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

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-