Last Day to Enter Giveaway!

Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter my small giveaway of a No7 mascara and a 17 eyeshadow palette, just click here and you'll be directed to the giveaway page where you can enter!

I also still have a foundation left to giveaway on my Foundation Frustration Post, so if you have a darker skintone please check it out and you can get yourself a foundation for free!

Thank you and good luck! :)

Foundation Frustration! - Everything's GONE

I have a problem...and I'm sure many women have come across the same issue and suffered in the same way as myself.

I can never match foundations or concealers to my skintone perfectly, especially in drugstores. Due to this I now have 3 foundations and 1 concealer that do not match at all.

I've taken a decision and it is to give them away on here, nothing has been used very much, the 17 Photo Flawless Foundation has been used once - to check colour, the Maybelline Dream Satin Liquid has had about 4 pumps taken from it because I tried mixing it with a L'Oreal one that also doesn't match. (I'm not giving away the L'Oreal one as it has a brush and that's a bit unhygienic, I'll just have to pretend I have an orange skintone until it finishes...) I also have the Dream Mousse Concealer which is too fair for my skin to give away, that has been used once, just to check the colour match.

I don't have a Paypal account and nor do I know how to hold blog sales, which I why I am giving them away, and I'm so fed up of them I'm very gladly giving them to you!

Please leave a comment with your email address telling me which item you would like and I'll email you back for your address and I'll get the item(s) sent to you asap!

Thank you so much!

N.B The Maybelline Dream Satin Liquid Foundation and the Maybelline Dream Mousse Concealer have been given away! The 17 Photo Flawless Foundation remains still :)

Liz Earle Offers

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts, I was trying to stop myself from blogging so much and study much more...didn't work too well though...oh dear!

Anyway, today I bring you the fantastic offers available at Liz Earle for spring, and the 2 I have taken advantage of...(seeing as I'm a collector of all things beauty, I feel like I should repurchase already - even though I haven't used anything yet...*slaps on wrist*!)

So here's the link where you can view the offers: http://uk.lizearle.com/offers

And here are the 2 that I bought! :)

This is the New Springtime Must Haves Offer for £41 but with a retail value of £64.55. Included are:
- 2 Cleanse and Polish Hot Cloth Cleansers (100ml) and 2 muslin cloths
- Instant Boost Skin Tonic (200ml)
- A choice of moisturiser depending on your skin type
- A beautiful beauty bag

First Impressions:
- Packaged beautifully, each item is individually hand-wrapped and packaged so that nothing will leak or break
- The beauty bag is of very high quality and is very pretty inside, sporting colourful stripes and convenient compartments
- Very fast delivery
- The skincare items look gorgeous too
- Also a great deal with savings!

This is the Clear Skin offer for £20.65 with a value of £33.15 and includes:

- Deep Cleansing Mask (75ml) and 2 sponges

- Gentle Face Exfoliator (50ml)

- Spot-On (6ml)

- Soft White Headband

First Impressions:

- Again, very well wrapped and presented

- Speedy delivery

- Fantastic savings and am thinking of purchasing this set again before the offer runs out in May...

I am very impressed with the whole ordering - delivery process and especially with the free gift of a 30ml cleanser with a muslin cloth and a personalised letter congratulating me on my first order. As I said to my boyfriend, "I feel like a Queen!"

I will forever associate opening my package with that feeling and as I had had a great day when it arrived too! I hope that my interview was successful and am offered a place...won't reveal too much there just yet!

Have you tried any Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare Products? What do you think?

Thank you so much for reading and don't forget to enter my giveaway!

17 Limited Edition Vintage Eye Palettes (and mini-giveaway)

These are the new limited edition 17 eye palettes for spring! I admit I'm a little late talking about these seeing as they've been out since late February. But they're so amazing I thought I should give them a mention with a little giveaway!

They're £5.49 each and have 6 different eyeshadow colours and a double sided sponge applicator and a very reasonably sized mirror. They are available at Boots if they haven't run out!

The design is very pretty and the colours are perfect for spring! The one on the left is called Perfect Pastels and the one on the right is Metallic Nudes. They swatch very well and are very pigmented and smooth.

I'm also going to give one Perfect Pastels palette away alongside a No7 Extravagant Lashes Mascara because unfortunately I couldn't find another one of the Metallic Nudes palette :(

The Prizes:

The mascara is worth £12.50 and the palette is £5.49, I have bought both prizes by myself and am very happy to be doing another giveaway!

