L’OREAL PARIS Micellar Water

I bought this a few month’s back after the gorgeous Toni Eaton tweeted about it (Check out her twitter and give her a follow: https://twitter.com/tonieatonx?lang=en-gb) and I have to say I have fallen madly and shamelessly in love.

Taboo Beauty Products

I love trying out new products and recommending them to my friends, family and all of you guys. I scroll through social media and blog sites and see millions of recommendations for glamorous and gorgeous products. But there are A LOT of products out there that we all use but no one wants to talk about. We all have tried great variations and horrendous variations of the product from different brands and we all have our favourites that we would normally recommend to everyone that would listen – but these products are sometimes seen as unladylike, unattractive and sometimes just too boring. So I think it’s time to discuss some of those ‘Taboo’ products. DON’T WORRY, they aren’t too gross that you have to put down your dinner.

Let me start with deodorant. For some reason, women like to pretend that we don’t sweat, we don’t need deodorant and we always smell amazing without even trying. Unfortunately this isn’t true! We all wear deodorant, we’ve all tried rubbish brands and we all have our favourites that we ALWAYS wear, so why does no one ever talk about it? I never see blog posts comparing different brands and ‘Just tried this!’ posts. So I think it’s about time that we started. When I was going through puberty, I sweat a lot – and I mean a lot so because of this period in my life I have tried A LOT of different brands. I now use Mitchum. This was recommended to me by a friend that I lived with at Uni. Before then I had always used Sure, Sure smells lovely and comes in some many different scents, but unfortunately it was never strong enough for me. Mitchum works a dream! I use the roll on, it’s a little annoying because you have to sit down for 5 minutes after your shower to let it dry, but it definitely works the best! Now I never have to worry about sweating, even if I spend the day at work then go to the gym. I also have a spray on deodorant that I carry with me on the go just incase. It has a few scents, none are overly scented, but all smell pretty nice. Mitchum have recently changed their packaging. It was more of a darker green, so the new packaging looks much more feminine. It’s sold almost everywhere, the roll-ons sell for £2.89 in boots.

Cosmetic buds. These are quite dull and definitely not in pretty packaging, but they work a treat. If you don’t already use buds, or if you use regular cotton buds, then you need to get yourself some of these. You can get them for really cheap. These ones sell in Boots for £1.80 for 80 buds. They have one rounded end and one pointed end. They are perfect for fixing makeup! I am constantly doing my mascara, then spraying my perfume, it makes me sneeze and my eyelashes then leave little mascara dots all around my eyes, these buds are perfect for clearing that up without spoiling the rest of your makeup!

Let’s talk face wipes. Now I know some people say you shouldn’t use face wipes to remove your makeup and some people say they cause spots or dryness, but I’ve never found that to be the case. I use Simple wipes, I’ve tried many different brands and Simple seem to work best for me. They don’t irritate my skin but are strong enough to remove all of my makeup. They are super quick to use. These retail in Boots for £3.99. I have tried the exfoliating ones, but they seem too harsh for my skin.

Veet hair removal cream. Yes, we all have unwanted hair. Some more than others. I struggle to find a hair removal cream that it strong enough to work on my leg hair. So if any of you know a brand, please let me know!! My leg hair is too thick and coarse to be removed by creams – another downside of being brunette. However I love the Veet Sensitive for all other unwanted hair, it works a treat and doesn’t irritate my skin.

My Ped Egg! Now a lot of people don’t want to talk Ped Eggs. My boyfriend thinks it is the most disgusting tool that has ever been invented, but I think it is by far the best. If you feel too ashamed to walk to the counter with a Ped Egg then please please try and stifle your shame. It is amazing. It has removed all hard and rough skin on my feet and have left them looking and feeling amazing. It’s unreal how much difference it makes after just one use! It’s so easy to use, it looks like it’s going to hurt your feet but it definitely doesn’t. Give it a try!

Do you have any Taboo products that you are dying to share but feel too embarrassed?

What’s your favourite brand of deodorant or face wipes?

Clean Your Makeup Brushes

When it gets close to Christmas I start cleaning and organising EVERYTHING. As a kid I would spend weeks going through all my old toys, putting them into charity bags and making room for all the new ones that Santa was going to bring me. I think that has probably stuck with me for my whole life, and now with a few weeks to go I’m starting to get rid of old clothes, bags and shoes. This year I’ve asked Santa for some more Real Technique makeup brushes, the blush brush and the core collection to be precise – which I am veryyyy excited about. But this means that I need to clean my current brushes, find a new (bigger) home for them and sadly throw away my over loved ones.

I’ve been hunting for a new makeup brush holder for weeks – it’s a very serious commitment. And I’ve found lots of pretty ones and lots of big ones, but sadly none nice enough and big enough for me to buy. I chatted to my boyfriend and asked him if he would be able to make me one (he works in the metal industry), eventually he agreed, I’ve sent him measurements for 3 different size pots and I’m waiting patiently for them to be finished.

Now on to cleaning! I HATE cleaning my brushes. It makes me so nervous that I’m going to destroy them, so I’m constantly trying to find a new, convenient way to clean them that doesn’t mean I totally wreck the glue. And I think I’ve finally found it. (I lost a few bristles from my 17 bronzer brush, but let’s not mention that).

I was looking through Amazon and saw some Strictly Professional Cosmetic Brush Cleaner and decided to give it a go. It was only a couple of pound plus postage and thought that I may as well give it a go. It’s like an oily solution, that you stand your brushes in for 15 minutes then rinse with warm water. I decided to just use a normal bowl and used about a third of the bottle, but this cleaned all of my brushes. After the 15 minutes the liquid had all been absorbed into the brushes. Then when you rinse it the makeup just comes straight off, however the oil needs a few rinses before it’s completely gone. But it works  SO well. I rinsed them through once, left them out for a little while on a piece of tissue, then rinsed through again. The oil left them clean and really soft, they also smell lovely. However my bathroom sink was a little more difficult to clean after all that foundation!

How do you clean your makeup brushes?

Beauty Beam

I’ve recently tried out the Beauty Beam. Now this cute little devise is a small light that you can put onto your beauty tools in order to enhance your view of what you’re doing. A few years ago I tried a pair of tweezers that had a light fixed on to it. This made the tweezers really chunky and quite hard to use and most of all, once you started moving your hand and wrist around, swapping between eyes, you started blocking out the light, but the Beauty Beam is SOOO different.

It has a little elastic band around the back of the light, which means that you can move it between different tools, move it to different distances along the tool and more importantly also move it around the circumference. This means that you can adjust were the light sits depending on which way your hand is.

It comes in a variety of different colours and costs JUST £4.99. It’s fantastic. It fits on lip brushes, eye shadow brushes and even face brushes, because the band is so stretchy. You can put it on lip sticks and glosses, eye liners and eyebrow pencils and tweezers. I found that in the middle of the day, it doesn’t make a huge difference. But at night when you’re getting ready to go out to a bar or club, it’s a massive help, especially when applying false eye lashes!! I get up for work at 6am, so with these dark winter mornings it’s a great product to use. It’s also really good for plucking your eyebrows –there’s nothing worse than stepping into good light and noticing how bad your eyebrows are – you can see all the fine hairs that you sometimes miss.

This is a fantastic product, really works and is so easy to pop in your make up bag or hand bag and can be carried with you on the go. It’s light weight, easy to use and looks really cute. It also comes with a battery, which is great, so you can use it straight away.

On sale at yourbeauty247.com and amazon.

Have you tried the Beauty Beam, what did you think?