Origins x Kate La Vie: Blooming Bold Bouquet Workshop with Mud Urban flowers

Salut mes amis! 

I hope you are all well and are having a fantastic week thus far. The sun is happily shining here in Glasgow so there ain't much to complain about and everyone's spirits seem to be up. All good vibes here!

So... I am here today to tell you all about the most adorable little afternoon I spent last Thursday at my favourite coffee spot in the Southside of Glasgow called Market. It is fair to say I am a frequent visitor at Market where I enjoy many a cappuccinos on the weekends and really enjoy spending time there; it is such a lovely space with great interiors and such good vibes. The coffee alone.. is the best in my opinion (cannot find anywhere else to top it!). Jordan takes great pride in the coffees he creates and it shows by how meticulous he is, in his barista work. I thoroughly enjoy this coffee shop for its amazing coffee, beautiful aesthetics and the calming vibe the shop emits.

Market is blogger Kate La Vie's business venture she has set up in Glasgow with her husband Jordan who is primarily the main barista of the shop. I think their combined interests of coffee, beautiful interiors and aesthetics have created such a lovely little space nestled in the Southside and I am really happy for its existence as it is now my first destination for coffee and tasty cake!

Kate La Vie announced via her instagram prior to the event that two Bouquet arranging classes would be running in Market on the afternoon of Thursday the 4th of April and it was the opportunity to grab some tickets. The event was free which was so generous of them and I managed to grab myself the last ticket for the 4pm class (believe me when I say the event spaces were all reserved super quick!) so I was lucky to nab one. The premise of the class for the lucky 8 of us who all got a space was to create our own Blooming Bold Bouquet with Kate and Chloe from Mud Urban Flowers which is an online florist and their flowers are so stunning! Definitely check them out on instagram if you want a look. Even more excitement to add to this event was that Origins skincare were on hand to provide expert skincare advice and to try out their new Blooming Bold Lipsticks range.

The shop was decorated so beautifully in an abudance of flowers provided by Mud Urban Flowers and lots of Origins products with their full range of the new lipsticks on offer to try. The girls from Mud generously gave us a mini masterclass of how to properly arrange a little posie of flowers, wrap and present them. In addition to not only providing the flowers they gave us an adorable little pink glass vase to place the flowers in when we returned home and for future floral arrangements. Such a sweet touch and they really thought of all the details, I was so impressed and really enjoyed the experience. Whilst arranging our flowers it was a great opportunity to have a chat with Kate, who I have followed for a while now so was lovely to be able to chat IRL and to also get the opportunity to meet other Glasgow gals who came along for the experience. Jordan was on hand to keep everyone fuelled with coffee and complimentary cakes - which were delicious! - Soo generous of Market coffee! Really appreciated it. I came away from the event with a little Origins goodie bag complete with a Blooming Bold Bouquet lipstick in the shade Peach Petal which is a lovely peach/coral colour which I really love and have already had a few comments on it. Origins were also very generous to allow us to book in for a complimentary visit for a Feel Good Facial in store so I am really excited to receive that.

Coming away from the event I was so grateful to leave with the bouquet I created, Origins goodies and a facial to look forward to... oh and cake for the road! It was the perfect way to spend an afternoon... a lovely event hosted by Kate, great flower expertise from Mud Urban, lovely beauty bits provided by Origins to try out and the best coffee to accompany the day with thanks to Market Coffee.

Would highly recommend one of these events to try out; if you get the opportunity! If its anything like this one, you won't be disappointed. Such a unique and delightful experience it was great to try something new, chat to new people and be involved in all things that interest me.

A massive thank you to Kate La Vie, Market Coffee, Origins and Mud Urban Flowers for creating such a fun filled day. I certainly came away feeling really happy and grateful to have been involved. I hope Kate will look to host more of these type of events soon! Really enjoyable and a great success!

A bientot et bisous!

Cheryl 

xxx

Flower Beauty Review

Bonjour mes amis!

"Flower Beauty is for Everybody"

Hope you are all well and are all having a lovely week so far. I have a much anticipated review of Drew Barrymore's debut make up line called Flower Beauty.

I purchased my items from Superdrug UK online as the brand is not yet available to be purchased from Superdrug in store. To my delight, Superdrug currently have a 3 for 2 offer across all of their make up lines so I took full advantage of this offer and went for 3 of the Flower Beauty items. My choice of three products quickly became a tricky decision, but I was able to narrow it down and I decided to purchase a foundation, concealer and a highlighting palette (it would be so easy to just go all out and order one of everything!). I was a bit disappointed to see that the Supernova Celestial Skin Elixir Primer was sold out, as this is an item I am very intrigued to try after watching Drew Barrymore do a 'get ready with me' video with Jamie Genevieve. Here is a link if you have yet to see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6to9DZKsP0

This is such a fun introduction video to get a feel for the Flower Beauty brand and what products they have on offer, this ultimately captured my attention of the brand and made me want to try it out. 

