVE tomato soup :)
• Depending on the veg, it's pretty easy to keep the calories low!
• For me, it turned out that it really did help to stave off hunger pangs.
• YOU CAN PUT ALMOST ANYTHING IN SOUP!

For a few weeks, I had my soup for lunch almost every day, sometimes for dinner when I got home too. Within those few weeks, I got down to my target weight. I lost most of it in the first 3-4 weeks, and after that it was a little slower and steadier. I changed almost nothing else about my diet, other than using a little bit more willpower when I wanted chocolate, and sometimes having a fruit smoothie for breakfast.

At this point, I'll mention that I basically invented this recipe from scratch, and I always change it up a little bit every time I revisit, so it's never been exactly the same twice! Also, never forget my little mantra with almost all one-pot hot food: when in doubt- paprika. This is basically tomato soup with a bit of a kick!

This is today's soup:

You may have noticed it's not perfectly smooth- I actually really like that little bit of bite, but you can always just blend, blend, blend away the lumpy bits! You may also have noticed that it appears to be tomato soup- which it is- but it's chocka with lots of other loveliness too! 

Right, so- this is how today's batch (approximately 4-5 servings) was made...

First, a good slosh of extra virgin olive oil (you could use a little bit of butter if you prefer, I have done before, and it's YUMMY), 2 chopped garlic cloves and a dusting of paprika & black pepper in a pan, on low heat.

I chopped:

• 1 large sweet potato (try to keep the chunks relatively small and similarly-sized, but it's all getting blended at the end, so it doesn't matter if they don't look pretty!)
• 2 medium-sized carrots

Sweet potatoes and carrots go in first, as they'll take the longest to cook and soften up. Throw in half a cup of water, then we're onto some more chopping...

• 1 large red pepper
• 1 medium/large red onion

These are next in, with another half-cup of water -I basically top up the water a little bit at a time as I go along- and THEN (first time I've tried this) I added a Knorr vegetable stock pot. If you've never seen them, it's stock in a sort of jelly form. I usually use the dried, powder-consistency stock, with boiled water, but I decided to give one of these a go (mostly because they were on offer in Tesco) and it's handy, because you just fling it in the pan, and it melts into everything else, spreading the lovely flavours all over everything. Mmmmmmmmm.....

I also added another sprinkling of pepper and paprika, and turned the heat up to (approximately) the halfway mark. THEN I chopped up...

• 2-3 large vine tomatoes (don't all tomatoes grow on a vine? Why do they call them that?)

I say 2-3 because a) the size obviously varies and b) I have three left over, but I cannot for the life of me remember if I bought 5 or 6...

At this point, our pan's starting to get pretty full, but there's always room for more! I added...

•  2 tins of chopped tomatoes (you could use peeled tomatoes, or you could just use more fresh, "vine" tomatoes- I just prefer the chopped)

This bit might seem a bit weird, depending on your cooking experience, but I recently heard a cooking tip I'd never thought of, to add sugar to carrots when you're boiling them, so I (somewhat warily) added about half a level teaspoon of sugar... and then a little pinch more. FINALLY, I threw in a couple of dashes of -you guessed it- pepper and paprika, before giving the whole thing a good stir, popping the lid on the pan, and turning the heat back down to let it all simmer for 10-15 minutes.

After this, it's basically a waiting game. My not-exactly-a-technique is to go back every few minutes to stir (and sniff) the soup, and try to judge whether or not the veg has softened up enough to be blended. When it has, obviously it goes in the blender! 

Depending on your blender/smoothie maker/food processor, you MAY have to let the whole thing cool down before whizzing it. I used to use a smoothie maker for this, but you couldn't put hot food in the model I had, so I had to wait. You might also need to do it a little bit at a time, depending on the capacity of the blender.

After it's all been whizzed up into a lovely soupy soup, I like to give it another little stir and a blast on the heat before serving.

After that, all you have to do is EAT! YUM!

