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-
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