Rules:
1. You must be a follower of my blog via Google Friend Connect
2. You must be 18+ or have your parent's permission if you are younger

To enter:
- Please leave one comment telling me what you're favourite eyeshadow palette is and why - for 1 entry
- And/Or tweet this giveaway, (you must be a follower on twitter for this entry to count!) - for 1 entry
Tweet: "Follow @nav_t and RT this to enter BBA's 17 Palette Giveaway! Details here: http://beautybloggingaway.blogspot.com"

You can only enter a maximum of 2 times, with the above methods! Giveaway closes at 10pm UTC on Thursday 31st March and is open internationally.

Thank you so much for following me and for reading this! Good Luck :)

Review: No7 Natural Blush Cheek Colour in Candy Pink

This is such a pretty blush with a gorgeous colour to it once applied onto the cheeks. It's by No7 and named Candy Pink very appropriately I think. It costs £9 and is available from Boots but with the £5 off vouchers currently in circulation it'll only cost you £4! Bargain!

The texture of this blush is very soft and "powdery", which in turn begs the question (in my head anyway) why it isn't chalky...that just shows the brilliance of the blush in my opinion! It goes on very well with your fingers or a blush brush, I use Mac's usually and I find that it leaves a very pretty natural looking blush on my cheeks.

I usually tend to put on a bit more as it tends to wear off during the day but by midday it looks absolutely perfect with my skintone. I also think it would look great on all skintones because of the buildable nature of this blush. You can either pile it on straight away by picking up lots or gently build up, it's completely up to you. It's very natural looking generally, but you can choose to go for a more dramatic look if you wanted.

I really love the packaging, it's very sleek and compact and fits perfectly into all my cosmetics bags, large or small! I've bought a back-up of this blush just in case it runs out soon, (seeing as I'm using it very often), but on the compact it says that they've changed the formula and the blush looks a lot more pink...hmm...

You receive 5g of product which is quite a bit of blush and it's lasting me for a very long time. It is definitely one of my favourite blushes that I've come to love recently. Overall it's an 8/10 from me!

Have you tried this? What did you think? Please leave your comments below!

Thank you for reading :)

NEW Clinique Chubby Stick Moisturising Lip Colour Balms

Hi! :)

These are the new chubby sticks by Clinique, which are a basically a coloured lip balm, or a lip balm with a tint. I've had these for ages now, about 2 months I think and I only started using them recently. I'm aware that they weren't released in the UK that long ago but I managed to get hold of some! I haven't been able to find them on general websites for the UK yet either but I think they were meant to be released in March/April sometime at £13.50 each. They are available in the States for $15 each now and there are 8 colours.

I bought 4 chubby sticks which I'm not sure was a good idea as it hurt my bank account a fair bit! I got the following colours:

- 02 Whole Lotta Honey
- 04 Mega Melon
- 07 Super Strawberry
- 08 Graped-up

They all look so pretty and are very innovative, I'll review each one individually once I feel they've been used enough! (Very soon!)

Thank you for reading :)

Marie Claire Freebie!

I got hold of a Marie Claire magazine (£3.50) and they're giving away Cowshed 100ml body lotions, 6 different kinds! :) In their April issue.

I got the "Wild Cow" one and I haven't used it yet but will give a quick review on it after I've used it.

So if you want to try Cowshed or just want the magazine go pick it up and you get some very useful travel sized body lotion!

Thank you for reading!

Makeup Ban: Update

Hi all! :)

I'm very glad to say that I've finished more products from my makeup/skincare collection:

- Sanctuary Spa Body Souffle
- Body Shop Tea Tree Blemish Wand
- Blistex Massage Lip Balm
- Soap and Glory Hand Food Handcream

I'm so happy that I'm finally using products up completely and I'm near to finishing another few products too, as always I'll keep you informed :)

Review: No7 Stay Perfect Nail Top Coat

Just ergh. The most horrible disgusting useless top coat I've ever tried, and it's from such a reputable brand. it costs £7 and is available at Boots if you want to give it a go.

Now I'll explain why it's the worst top coat I've ever come across.

- It's gloopy - on the brush it's gloopy and gunky, the consistency isn't nice enough for you to want to polish your fine manicure with.

- It's bubbly - it creates bubbles, micro, tiny, yucky bubbles on my nails which completely ruins them.

- Drying time is FOREVER - it takes forever to dry, even after about 2 hours, you may think that your nails are ready to touch and you can continue your daily chores but NO! If you touch a nail you will have a splodge or a nasty fingerprint left on whichever pretty colour you've chosen to paint your nails with.

- It's Sticky - this isn't really to do with the nails exactly, but if you accidentally do manage to place it somewhere else, it sticks and is very hard to get off or even smooth down to a level of near invisibility.

- It leaves strings - this is a really unattractive, it leaves strings while transporting it onto the nail from the bottle, like honey leaves trails on a spoon!

