MUA Dusk till Dawn palette

The second installment in my mini series of MUA posts sees the fabulous Dusk till Dawn palette being shown in all its glory! This lovely palette is packed full of the most perfect eyeshadows needed to create a light and pretty daytime look, but also holds many darker colours provided to easily transform your day look to a more glamorous evening look. If you wish to know my first impressions and thoughts on the palette itself then you can click here to view my first MUA post about the Starry Night palette.







The first great thing I noticed about this palette in comparison to the Starry Night one, was that there seems to be a much wider range of colours to choose from. The problem I had with Starry Night is that there were maybe just a few too many grays and silvers, I prefer a wider range of colours to create more depth in an eye look. Now, I don't know about you, but I can also spy a few eyeshadows in this palette which in my opinion are very similar to a couple of Mac eyeshadows I have! They may not be direct dupes, but there certainly is a similarity about them. First, the very top right eyeshadow is very close to Mac's famous 'All that glitters'. Second, the eyeshadow directly below it is definetely Mac's 'Black tied'. I swatched and compared Mac's next to MUA's and OH MY GOD. I don't know what Mac have been doing but they certainly need to ditch their formula and pinch MUA's! SO pigmented, sparkly and just lovely! Black tied is one of my all time favourites but this eyeshadow just walks all over it, the blackest black ever with the most gorgeous silver glitter running through it. Perfect. You could also compare the top left hand eyeshadow with Mac's 'Shroom', but I find the finishes to be too different between the shadows.



Top row L-R



Bottom row L-R


This little palette of wonder for £4, I'll say it again £4!
Has anybody else noticed the Black tied comparison? Good eh?!

Love, Hol xxx

MUA Starry Night palette

Hi all! I've been spending my Christmas money on some lovely goodies! Up until now I havn't owned any MUA, ( shock horror ) a brand which has become somewhat famous in the blogging/youtube world, just like Sleek has! Best known for their £4 eyeshadow palettes, more precisely their Heaven and Earth palette, MUA has a wide range of products in which most of them cost just 1 whole pound! The other night I was having a little nose on the Superdrug website when I thought to myself, today is the day I'm going to introduce myself to MUA.  I bought myself 3 of their eyeshadow palettes, 2 nail varnishes, and 2 glitter eyeliners! This all came to a whopping....£16! How cheap! I kept looking at my basket expecting it to be somewhere in the £30 region but then I remembered MUA prices are insanely low! I also bought myself some Blanx whitening toothpaste as one of my resolutions is to do whatever it takes to have Simon Cowell sparkly whites! But that topic is for another day!

Even though you've probably seen these palettes reviewed and swatched a thousand times I didn't think it would hurt to add my input to the whole MUA craze. I will get round to showing all the things I got but I thought I would start with the rather pretty Starry Night palette.



Honestly, the palette itself does feel a little bit on the cheapy side but for £4 what do you expect, and after all it's whats on the inside that counts! The only other issue I had with this palette is the clasp the holds it shut, I have a really difficult time getting this palette open. I eased it open very carefully with a hair pin, but it's the kind of plastic that makes me think if its forced too much it will DEFINETELY snap! Uh oh! It feels okay to pick up but I get the feeling that one little accident with this palette and it could shatter, time will tell! I'd really like to think that it wont though.





Inside the palette there are 12 eyeshadows which are very pigmented and creamy. The palette also comes with a sponge tip applicator which I personally would just throw away, I don't have much use for these. On the whole this palette is definetely full of very cool toned eyeshadows, it's packed with creamy silver toned shadows with the odd cool pink and blue thrown in. I don't really like pink eyeshadows as anything remotely red or pink on my eyes makes me look ill! There isn't actually one single matte eyeshadow in this palette either, personally I like to mix up matte and shimmer. I don't think thats a bad thing though! It's obviously aimed at people who want a very glittery/sparkly look when they go out (and obviously the palette is called STARRY night, duhhh) The shades in this palette will definetely be perfect for that injection of glamour you look for on a night out, or even for a little bit of sparkle in your everyday makeup!



Top row L-R




Bottom row L-R


Overall I think the colours in this palette are gorgeous, and even though I probably won't create an eyeshadow look using just this palette ( I like to mix me matte and shimmer! ) I'm almost sure i'll be dipping in to this every now and again to mix up my eyeshadows and to create some glamerous looks! But really...for £4, how can you go wrong!