Ok... so on to my thoughts of the products I purchased. For starters, lets have a look at the foundation which I have been most excited to try. I am always on the look out for new foundations and because I have a very pale skin tone I am always interested to see how light the brands will take the foundations to; my normal base line for a foundation is start with the lightest and work forward but most likely I will tend to buy the lightest shade available.

The foundation range on the Superdrug website is a core collection of the line and has only 5 shades available: Porcelain, Nude, Natural Beige, Tawny and Sable. Needless to say I chose Porcelain and just hoped for the best that the shade would be light enough for my pale skin as testing the product in store is just not a possibility at the moment. The affordability of this brand is most definitely a plus point as the range is in the middle ground I would say; not on the low end of the spectrum but not high end either. The Light Illusion liquid foundation is £12.99 for 30 ml which I think is reasonable enough for a drug store foundation. My initial impression of this foundation having swatched it on my hand is that this foundation is medium to full coverage as the formula was a lot thicker than I expected when I pumped some on to my hand - it would seem a little goes a long way with this formula so happy days. The shade felt a bit on the darker side for me but I am not going to judge too prematurely and will see how it goes when I apply it to my face and blend it out properly. 

Upon applying this foundation to my face I was really impressed with the coverage and the colour blended out a lot better than I expected once buffed in to the skin. For application I used a beauty blender and before application I used a primer which was a really nice base for this foundation and added to the luminosity effect of it. I normally like to set my foundation with powder but on this occasion I really liked the look of the foundation as it was that I only used a very light dusting of powder to not deter from the foundation's dewy effect.This foundation initially had me sceptical with its thick texture and appearing more on the dark side for a porcelain shade in my opinion however, after having applied it to my face I have been turned and I really love this foundation. The formulation is brilliant, its dewy, luminous, creates a natural look and I just love how it felt on my skin, not heavy at all and felt very silky on the skin whilst maintaining wear. I sometimes have the problem of foundation sinking in to my pores but I did not see this with Flower Beauty and I really believe a good primer sets this foundation off. I will be really interested to see what other shades Flower Beauty have to offer but for the mean time I am more than content with the Porcelain one and have found my new favourite foundation.

The next product I had a play with is the Light Illusion Concealer, I chose the shade Fair which is the lightest shade available. 

There are 5 shades of concealer; as like the foundation, these are in the shades of Fair, Light, Light Medium, Medium Deep and Deep. The Concealer is priced at £8.99 which in my opinion is reasonable enough for a concealer. The concealer comes with a doe foot applicator sponge that is well suited to glide in the under eye area, on initially swatching the product on my hand I was thinking it was a bit on the darker side for me but lets not be too hasty and try it on the face. 

The concealer is definitely high coverage and has a really creamy consistency. I applied this over the Flower Beauty foundation on my under eye area, on blemishes and any red or problem areas on my face. Due to having very pale and sensitive skin, my skin can be quite red at times in places so I like to target these areas with concealer for extra coverage. Yet again my initial impression of this product has been completely changed and I LOVE this concealer - the only slight draw back would be that the shade could be ever so slightly on the lighter side but for first impressions I am more than happy with the fair shade. I would say with the shades being ever so slightly darker than I am used to I spent more time in blending this into the skin but felt this only added to the flawless finish of the product and I was super impressed with how long lasting this was and barely transferable. I did set my under eye area with a little powder however, after around 6 hours of wear I was pleased to not see any creasing and did not require any touch ups. I normally wear the Glossier stretch concealer which I really love and was just about to re-purchase this however I think for the meantime I will stick to this one. I find the stretch concealer to be a little greasy at times and I feel like this can cause some creasing at times under my eyes but I didn't seem to get this with Flower Beauty, I found this formulation not too drying but set enough so it felt like it sort of melted in to the skin and created a really flawless, illuminating finish. 

The final product I have been have been testing out is the Shimmer and Strobe Highlighting Palette which costs £12.99. The palette is actually a lot larger than I expected and comes complete with a strobing brush. The brush is a nice little feature and I will likely use it at some point but for my application I used a more feathery. lighter highlighter brush. There are three shades of highlighter which are all universal, the first one is more of a subtle faun, pearl like shade with the middle one more of a pinkish/rose gold shade and the last one is a more gold like shade.

I will get wear from all of these depending on which occasion it is and how much of a highlight I feel like. The formulation of these highlighters are super pigmented, very smooth and the powder is so fine it glides on like it could be butter. For the photo below I chose the left highlighter on the palette - the pearl like one and I only had to apply a very little amount of this to achieve a really nice highlight. The powders are so fine they feel weightless on the skin which I often find can be problematic with powder highlighters as often they can feel heavy on the skin and I become really aware of it just sitting on my face. Not the case for Flower Beauty it feels so slick and my skin feels luminous. 10's, 10's, 10's across the board!