Basically this top coat sucks, in every way possible. It gives nothing required of a top coat apart from the shine if you manage to get 1 little nail done properly with this.

This really baffles me because I adore No7 Stay Perfect Nail Colours, and they're of a good consistency and wear pretty well. It's just this top coat that ruins my nails completely and does nothing useful. Sorry, it does do one useful thing, once on and if you've managed to dry it well it does keep the colour of your nails going strong, but you may not want colour locked onto your nails with bubbles on top! Most of us don't!

I wouldn't pay £7 for this or even £2 with the £5 off vouchers, I remember it being £6.25...just in awe at the increase in prices now!

But this is a definite no no on my part, have you ever tried this? What did you think? Am I the only one?!

Thank you so much for reading! :)

Mini Body Shop Haul :)

This was bought before the proper ban took place but arrived yesterday! Which is actually quite quick to be honest!

I bought the Oil Free Balancing Foundation SPF15 for £13 in shade 6, which I tried in the shop and I believe this may be a shade that actually matches my skin colour! *angels sing* However, I tried shade 5 too and I couldn't really pick out the direct difference between them so I chose shade 6, and we'll see how it goes... (and shade 5 came across slightly more difficult to blend, and a bit chalky...it was probably just the tester being ages old...)

I also bought the Tailored Cheek Tint for Spring in Hot Pink for £10, this looks very strange to me as it has a brush applicator, but I love the packaging designed by the London College of Fashion.

For buying 2 makeup products I got their new Carbon Eye Definer in Black worth £9!

Finally I bought Tea Tree Blotting Tissues for £4.50, I needed blotting paper/tissues of some sort because near the end of the day I tend to use my hands to clear the excess oil and then go to wash my face which isn't very nice, so I thought blotting tissues would be handy. These look great and the package is so small! 65 tissues will probably last me about 2 months if they're of a decent size! If I fall in love with them I'll buy a pack for every handbag I own! :)

I also purchased the Love Your Body Card, which is The Body Shop's Loyalty Card offering:

- 10% off all purchases for a year

- £5 reward on the 4th stamp
- £10 reward on the 8th stamp
- £5 present on your birthday
- Exclusive member discounts

And it cost me £5. I've had one before but in all honesty I think it made me make sure I bought things from the Body Shop even if I didn't really intend to...so I'm not sure about it, but I do like the discounts and rewards. To get a stamp though you have to spend a minimum of £10, it's not very difficult though, seeing as a blush costs £10 alone!

For spending over £25 I received this Vitamin E Hand and Nail Treatment worth £8!

I'm really very impressed with the Body Shop and the free items worth £17! I received the package after about 2 days of ordering I think, ( I can never tell because I order in the middle of the night!) so overall very happy :)

I will review these products as soon as I make sufficient use out of them, have you tried anything? Like/Love/Hate?

Thank you for reading! :)

Boots No7 Giveaway Winner

Hi,

A quick post with the winner of the giveaway. I used random.org and put in 1-10 because of the comments and twitter entries, I had done this before when the giveaway was supposed to close and my boyfriend has entered unfortunately so he won, and the random number generator gave me 2. I then extended the giveaway because I don't think it was fair for him to win.

However, this phenomenon has occurred again, personally I think it's because of the fewer numbers available, 1-10. I'm not 100% sure what to do about this, but I'm aware that he's happy to win. I've politely asked him not to enter any giveaways again because even if he does give the winning things to his mum or a female friend because he is (obviously) affiliated with me, I don't think it's fair.

So the winner is Moostafa and I will be running a giveaway again very soon from which I will omit all those very close to me regardless of whether they enter or not!

Thank you for reading and my apologies,

Sad Annoyed Nav x

Glamour Magazine's Great Givings...

As with the rest of the women in the UK I picked up a few copies of Glamour Magazine, surprisingly not as many as I initially thought I would...I got 2 from one newsagent and then decided I wanted a moisturiser so picked up another, a total of 3 magazines, and £6 spent.

As part of their 10 year celebration they are giving away 10 different mini Clinique products, I picked up the lipstick, which is absolutely gorgeous, the 7 day scrub and the moisture extend moisturiser. I haven't pictured that because I literally just bought the magazine!

It also really frustrated me that so many people had ripped the magazine cover apart, taken the Clinique product and left. If you want the item, buy the magazine like the rest of us!

Anyways, there are still a fair few magazines left so make sure you don't miss out if like myself, you love Clinique! :)

The Makeup Ban - Quick Update

I have now decided to ban myself from purchasing ALL beauty related items because the exchange hasn't worked out very well and I keep buying! :o

So now I'm waiting to finish a lot of products, so instead...no buying makeup products until 1st August 2011. I'm in need of a stippling brush and a foundation that matches my skin tone, so maybe if I do finish a ridiculous number of items I'll permit these purchases? Or ask my lovely boyfriend? ;)

I'll keep you updated with the progress! :)

Thank you for reading x

Thank You to Vaseline and The London Beauty Review!

