Beauty reimagined: Fabled by Marie Claire

fabled-by-marie-claire-review-1Imagine a gorgeous place where your favourite beauty brands come together. That would be enough, right?

Add some beauty experts edits and opinions, from a leading magazine, to make your life easier when choosing the best products for you.

fabled-by-marie-claire-review-2Then, top it off with a real shop full of friendly and approachable professionals in the counters.

Enough? Thought so, but there’s more: online shop with the superb Ocado delivery service, within a chosen 1 hour time slot.

Too good to be true? Maybe, but it’s real. All this is Fabled by Marie Claire.

And you can experience it right now as I have an exclusive 15% discount code for you, lovely readers, to start shopping online right now: VOU039323938, valid until the 26th October 2016. 

To me, the concept is genius: an online shop tons of amazing beauty brands covering makeup, skincare, hair and fragrance, supported by the magazine expert edits, reviews and trend watching.

Beauty lovers that might be short for time, or are not sure about what red lipstick to go for, now have a haven to make their lives easier and help them nail they beauty needs.

And The Fabled Shop in London’s Tottenham Court Road? Dreamy!

fabled-marie-claireI was about to place my order at fabled.com and decided I needed a new foundation. Took the opportunity to try the new Urban Decay All Nighter foundation.

So I went to the shop for a colour match, as I work nearby. Even though I told the lovely makeup artist on the UD counter I was not buying, she was lovely, helpful and super friendly.

I also wanted to get myself a new eyeliner – I went for Estée Lauder Little Black Liner. Obviously both will be reviewed soon!

fabled-by-marie-claire-review-3Now to the order. The site is clean, well categorised, so it is easy to use and find what you’re looking for. You can also look for specific brands, skin concerns, the Marie Claire edit and specific filtering within categories.

They have an online chat to help you in those decisive hours and placing the order is very quick and painless, with Ocado delivery (free over £15, £3.90 otherwise) slots from 5:30 am to 11:3pm.

And you can attach it to your grocery shopping. Now, that’s as exciting as it is dangerous!

Remember, you can get 15% off right now with my code VOU039323938, valid until the 26th October.

fabled-by-marie-claire-review-4At fabled.com and at their fabulous The Fabled Shop at 21 Tottenham Court Road, London, you can find Aveda, Aromatherapy Associates, Balance Me, Bobbi Brown, Benefit, bkr, Burberry, Clinique, Caudalie, Crabtree & Evelyn, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Essie, Eyeko, Estée Lauder, Eylure, ghd, Giorgio Armani, Gucci,  Hugo Boss, He-Shi, Lancôme, Lipstick Queen, L’Oréal Paris, Marc Jacobs, Maybelline, Nails Inc, NARS, OPI, REN, Rimmel, Seche, St. Tropez, Skin & Tonic, T3, This Works, The Balm, Tom For, Urban Decay, Zelens (breathe) and much more.

signature1

You know the drill, but I’ll say anyway: this post contains PR samples. This review, however, is based on my experience with the product and reflects my honest opinion on them.

Review: Eylure Volume lashes and how to apply strip lashes

eylure volume lashes False eyelashes is something I only mastered relatively recently in my beauty journey and a few brands have been my go to in order to enhance my peepers – Eylure is certainly one of them.

Continue reading

Eye make-up look challenge: festive gold

Festive gold eye make-upOooh the festive mood… it is in the air… everywhere you look… Here, at So Many Lovely Things it’s no different. Nothing better than a lovely black and gold smokey eye to go with it, right?

I started by applying the gold eyeshadow across the whole lid. I then applied the black with gold flecks to the crease and swept out and upwards, following a 45 degree “line” from the outer corner of my eyes.

I then applied black eyeliner on the upper lash line, with a nice flick, followed by a gorgeous metallic eyeliner above it, creating a slightly longer flick.

I then applied black eyeshadow to line the lower waterline and lash line, and applied the gold eyeliner slightly below the lash line, creating another flick at the end, in the same direction of the upper lashline.

I then applied a light eyeshadow to highlight the brow bone and sprinkled the gold dust around the brow bone and towards the inner corner of the eye, and finished off with some mascara and gorgeous false lashes.

Great for New Years eve!!!

