Urban Decay Naked Palette Dupe

Hi!

Makeup is one of my many passions in life and I always love to try and mix things up a bit. However, there are some items in my collection which are my 'daily essentials'- products I can't live without. One of these is the Avon 8 in 1 nude eyeshadow palette. This is incredibly similar to the Urban Decy Naked

The spongy applicators that come with the palette are not very good, so I would recommend using a Superdrug blending brush to apply your eyeshadow, which is what I use. This is a cheap brush at only £1.99. 

I use this pale whitish colour as an inner corner highlight and as a brow highlight. It is a matte shadow.

This colour looks great as a base, or blended with one of the darker shades. It is a shimmer shadow.

This is the perfect dupe for the Naked's Half Baked, I love it on its own or blended with the shade to its right. It is a shimmer shadow.

This shade doesn't swatch very well on my finger, the actual colour in the palette is more representative of what it actually looks like. This is by far my favorite shimmer shadow.

I don't regularly use this shadow as it matte, but I think it does look nice blended with the Dainty Doll eyeshadow in Shade 1.

This eyeshadow is great for applying close to your tear duct as it really brightens up the eye. It is a matte shadow.

This shadow blends really well with any of the other shades in the palette or even on its own for a pretty daytime look. It is a shimmer shadow.

This shadow looks quite daunting, but once on the eye it looks much softer-perfect for nighttime. It is a shimmer shadow.

This is the first 4 shades from the left swatched on my hand.

This is the 4 darker shades swatched.

Overall, I would say that this eyeshadow palette is perfect for day or night as it has a really versatile range of shades; it is a very good alternative to the Naked palette if you're not willing to spend all of your money.

-rachel louise xo

A Collection of My Favorite WeHeatIt Pictures

Hey! It's been a very long time since I've written a blog post and I deeply apologise for that; unfortunately, blogging is not my career so I have to find time to fit it in amougst all of the other things I do! I have just come back from an amazing holiday in France, where I managed to get a beautiful tan which proves that I can be another colour than white!!
So, recently I have been searching WeHeartIt, and here is a collection of my recent favorite pictures...

      

So there they are! My favorite images at the moment- obviously zac will be staying there for a while haha!

-rachel louise xo

  

Trip To London Town

Ahola!

Around a month ago, I went to London with my family for a day trip, I haven't been to London since the Olympics was on last year, so I was very excited!

We got the tube from Epping right into the centre at Whitehall, where we visited the Imperial War Museum. This was a really valuable experience which educated me about how Winston Churchill lived in his underground bunker during the manic years of the war; it is amazing that such a big space was underground so near to the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Myself and my family are very interested in history so this seemed the ideal way to kick off our day.

Next came some sight-seeing around Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden. We nipped into lunch at Pret a Manger on the stand and followed this by a bit of shopping in Covent Garden which was lovely in the summer heat.

We then walked down to Piccadilly Circus and went to a Hagan Daaz restaurant which we had previously been to in Paris several years before and had the most amazing ice cream meal. This was followed by more wandering around the city and going to the Shard which is massive! We then got back on the very very very busy tube (it was a bank holiday) and headed back home! Here are some snaps from the day:

Morning snack on the tube!

The tube

Excited with my cool tube card

The tube was very quite in the morning

Whitehall

The houses of parliament

10 Downing Street door

Horse guards parade

Horse guards parade

Horse guards parade

My amazing ice cream and brownie meal!

Piccadilly Circus

Millennium Bridge

The Shard and some random church haha

Rachel Louise xo

Perfection

I've been reading a few blogs this evening and one of my friends called Helena from Toothpaste Kisses did a post on perfection.I thought this was a really interesting topic and I thought I'd delve deeper.

Is there such thing as perfect? Can one single human being contain all the attributes to be a 'perfect' person? Yet that then raised the question of what makes a person perfect. Is it their looks; being a size 0 or having beautifully shaped eyebrows? Or is the word 'perfection' directed at what lie on the inside- is perfection a judgement on your personality, beliefs and morals? Ultimately, it is in the eye of the beholder.

Obviously these girls are: skinny, big boobed, leggy and big butted right? (This shouldn't be the way it is!)

Yet in the current world, we are constantly swarmed with images of supposedly 'perfect' celebrities. The likes of those so skinny they look like they may be about to snap. Does society just want us to aspire to be a pile of bones, suffering from being too thin? Why is it considered bad to be overweight? Excluding all of the obvious health problems, why is it considered better to be overly thin that overly big?

                                                     

Does this really look like perfection?