Total list of ingredients (including incredibly vague quantities):

• A few tablespoons/slosh of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 x large sweet potato
• 2 x medium carrots 
• 1 x large red pepper
• 1 x medium/large red onion
• 2-3 large vine tomatoes (At this stage, I don't even know why I'm including the word "vine")
• 2 cloves of garlic 
• Various pinches of paprika, ground black pepper & sugar
• Intermittent half-cups of water
• Knorr vegetable stock pot

(serves approximately 4-5)

I realise that this isn't the most well-organised, professional-looking recipe. I am a little bit sorry for that, but there is a reason! Throughout this whole post, I've really tried to highlight that for me, cooking is just like makeup for me, it's fun and it's flexible! Like I said, none of this set in stone, some of these ingredients have never been in my soup before, but it still tasted AWESOME! You can change up absolutely anything you like (or don't like) in this list! White onion works just as well as red, although I use a smaller one because the taste is stronger. Previously I've included yellow peppers, butternut squash, mushrooms, chillies (SPARINGLY) or even courgette, and it always tastes great! The only things that have never been changed in this for me are the tomatoes, carrots, garlic and vegetable stock.

I hope you try this, if you do, let me know what you thought! 

What's your favourite winter-warmer, or tasty one-pot wonder? 

Tweet me your faves, or let me know if you tried my recipe at @CharleyShadow or leave your comments below!

Thanks for popping along, Lovelies! 

Have a beautiful day!

Charley xx

Beauty and such...

Hm. This is a bit out of my usual blogging comfort-zone, so bear with me.

I love eyeshadow. I love to draw attention to what I believe is good about my appearance. I've said it before, but I believe in accentuating and highlighting, NOT disguising and hiding. If you're focusing on the negative, I believe that you're already setting off on the wrong foot. Absolutely nobody looks perfect, and nobody should! It is human nature to have features we aren't crazy about, it's universal. Knowing this, knowing that nobody absolutely adores everything about their appearance, why are we so concerned about our minor flaws?

I guess what I want to write about today is perspective. Last year, what got me thinking about it was when Jennifer Lawrence was quoted as saying that she wanted to be "fit and healthy". It might seem odd, but I can't remember many instances of this before. I've heard of a hundred actresses talking about how they were losing weight, or gaining weight. I've read about singers talking about their curves and how they're not ashamed of them. That's not a bad thing, as such, but it's still fairly superficial.

Given that Christmas has just come and gone, diets seem to be rife among my friends at the moment. There was a smoothie diet, the 5-2 diet, carb-free diets and various branded plans. I despair - not because they're pointless, but because I don't believe in making drastic changes to your eating habits. It is impossible to maintain long term, which means that when you eventually go back to 'eating normally', some weight will immediately go back on. The fact is, if you just want to be slimmer for an event, then fine, go for a faddy diet plan, lost your weight, then stick it back on later. Personally, I could probably stand to lose a few pounds, but I'm not overweight, and more importantly, I'm not unhealthy. Rather than counting calories and excluding food groups, I value switching to slightly smaller portions, and a shifting the ratio of my healthy:unhealthy snacks/meals. Equally, as damaging as it can be to totally exclude a food group, I think it's just as bad to CONSTANTLY talk about the food you "can't" eat. The bigger the deal you make of it, the more it plays on your mind.

I realise that for the most part, this post was nothing to do with makeup. But I really hope that some of you enjoyed it, or at least found it useful. Maybe you disagreed with everything I said- is that you? Let me know what you think, in the comments, or tweet me at @CharleyShadow ! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for stopping by, lovelies!

Seeya again soon!

Charley x

Payday Beauty Gifts (from me, to me)!

Well, I got paid last week, so it stands to reason that THIS week, I would have some lovely beauty treats in my ammo.

I went shopping in Cardiff yesterday, and stocked up on a few staple items that I go back to again and again, including the Cucumber daily facial scrub, the essential makeup remover wipes (I usually go for the cucumber ones, but they were out of stock, so I grabbed the plain) and the cucumber eye makeup remover pads. Although I LOVE this range, I've not actually tried the pads before- first impression is that they're a tad oily-feeling (not a big fan of that) but they DO get the job done.