Well it looks like Flower Beauty is quite a game changer for me in the beauty department. I am now eager to try out more products especially the Elixir primer and the Liquid lipsticks. I am really impressed with the items I have purchased and can see the products being super long lasting as the formulations have super staying power! Great work Drew!

Have you tried Flower Beauty yet? Interested to know what you make of it and if you have opinions of other products I haven't tried out yet.

A bientot et bisous

Cheryl xxx

My Little Cosmos Box Fevrier 2019

Bonjour mes amis!

Well... Its been quite a long time since I posted anything on here. The blog has well and truly been given a good dusting off and I am here with a new post all about the French edition of My Little Box. Sadly My Little Box UK ceased in November 2017 and brought with it a lot of unhappy subscribers, myself for one! I really enjoyed my subscription with My Little Box so was pretty disappointed to see them stop sending to the UK.

However.... Silver linings and all that.. I have been able to subscribe to the French edition by having it sent to a forwarding address in France for them to then send it on to me. It does mean I can be a little behind in receiving boxes as the delivery process is longer, but I am just happy to be able to get my hands on it and carry on my subscription. The first offering I have for you here is the February box which is the theme of the Cosmos. I have been receiving boxes from France for a little while now but I am finally just getting around to sitting down and writing a review for you.... So Here Goes..!

The concept of the box is primarily the same as the UK one however I would say the contents are better and I feel the box is more value for the money. Of course I pay a bit more to have it forwarded to me but I feel that the quality of the box justifies this, so for the time being I am really happy to receive this.

The February box is the theme of the Cosmos which is super cute with the constellations of stars design on the box and everything in midnight blue and silver.

So lets delve in to this box...

Upon opening the box.. we are presented with the contents tied up cutely in a silver ribbon with some really cute holographic stickers.. always gotta love some stickers and My Little Box are strong with their sticker game. For someone who super enjoys seeing stickers in their Glossier orders - I am really happy to receive these.

Only one small downside was that there was no sticker this month on the insider of the outer cardboard packaging, normally they do have one - its a bit of a hit or a miss really.

Lifestyle items

Ok so on to the lifestyle items in this exciting box!..

First up... A beautiful gold necklace from jewellery brand Satellite. Customised to my own star sign Cancer this necklace is two gold discs, a smaller one in front of another engraved with my astrological sign on it. I really love this cute necklace and will be something I will get plenty of wear from. I am impressed that they have tailored this product unique to everyone and it is just a really nice little customised detail of the box.

The beauty products in this box are contained in a very stylish metallic silver clutch purse which says "Kit a emporter sur la lune" on it and this translates to "Kit to take to the moon".

Beauty items

Ok so on to the excitement of the beauty items and in true My Little Box style there are three items with one of them being an item from the My Little Beauty range.

The My Little Beauty item is a Masque de l'espace, translated to ... Space mask. This mask is a purifying silver face mask (50 ml) which I have now used twice and I am really impressed with it, after leaving it on for 10 minutes it leaves my skin feeling ultra clean, smooth and really purified. I am aiming to use this around twice a week to keep my skin in check and so far so good..

The second of the beauty items is a REDKEN multi-benefit treatment for hair in a 30 ml sample. As stated, this treatment is multi-use as it can be used as leave-in treatment after shampooing or as a rinse-out after 1-2 minutes for lightweight conditioning. The scent of this is really pleasing and I have been seeing good results using it as a leave-in treatment, can really see me re-purchasing this in a larger size however for the now it is making the perfect travelling companion for my hair.

The final item of the beauties and believe me this one is a beauty! Drum roll please........

Its... Benefit Bad gal Bang mascara!

I have been desperate to try this mascara for forever now and I am delighted to have received it. I received a small size sample of 4.0 g which is perfect for me to pop in my handbag. Let me tell you.... the wand on this mascara is tres bien!! Its a slender intricate comb like wand which catches every eyelash. The perfect mascara for lengthening my lashes, it is giving me vibes from my University days of wearing L'Oreal Telescopic mascara which used to be one of my must have mascaras.

Marks out of 10: 8

Favourite item: Benefit mascara (and the necklace too!)

Least Favourite item: Silver clutch purse

And so you have it... my first review from the French edition of My Little Box. I intend to keep on top of doing these reviews.. as some of the boxes are really impressing me and I would love to share the content with you all. I can see why My Little Box perhaps decided to discontinue the UK boxes and focus on channeling their energy in to the French ones - they are certainly of a better quality with a higher quality of products and the little details, it has also been helping me out with my French! A win-win all round!

Until next time... 

I am waiting to have my March box forwarded to me so I hope to receive this soon and a review will be on its way to you all!

A bientot et bisous!

Cheryl xxx