Mint fresh

Pastel shades are everywhere at the moment and as you may have seen in Springtime nail polishes post last Sunday, I have a few favorite pastel shades!

This week I've decided to colour my nails with the Barry M shade in 304 Mint Green. 

I painted my nails with two coats of polish. 

The rings I'm wearing here are primarily from River Island for about £2-3. The ring on my index finger I got from a stall at Spitalfields Market in London a few years ago. 

I also matched my nails to the earrings I was wearing.

I think these look so lovely and they were £6 from River Island. 

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked this post! Love, A x

BaByliss Elegance Pro 235 straighteners review!

For years I have religiously used my Mum's Ghd's and for Christmas I wanted to get a good pair of straighteners of my own. After searching high and low and checking out blog reviews on the best pair to get the BaByliss Elegance Pro 235 came out on top. I must apologise for the lateness of this post as it was a Christmas present and I should have done it earlier!

Anyway, on to the review!

I got the straighteners in a glittery, dark red colour but I think they are also available in a blue colour too. 

What I like about these straighteners:

• They have three different heat settings 180°c, 200°c and 235°c.
• They heat up really quickly and can be used 15 seconds after starting heating up. 
• They are made with an ionic technology so they should give you a frizz free finish! 
• Can be used for both straightening and curling.
• I love the deep red, glittery colour! 
  
• Hair stays quite straight for a long time. 
• Very good price. At the time I think they were about £40 when they should have been around £90. 
• Leaves my hair feeling soft.
• The lead for the plug is quite long, which I really like!

What I don't particularly like about these straighteners:

• Because they go so up to a high heat it can be quite easy to burn your hair even if you use heat defence spray. 
• As i'm not used to straighteners heating up so fast, and considering they only take about 15 seconds to heat up, they can give off this strong burning smell which isn't pleasant. 
• The heat switch is a bit wobbly. 

I started this with damp hair then dried it with my Glamoriser by Richard Ward professional digital ultralight power dryer (which I also got for Christmas btw!) and I used some heat defence spray before drying it too.

                               'Scuse the fresh, no make up face. But this is my hair dried.

I spritzed my head all over with a lot of heat defence spray then brushed my hair through. I sectioned my hair into two parts pulling the majority onto the top of my head into a high bun leaving the section underneath. I lightly sprayed it this part with the heat defence spray and then brushing through, followed by pulling my straighteners through my hair. I repeated this on the same bit of hair twice. When this section was complete I pulled my bun out and let down some of the middle section of hair and tied the front up again. I spritzed it and followed the same steps as last time.

When the middle section was done I then did the front. Once all my hair was straightened I brushed it out, flipped my hair upside down and straightened from that angle. Once that was done I flipped my hair the right way round, brushed my hair out again and checked to see if there were any areas that needed another straighten. Then I was finished!

And the finished 'do! 

If I have some straggly little hairs I spray a hairbrush with a little bit of hairspray and brush over the straggly bits.

I have to say I am very, very impressed with these hair straighteners and would definitely recommend them over GHDs!

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked this post! Love, A x

Monochrome nails

I realised I haven't done a nailsy type of post in a little while especially a nail art one. So aside from spring pastels I have really liked monochrome recently and thought I'd try and do some black and white nail art ideas. 

I started off with a nail art wheel which I bought several clear ones off of Amazon for about £1-2 or so. I painted them black and white as you can see. I think I did two coats and let them dry completely.

Et voila! Some of them aren't as good as I would have hoped but I'll have plenty more practice. 

And these are all the things I used. From the top:

BarryM black crackle effect paint.

Seventeen polish in Matte White (it's not a matte colour) 

Seventeen graffiti effect polish

Collection polish in Ebony

A Model's Own white nail art pen 

And a black nail art pen which I got as part of a set.

If you particularly liked one of these nails and would like me to do a tutorial post, please let me know! Thanks for reading I hope you liked this post. Love, A x

What's in my handbag!

I've always liked these posts/vlogs and have always fancied doing one. As my handbag was in a bit of state I thought doing this post would also help me sort it out a little bit too. Also may I just add I am really bad at cleaning out my handbag.. I think because it's got a black lining when you pop something in there it's like it's dropping down into a deep sea abyss and never seen again. 

