Celestial

Those of you with a keen eye for new releases might have already figured out what today's post is about purely by the title, but if you're not quite up to speed on recent releases then you might be excited to hear that Rimmel have released a new line of lip products.

All hail the Apocalips! I'm actually quite wary of hyped releases such as this, as usually the products don't really live up to expectation. The colours in this line are, admittedly, gorgeous, although only the colour I'm showing you today appealed to me personally. The remaining shades, such as Big Bang or Stellar, are perfect for those who love to wear a bright, bold lip. I picked up Celestial while I had some time to kill in the train station last week and am pleased to say that it does indeed live up to expectation.

Of the lip products I already own, I'd compare the formula and consistency of this product to my NYX lip creams. Celestial is a vibrant, springtime pink that stays on the lips for a very decent amount of time and won't need to be reapplied every hour or so. The only downside to this product is the smell, which really does not appeal to me at all. Thankfully, it disappears once on the lips and it doesn't hang around for long at all.

As a student who often spends all day in university without chance to reapply make-up, I have to say I was very impressed with this product. I also think it will be very versatile and can be used to create a number of looks. 

Here's what it looks like overall ^ What do you think? Have you tried any of the Apocalips products? Do you think you would now? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

January Favourites!

So January has been and gone and we're now firmly into the month of February (cue Josh Groban's 'February Song' playing over the top of this post), but even though it's a little late I thought I'd put up some of my January favourites.

Philosophy 'Luscious Lime' shower gel

I bought this in the sale just after Christmas in Debenhams and I've been loving it when I'm feeling tired and need refreshing on an evening. It also smells exactly like lime jelly, which is a major win for my inner child.

Korres Lip Butter in Jasmine

I've posted about the Korres Lip Butters before and I have to say I've recently fallen for the brand big time. I think this is probably the perfect lip butter for my lips and it's really been helping with my dry, chapped winter time lip problems. It also smells divine, which is always a bonus.

L'Occitane Cocoa Flower and Desert Rose Hand Creams

These are unlinked (btw, the Philosophy shower gel is linked, the colour won't shop up as blue though) as they were limited edition and no longer on the L'Occitane website. I bought them in the sale just after Christmas and I adore them both. L'Occitane hand creams are my favourites anyway, so this could have included a few more scents. 

NYX Powder Blush in Pinched

I never used to be a blush kind of a girl, I actually used to hate it and only wore it on very rare occasions. I bought this recently and have fallen in love with it. It's not too pink, and it has coral/orange undertones that I love. I've also heard it's a dupe for that Nars blush.

I had many more January favourites, but these are just a few of them. Have you tried any of these products? Let me know what you think in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Requested: Nail Tutorial - Art Attack

Hi guys :) Today's post is going to be a requested tutorial of the nail art I posted about most recently. My usual 'hand model' (AKA my mum, haha) was unavailable so I've done it on an acrylic nail, hopefully you'll still be able to follow it though :)

So, you will need:

- 1x base coat (not pictured)
- 1x top coat (I used Sally Hansen Mega Shine)
- 1x white nail polish 
- As many other colours as you want to go in your pattern. I recommend the colours pictured to create the same effect as I did, and will refer to these colours in my tutorial. 
- 1x paintbrush (as cheap as possible, you'll see why later on)
- 1x nail polish remover and cotton pads

Step 1:

Apply your base coat and allow to dry. This is particularly important with a polish such as a white one, as they can often leave yellowing on the nails without a base coat being applied first.

Step 2:
Coat your nails with the white polish until they become opaque. Make sure you allow each coat to dry before re-applying, as you could end up pulling the drying polish and ruining the nails.

Step 3:
Take your paintbrush and yellow polish and lightly dab the end of the paintbrush onto the nail polish brush. You could try dipping the brush into the polish, but chances are you will end up with too much polish and will need to start over. Paint from one corner of the nail outwards and feather the ends out as much as possible.

Step 4:

Now take your orange colour and layer it over the yellow, trying to blend the two colours together as much as possible. Don't worry about it looking messy, this will be covered up later in the design.

Step 5:

Now take your bright pink and do the same as in step 4. In addition to this, you want to try and feather this colour out even more than you have previously. You can do this by pressing the brush against the nail.

Step 6:

Now we're going to introduce a slightly darker colour. Use your blue (I used something in between bright and dark, you don't want to go too dark) in the same way as your previous colours.

Step 7:

You're going to add some black now, just to give the pattern a bit more depth. Try not to feather this out too much, as these nails are mainly supposed to be colourful.

Step 8:

If you saw my original post, you might have noticed that red was the most prominent colour. This is the stage where you need to add the red. Don't be afraid to use a lot of this, however make sure you don't try and make the colour opaque. 