Products I used:

  • Urban Decays eyeshadows in zephyr (book of shadows IV), jagged and blitz (vice)
  •  Collection 2000 felt tip pen liner
  • myface.cosmetics liquid eyeliner in gil-ty
  • MAC eyeshadow in carbon
  • Mac Zoomlash mascara
  • Kryolan glamour sparks in golden
  • Eylure eyelashes in vintage 124 (if you look really closely you’ll notice they are not perfectly applied – had one of those nightmare days where the lash doesn’t want to sit in properly, unluckily  it was on my “model” eye… oh well)
  • Beauty boxes brushes (first time I used them – they are great!)

20121221-141038.jpg

Difficulty:

eye make up look - medium

Eye make-up look challenge – black liner

After the super indulgent green witch eyes, I went for something a bit “simpler”. Still, I love the impact of the under the eye liner. It doesn’t pop out as much as I thought it would, so is more wearable then I expected…and simpler to achieve!

After priming, I swept a metallic beige all over my lid up to my brow bone. I then applied a metallic light brown from the inner corner  following the crease, just up to where my eyebrows start, blending with the lighter colour.

Using a felt tip eye liner, I lined my upper lash line, pulling it from outside the inner corner, and finished with a flick. On the lower lash line, I used a white eye liner, from about 2/3 of the way towards the outer corner. I then created a white flick, slightly smaller than the black one from the upper lash line.

I followed with crushed pigment from about 1/3 from the inner corner to the outer corner.

Finally, I drew the line parallel to my lower lash line, following my eye shape and flicking it downwards towards the inner corner. I blended some crushed pigment in the centre of the upper lid and finished it off with false eyelashes.

Products I used:

  • Urban Decay eye shadows in Midnight Cowgirl and Midnight Rodeo
  • MAC crushed pigment in White As Snow
  • Studio eye liner in Winter white
  • Collection 2000 Extreme felt tip eye liner
  • Eylure lashes number 155
  • Duo eyelash glue
  • Urban Decay eye primer
  • MAC brushes 239, 231, 208
  • Maybelline Falsies mascara

Difficulty:

Eye make up challenge: green, as a witch

Green witches (yes, Elphaba, I am talking about you!) inspired me for this challenge. I wanted to do something big, bold, a bit evil and of course, green. I love using green eyeshadow, it photographs really well, it is so vivid.

Here is what I did: I applied a primer, and attempted to erase half of my eyebrow (without much success). Then swept the whole lid with green pigment.

After that, using a darker green, I drew the cat-eye shape with a pencil brush, from the beginning of my crease to close to my eyebrow edge.

Then I applied a lighter darker green to the upper lash line and met the higher dark green line, closing the shape.  To add dimension, I applied very light green crushed pigment to the center of the eye lid, as a swoop that went from close to the inner corner, upwards, meeting the darker line at the top. I then blended all the lines using all the colours and some other shades of green until I was satisfied with the amount of definition of some lines and blending.

I lined the lower lash line with the lime green, closer to the inner corner, blending into dark green towards the outer corner and applied black eyeliner to the water line.

Finally, I added the lime green to the tops, a little bit of black to define some of the lines (close to the crease and from outer corner), applied black eyeliner, making a huge flick, and dabbed more light green crushed pigment close to  the brow bone and inner corner of the eye. I finished the look with false eye lashes.

Things that didn’t go too well:

1. I tried to “erase” the end of my eyebrow, it turns out mine are too dark and thick to do with concealer and foundation only. I did it in the past to re-create Boy George eye make up, but I suppose the person had fairer and thinner eyebrows than me, so it worked alright!

2. Drawing the shape was hard. Very hard. I had to clean everything up and start again.

3. My first combination of greens didn’t give me oomph. This is another reason I started again. Next time, I will swatch them in my hand before applying!

Products I used:

  • Urban Decay eyeshadows in Bender and Hijack
  • MAC eyeshadow in
  • Collection 2000 green pigment in Bitter
  • Ocean Scent green eye shadows from basic palette
  • MAC crushed pigment from Surf the Ocean pack
  • MAC Studio finish and Select Moisturecover concealers
  • Collection 2000 felt liner in Black
  • MAC eye kohl in Smolder
  • MAC brushes number 208, 217, 219, 239, 266 and 195
  • Urban Decay eye primer potion
  • DUO eyelash glue
  • Maybelline Falsies mascara
  • Eylure false eyelashed in Vintage 124

Difficulty: