Ted Baker @ Cosmopolitan's FashFest LFW

Soo.. last week I was very lucky to win a competition through Ted Baker's facebook page and won tickets for 2 friends and myself to attend Cosmopolitans Accessories Showcase as part of London Fashion Week in association with Ted Baker. The event was located in the stunning venue of One Horseguards at Embankment. On arrival we were greeted by some lovely Cosmopolitan representatives and given a small envelope of vouchers for a complimentary glass of Prosecco, a special cocktail compliments of Zubrowka vodka and a Goody bag up to the value of £20. The Cosmopolitan FashFest was a 5 day event running last week with various events around London including a Lingerie Show, Meeting Celeb Stylists, Catwalk Shows and the Wrap Party. Now as I am not from London this was the perfect excuse for a little getaway to London especially at the time of all the hype leading up to London Fashion Week.. London was crazy busy! And it prove to be very difficult to find a hotel last minute. My best friend Donna attended the event with me as she was already in London for work and so Donna's work colleague who really likes Ted Baker also joined us.

The event itself was beautifully presented with accessory offerings from Ted Baker, Fossil, Armani and some smaller independent jewellery brands. There was the opportunity to have some beauty treatments however the queues for these were pretty insane and so we didn't wait to have any.. we would have been basically queuing all night! We spent some time in the trendy bar area having our vodka cocktails and enjoyed the atmosphere; the location was almost like an array of secret rooms with different things to offer and it was exciting to go through each room to see what there was. Ted Baker had an exquisite array of their current accessories and there was the opportunity to make a floral garland of real fresh flowers which looked beautiful.

 

Donna checking out the Fossil accessories on offer!

 

I found the night to be a mixture of exciting accessories and was just a fun place to check out and have a look around.. Now on to the all important Goody bag!

Now I can't say my hopes were set to high on the contents of this bag...... However....! It was actually very exciting! In the bag there were various make up/nail/beauty products from a range of brands including Rimmel, Accessorize, Very, some Lindt chocolates and lots more!.. Here below you can see a pic of the canvas style bag and its contents.

I really enjoyed my time at the Fash Fest and thank Ted Baker for allowing me the opportunity to go! It was the perfect opportunity for me and Donna to get a great catch up and here is us below rocking the Step and Repeat! ahahah Naturals aren't we?!

Thanks for reading all you lovely people!

See you soon! Stay Fashionable and I hope everyone had a fab Fashion week!
Cheryl xxx

Birchbox Pop up Shop @ Selfridges London

So this weekend I went on a little trip to London to visit the Birchbox - Build your own Box 'pop up shop' currently featuring  in store at Selfridges. This exclusive offer has been running from August 28th and will be available until the 27th of September.  It’s 5 years since Birchbox launched their beauty subscription service to the world and, to celebrate, they are bringing the box to life at Selfridges Oxford Street, London. On offer for the value of a reasonable and a bargain price (I think) of £15 is the chance to select six deluxe samples from incredible brands including Elemis, Benefit, Nuxe and Stila – and  you get to take them home inside a specially designed Limited Edition Birchbox. I had a great time at this event choosing from all the samples on offer and would highly recommend it if you are a lover and subscriber of Birchbox.

The samples were divided up into 5 categories and you are given a little beauty guide to inform you of what is on offer and to help you choose your selections. The categories are Make-up, Skincare, Body Care, Hair Care and a bonus Beauty Treat. The Make up category has the widest selection of samples to choose from and there are 8 on offer 2 of which you can select for your own personalised box. The staff at this event were incredibly helpful and made the experience very enjoyable. To start off you are given a box and are asked to choose a little Birchbox bag in the colour of your choosing to put the products in; one the same as the one you receive in the standard Birchboxes.

For the make up products I choose; the Lord & Berry Couture Kohl Kajal Eye Pencil in black and Modelco Power Lash black mascara.

 The Lord & Berry eyeliner is in a travel size and is perfect for fitting in my make up bag; I love Lord and Berry products and have already received a lip product from a past Birchbox so I knew this was a good brand. The eyeliner texture is nice and creamy to create a smoky smudged effect but has the precision for creating a bold black line and cat eye flick. It is extremely versatile and an eyeliner I would definitely buy in a full sized product however I feel this travel size is perfect. For the Modelco mascara.. I can't say this is a brand I have heard of before. however this is the beauty of Birchbox; it introduces you to brands you may never have heard of before. Again this is a small compact mascara and is very highly pigmented with an ultra lengthening effect which I was quite surprised by with this type of brush; as recently I have been drawn to the more comb like plastic style brushes to attain a lengthening effect. I am pleased with this product and is the perfect size to take on a night out and pop in my bag. Not the best mascara I have tried but does the job and I was pleased with the results.

