REVIEW - Bargain On-Trend Nail Polish! __MakeuPanda

On my recent trip to Meadowhall, I bought some £2 nail polish from Primark. I wouldn't usually buy cosmetics from Primark because I wouldn't rate it as a particularly trustworthy place to get stuff you put on your face/near your eyes (but I do love you really, Primarni), whatever, but I loved the colour and have been after a few pastel shades since they became the newest nail polish trend, plus they look super cute on all skin tones, including my palest of the pale. :D

 Plus, apparently it's UV reactive! Cool... But I'm yet to find out if it actually is, if anyone has experienced this first hand, let me know!!

This is after one coat. It's really a opaque colour which is great. It reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream :3 I know it's messy! I'm not neat at nail painting and can't be doing with the hassle of cleaning it up with a cotton wool bud D:, I just make it worse!

 After two coats, it's perfect! And it's slightly more green in reality.
I really like the colour and application, I may have to buy a couple more colours next time i'm in Primark!

Has anyone else tried Primark's UV nail polish? Let me know your thoughts!
xxx

REVIEW - Topshop Lipsticks! __MakeuPanda

Firstly an apology for my lack of updates recently, I'm currently on my Easter break from college and am trying to cram in as much revision as is possible without dying of boredom.

So, here's my review.
I went to Topshop in Meadowhall yesterday and bought 2 lipsticks from their makeup section. They are £8 each.

They come in packaging like this:

Cute! They colours are On The Town and Brighton Rock.

And here are some swatches:

Topshop describe On The Town as "Lilac" and "Velvet finish lipstick to smooth, moisturise and nourish lips. Apply for fabulous colour and moisturised, matte finish, wear alone or with gloss for a shiny finish."
When I applied On The Town it was shiny rather than matte but I quite liked it anyway.

Brighton Rock is described as "Pink" and "Satin matte finish lipstick to smooth, hydrate and nourish lips." and I agree more with this as it goes on quite matte but not as drying as Mac's matte lipsticks, which I always wear with a balm under.

This is what On The Town looks like on me. It's not an opaque colour, more of a lilac shine. It looks pinker than it is in reality on these photo. It's more of a grey-ish tone.

It's an almost coral-ly pink, very warm. My other pink is Girl About Town by MAC which is not only quite a bit deeper but also more blue-y toned than Brighton Rock. I really like it on me though, to say I usually suit more blue-based colours. Plus it matched the top I had on :)!
Has anyone else tried out Topshop makeup? What do you think?
xxx

PROJECT - Front Cover eyeshadows- from bulky to compact! __MakeuPanda

So, I had the Front Cover palette which i got as a gift a while ago, from Boots I believe. I think at the time it retailed at around £30 but I think it was on sale for £15 at the time I got it. I think it was called Rainbow Eyes but I threw away the packaging before taking note, :(. I don't think you can buy it anymore but you can still get certain Front Cover palettes just not this one.
However, the box was so big and bulky that I couldn't keep it anywhere handy on my dressing table area.
So, what Mr Panda and I did, was depot the eyeshadows (he's a goodun', helping me with makeuppy stuff <3). We did that by breaking open the box and taking out the black plastic part which the eyeshadow pands are glued to. Then we pulled off the pans and cleaned the backs for blue. After that we used a knife and sliced off the top "domed" part of the eyeshadow because the dome made it impossible to close the lid on a regular mac palette. This is the result of the sliced eyeshadows.

The top right green and blue aren't Front Cover eyeshadows, I believe they are Stila. Sorry about the gross random hair.

These are just mac's 15 pan eyeshadow palettes. The neutral one I can obviously add more random eyeshadows to :) I used round sticky-backed magnets (from Hobbycraft) on the back of the pans so that they stay in the palette (as the Mac palettes have a metal sheet at the bottom).
I much prefer my eyeshadows in these palettes as I often reach for my palettes in a morning, but never for a huge bulky box.

However, I wasn't gonna waste the powder sliced off the domed eyeshadows... So I crushed it up and put it in these stackable pots I got from Hobbycraft...

One of these is a Front Cover, the other two are Urban Decay (bottom) and the top one is a random silver from a cheap band.

I like how I now have the choice of using a pigment or a pressed shadow for these colours...
This is just an idea if you have any bulky unusable makeup!
xxx

NOTD - Orange nails with Barry M Special Effects! __MakeuPanda

As I said on my prevous post about the Barry M nail polish, I wanted to try an orange with the black crackle over.
So today I did!
This is how it looked.

I quite like it!
It's more orangey in real life. The polish is called Draycott Place by Nails Inc. :)!
xxx

MAKEUP LOOK - smokey eyes __MakeuPanda

Here's a look I did this evening which is a black and brown smokey look.

