I've always been attracted to neon. There's something exciting, romantic even, about those bright, luminescent colours illuminating all around them. One of the few advantages winter has over the summer is the ability to see these dazzling beautiful lighting arrangements in their element, in the darkness. I remember first moving to Manchester, and seeing the bright lights of Wilmslow Road for the first time. It sounds silly now, but it was such a buzz.

But now, the love affair with Neon is increasingly spreading to the home. No longer are neon signs the preserve of banners above a shop window, nope. More and more, you can get your hands on neon displays for the home. So whilst Marquees were so 2016, 2017 will be the year of Neon. And even that has an extreme sense of irony, as it first came to prominence back in 1920s America.

This makeup look is inspired by the beauty of neon, cutting through the darkness, lighting it up and bringing a sense of wonder and joy.

For the actual look, I used a black base to represent the darkness, without which, neon just wouldn't be quite so exciting. I applied Illamasqua's Precision Gel Liner in Infinity all over my eyelids and took it out as far as the temples, before setting it in place with MAC's eyeshadow in Carbon. I then took the Carbon that was left over on the brush and started to smoke it out.  I did the exact same beneath the lower lash line, and connected it to the temples.

To get that neon light effect, I used my vibrant AF liquid lipsticks for the winged liner, and the trio of love hearts I created along the temples. On top of that, I thought I'd take it up a notch, so I dipped a thin brush in micellar water, and removed the makeup inside the hearts to create a negative space effect. This definitely makes those hearts POP.

|| FACE ||

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation - Barcelona

Make Up Forever Full Cover Camouflage Cream - #8 Beige (extra coverage)

NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer - Ginger (under eye highlight)

BEN NYE Banana Luxury Powder 

|| CHEEKS ||

NYX Blusher - Mocha

Sleek Face Contour Kit - Medium 

Phee's Makeup Shop Luxe Holographic Highlighter - GLO UP

|| EYEBROWS ||

NYX Tint & Frame Brow Pomade - Espresso

|| EYES ||

Illamasqua Prescision Gel Liner - Infinity (lids, temples & lower lash line)

MAC Eyeshadow - Carbon (lids, temples & lower lash line)

Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick - Blow Pony & Jaw Breaker (liner & hearts)

Lime Crime Velvetines Liquid Lipstick - Flamingo & Alien (hearts)

MAC Powerpoint Eye Pencil - Industry (waterline)

Face Stockholm Volumizing Mascara - Black 

|| LIPS ||

Barry M Lip Liner - Dark Pink 

Lime Crime Velvetines Liquid Lipstick - True Love 

As this will most likely be my final post of the year, I just want to say that I hope you've all enjoyed my blog journey in 2016, it's been an absolute blast! This year has been a bit of a tough one, and I feel that in 20 or 30 years we'll be talking about how horrendous 2016 really was. 

But it's also been a good year in other ways, it's been empowering for me, as I've spoken out about the injustices levelled against me and and against minorities in general. And I also ticked a huge box off on the bucket list. Japan was a truly incredible place, and I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to spend a couple of weeks in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. It may sound a bit cliché, but it was a truly life-changing time. 

On top of that, for the first time ever I did something serious about harassment, by reporting it to the police. A small step for humanity perhaps, but a giant leap for me personally. And I also learnt how to use my camera properly, and have taken some pretty amazing shots over the past few months. Trust me, you don't need a fancy camera, or the most expensive equipment going to get a nice shot - make the most of what you have!

But I also hope that I've brought a little bit of light in to your lives, I know it's brought a lot into my own. Make sure you end 2016 with a bang, and get stuck right into 2017.

PEACE. 

Back in the summer, I bleached my hair blonde. Like, totally blonde, and I've had a fair few readers ask me how I managed to reach that platinum blonde look. It wasn't the first time I'd done it, that was way back in 2014, but that time my hair was left pretty badly damaged for a couple of reasons: first, I used the highest strength peroxide available and second, I abused my hair on an almost daily basis with heat styling tools.