Moving on to the Skincare range.. there were 4 products on offer from Embryolisse, Elemis, Nuxe and Ren. You are allowed to choose one from this range and I choose the Elemis Pro Collagen marine cream; I haven't tried anything from Elemis before but have heard people praising the brand so I thought I'd best try it out. I am quite the obsessive one for anti-ageing creams these days so this was the perfect choice for me.. The cream comes in 30 ml and the packaging looks nothing but sophisticated. The cream is supposed to help reduce wrinkles, fine lines and increase radiance in 15 days.. so lets see how the results go.. the cream has a lovely fresh, light scent and is not overly scented which I always think is a big plus for skincare products and has a light texture. I am really pleased with this product and the beauty of this pop up shop is that you can try the samples out before you make your selection.

For the Bodycare selection I chose a Rituals Yogi Flow Foaming Shower Gel in a 50 ml size. What can I say about this?.... I am absolutely IN LOVE with the scent of this shower gel. The scent is sweet almond oil and Indian Rose. A Rituals body scrub was featured in a recent Birchbox so I was instantly drawn to this brand when I saw it and excited to try the shower gel. The formula is a gel which transforms into a foam on contact with water and leaves your body feeling refreshed and invigorated. This is definitely a great product for an early morning wake up shower and makes me think of holidays...!

The 4 Hair care products on offer are a Protection Hair oil, a moisturising sea salt spray from Parlor by Jeff Chastain, a Percy and Reed hairspray and a Philip Kingsley Elastacizer. I choose the hairspray in a 50 ml size which again I thought would be perfect for my bag; for days and nights out. This Reassuringly Firm Session Hold Hairspray has a great holding effect and a scent which is quite strong and not the best. All the same I would rate this for the hold which it gives to your hair and try not to let the scent detract me too much although I would prefer if they work on their scent a little better. The packaging was cute and looks very professional.

The last product I chose was a Beauty treat which was a novelty pink leather tasselled Birchbox key ring which I thought was really cute for my weekender bag. The other products on offer were 2 different pillow sprays to aide a relaxing nights sleep and the other was an Enamel science advanced toothpaste from Regenerate. I wanted them all but unfortunately could only pick one..

I loved my Birchbox building experience and would strongly recommend going if you have the chance to or are heading to London anytime soon...! It is a really fun experience and even my mum enjoyed making a box despite not knowing much about Birchbox. If you are unavailable to go to London before this opportunity ends then you can purchase a special Selfridges Birchbox edition on the Birchbox and Selfridges website. I am really enjoying that Birchbox have been involved in exciting collaborations recently with French Sole, Habitat, the Beauty Junkie edition and I hear they are soon to collaborate with Stylist magazine which I am very excited about!

Please keep a look out for my upcoming post on September's edition of Birchbox "Happy Birchday". I am currently trying out all the samples at the moment so keep a look out soon to read my reviews on these! This box was one of the best I have received though since my subscription started.

Thanks for reading and what did you think of the Birchbox event if you attended?

Cheryl xox

Bienvenue! First ever blog post.......

Welcome! Benvenuto! Willkommen! Bienvenue! Vitejte!

I would like to say a very warm welcome to my first ever blog.... and blog post. I wanted to create a place to share with you all my experiences, opinions and general chit chat about beauty, fashion and lifestyle.

For quite a bit of time now I have been following and delving into the life of Fleur de Force and it is probably down to her that I decided to create my own blog. She is very inspiring to me and I now realise I am sat in the same spot that she was when she started to blog. Hope you all find this reasonably interesting or at least some people will? I realise that blogging and gaining some followers is not something that will happen over night... So for the mean time I will just write away and see if anyone listens...

To tell you all a little bit about myself...  My name is Cheryl (That's me in the pic above!) At probably one of the best places I have visited ever! Yes that's me outside of SJP's apartment from SATC in Perry Street NYC.... Looking oh so happy as I clutch my bag with my latest moschino purchase! I am 26 years old. I am currently living just outside of Glasgow and attended University there studying Earth Sciences from 2008 to 2012. In this blog I'd like to chat about what I am finding particularly interesting in beauty, fashion and lifestyle and my general likes and ideas I'd like to share with you all. I take particular inspiration and like to read the blogs from the likes of the already mentioned Fleur de Force, Olivia Palermo (Her style is to die for...!), Whitney Port, Lauren Conrad and Lily Pebbles.

A few ideas for what I'd like to be blogging about are my beauty box subscriptions; I am currently subscribed to two but I really had to cut it back a bit as I was becoming a bit obsessive and was ending up with too many boxes to try and store! Some of the brands I am really liking at the moment include Kiko, L'occitane, Ciate, Lola Barcelona, Caudalie and many more..

Hope for this to be the start of something great.. And for this to be a fun way for me to express my opinions on what products I am liking.

Bye for now and look out for my first official proper post soon! (First priority though is to get myself a decent camera so I can take good high quality photos to put in this.. ) Any suggestions would be appreciated

Have a great day!

Cheryl xxx