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