Goals Week: Blog Goals

It's Thursday of Goals Week and I am contemplating my goals for my blog - let's get to it:

1. To start off with, I think blogging at least once a week is a reasonable goal. So many things get forgotten when I’m in front of the camera and my blog is a great way to make sure all my thoughts really do get shared – and I’ve not written for fun in an embarrassingly long time. Things must change.
2. Invest in a user-friendly layout (if you design them, let me know) or, even better:
3. Relearn HTML. I could do it for no one’s benefit but my own back in the Myspace days – now I have a focus I feel the need to get back on that and wizard it out.
4. Find my own photographing style, and take photos of my favourites more often. I think this one is pretty self explanatory.
5. Find my own “things” – I like the idea of regular features, ideally that aren’t just tweaked versions of what the pros are already doing.

 And tomorrow is the last day so stay tuned for some deeper goals for this year!

Goals Week: Youtube Goals

So it's now day three of goals week and the focus of today is Youtube, and here they are:

1. Make at least one longer, more challenging video a month; for February it was my lookbook, for March doing makeup on Anna really threw me out there, and I have a couple of ideas for April that I’m really hoping come to fruition.
2. Be a more vocal member of the beauty community. Now I have my own channel, I understand how amazing a lovely comment can be, and for years I watched silently and never told my favourites how much I love them. I am determined to change this.
3. Make Youtube friends, and do a collab/swap/tag with them. I love Youtube but for the moment it really does feel like a lonely little place!
4. GET BETTER AT DESCRIPTION BOXES. ‘Nuff said.
5. Work out my banner/tech stuff and improve my editing/filming game. It’s gonna be challenging but fun, I can feel it.

Cor I am getting into this. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the next installment!

Goals Week: Fashion Goals

So it's day two of my goals week, a week dedicated solely to reflection and ambition and somethingelsetion and today's subject is Fashion Goals - here's a photo that never made it into my Paris weekend lookbook:

1. Go “thrift shopping” – i.e. get on the secondhand/vintage bandwagon. I know a couple of vintage places I’ve never had the balls to properly try out and my uni town is packed with what I’m told are surprisingly decent charity shops. I love the high street but I still feel I could switch things up more.
2. Get rid of the things that I don’t actually like/wear any more and give those things back to the charity shops (if the quality is still decent enough!)
3. Learn how to walk in heels. I am 21 years old and I still can’t do it. Shameful.
4. Be bold with my hair (I’m thinking be a redhead, at least for a while!)
5. Piercings: get more of them. I have been wanting my tragus and helix pierced for so long and I love the look of all white gems on silver, so I think those are the studs I’ll be going for.

So, those are my fashion goals - I of course will be keen to hear yours and I wish you a wonderful Tuesday!

Goals Week: Beauty Goals

So, it's the start of my last teaching term here en France this week and the perfect time, it seems, to do some pondering and have a little think about what I'd like to get done this year.

Today's subject is perhaps the most superficial of the bunch: my beauty goals. Cue stock photo of my desk (my desk is my favourite thing to photograph, what a cool person I am):

1. Experiment more with warmer colours. I love me my cool toned shades; if any brands were thinking of making my ultimate palette – let’s be honest I’m sure they all are – they could just make one with all taupes and I would fall to the floor with joy, but this love-fest doesn’t make for much variety in my makeup bag. Time to branch out and warm things up in here.
2. Actively rotate my everyday makeup bag, ideally every week/fortnight or so, to make sure all the makeup that goes unloved the majority of the time sees the light of day. I am getting better but I still think there’s room for plenty of improvement.
3. Work out a regular brow routine – ideally finding a threading lady that understands I don’t want to lose my brows all together but that I do went them to be more polished – and maintain it, by hook or by crook.
4. Try contouring. Just give it a good old go. I haven’t had much luck so far but I still believe, I still believe.
5. And my eternal, never ending life goal – make winged eyeliner my biatch.  I would love, love, love to be known as someone that has great eyeliner. A little too much in fact…

These are my beauty goals, I am stoked to hear about yours!

Bioderma: A Love Story

Me and Bioderma.

I thought it was never going to happen, I really did. No, beauty blogging world, I said. I am set with my Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish. I am good. I don't need a water that requires the use of wasteful cotton pads in my life. No thank you. Stop poking me with the bottle, cheers.

And then came the whole "double cleanse" routine, courtesy of our Goddess, Caroline Hirons, and that was it.

The facial equivalent of shampoo's legendary "rinse and repeat" genius move, the double cleanse is essentially the action of removing one's makeup with one product (like, for example, a micellar water) and doing a slightly deeper, generally muslin-cloth based cleanse with another.

It really does make sense: you don't want to be pushing makeup into your skin with heat and muslin, no sir. A micellar water just makes things feel so much cleaner, letting you go deeper with your proper cleanser. Great stuff.

And now on to the micellar water in question: Bioderma.

Having spent four years consuming beauty blogger- and vloggerdom (mmm good start to this sentence, not) I remember the first people I ever heard mentioning this stuff was the Pixiwoo sisters and from there Bioderma seems to have spread like wildfire.

It really does look like a water, doesn't seem to have much of a smell to it and does a very good job of taking off your maquillage.

It beats all other eye makeup removers I have tried in terms of how little volume is needed to get the job done, but what I will say is that it still doesn't trump my old fave, Liz Earle, in terms of effortlessly removing everything, and I mean everything - with Bioderma, I find it looks as though my face and particularly lashes are squeaky clean but I wake up with tell-tale panda eye that means things clearly weren't quite as makeup free as I thought.

So why the love fest? And why have I just bought the biggest size?!

(To clarify, this is the travel size, repurchased for convenience on the road)

The answer is that it's just bloody useful to have around. It halves the amount of rubbing I have to do with my Liz Earle, which doesn't necessary irritate my eyes but rather fills them with white cream; it's also great for if my skin is feeling a little sluggish mid afternoon but I don't feel the urge to properly wash it again; and I think it's best for makeup boob recovery - the nozzle is perfectly sized for sticking a cotton bud in it, making sorting out mascara mayhem and liner lunacy a walk in the makeup park.

So, yes, I never thought it would happen, but four months on, and it really does feel like love.