The scornful looks given when you revel your weight around so called friends when it is perhaps slightly more that the average girl. Now I know I'm not the thinnest person on the planet, but I wouldn't consider my self overweight. In fact, I'm not overweight- I have a healthy BMI, which is probably better than all of those skinny girls. I hate the ingrained opinion that a skinny girl is the definition of perfect.

Should society really promote images like this?

But in fact, skinny girls don't guarantee perfection. Perfection is a descriptive term for 'completeness'. Personally, I don't put weight in the checklist to perfection. Things such as being friendly, open-minded, approachable and possibly intelligence in that checklist. Big or small, I don't believe that contributes to how 'perfect' you are. 

Images like this deeply upset me.

That's why I am frustrated with society. They force-feed us with so-called images of perfection. They give us a distorted view which leads us to aspire to things that are physically not possible. I recently saw one of my favorite YouTube blogger Tanya Burr (if you haven't discovered her yet, search her NOW!) post a picture of her legs whilst on holiday in Greece. She was met with comments about how she needed to "tone up and shave her thighs". This is how distorted society has got. So now its unacceptable to have a bit of flab on your thighs or not to shave your thighs? I mean, come on. It's pathetic. Tanya has a gorgeous figure, much more flattering that anorexic models.

Tanya Burr is hardly 'obese' is she? 

Society has disgusted me. I would love to promote the fact that you don't have to be skinny to be perfect. Girls need to stop believing that until they reach a size 0, they are not worthy for society. When in fact, you are worth it. It's personality that makes a person, not what they look like. Fact. All I'm trying to do is turn on the light switch so society can see the end of the tunnel. This tunnel contains self-confidence, self-belief and appreciation for what you have got, and not what you want to have.

This perfectly sums up what society is like today.

*All pictures credit to www.weheartit,com

-Rachel Louise xo

My Everyday Makeup Routine

Today I'm going to do a step-by-step routine of everything I wear on a daily basis. I wear a substantial amount but not too much and I have bought all of the products myself or they were a gift. I will let you know where they were all from and prices! *Sorry for the bad photo quality!

So I start off by tying back my hair to get it out of the way. I then use the Benefit Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow Foundation (£24.50) with a Real Techniques foundation brush. This brush was part of the core collection from Real Techniques.

I put a few pumps onto my hand and use my fingers to distribute the foundation around my face. I then use the brush to blend it all over my face, making sure I get right into my hairline and jawline to prevent any harsh lines where my foundation ends. This foundation gives a light coverage and doesn't really last all day so I will be investing in a higher coverage foundation soon! However, it gives a natural finish which I like and doesn't feel heavy or cakey.

I then apply my Rimmel Stay Matte Power (£3.99) with a Real Techniques (also part of the core collection) buffing brush to set my foundation. I only use a small amount and concentrate on putting it on the oily areas of my face (forehead, nose, chin) and then dust off the excess on my cheeks.

I then use the Benefit Lemonaid (£16.50) which is an eyelid primer that is colour-correcting. I use it under my eyelids to help my dark circles and on my eyelids to even them out before I apply eyeshadow. If I have any other red areas of my face (often around the nose and chin), I also use this product as it lasts all day.

 I then move onto eyes. I start off with the Dainty Doll eyeshadow in 'Are You Experienced' (£11.25), which is a gorgeous matte brown. I apply this with a normal eyeshadow brush.





I then use my Avon 8 in 1 neutrals palette which has a wide range of light to dark neutrals and is perfect for everyday use. I take the 2 shades on the right which are the darkest and blend them into the Dainty Doll shadow. The Avon shades are shiny so they add a nice contrast.

 Then I use the Benefit Badgal mascara which was £16.50. This mascara is in the shade 'black' and is fantastic at providing thick, non-clumpy lashes. I usually apply 2 coats, waiting a couple of minutes between each application.

 Next I take my MUA bronzer in 'Shade 1', which has a slight shimmer to that I'm not all that keen on, but it was only £1 so who can complain?! I use the Real Techniques contour brush to contour my cheekbones and use the brush to properly blend to prevent harsh lines.

Next, I use the same contour brush for blusher because I currently don't own a blusher brush! I use the Models Own blusher in the shade 'Warm Glow' which was £6 from Boots. I apply this to the apples of my cheeks and sweep up my cheekbones with the excess. I don't usually apply much blusher because I am naturally very red.

Then I take my Collection lipstick in the shade 'Plum Perfection' and apply that over my lips which have been previously buffed using the Lush Bubblegum Lip Scrub (£5). This lipstick was a snip at £2.99 and I got it in the 3 for 2 offer at Boots a while ago. It adds a really nice sheen and stays put for ages! Depending on the days, I will mix up my lipstick!

So here is the finished look, this is my everyday makeup! If it looks like I have a lazy eye, I promise I don't!

Rachel Louise xo