The girl in the blue dress: October 2014

Thursday 30 October 2014

Body shop and Estee Lauder autumn lipsticks

First I just want to say how sorry for the little gap between this and my last post, laptop completely broke, but its all okay now. Back to the post.

Not going to lie but I've actually only just started wearing lipstick, I don't really know why I think it might have been because I though it looked silly on me plus more went on my face than on my lips to be perfectly honest. So I have been collecting my first autumn lip colours so here the ones iv found, there is a mixture of ones I do and don't like too.

My first is my second favourite. It is a brown with a undertone of gold, this isn't matt and also has slight sparkle bits in'it, its slightly creamy but very pigmented but glides on the lips very smoothly and lasts ages. You can also apply this suttle or as a statement, I wear this suttle as I like my make-up natural.

-Estee Lauder- pure colour 86 tiger eye shimmer

long lasting lipstick-rouge

This next one is my third favourite. It is brown with a slight red/orange undertone. This is super pigmented, not the softest but stays on for a very long time. Its isn't matt either but also has little sparkly bits too. As weird as this is going to sound it has a autumn smell, I'm not the best at describing smells but this one reminds me of autumn so much.

-body shop-45

So I am not going to lie with this one but it is my least favourite and I don't really like wearing it. It is a brown with a strong red/orange undertone, this is my least favourite purely because it is so strong and such a statement lip and there is no way of getting it suttle as it is so pigmented and every little bit will stay exactly where you put it, this doesn't make it as comfortable to wear as the cream based ones as you know it is there and my lips always tingle quite a lot when it put it on, that might just be me but I don't really like that feeling.

-Estee Lauder- pure colour 157 Autumn (appropriate name)

The next one is my favourite out of the four,as you can tell it's mostly gone, I feel like this one suites me the most, I mainly do my make-up natural and this is a brown neutral colour, so it would make sense that it suites me the most. So the colour is a nood'ish brown and it is matt, which is always my favourite no matter what it is. I have been using this lipstick as my everyday make-up , i also wore it on my birthday meal too (September blog post). It is cream based so it feels super soft and not sticky however this means it isn't as pigmented, so doesn't last that long.

-Body shop-06

So these have been the lip-sticks I have not/been wearing this season.

Thank you for taking your time to read this

'the girl in the blue dress'

Friday 17 October 2014

special bath

Baths like these I think are needed every once in a while just to allow your self to relax and have a bit of 'me' time. I keep all my bath and shower type stuff in this really cute wicker type basket, just too keep everything tidy.

Lush! Nothing really more to say. I have eczema which can get rather bad at times so using bath products can be difficult as it's hard to know if the product is going to affect it until you have used it, but I know when ever I'm going to buy in lush it is not going to affect my eczema but sometimes help clear it and also smell nice, make my skin softer. Most stores will give demonstrations for how the products work and they will help you if your looking for a certain one or to do a certain thing which I think is so good, now actually what this blog post is about.
I also use a company called bomb cosmetics,(top two) which is really good too,much cheaper and some of them you can use around 6 times too which is amazing! The two I have are lime blossom and lavender brulee, which is a bath bomb you can use up to 6 times, the other is pineapple expressed which I am very tempted to eat. The bottom two are from lush the comforter bubble bar and yuzu and coca bubbleroon.

The one I used is called 'the comforter' which is a bubble bar, this means you crumble it into hot running water and it will create bubbles and sometimes other things like, a color or glitter and sometimes bits of flowers. The one iv used makes your skin super soft and smells amazing, its fruity,blackcurrant .what's really good is you only need to use half of the bar to get lots of smell and bubble that you need but by all means you could use the full bar, I had already used half so it is double the size of the picture. This bubble bar cost £4.75 which is rather expensive however you can use it twice so its worth it plus its amazing.

Then I just lit some candles, I feel like adding candles makes a room not only small nice but have a calm, warming atmosphere.

Red berries and orchid scented candle, from Primark £2, this is a cheep one
but don't undermine it, definitely one of my favorites.

By the time I had lit all my candles I wanted my bath was nearly done. It turned a really nice hot pink and at this point smelt amazing. I placed my candles around the bath. I used a few different types of candles, tea light are super easy to find there normally really cheep too however don't really last very long or have a scent but they look really nice whilst burning. I also used scented ones, in which I love as well. I also burnt an incense sick which are very strong the one I used was french vanilla, you set these a light then the flame goes out but they still continue to burn and the scent is let out with the smoke.

