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Primark

Hauls

January Sales Haul

January 9, 2015

January Haul001

You know when you probably shouldn’t go shopping but you do anyway? Well Pants and I decided that a touch of retail therapy would be the perfect pick-me-up when we went into the city to send my lovely boyfriend back to university in Holland after the winter holidays, in fact the proximity of Debenhams to the coach station means it was all sort of meant to be.

January Haul005

I knew right away that Christmas money would almost certainly be sent to the Urban Decay stand, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. Luckily Pants is the best friend in the world and already bestowed the gift of the Electric Palette on me for Christmas (as well as Naked 3 for my birthday last year – spoiled I know!) so it was a toss-up between 1 and 2. The extremely lovely and helpful lady at the UD stand swatched practically every colour in both palettes, despite the fact we must have poured over swatch posts for hours, and eventually we both left with a shiny new Naked 2 palette [£37.00] on the premise that we simply couldn’t live without the matte black shade. I also picked up this adorable Beauticology set [£2.50] at the counter which smells delicious and I want to eat it all right now.

January Haul003

I remembered I had some money left on a Boots card, so we went to take a peek there where I snatched up this Soap & Glory minis set for £5 [sold out online]. I already know I love all the products, and they will be stashed safely away for my next jaunt to the mainland saving me lots of precious bag space!

January Haul004I’m a true bargain lover at heart, so no trip to town would be complete without a a perusal of Poundland where we found a nice stash of Rimmel Apocalips! I already owned the other shades on the shelf so I thought I’d give Nude Eclipse [£6.49]  a try . I’ve also been really impressed by the new Make-Up Gallery range, and have really loved a few of the nail products so I went for this cuticle oil as mine are an absolute state after a Christmas full of construction work (more on that ambiguous statement in another post soon I’m sure!)

January Haul002

Finally the lure of Primark called out to us, where I composed myself like a proper grown up and definitely didn’t squee with delight at finding a My Little Pony T-shirt for only £3.00. I followed that with a little strop because I saw the The Beatles shirt for the same price, yet only in a size six…so I did what any experienced band t-shirt wearer did and bought it anyway with plans to alter it into a halter shirt.

Opperation: Shopping-trip-to-fill-the-space-my-boyfriend-leaves-with-pretty-stuff was a resounding sucess and hardly damaged my post-festive-season bank balance at all. From this point on thought there’s going to be a serious cosmetics/clothing spending ban whilst I try to recover from going a little overboard with spoiling my friends and family this year!

Did you find any amazing bargains in the sale, or treat yourself to anything particularly nice with Christmas money?

Totally hellbent for shopping with my bestie always and forever

Gem

Nails

Bourjois Manucure Toppings in Coral Bikini, Lilac Sand & Maliblue

June 19, 2014
Bourjois Manucure Toppings

Bourjois Manucure Toppings

As with all nail trends I was inevitably late to this party but I seem to have suddenly acquired quite a collection of nail caviar sets, and this the latest was a competition win from the lovely Pretty for Pence!

The trio contains three shades; Coral Bikini, a mix of  red silver and gold, Lilac Sand in purple and silver and Maliblue, which is made up of blue silver and black. I’ve tried quite a few different caviar manis recently and I have to say I can see no difference between the original Ciate (£18 a set) and the Primark (I paid £1 for mine!) set, nor indeed this Bourjois  offering somewhere in the middle at £6.99 each.

To apply you simply pour the tiny beads over the top of wet nail varnish and leave to set. None of them survive longer than a day or two, but they do give an amazing 3D effect whilst it lasts!

Bourjois Manucure Toppings

My favourite of the three is (unsurprisingly) Maliblue, but as I’m so into this look at the moment I think all three will find plenty of wear on my nails. If you’re like me and enjoy changing your manicure every few days anyway then it’s no extra bother to take it off and start again once the balls start going AWOL. If you are after something that will last you a whole week then caviar nails are definitely not for you!

The only thing I don’t really like about the Bourjois Manucure Toppings is that they don’t come with a funnel, which is pretty essential if you don’t want to throw away the inevitable spillage that occurs when you pour the beads onto your nails. Luckily I have a few from my other sets, but if you don’t have one it’s quite tricky to try and pour the beads back in even if you do collect them in a piece of folded paper. My advice would be to pop to Primark and grab one of their sets for £1 just for the funnel!

Overall I am quite smitten with this summery trio, so big thanks to lady luck and Katie from Pretty for Pence for bringing them into my life!

£6.99 each from Boots.com

Totally hellbent for loving a freebie!

– Gem

Candles, Clothing and Fashion, Make-up, Nails, Skincare

Accidental May Haul

May 29, 2014

may-haul

Sometimes you just want to shop. It’s an urge that truly can not be ignored, especially if Gem and I are left alone, unsupervised! This afternoon was definitely one of those times and we ended up going on a completely unplanned spree.

may-haul-2

No budget style shop would be complete without a trip to Primark and even though I didn’t -need- anything at all, I still ended up with a bag full of stuff. I absolutely adore giraffes and I squeeled with delight when I found the giraffe print dress and the tote bag. Even though I usually buy matching underwear from La Senza or Ann Summers, I often pick up some cheap briefs when I can for the gym or lounging around, because lets face it, no one wants to spend 30 minutes on a treadmill in lacy briefs. I really couldn’t resist the pack of four Brazilian style briefs which came in red animal print, red lipsticks, red hearts and navy polka dots and the 5 pairs of animal print “shoe liners” or better know to me as … socks I can wear at the gym with my trainers.

Giraffe Dress – £5 – Primark

Giraffe tote bag – £1.50 – Primark

Pack of 4 brazilian briefs – £4.50 – Primark

Animal print shoe liners – £2.50 – Primark

may-haul-3

And now the stuff that I really really didn’t need. Another candle to add to my collection from Primark in “red berries & orchid” a beautiful berry candle in a gorgeous purple tin, surely this was meant for my dressing table?

A trip to boots ended up in me picking the Rimmel Scandel Eyes gel eyeliner up, which you can read Gem’s review about here, and also NO7’s Beautiful Skin Day Cream with spf15. This was my primary reason for going into Boots as I had a £5 off No7 skincare voucher and really needed some day moisturiser which had spf in. This was for dry to very dry skin and all the reviews I’ve read about this cream were pretty good, so I’m excited to give it a try when I run out of my current moisturiser.

Despite my worries of going to Superdrug and buying half the store, I was actually very sensible, as it was 3 for 2 on most of their makeup, I did pick up an MUA lip-liner in “Red Drama”, MUA lipstick in “Shade 3” and another MUA power pout in “Crazy in Love” (you can see my review of the MUA power pout in “Runaway” here). I also picked up some Garnier Micellar water, which I really did need and some more deodorant which I’m almost out of.

Lastly, we fell into Poundland where I stupidly decided that I had to have a Revlon nail varnish in “Runway Pearl”, two W7 “rock and roll” eye-shadows in “sage” and “envy”, some zebra pens (I already have a vast collection of these exact pens in my desk drawer!) and some beautiful blue paper, a nice addition to my craft room.

Purple tin candle – £3.50 – Primark

Rimmel Scandel Eyes Gel Eyeliner – 4.99 – Boots (usually £6.99 and also £6.99 in Superdrug)

No 7 Beautiful Skin Day Cream – £12.50 – Boots (only £7.50 with my £5 off voucher)

Nivea deodorant – £2.29 – Superdrug (2 for £3)

MUA Power Pout – £3 – Superdrug

MUA Lip Liner – £1 – Superdrug

MUA Lipstick – £1 – Superdrug (3 for 2 – £4 in total)

Revlon Nail Varnish – £1 – Poundland

Decorative paper – £1 – Poundland

W7 rock and roll eyeshadow – £1 each – Poundland

Zebra animal print pens – £1 – Poundland

I absolutely blame our shop on Lauren over at Lauren Amy Blogs, since I was up late last night reading some of her “Superdrug haul” posts and I had an overwhelming urge to go out and buy things. Despite both Gem and I having a no spending month *cough*, together we are a force that is unstoppable – thankfully we did manage to resist the £5 blow up chairs in Ann Summers complete with built in penis’ – something we thought would be absolutely hilarious to take to our upcoming festivals.

This is definitely my last haul for a while, but if you’ve had a recent haul, please post us your links in the comments below so instead of spending our money we can live precariously through you and your blog posts :o).

Totally hellbent for having an uncontrollable addiction that I thankfully share with my bested friend in the whole world

-Pants

 

 

Nails

Primark P.S Gel Effect Top Coat Review

April 7, 2014
Primark P.S I Love You Gel Effect Top Coat Review

Primark P.S I Love You Gel Effect Top Coat Review

 

If you’ve been into Primark recently you’ll likely have noticed that they are rolling out a new line of “P.S” beauty products. In my local shop they seemed to be mostly nail products but I’ve seen reviews popping up of all sorts of things! Being Primark they are all of course at ridiculously low prices with most being only £1.00, this of course lead to a smash and grab style shopping trip that left both Amie and I with a heaving bag full of bargain treasures!

Now given the price I wasn’t expecting much from this top coat, but the luxe packaging made it seem all the more tempting so I thought I’d give it a go. The brush itself was much better than I expected and although it isn’t wide enough to cover the nail in one sweep it applied very well!

 

 

As far as looks go I don’t think you can really see any difference at all between the swatches on the left with no top coat and the swatches on the right with one layer of Gel Effect Top Coat.

As for longevity (which is really the most important job of a top-coat in my book!) I tried this with a number of different familiar polishes and I’d say it fought off dreading chipping for maybe a day or so extra, so for £1 you can’t complain too much but it’s hardly an innovative must-have product.

Have you tried anything from the P.S range?

Totally hellbent for one more day at the very least

– Gem

Clothing and Fashion, Hair, Jewellery

Primark “Rock Chic” Accessory Haul!

September 30, 2013

Primark Accessories Rock Chick

I’d actually only planned on popping in to pick up some £5 fake uggs to laze about in, but I couldn’t help a tiny little look at the other bargains on offer!

Although I frown in despair when I see a fashionista sporting a bullet belt or a trvegrym band shirt that they’ve never heard of, I do love being able to pick up “alternative” accessories at high street prices!

Primark Opia bracelets

Okay so I only really wanted the black and silver spiked bracelets, but I will find some use for the others I’m sure!

£2.00

 

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Love this arrow necklace, especially with the very long chain. I bought this with idea of wearing it on stage, but I might have to watch out for how much it flails around when I’m headbanging!

£2.00

 

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I’ve been meaning to pick one of these up for a long time to try and make a sophisticated slick bun. Unfortunately they don’t come in blue so I settled for a black one!

£1.00

 

Primark backcombing brush

 

I’ve been rocking the big textured hair look a lot recently, so I figured it was time to finally buy a back-combing brush to reach Motley Crue esque levels of volume!

£1.00

 

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Honorable mention goes to these two scarves I picked up in poundland. I’ve paid a fortune for similar styles in the past from festivals! They’re short enough that they can double as headbands or bandannas too!

£1.00 each

 

Totally hellbent for festival-esque shinies at highstreet prices

– Gem