As I was going for a night out, I picked up a Goody 'Simple Styles Bun Spiral' (top right of photo). It's basically a big metal coil with a diameter of 2-3 inches. You sling your hair back into a ponytail, wrap it/twist it into a bun, and twist the spiral into it, in a clockwise direction. I did mine with a pretty loose bun, and I've used a couple of hairpins to control any crazy flyaways, but this is literally a two-minute messy updo. THOROUGHLY recommend. I just know I'm going to use this on the daily.

As you can see from the photo, I also picked up a couple of cheeky Urban Decay treats, but I'm testing out the B6 spray for a few weeks before I go into any detail about that. I also want to see if any long-term use of the 'De-Slick' mattifying powder will have any repercussions on the drier patches of my face.

What have you treated yourself to this January? Let me know in the comments, or tweet me at @CharleyShadow :)

Seeya next time beauties, thanks for popping along!

Charley xx

A Two-For-One Treat: I'm Going Bold!

Hello there lovelies!

Okie dokie, let's not mess about, the time has finally come for me to roll up my sleeves and crack on with a tutorial.

As I've been a bit naughty, and done three different posts with zero eyeshadow looks, I've decided to do a bit of a bargain for you, with a TWO FOR ONE tutorial, mostly using the Urban Decay Vice Palette (original).

The theme of today's two-for-one will be 'Ways To Go Bold'.

The basis of each look is the same, but when we get to that last 10%, I'm going to give you a couple of cheeky options to decide between to change it up!

So here are our options (try to ignore my crazy hair):

Route 1: Smokey eye with a bold red lip

Route 2: Neutral lip with a bold smokey eye (yellow)

Right-  I started with my Urban Decay Primer Potion (anti-aging), and covered my eyelids, browbones and undereyes.

e.l.f. angled contour brush and 'Laced'.

Using my e.l.f. angled contour brush, I took 'Laced' from the Vice (original) and swept it across the crease, as a transition for the smokey magic that is to come!

After this, I applied a light layer of 'Desperation' - a smokey brownish-grey to the crease and outer V, and blended out to a soft finish using my e.l.f. eyeshadow 'C' brush. I LOVE this brush for blending and buffing out harsh edges- it is a DREAM to work with!

Applying 'Desperation' with the eyeshadow 'C' brush

Using a dense eyeshadow crease brush (bought YEARS ago at H&M, not entirely sure if they still stock it, but I love it!) I dabbed a tiny dot of 'Black Market' into the crease and outer V to create a more slightly more defined cat-eye shape, then further blended out any harsh lines.

I took my e.l.f. small stipple brush, and used it to apply my e.l.f. HD blush in 'Headliner' for a soft, understated flush of colour on the cheeks.

This is the point at which we decide whether we're rocking a bold lip or eye. Thus far, the eye is fairly neutral, with no shadow on the inner two thirds of the lid.

Route 1: Apply 'Echo Beach' to the inner corner, and blend out to 'Nevermind' in the centre of the lid. Crack out the boldest, brightest lip colour that you have in your arsenal - I went for my Urban Decay (I know, surprise surprise) Super Saturated High Gloss Lip crayon in 'F-Bomb', a classic red. If you fancied doing this in matte, you could opt for the UD 24/7 lip pencil in '69'.  Finish off your eyes with lashings of your mascara of choice, a dash of eyeliner (as IF you even need to guess which brand of eyeliner I used) and you are DONE!

Here are the final results of Route 1...

Route 2: First we need a bright eye colour to fill in that inner/middle section of the lid. I'm sure you know that the Vice Palette has a whole myriad of options, from a glittery hot pink ('Noise') to the most outrageous electric blue you've ever seen ('Chaos'). But I'm trying to move out of my comfort zone here, and I recently picked up the pressed-powder-insanity that is Sugarpill's Buttercupcake, a vivid matte, mustard-esque yellow.