Then whilst it cooled down I made my self a glass of hot Vimto then got in the bath and relaxed. Doing this at least once a month just helps me to get myself back on track with everything, also these nights would be a good chance to put a face mask on too.

Tip: a bit of steam can be good for the skin too, as it helps to clear up acne as the moisture softens the layer of dead skin cells, it helps to get rid of any dirt, bacteria of anything that could get trapped and could be causing breakouts, so remember to take your makeup off, if you wear it.

Thankyou for taking your time to read this

hope it helps anyone, if you try it let me know

by leaving me a comment or tweet me

links below.

'the girl in the blue dress'

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Cake making and party

Iv always been the creative type and been art'y all my life, I was the typical younger girl who would make cakes with my mum out of one of them boxes that was already mostly made, aha. My mum did catering when she was in collage so when I was able I started to make food from scratch, with a lot of research I made cakes for every celebration, I had built up what I would say as a medium sized collection of cake decorating equipment, then I just stopped making them, I got to that lazy age and I had made one for a very long time. A few weeks a go my little cousin asked me to make her birthday cake for her party, and I wasn't going to say no. So we planned what she wanted and three days before her party I got cracking the first day I made the cake and decorated it the second, I am in no means an expert but here is how I did it:

Ingredents(cake):

400g of self-raising flour(500g if not using coco powder)

500g of butter

500g of castor sugar

10 eggs

2 table spoons of baking powder

100g coco powder(optional)

First, I pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. I then creamed the butter and the sugar using my James Martin electric mixer but you could do it by hand, until its think and creamy.

In a separate bowl, I broke all the eggs and whisked them using a fork until they were all mixed in. Then gradually add them too the butter and sugar mix, and mixing with my electric whisk.

After that, I added half the flour and folded in in using a wooden spoon, so that air bubbles don't escape, I don't recommend using a electric mix as I know from experience flour goes everywhere. Then I added the baking power and the coco powder, you don't need to add coco powder which make it chocolate cake just add 100g more of flour (500g).

My next step is to line my tins and add the mixture, I have one eight and one six and a half inch cake tins. I split the mixture into three, two for the big tin and one for the little, and filled the big tin and the little and put it in the oven for around 30-40 minutes and checking them every 5 minutes until they were done, the bigger one will take slightly longer. TIP,insert a knife into the center of the cake, slowly pull it out and if the knife has mixture on it then it isn't done.

This is what they looked like when they were done, I then wrapped them in tin foil and left them for the night.

Ingredients(decoration):

1kg of fondant icing(white)

red gel food coloring

chocolate style butter cream(one tub)

icing sugar

Toffee popcorn

So the day after I first cut the cakes so that they were level, in and I did this by putting them back into the the tin cutting the top that went over the side of the tin,(you might want to ask a parent or helper to do this if your younger).I also cut round the sides to get rid of the hard its and make it more smooth.

Then, I cut a box into the middle section as the step, then cut that piece in half,then half again and put it in the gap and one on top.(you might want to look at the picture, its hard to explain,aha)

I then covered the whole of the cake except the top in chocolate butter cream, you can always make the butter cream but buying it is much easier I used Betty Crocker. I also put more in between the two slices as the middle filling.

After that, I sprinkled a bit of icing sugar on my table and used a hand sized chunk of royal icing ,which you could also make but its much easier to buy, and rolled it out into a circle, Then placed it on top.

Then I rolled out a quarter of the royal icing in a long rectangle and placed it round the side over flapping the top slightly.

Then using my red gel food coloring I colored some icing. You could buy rd icing already done, but I don't suggest you use the normal food coloring especially with red as it takes a long time, uses a lot and doesn't come off your hands.

I then rolled out that icing and cut it into a long strip to represent the red carpet.

Now its time to actually decorate it. I went round all the ends of the cake with alternate red then white small balls to finish it off and get rid of all the bad lines. I then cut out a little star and using a edible pen I wrote eve and went round it with tiny dots. I made a quick clapper board and a number 9, I used edible glue to stick the on. I had a few sticks with little hearts an stars on the side which I decided to stick out the top and use as a post for a little barrier which I then added red ribbon too. And lastly to finish it off I draped toffee popcorn down the side and across the top.