So for this post, I've approached it in the same way I always do when it comes to colouring or bleaching my hair, I like to wait and see how my it develops over time before writing up a 'how to' post. Mostly because I want to see what effect the changes have on the condition of my hair before I start dishing out advice or making recommendations.

OLAPLEX

This year, I thought I'd give the bleach-blonde look another shot, but this time I'd do whatever it took to ensure the damage was nowhere near on the same scale. I'd already promised myself I'd stop heat styling my hair, and I'd been tipped off about an amazing range of products by Olaplex that would help keep my hair in good condition after a solid bleaching. I've already reviewed that HERE, so if you want to learn more about it, have a read.

I'll put this out there now though, I am a trained hairdresser and I worked in a salon many moons ago, but I've not been trained on Olaplex and I'm no expert on it - I've just followed their instructions to the letter!

It's important to remember when bleaching hair, that everyone's hair is different. What works for me, may not work for you, and vice versa. So many factors play a part, which is why you'll find some hairdressers who are willing to bleach your hair and others who just aren't. The key things to think about are hair length, thickness, how damaged your hair is already, whether it's been coloured and porosity levels. My hair at the time was shoulder-length, fine, damaged at the ends but the mid-lengths and roots were in decent condition.

When I went blonde in the summer, I had inches and inches of regrowth with pastel pink ends. I'd let my hair grow out without trimming for a long time after I trusted my hair to a very well known and 'reputable' salon last year, who shall remain nameless. They did use Olaplex, but I think the hairdresser may have left my hair to develop longer than necessary and it caused quite a bit of damage.

And that serves as a reminder about Olaplex actually. Yes, it's innovative, yes it uses clever science to help your hair through bleaching and yes it's revolutionary, but it's not a miracle product, and it's still susceptible to human error. Olaplex also reduces the effectiveness of your developer, so whilst I'd ordinarily use 6% (20 Vol) peroxide and allow the colour to lift slowly, I'd need to bump it up a level to 9% (30 Vol) for Olaplex. So, back in the summer I was going to be tackling the roots and mid-lengths, leaving my pastel pink roots alone.

Using the instructions provided, I weighed out my bleaching powder, poured in my 9% peroxide and measured out the appropriate amount of Olaplex No. 1. A few points to bear in mind though - the amount of Olaplex required is dependent on the amount of bleaching powder you want to use, so always weigh it out before mixing the peroxide in. The amount of peroxide used is personal preference - use the right amount to get the consistency you desire, and Olaplex makes the mixture very runny, so bear that in mind when pouring in the peroxide. I limit the amount of peroxide I put in until the Olaplex is added, then add more if the mixture is still too thick.

Now that the mixture is ready, here comes the fun part! For application, I section the hair out, and apply the bleach mixture to the mid-lengths at the back first. My hair is most resilient there and needs a little extra time to develop, also, the roots take less time as they're closer to the heat from your scalp - FYI, heat develops bleach/colour quicker. I then work my way to the front, still only focussing on the mid-lengths, before going to the back again, applying to the roots there and working my way back to the front.

Once I'm happy that the mid-lengths and roots are saturated, I let it develop. When it comes to bleaching, the instructions on the box usually give an estimated timeframe to leave it on, but it's my opinion that development varies from person to person, dependant on their hair. So I leave mine on for 30 minutes, and then keep checking it out in the mirror until my hair reaches a pale yellow colour. There may be a few patches of deeper yellows, but we can deal with those later, so I rinse it off at this point.

After giving my hair a thorough rinse, I apply Olaplex No. 2 to towel-dried hair. Once my hair is saturated, I comb it through and leave for about an hour. Olaplex suggest leaving it on for 10 minutes or longer for damaged hair, so I leave it on that bit extra. Then I hop back in to the shower and rinse it all off, before shampooing and conditioning.