I smudged on a little of my NYX jumbo eye pencil in 'Milk' for a solid, white base, and using a precision eye brush, I patted Buttercupcake onto the inner two-thirds of the eye, and blended into the edges of the darker crease/outer V colours. As ever, the mascara and liquid/pencil liner combo finish this look off beautifully. If you curl your eyelashes, I imagine this is when you would do so- my own lashes are fairly long with a decent amount of curl naturally, so I've never curled mine, and as such, am not much of an expert.

My go-to neutral lip choice of late is my Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balmstain in 'Honey'. This is a beautiful dusky pink with the perfect amount of understated shine.

So! After all that hard work- this is where Route 2 brings us...

How perfect is that Revlon Balmstain for a neutral lip?

I love the contrast of the yellow shadow and UD's jet-black 'Perversion' liquid liner.

The looks obviously aren't HUGELY different, due to them being based on the same fundamental products, but  I love them for different reasons; I think a statement lip always looks glamorous; but who doesn't love a fierce eye look?

Which is your favourite? I'd love to know your thoughts!

If you have any 2-4-1 ideas you'd like to see, let me know! Two ways to rock glitter? Two easy Valentine's looks? Let me know, either in the comments below, or on Twitter using the hashtag #241- you can find me at @CharleyShadow !

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Seeya again soon lovelies!

Charley
xxx

Makeup Confession: Foundation

Okay. Here it is, confession time...

*deep breath*

I hate wearing foundation.

I hate choosing foundation. I hate putting on foundation. In Winter, I hate being afraid to blow my nose BECAUSE I'm wearing foundation. In Summer I hate being afraid that it's going to melt off my face.

I do not like it at all.

On top of this, I'm like a chameleon- the colour and pigmentation of my skin appears to be in a constant state of flux. If it's a sunny day, I could be outside for 10 minutes and I'll go back inside a different colour than I went out. If I'm feeling a bit run down, my skin goes all ghostly and anaemic looking. When I DO buy foundations, I ALWAYS swatch them on my skin, but they NEVER seem to look the same at home.

I currently own three different foundations, two are Urban Decay Naked Skin liquid foundation in 4.0 (approximately my average colouring) and 6.0 (for Summer) and the other is a Body Shop Extra Virgin Minerals loose powder foundation in '208 Golden Vanilla'.

It's not that they're BAD foundations, or even that they look bad, I just hate looking in the mirror and knowing that what I can see isn't my skin, because it makes me feel like I'm wearing a mask, which is absolutely NOT the reason I love makeup.

I only tend to choose to wear these if my skin is doing its ghost thing, or I've been unwell and my colouring's all blotchy. Sometimes I'll wear foundation because I've done a really dramatic eye makeup for an event, and the rest of my face just needs to fall more in line with that, but I still resent feeling like I need to. *sigh*

There are girls on YouTube with complexions that seem beautiful and airbrushed before their foundation even touches their skin. I would love to have that. What I do have are three foundations that I resent owning, and two product-specific foundation brushes whose price tags made my eyes well up as I handed over the cash. 

UD Good Karma Optical Blurring Brush & The Body Shop Extra
Virgin Minerals Powder Foundation Brush

Don't get me wrong, they're good brushes. I especially LOVE the Body Shop brush for the powder foundation, but I wear the product so rarely that it seems cruel to have such a lovely brush and not use it. A male friend of mine recently blogged about owning too many shoes, and said he wondered if it was like in Toy Story, where all the neglected ones feel unloved. I feel this way about my makeup brushes. Do they peep out of my makeup bag, wondering if I will ever love them, being rewarded only by the briefest contact, when I begrudgingly sweep product I wish I didn't want onto my face with brushes I'm angry for owning?

I think I might be overthinking this.

Anyway, I hope that this confession/review/mental breakdown has been relatively informative. If you DO enjoy owning and wearing foundations, I thoroughly recommend that you try the ones I've mentioned, so that you can perhaps give them a better home than I have! Like I said, they're great products that totally serve their purpose, but my favourite everyday complexion-baby will always be my UD Naked Skin Beauty Balm!

What's your secret makeup shame? Please share in the comments below! I'm hoping I'm not the only beauty heretic!

My New Year Favourites!

Howdy!

Strictly speaking, some of these would be December favourites, and others would be January. Nevertheless, I've decided to take a sort of "as the mood takes me" approach to the whole 'Favourites' posts. As much as I love all of the YouTubers /bloggers I'm subscribed to, I sometimes feel like I'm watching the conveyor-belt round of The Generation Game, only instead of cuddly toys, it's reams of outrageously exotic products whose price tags have no correlation with my budget. For that slightly over-explained reason, I have no intention of keeping to any kind of schedule with my favourites or 'hauls'.

Anyway, over the course of the festive season, I did accumulate some cheeky little treasures that I highly recommend. 

First up is the e.l.f. HD blush. THIS, is a total gem. There are (I believe) five shades to choose from. The one pictured is 'Diva', which -as I'm sure you can see- is hot pink. It's very bright, and CRAZILY highly pigmented, so you have to go in pretty lightly. Perfect for an eye-catching evening look, it couldn't be more aptly named. I also bought this product in 'Headliner', which is a vastly more daytime-friendly pale pink. I have a slightly more comprehensive video overview, on my Tumblr feed, which you can find here!


Our next guest is the Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in 'Honey', which is a mouthful in more ways than one. I ADORE this product. For jazzing up your daytime no-makeup-makeup, or a subtle addition to a more glam evening look, I really feel like I've found one of those wonderful products that I'll buy time and time again. 

At this point, I need to make a small revision to something I said in my first post. I said that I didn't feel that "makeup is a staple", and I don't want that to be misconstrued as "I think people who wear makeup every day are vain". I'd like to revise it to the following:

I personally don't feel the inclination to wear a full face of makeup every day. MOST days I will wear eyeliner and mascara; often I will accompany that with a little bit of blusher and lip balm, tinted or otherwise. SOMETIMES, if I have time and the mood takes me, I will make a real effort and do a full face. Like I said, makeup for me is a plaything, and how much I wear is directly in line with how 'playful' I'm feeling!

Anyway, onwards and upwards! 

In my first post, I said that my favourite eyeliner as a teen was an electric blue one. As an adult, the love affair with bright blue tones has reached out and engulfed all things turquoise. Who wouldn't LOVE this Maybelline Color Tattoo in 'Turquoise Forever'? Even putting it on, I felt like a mermaid. It was a magical experience. This is the perfect cream base to several GORRRRRRRRGEOUS blue/turquoise/green powder shadows I own, and makes for a vivid look.

Next up, ladies and gentlemen...

Ahhhh, how could the mothership not get a mention? The wonderful people at Urban Decay clearly knew that I was looking for some wearable everyday eyeshadows when they were creating the glorious Naked 3 palette. It seems to have had something of a love/hate reception in the blogosphere, due to the rose-gold pigmentation of the shades. For me, TOTAL, 100% 'love'. I'm not that much of a brush-snob, so having the double-ended UD brush in the ultra-slender palette means that this baby lives in my handbag so that I can do my makeup quickly when I'm on the move! I was surprised that I was able to get such a variety of looks from this, considering that basically all of the shadows are pink-tinted neutrals.

Last up- Christmas gifts from Mr Charley. Whilst I strongly suspect that he walked up to Nails Inc. in Debenhams, swept the contents of an entire shelf into a basket and headed to the checkout, I totally appreciate that he knew exactly which counter to go to, and which shelf to sweep. I audibly squealed on Christmas day when I opened these:

These are hands-down, some of THE most beautiful nail varnishes that I have ever put onto my nails. Many of them have only needed one coat, and every single one that I've tried out so far has looked stunning when locked between the Kensington Caviar base & top coats (duo on the right).