Its quite simple, the key to doing this right is just blending! A lot of blending with a soft fluffy brush! :)

These are the products/tools I used.
From left to right: Urban Decay Primer Potion, Mac 194 SE, Mac 219, Mac 239, Mac 217, and a random soft fluffy highlight brush, then (top to bottom) Smashbox cream eyeliner in Java, Mac's Carbon, Brun, Bamboo, Parchment, Collection 2000 liqid eyeliner, Mac eyeliner in Smolder, Smashbox HYPERLASH mascara, Shu Uemera Eyelash curlers (<3).

 The cream eyeliner goes on as a base up to your crease. Then apply Brun (a dark brown) all over the lid up to the crease, and then carbon (matte black) in the outer corners blended out. Bamboo (medium/light warm brown) was blended above to soften the line and parchment (warm gold light highlight) as a highlight.
 But remember just because I used these products doesn't mean that you have to use these exact products if you want to have a go, just use whatever you have!!!

Hope you like!
xxx

COLLECTION - makeup storage __MakeuPanda

Firstly, Happy Mother's day!

I know that I, for one, am always interested to see how other people store stuff (my Dad finds it stupidly funny how obsessed I am with STORAGE... I love looking at drawers and boxes and such in shops... :3). Especially their makeup! So I thought I'd share my storage with you. I have quite a lot of makeup probably more than average but nothing compared to some mega-makeup-bloggers!

Soo.. this is my whole dressing table-y area. I have some drawers underneath for alsorts of stuff like jewellery body stuff, some have absolute rubbish in them hahah, also the box next to them has nail polishes in.
I have a chair which is just seen on the picture from Ikea and the cushion too. My Dad built the actual wardrobe/dressing table/shelving.

On the dressing table I have a drawer tower from Hobbycraft I believe, my palettes, a little pot with 10ps/20ps in, a pot (Hobbycraft) with small brushes, an Ed Hardy perfume box which i store eyelashes in with a mini chest of drawers on top (in this i store hair grips, hair ties, earrings and a couple of small bracelets- i got it from Wilkinsons) . The mirror is from Boots. It lights up, (as you can see the cable plugs in at the far left of the table) and has a zoomed side for close-ups, i love it! Then i have some perfume and a larger pot (also Hobbycraft) with all my other brushes in.

This is in the top of the set of drawers. As you can see I keep skin products, brush cleaner and fix+ in here.

This is the first drawer. It has lipsticks, balms and cute little lipgloss pots in the left, tube lipglosses in the middle (and a loose powder), and the right side has my foundation, concealer, blushes and bronzer/highlighter.

In the middle drawer I have glitter liners (I have no idea why I have so many of these I never even use them!!) and loose glitter. Then in the middle I have lots of pencils (eyeliner, lipliner, brow etc.), along with liquid and gel eyeliner and of course the almighty pencil sharpener(s)! In the right I have mascara, eyelash curlers, and primer potion (sadly it has nowhere else to live :c)

In the bottom drawer I store random loose eyeshadows and cream eyeshadows (which I dont get along with much) and then pigments in the middle, I only have a few because I fnd them expensive (more than eyeshadow) and who needs THAT much powder? The old Mac ones have enough for 6 lifetimes I'm sure... But then I have a stack of loose pigment in the far right which is the product of a project that me and my boyfriend Tom took on (which I will blog about some other time... it includes the smashing up of FrontCover eyeshadows which sadly had to be depotted because they came in such a mahoosive bulky box! No one likes that...).

Anyway that's my collection (excluding my palettes which I could post about if anyone's interested)!
Hope you enjoyed noseying :)
xxx

NOTD - Barry M Hologram Hexograms (np244) __MakeuPanda

 

Soo.. This is what the bottle looks like.. If you're someone whose drawn to shiny things then good luck resisting this! It looks great in the bottle! So I got this in a 2 for £5 on Barry M nail polish at Boots.

 First I painted my nails with Victoria Street by Nails Inc. (after my OPI basecoat).

 Then I applied one coat of the sparkly polish. I was a bit disappointed with how much sparkle actually GOES ON to the nail itself, because it's a bit sparse. But after another coat it looks okay.

This is after two coats.. However I think even a third coat might do the trick.. But I got bored haha! It does look pretty though and I've had a few comments on it today so it must look cute!
I really love the effect but just wish that it would go on more smoothly, as applying seven layers of polish (base coat, two layers of colour, three layers of sparkle and a top coat) seems a little excessive to say the least, even if you like nail-painting.
Has anyone else had this polish or one similar?
And any ideas on another colour polish which would go nicely with the sparkle? Right now I can only think of silver as an appropriate base colour.
Thanks!!
xxx