The next part may seem a little painful, or too much to bear for some, as I tend to leave my hair to rest for a couple of days. I won't finish it all off in one day, as I don't want to put my hair through all that stress and cause extra damage. So I endure the yellowness, because it's worth it if you want to keep your hair on your head!

After the rest period, I'll go ahead and tone the hair. I find that peroxide based toners work best to lift out and lighten up those yellow patches. I was loyal to Wella's Colour Charm in T18 White Lady for a long time, however more recently I've started using a box-dye from L'Oreal Preference in 11.11 Ultra Light.

It's basically a colourant for people who want to make their hair blonder, I'm not 100% sure of the developer strength, but I do know that it works a treat at lifting out those yellow tones when mixed in with 3.75ml of Olaplex No. 1. I mix all of the contents of the box, add the Olaplex and apply from the back of my head to the front. Also, as I had pink ends, I applied the colourant to those too, to ensure an even colour throughout the length of my hair.

The instructions on the box give various suggestions for development time, but I generally leave it for half an hour, as my hair tends to look white enough by then. If not, I'll keep checking every couple of minutes thereafter until I'm happy. Then I'll rinse it off in the shower, and apply Olaplex No. 2 to my towel-dried hair,  leaving it on for one hour before shampooing and conditioning. And that's it, the bleaching and toning is complete!

Of course just because your hair is now the colour you so desired, it doesn't mean you can just treat it as you normally would. Oh no, you need to work on it to keep it in good condition! Like me, if you're bleaching from black to blonde, your hair will be damaged and very fragile. Olaplex helps a lot, but it can't do everything by itself.

After the bleaching process this time, running my hands through my hair I could feel my roots and mid-lengths were much silkier than the ends, due to the heat styling I used to do so frequently. Since going all out blonde in the summer though, I would say I've straightened my hair or used heat stylers two or three times, and I only blow dry my fringe on a low heat setting maybe once a week.

Here are my top tips to maintain bleached hair:

I hope you've found this post to be helpful, or at least given you an insight in to the world of bleached hair. I'm not gonna lie, every now and then I do think back on my hairdressing days with a touch of nostalgia - I imagine it's quite an interesting time to be in the hairdressing industry right now!

If you're looking to buy any of the products mentioned, the links below are affiliate links, so I will earn commission for any purchases you make. The Olaplex Traveling Kit can be purchased **HERE** for £118.83 . Tigi's Copyright Color Activator can be purchased for £14 **HERE** and you can get Wella's Blondor Bleaching Powder right **HERE** for £17.95. I would highly recommend all three, I mean just look at that colour!

I'm always looking to create interesting makeup looks, and to do that I end up drawing inspiration from the most unusual of sources. This look, for example, was inspired by my lampshade. Yes, that's not a typo, or an autocorrect. My lampshade did actually inspire me! How? Well, it's iridescent, and when the light hits any object in my room, it casts a very peculiar shadow - there's the usual greyish shadow, but overlapping that, there's also a blue shadow and a red one!

I'm no scientist, so I'm not 100% sure how or why this happens, but I do know this - one, it looks freaking awesome and two, Peter Pan would get himself incredibly confused if he flew in through my window! Anyways, it reminded me of those 3D glasses we had as kids, so I had a look around and realised that not only do all images drawn for these 3D glasses have a red shadow and a blue shadow, but that they also overlap slightly.

So, why not make an eye makeup look along the exact same principles? And thus, the 3D Eyeliner Look was born, in my house.

HOW IT'S MADE

To create this look, I decided to use only liquid lipsticks - it's something I've been doing of late, as it allows you to create a little bit of magic with your eyeliner, without the need to go out and buy another new product. Why do that, when liquid lipsticks do the job just as well?