Step 9:

To darken the nails even further, add some green, and finally add some purple.

Step 10:

You're pretty much done with adding the colour now, however if you want to add any more of the colours you've already applied, feel free to do this and allow the nail to dry. In the photo below, I added more blue and yellow

Step 11:

Once the nail is dry, apply your top coat and you're done!

Overall, I don't think this tutorial is complicated to do, but it does take a bit of time and I wouldn't recommend you try doing this when you're in a hurry. I think this design could be mixed up so much for different seasons, occasions etc, and when I come back to it in the future I'll post some more NOTDs for you :)

I hope that was helpful, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment, tweet me or send me an email, the links are all at the end of this post :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Treat Yourself...

Hola everybody :) In the past few weeks, I've had my first four university exams. When I was finally freed on Thursday 17th, I decided to treat myself. After a not-so-pleasant experience ordering from  Mac online (which I'll discuss in a future post when my order finally arrives...) which resulted in a lipstick being refunded, I decided to find something to replace it...

After walking around the Mac counter in Harvey Nichols for a while and swatching almost everything I looked at, I decided on Syrup. Seen as I already have slightly-darker-than-average lips, Syrup is like a slightly more pink nude on me, which is exactly what I was hoping it would be.

In the swatch above, I had a tiny amount of gloss over the top but by the time this photo was taken it had pretty much faded away. The colour you see above is fairly true to how it looks on the lips. 

And here's what it looks like from more of a distance... I wore it out to a family party last night and while the colour did stay all night, I did find that my lips felt a little dry so I reapplied a few times. With the exception of this, so far I really like this lipstick and feel that I will definitely get more use out of it than any of the more typical nudes I own by Mac (aka Hue and Creme Cup, which are lovely but quite hard to work with). 

What do you think? Do you own Syrup? What's your favourite Mac lipstick? Let me know in the comments :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

NOTD #3 - Art Attack

Having taken a little break to concentrate on my second semester of university starting, I'm back with a beauty-related post today and I thought I'd share my nails of the day!

I can't really figure out what I think they look like, but I've called the post 'Art Attack' because I basically went mad with different colours and a paintbrush. Sometimes I think they look kind of feathered, sometimes I think the colours look a bit like those of a peacock... I like the fact that they're all completely different and some nails have more of one colour than the others.

What do you think? Would you try this out yourself? Would you like to see any more designs using this technique? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Liebster Award!

I was kindly nominated for the Liebster Award by the lovely Annie-Lou of Big World Small Girl. You can view her post on it here. I actually did this ages ago on my personal blog (and the cute little graphic definitely didn't exist back then!) so it's lovely to do it again.

The rules are:

1. List 11 facts about yourself.
2. Answer the 11 questions the blogger who nominated you left.
3. Ask 11 new questions for those you nominate.
4. Choose 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers to nominate.
5. Go to each bloggers page and let them know about the award.
6. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.

So, 11 facts about me...

1. My beauty weaknesses are nail polish and lipsticks...a girl can never have enough in my opinion.

2. I have two pets, a bunny called Dusty (or Duddles) and a guinea pig called Peanut (or Nuttles).

3. I am a first year Linguistics and Phonetics student in the north of the UK.

4. Josh Groban is my absolute favourite musician and I'm SO excited for his new album.

5. I can write my name (Rachel) in the alphabet/language from which it originated (Hebrew). It also means 'ewe', which is possibly the most random name meaning ever.

6. Today is a snow day, so I'm snuggled in my favourite jumper doing nothing...just how I like it ;)

7. I'm OBSESSED with Forbrydelsen (known to most people as The Killing). If you haven't seen it, you should. 

8. I'm lucky enough to have met nearly all of my favourite comedians (Jon Richardson, Mark Watson, Rhod Gilbert), have been tweeted by one of them (Adam Hills) and have spoken to another (Alun Cochrane). In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a huge comedy junkie.

9. I speak two languages, English and Spanish, but am also studying Hebrew and Icelandic and have taught myself some Swedish.

10. I don't like watching films. I don't know why, I just don't.

11. There's nothing I enjoy more than spending a miserable day sitting in my grandma's living room while she tells me stories and shows me photos.

And now for Annie-Lou's questions (which I love because they're mainly travel themed!)...

1. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Bizarrely, I'm fairly content living where I am. In my wildest dreams, I'd have to say either Australia or somewhere in Scandinavia.

2. Make up your own ice cream flavour: what would it be?

OK, so I'm going to cheat a bit on this one because I have eaten this flavour before, but only once and I've never seen it anywhere since... Salted caramel. I had it in France in...2011(?)...and it was literally the best flavour ever. Unfortunately, I haven't found it since and that makes me sad.