Love, Hol xxx

Laura Ashley storage

I've always eyed up these pretty storage boxes in Laura Ashley, but it's always been the pricing in there thats stopped me from buying them. £38 for 3 boxes in my opinion is way too much for something you could probably find similar and cheaper somewhere else. Last year my mam bought me lots of Laura Ashley things for my room for birthday and Christmas from the same range so it all matched, so I was pleasantly surprised to see she had bought me these for Christmas this year!

Luckily right now, they're on sale for £26.60, which is still pretty expensive for a couple of boxes but if you love Laura Ashley and you're willing to spend on it, nows your chance to grab a bargain. There's also a couple more different patterened boxes on the website which you can go to here.





If you're in to storage and organising things (especially your beauty products!) Then these really are something you may want to consider picking up. Currently I'm using the smallest box to home a few of my more loved nail varnishes (and because I'm lacking anywhere else to put them!) and the middle box is housing all the lovely bath stuff I've had lying around, or that I received as lovely gifts for Christmas. I havn't found a use for the bottom box yet, I just quickly threw some xmas presents in there to move them out of the way but ended up liking the way they stored! I'm sure I'll find something to put in it very soon.






I would also love to know if anyone knows of any cheaper alternatives to this style of storage, maybe from Ikea or something?! It would be really helpful to list them below here for people who want something like this but don't want to spend a ton of money on it. I know I wouldn't, I was just lucky enough to be bought them for Christmas!

I hope everybody has had a wonderful Christmas, I'm having so much fun looking through what everyone else has been lucky enough to get, I'll be posting reviews and thoughts on a couple of things I got very soon!

Love, Hol xxx

Dainty Roses - YSL arty oval ring for cheap!

Recently i've been exploring those wonderful little online jewellery stores! They're usually a whole lot cheaper than what you would find in the shops and you can occasionally find little bits and peices you usually don't find anywhere else! I actually picked a few that i found to order some bits and peices from so i could do a little write up on them as i really love coming across little gems like these.

 The Dainty Roses twitter was recommended to me on twitter, and as soon as i saw that it was an online shop i had to have a look. Now I'm not sure about you lot but I LOVE my rings, and I've had my eye on the YSL arty oval ring for a while now, they're absoloutly gorgeous, I've seen a ton of celebs wearing them, everyone from Alexa Chung to Kim Kardashian! They would set you back £165 but I'm a sucker for designer rings so i will probably save up for one at some point, so you can imagine how excited i got when i saw that Dainty Roses was selling a replica of them for £8.50! There isn't as bigger colour range on DR as there is on YSL but when you can have a ring that looks the part of a £165 ring, wether you buy it or not is a no brainer really!

I actually only ordered this ring on Sunday night, it's now only Tuesday morning and I'm already wearing it! So as you can see it came super quick, the lovely person who runs the DR twitter was lovely enough to reply to me when i tweeted her, and it came personally packaged the cutest way ever complete with a little badge :)











What do you all think?! Gorgeous isn't it?! I can safely say it is my new favourite ring! If you wish to visit the Dainty Roses store, click here. Can't wait to post about my next little online jewellery store!
Love, Hol xxx

Nails Inc for £2?!

The lovely Amy at Flaws and all tweeted yesterday about Glamour magazine including a freebie - A Nails inc. varnish! Keeping in mind the magazine is £2... £2 for a nail varnish that usually costs £11?! What! Now if you're a nail varnish junkie then the chances are you've already rushed out to buy a copy, hell you've probably bought 4 copies of the magazine and receieved all 4 shades with them! If you havn't it's the perfect chance for you to nip out and grab yourself one of these if its something you've been wanting to try out without breaking the bank. Crazy to think that you can buy all four of the shades that the magazine offers for even £3 less than what it would cost you to buy ONE from the Nails inc. website! Personally i can't resist a bargain nail varnish for £2, even if i did have to look at Kstew's stroppy face on the front cover!








The shade i was automatically attracted to was "Basil Street". I am such a nude person when it comes to nail varnish and this is just another one of my perfect shades! I think nudes are those timeless sort of nail varnishes like blacks and reds which are acceptable to wear all year round for a clean cut finish to your nails. I hope all you lovely readers take advantage of this wonderful bargain and if you do get round to getting a copy of Glamour i would love to know what shade you all go for!

Love, Hol xxx