First I applied the red liner, just as I normally would really and then winged it out. Next, I mixed two lipsticks together (see product list below) to create a nice vibrant turquoise colour, and started to apply that above the red. I deliberately made sure this wasn't too clean-cut, as I wanted it to merge together with the red, before straightening it out into a nice razor sharp line at the wings. The whole thing about 3D is it's a fuzzy, blurry merging of red and blue, until you hit the key details where it sharpens up. BOOM. 3D Liner bitches. 

As for the lower lashline, I made an attempt at a 3D effect too, but I'm not too sure it worked out. I applied the red with my fingers, sweeping it outwards towards the wing, before applying the turquoise slightly underneath that, again with my fingers to allow the colours to merge, and swept it out towards the wing.

 

PRODUCTS USED 

|| FACE ||

 

MAke Up Forever Mat Velvet + Mattifying Foundation - 55 Natural Beige

Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer - Dark (scarring coverage)

LA Girl Pro Conceal - Creamy Beige (under eye highlight)

BEN NYE Banana Luxury Powder (under eye highlight)

|| CHEEKS ||

NYX Blusher - Mocha

Sleek Face Contour Kit - Medium

Phee's Makeup Shop Luxe Holographic Highlighter - Gloaming

|| EYEBROWS ||

NYX Tame & Frame Tinted Brow Pomade - Espresso

|| EYES ||

MUA Pro Base Eye Primer - Nude

Sugarpill Pressed Eyeshadow - Tako (lid and brow bone highlight)

Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick - Beso (liner and lower lashline)

Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick - Breakfast At Tiffany's & Jawbreaker (mixed to form turquoise, used as liner and lower lashline)

NYX Lip Liner Pencil - Hot Red (waterline)

|| LIPS ||

Barry M Lip Liner - Red

Stila All Day Liquid Lipstick - Beso

 

So a few months back I received the most magnificent PR Sample through the post: a KITTEN!*

Ok, obviously that's a lie. What actually happened is this:

I was visiting the family a couple of months ago, when I first met Marina: a tiny little grey kitten with a striped belly and face. Her mum is a full breed Norwegian Forest Cat named Fluffy, though my mum calls her Floppy and my dad calls her Flappy. Honestly though, I don't think she even notices people are calling her anything! We suspect Marina's father to be a British Short Hair from the hood who is BFFs with Fluffy/Floppy/Flappy. We don't know who he belongs to but the neighbors have all affectionately named him Teddy Bear.

I picked up this little grey ball of fluff and placed her on my lap, but she wasn't really content there, so she climbed up onto my shoulder and fell asleep. Within those few moments, I found myself no longer owning three cats, but four and immediately named her Marina. The saddest part of that day, was having to leave her behind, as she was far too young to be separated from her mother.

This post is my review on Marina, as I'm struggling to type up a review on a foundation as I'm not wearing it right now, I haven't taken any notes and Marina's currently howling at me as she wants to sleep on my laptop. She's definitely one of the strangest, funniest, cutest cats I've ever come across.

PACKAGING

At first the packaging was tiny, grey all over with the exception of white markings around the face and a mostly white belly, with the deepest of deep blue eyes. Over time though, the packaging has grown significantly, with further growth expected and her grey back has developed white-silver stripes. The eyes have kept a tiny bit of blue around the iris, but are mostly green now. Despite the changes, she remains an absolute cutie, and feels as soft as a teddy bear. In addition, she has the sharpest white eyeliner, that puts even her owner's to shame.

NATURE

One of the big concerns when bringing a new cat in to the house is how well it matches with your existing brood. Marina's gentle and loving nature, with a strong dash of playfulness, has helped ease her in to her new surroundings. When we have people over to visit, she is completely unfazed, and actually wants to know who on earth we've let into her dominion.

Despite her friendly nature, she's no pushover that's for sure. Anything and everything in the house has the potential to be her next favorite toy, particularly hands, arms and faces. Her little claws and tiny teeth really do pack a mean punch, so be sure to stay on her good side. That being said, at night I have to kick her fluffy little ass out of the bedroom, as I don't want her to play any games with my face in my sleep.