That's about it for this little 'Favourites' post. I hope you've enjoyed! If you did, then I'd be much obliged if you'd spread the word and share the blog post with the world/social media!

I'd love to hear what your New Year favourites are! By all means, comment below or holler at me on Twitter ( you can find me at @CharleyShadow :)

I hope to see you again soon! Stay beautiful!

Char 
-x-

Let's start as we mean to go on, shall we?

Right, so now I have a beauty blog.

If you haven't followed me on Tumblr or Twitter yet... well, frankly it's not that surprising, because I currently only have about 30 followers... but that's not the point. If you've not yet followed me, you probably don't know who I am. So let's start there.

My name is Charley, I've just turned 27, and I'm from Cardiff, in South Wales. I have a younger sister, who is hilarious and beautiful in equal measure, and a boyfriend whose patience astounds me.

'Why makeup?' you ask. Well, I'll tell you why. When I was younger, I was ALWAYS the shortest in the class, I had perpetually frizzy hair (that hasn't changed, to be honest), I thought my nose was too long, and a crooked tooth that I hated (I still have it, and our relationship hasn't improved much). I had a few issues with my appearance, and as I got older, a lot of them stuck with me. When the other girls started looking like young women, and I retained the build (and height) of a twelve-year-old... well that didn't help. BUT, there was a faint shining light at the end of the tunnel- I liked my eyes. I've always liked my eyes.

My mum had given me a makeup palette of hers to play with when I was younger. I remember that it had colourful layers of little sections you could pull out, to reveal a layer of even more shadows and blushers and wonderment. I was intrigued by the eyeshadows; bright cobalt blues; soft corals and bottle greens, but when I tried to put them on MY eyes, I ended up looking like a clown. I lost patience with a lot of it, but by the time I was about 14, I was pretty sure I'd mastered eyeliner. I bought liquid liners in every imaginable colour. My favourite was a metallic electric blue which - in hindsight - I believe was Urban Decay. It had been a birthday present from a friend, and I absolutely adored it.

Anyway, if we fast-forward a few years, we get to 25 year old me, stumbling across a makeup tutorial on YouTube, featuring the Coastal Scents Original 88 palette. Obviously by this time, I've amassed a respectable collection of eyeshadow quads and singles, several eyeliners, a couple of lipglosses/lipsticks, and a Sephora blusher (my friend introduced me to the wonders of Sephora when we were in Venice for a few days). I'd never really felt like makeup was a necessary part of my life (and to be honest, I don't feel that way now, either) but it was like a toy, and that Coastal Scents palette was calling out to me, so I immediately went online and bought it. This made me excessively happy, but all of the colours were matte and satin, so a few weeks later, when I got a £150 Debenhams voucher in exchange for my old phone at Vodafone, I skipped merrily over to the Urban Decay counter in search of shinier prey. What I bought was what I can only describe as the makeup equivalent of a gateway drug: the 'Smoked' palette. The colours, the shimmers, the silky-soft textures... I was hooked. Readers of my long-standing (and currently woefully neglected) blog 'Charley Says...' will know that at the time, I was so excited that I wrote a post about my makeup adventures.

So here we are. Two years, two UD Vice palettes, several face compacts, blushers, lip products, eyeliners (obviously) and half the Naked collection later, and I have so many makeup thoughts swimming around in my head, that I've had to release the pressure by unleashing them onto the interweb.

You may be thinking "that was a flippin' long story, there had better be a point to this". Well there is. Like I said, I STILL don't see makeup as a staple, I see it as a toy. If you like to play, you might just like this blog! For the life of me, I cannot talk you through a great skincare routine, how to minimise the appearance of cellulite, or the best conditioning hair-masks on the market, but by George, I can show you how to have fun with makeup, and sometimes - as an added bonus - the rest of my face might look good too! If you're liking the sound of things so far, check out my Tumblr account, where you'll be able to see posts and tutorials for the looks in the photos throughout this post, to tide you over until I've been able to throw a few more posts together!

Thank you for reading! Seeya again soon!

Charley
-x-