This is my handbag. It was from H&M either last year or the year before and costed £29.99. I really like this handbag for the studded part I think that looks really cool but also I like that you've got the option of a shoulder strap or the shorter handles to carry on your arm. 

Contents before: 

From the top: 

I had some boots vouchers.

A black phone case.

A comb.

A stack of old receipts.

My work badge.

A Christmas candy cane.

My River Island tapestry purse. Which is a few years old.

An Urban Outfitters lion scrunchie.

15 pence.

A card shop loyalty card.

A train ticket to Bath.

The remnants of a Creme Egg.

My Costa Coffee card.

A BarryM lipgloss in the shade Coral.

A tangle Teezer.

A Topshop ring. 

Lush's lip scrub in Bubblegum.

A pair of silver earrings from Accessorize.

An EOS lip balm in summer fruit.

Six hair ties. 

A lip balm. 

And a vegetable cuppa soup. ( this is because I usually take them to work for lunch)

After a clean up: 

A pair of black oversized sunnies from New Look. 

My purse. 

My Tangle Teezer.

My make up bag.

A nail file. 

Beyoncé's perfume Heat. 

Some tissues.

And some Soap and Glory Hand Food hand cream. 

This now all fits tidily into my bag and I still have plenty of room. 

This bag has two pockets on one side. 

And a zipped pocket on the other side. 

Thanks for reading, I really hope you liked this post! Love, A x

My favourite spring time nail polishes

At the moment I am really loving this pastel colours trend and I have picked out seven of my favourite pastel polishes I am using a lot this Spring. 

I used two coats of each colour. 

From left to right on each photo the colours are: 

Nails Inc- Warwick Avenue 

BarryM- 318 Peach Melba 

BarryM- 306 Blueberry Ice

Collection- 33 Button Moon

Rimmel London- 420 Aqua Cool

BarryM- 304 Mint Green

Sinful Colors- 1033 Pistache

I'd have to say out of them all I am most impressed with the Sinful Colors shades as they are cheap at £1.99 (bargain) they come out really nicely and with this shade  especially it has little glittery bits in it too. A downside of these are they seem to take forever to dry! 

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked this post. Love, A x

My March in photos

So it's April now and at the start of the last couple of months I've put up a post of my Instagram pictures of the month before. Alas, enjoy my photo montage of what I got up to last month! 

Starting from the top row going left to right: 

Top left- I am currently reading The Fault in Our Stars. And I'm really enjoying it. It is a very sad story about two teens who have cancer meet at a support group and fall in love. 

Top middle- On pancake day I had banana pancakes. Delish!

Top right- This is some cool street art I saw. 

Middle left- I love Reese's cups so having a bag of mini ones means it's more acceptable to eat more right?!?

Middle of the middle- marmite on crumpets remind me of being a child so much! So very British too.

Middle right- My sister and I had a night in and ordered a domino's. It was so good! I'm obsessed with the dip! 

Bottom left- I took my parents out for the day and we went to the coast, the weather was absolutely glorious! 

Bottom middle- My best friend Vicki and I went to Bath shopping one day and had a lovely lunch in GBK. 

Bottom right- I took a photo of the arches and waterfall at Bath weir. It's so pretty there. 

Starting from the top left: 

Left: One of my favourite chocolate bars, the underrated daim bar! 

Right: Lush by name and Lush by nature. This is the bath ballistic called Honey Bee and smells very subtly sweet and caramel like. It left my skin feeling silky smooth too! 

Left: My sister was very lovely and picked me up a bag of mini eggs. 

Right: Here's another picture of my orange finger nails I used in a blog post the other day. I really like the bold colour and the ring I was wearing. 

Bottom: This is an old picture I found of myself and two friends George and Connie. This was taking about two years ago at another friends birthday meal. 

My Instagram is: _abfabx if you want to see any other pictures! 

Thanks for reading I hope you liked this post! Love, a x 

Magenta and Silver

For my nails this week I used a Champneys polish in the shade Magenta which I got in a gift set from my mum for my birthday. As well as a Barry M nail polish effect in 319 silver foil. 

I painted all fingers apart from my ring finger in the Champneys colour and used the silver on that one. 

And a clearer picture of my nails beneath. 

I think they look really cool and glam! 

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked this post! Love, A x