APPLICATION AND FINISH

 "Cobra cat has nothing on me"

PROS

Butter wouldn't melt..

CONS

"Massage later, sleep first.."

CONCLUSION

"Oh darling, this hooman has style.."

It's rare for a cat with such beauty to be so playful, fun, loving and quirky. I really wish I could relay all of her unusual traits, but I fear I'd be here all night! Would I repurchase? YES, YES and YES!**

This year has been a bit of a weird one for me. I've completely fallen out of love with the fashion industry and the whole circus around it, and gone back to basics. There was a time when this was unthinkable though, where I'd be out on the high street every week, devouring the latest offerings. At one stage, I was actually finding Topshop bags under the bed filled with still-tagged clothes and receipts from months ago. Yet still, I'd find myself falling in to that most cliched of traps:

And that makes me really happy, because time is much more valuable than fashion, no matter what anyone says. Will I still talk about fashion on the blog then? Yes, I will. I'll still post outfit of the day photos, and god forbid, you might even see me feature the same skirt twice. Sacrilegious, blasphemous, heinous, heathen? Yes, but at least it's realistic.

It has been ages since I last did a foundation review. Ages. In fact, the last one I did was on NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation in March 2015. Holy fuck. That really is a long time!

Well, Make Up Forever recently launched a counter at Debenhams in Manchester and they invited me down there to take a little look around. I was pretty excited to be fair, I'm a big fan of their HD Foundation and Smoky Lash Mascara, so I felt it was about bloody time they opened a store in the barren wilderness that the residents call the North of England.

They were also kind enough to give me the opportunity to test out their *Mat Velvet + foundation. I was quite intrigued by this prospect, as I have oily/combination skin that requires powdering after applying foundation and throughout the day. The word MAT suggested to me that this might be the kind of foundation that might keep that oil at bay.

Here's Mat Velvet + in MUFE's own words:

"Mat Velvet + provides a flawless result that lasts for hours. Its smooth texture is water resistant and long lasting. Great for combination to oily skin, this full coverage formula mattifies with a velvety finish. Mat Velvet+ can also be customized to your needs. Applied lightly, it gives a natural, matte look. Applied with several layers to help conceal blemishes, it creates a velvety finish. This oil-free and non comedogenic formula is suited to sensitive skin."

 

The consistency is pretty thick, which gives the impression it's going to be a drying foundation, however after dotting it all over the skin and working it in with my buffing brush, I found that it blended in beautifully well. It certainly didn't feel drying, which is great, because that's the one big negative that I associate with matte foundations. Not so with Mat Velvet +.

The finish of the foundation is quite natural looking and it does cover acne scars to a certain extent, which is fine by me as concealer was made to finish that off anyway. As for the claims of a 'full coverage foundation', I don't actually think it is, unless you build it up. I'd rather say it gives a medium coverage, particularly when compared with something heavy like Estee Lauder's Double Wear. As for matte? Well, I would actually say it's semi-matte. It does have that velvety finish that MUFE promise, but my skin doesn't look fully matte, there's a certain sheen to my skin when wearing it. But actually, I quite like this. My skin doesn't look flat-out matte, it still has some dimension to it.

 

OH - one more thing, it doesn't contain SPF, so when you're out at your Christmas party or breaking free from the daily grind on a Friday night and your BFF snaps you, you won't be horrified by flashback photo face. Nope, you'll look gorgeous- well, depending on what kind of state you're in by that time... ;)

Overall, I think this is a good foundation. It doesn't quite deliver on what Make Up Forever have promised in some areas, but it comes in 20 shades, it lasts throughout the day and gives you medium, semi-matte coverage. If that's what you're looking for in a foundation, the £29 price tag is quite reasonable.

Make Up Forever Mat Velvet + can be purchased from the Debenhams website HERE, or if you're lucky enough, your local Debenhams may have its very own MUFE counter!