3. What super power would you like to have?

The ability to read minds... but I'd have to be able to switch it on and off whenever I wanted. It would have helped me out so much in previous situations...

4. All inclusive package or backpacking adventure?

Backpacking! While all-inclusive would definitely be more luxurious, I definitely believe backpacking is more enriching and just more fun. If I hadn't gone backpacking with World Challenge in 2010, I'd never have had the amazing experience of camping right next to the top of a waterfall, I'd never have seen so much of the beautiful Croatian countryside, and I'd have never experienced a true feeling of being proud of myself.

5. What is the one thing you would not want to travel without?

A camera (preferably a decent one, not just a crappy phone camera) and a travel diary/notebook. When I was in Croatia I took pictures of literally everything and I love reading my diary back. 

6. Skiing on the slopes or surfing in the sun?

I'd like to say surfing in the sun, but I imagine I'd probably fit in a lot better skiing on the slopes... plus I have an irrational fear of being underwater, so it's also probably a lot safer for me, haha :)

7. What animal would you use to describe yourself?

I've had this conversation with my friend Eliza before and I can't remember what we decided on. Probably an owl because I'm constantly looking all around me... especially in exams, which isn't a good habit to be in.

8. Do you prefer the hustle and bustle of urban city breaks or the tranquil and peace of rural retreats and why?

I actually love both, but I think I'm definitely a city girl and I feel much more at home in a foreign city than the countryside somewhere. I think rural retreats are something that you shouldn't do too often because then you appreciate them more. 

9. Born to travel or stay at home?

I definitely want to travel. There are so many places on a mental list inside my head that I want to visit. 

10. What is your best/worst travel experience?

Best: I have a few. I previously mentioned camping basically at the top of a waterfall, and that's definitely one of them. Our group toasted marshmallows over a campfire and Slaven, or tour guide, played his guitar and sang to us. Another is when we were in our minivan on the way to Split Airport on our way home and Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol came on the radio and we all sat there singing along in our own little worlds. One of my best travel memories is also from Poland in 2011 when my lovely friend Jess and I sat having a heart-to-heart in our favourite coffee shop in Krakow. 

Worst: Getting stuck underneath a kayak in Croatia, being stranded in the Channel Tunnel en route to Disneyland Paris for hours and hours surrounded by screaming children, and the time we landed in Liverpool John Lennon Airport after the Poland visit and my suitcase came out onto the luggage carousel open. Way to go, EasyJet. The worst experience is probably climbing a mountain in Croatia and spending two whole days pretty much having panic attacks because I couldn't breathe. Awesome. I think I redeemed myself when I pretty much ran back down the mountain to get help on our last day when the people I was walking with all became ill, though.

11. Travel plans for 2013?

No plans as yet. My Comedy Twin (CT) Poppy and I are hoping to go to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer and my friend Sophie and I have briefly discussed the idea of going to Sweden (especially hoping for this to happen). I'll be going somewhere with my family, but we went to Cornwall and got rained on for a week in 2012 so I don't really count family holidays as 'travel plans'.

And now for the questions I'm setting...

1. If you had to choose a quote to live your life by, which one would you choose and why?

2. Do you speak any foreign languages? If so, which ones?

3. Describe your perfect day.

4. Do you have any 'odd' habits or rituals that you do but nobody else you know does too?

5. What is your favourite season and why?

6. Why did you start your blog?

7. If you could be any animal for a day, which would you be and why?

8. If you could pass a new law that would ban something you dislike, what would you ban and why?

9. Go onto iTunes or your music library and go to your most played songs. Which song have you played the most times?

10. Have you ever had any interesting celebrity encounters?

11. Tell us about one of your proudest achievements.

I can't think of anybody to tag at the moment (they've all done it!) but if I think of anyone in future, I'll pop another post up about it :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Looking forward to spring and summer yet?

Bunting style necklace, Topshop.

I bought this necklace just after Christmas, so I'm assuming it's still in stores now. I couldn't find it online, but then you can never find everything on the website anyway. It feels a bit ridiculous posting about such a bright, summery piece when the whole of the UK is currently dealing with what the news likes us to believe is a 'snow crisis', but maybe it will cheer us all up a bit?

I think this is going to be the perfect necklace for spring and summer. The colours are gorgeous, vibrant  and perfect for summer, particularly the coral and the lime green, but the teal and lilac are still muted enough for it to be perfect for the spring too. 

What do you think? Are you already looking forward to the warmer, sunnier months? Do you have any spring/summer jewellery staples? Let me know in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com