Just a quick post to say thanks to the lovely ladies at The London Beauty Review, Sarah and Gemma and Vaseline as I was one of the winners of their Vaseline giveaway! I recieved the lovely new lip balms last Tuesday but I've been so busy so haven't posted.

Anyway, thank you so much! :)

Much love, Nav x

Review: BeautyUK's Glam Nails Nail Polish - Mauve Flash No34

I L-O-V-E this nail polish :) I wish I could stop there and end this post and that would be enough convincing for you to go out and try it...I'll continue for all those that need more convincing though. It cost me £1.99 from Superdrug which rockets the value factor by 1000x! For 9ml of nail polish...wow.

So onto the convincing now...I'm sorry I haven't posted any swatches of this (and for saying convincing 3x already!), all the pictures I took came out really shoddy and didn't do the beautiful colour enough justice.

It's a very bright summery pink that would look very pretty on nails in the summer, fingers and toes.The brush is lovely to work with, fans out enough and doesn't allow the formula to "gloop" on it, the wear is chip resistant for about a week and looks absolutely perfect, which is oh so difficult to find in a nail polish nowadays. I took mine off a bit sooner though because as the nails grow the cuticles become worse so I end up flaking/scratching picking at my nails until the colour came off, otherwise I reckon it would have remained perfectly for longer. I wore a top coat on top which completely "glooped" and left bubbles on my nails, yet the colour still shone through. I also put on 3 coats but I think 2 coats were enough, it's opaque enough for 1 coat as long as you pick up a lot of polish on the brush.

I know this isn't a typical transition colour from winter to spring but I needed some cheering up and this polish really did and has cheered me up :)

And there we are, a perfect nail polish for £1.99...shocking I know! A very big well done to BeautyUK for making such a perfect nail polish, I would like it to be a bit more opaque on its own and I have yet to try wearing it alone to further test out the chip-resistant, stay-pretty for ages quality it has, but I give it an 8/10 for now.

Thank you for reading :)

The Book Club: What are you reading right now?

Hi!

I've decided to start a book club on here because blogging on 3+ blogs would be a nightmare I think, and this will be open for males and females too! If need be, I'll move it over to another blog :)

So! Let's get started, please leave a comment saying what you're reading right now, and on my next post in relation to The Book Club we'll maybe discuss different books and see if anyone else has read them!

At the moment I'm reading the Vampire Diaries books 1+2 by L.J.Smith, The Awakening and The Struggle. I will review and talk about it in the next post...

Thank you for reading :D

Happy March! :D

I cant' believe it's March already! Wow! I remember my New Year's Eve like it was yesterday...

Time goes really quickly and soon it'll have been a year on this blog! I know that I don't update as regularly as I would like to but I don't feel obliged to blog; I like to post when I feel like it and out of my own will. It's also very relaxing so I usually blog in the evenings or at night, this post being the odd one out of course.

I haven't had many giveaways yet because it's quite difficult to afford such expensive beauty products regularly, I know I'd like to have a lot more because they seem fun, please don't forget to enter my current one until 10th March here. Take a look at the prizes here.

I've also started using my makeup a lot more as opposed to hunting it down or certain items and just sticking it in a draw so that I have it and it looks pretty and organised. I think this is a major thing for me because I don't even have 5 seconds to spare in the morning and am constantly in a rush. I think this could be due to how little sleep I get and because of my love of staying awake at night, I don't actually think I'm an insomniac anymore - if I turned everything off I'm pretty sure I'd knock out soon.

I'm glad that I started my makeup ban on 1st February but unfortunately I haven't stuck to it in its entire form, I managed to haul some really pretty nail colours and a Clinique chubby stick, but I'm going to wait until I do finsih products until I can use them. I've finished a body butter at the moment, so still about 20 items to finish yet. The reason I wanted to finish them is so that I can try new things, I don't like to have a backlog of items and having such a large selection would mean that I wouldn't use all the items within the safe expiry dates and I dislike wasting things! I also hardly ever purchase the same product again unless I absolutely love it because I don't think the beauty industry allows for repurchasing to take place, because there are so many beauty products that I want to try everything.

The ban has also been a factor in me using up my products and making sure I put lotion on after my shower everyday and using my face cream at night because I know that if I finish it I'm allowed a new item, so my skin seems to have improved a little too!

I'm actually enjoying and hating the ban at the same time!

Anyway, thank you for following my blog, I really appreciate it, and it makes me feel appreciated too :)

Thank you for reading,

Nav x