Glitterati by Crown and Glory - Januarys Box

I get ridiculously excited when this box comes through my door! I am a huge fan of Crown and Glory and love all their products. The Glitterati box costs £20 including postage and packaging and this months is filled with around £85 worth of products!! A wonderful bargain if you ask me!

This month’s box didn’t fail to please, the first item I pulled out was the Glitter Scallop Crown in a gorgeous pastel purple colour. I think I am going to backcomb my hair for mass volume and have this crown as the finishing touch. Next up is the Marabel Feather Headband in bright blue. This is the only thing I pulled out of the box and thought ‘WTF?!’ I think it’s a little hideous!

The glitter snap clips in orange are really pretty and are currently holding back my fringe. It’s at that awkward stage where it’s too long to be classed as a fringe but too short to sit nicely with rest of my hair. I really really need a haircut! Also being completely dippy this is the reason there is no photo of the clips as I completely forgot to take them out of my hair when I took the shots! Complete dippy moment!

The jewelled ribbon gemstone band is in purple and so 70’s, I love it! I’m going to use it to sparkle up boring outfits. Finally there is the not a lotta Rosie bobby pins in white, peach and pink made from felt. They are too cute!

Also as it’s my birthday this month, the lovely folk at Crown and Glory threw in a fab birthday card and an extra pressie for me! I received this amazing spikey silver glitter crown. It kind of reminds of the statue of liberty! Hehe! Its £35 if you were to buy it in the shop so I couldn’t believe it!

Who's in my Sidebar... January Edition!

 

Welcome to the Januarys edition of ‘Who’s in my sidebar’! Lipsticks and Lashes offers advertising packages, and I am beyond excited to introduce you all to my first sponsor of this year, Louise who blogs over at ‘The What Now Blog’. It’s a beautiful lifestyle blog that I have fallen a little in love with!

 

“TheWhatNowBlog is a positive thinking work and lifestyle focused blog. Aiming to provide a little insight and inspiration into the working world, plus fun and motivational ideas for life outside of the 9 to 5!”

Here are three of my favourite posts on ‘The What Now Blog’ …

Sun And Sights In Sydney – as someone who is heading to Oz later in the year, this post have given me serious wanderlust and November can’t come soon enough!

The daily deskercise – 5 simple tips to get moving! I have been keeping these in mind whilst I’ve been at work lately, I am conscious that I do sit down a lot at work!

When one door closes… - such an inspiring post, and one I think I was meant to read!

Louise’s photos are also super dreamy and there are quite a few mouth-watering food posts, definitely a blog to check out!

 

 

If you would like to advertise with Lipsticks and Lashes in February then check out our sponsor page here! We’ve got packages to suit everyone! If you have any questions then please feel free to contact me at whatsinyourmakeupbag@gmail.com

January's Birchbox

This month Birchbox have hooked up with Women’s Health Magazine to create the ‘Hit Refresh’ box, a box of revitalising treats to help you kick start the New Year!

So what did I receive?

Stila Lip Glaze in the shade ‘glamour’ – which is a deep pink/purple tone that’s quite a neutral colour. I really like it and find the Stila Lip Glazes quite moisturising on my lips.

Beauty Protector Protect and Detangle – Having fine hair that easily knots especially when it’s wet, I am pretty excited to see how this works on my locks!

REN – Glycobiotic Radiance Renewal Mask- I’ve received this mask before and found it left my skin feeling lovely and clean so I’m happy to find it in this month’s box.

HealGel Body – I have heard a lot about this body lotion but have not tried it yet – I’m intrigued to see how it works on my skin as I really suffer from dry skin during these cold winter months.

Activbod Feel Great Shower Concentrate – this smells really refreshing, I can’t wait to try it in the shower!

Embrace Matcha Green Tea – a powder you mix into hot water to create Green Tea. I drink a lot of fruit and herbal teas but I just can’t stand the taste of Green Tea! It’s gross! So I think I may be passing this a long to someone else to try out!

Birchbox Pilates Band – I love that Birchbox now throw in a lifestyle treat to their boxes! I have recently started Pilates and love it so can’t wait to try this band out!

For £10 plus £2.95p+p, it’s a pretty great box considering ill use the majority of the products received and am really pleased with it! As a bonus the theme really fits in with my motivated mind set at the moment.

Do you receive any subscription boxes?

Benefit They're Real Push-up Liner

Benefits They’re Real! Push-up liner has been out for a little while now and is a lash-hugging gel eye liner pen. When it was first launched I was really keen to try it but then I saw really mixed reviews about it and with a price tag of £18.50 I decided to give it a miss.

Then recently I popped to my local Benefit counter to pick up some more They’re Real Mascara and noticed for the price of £19.50 I could get ‘The Real Steal’, my mascara plus a mini ‘They’re Real Push-up Liner. A bargain! So of course I made the purchase.

I am so glad I did as I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the push-up liner. It’s pretty easy to use, you twist the nozzle to push up the gel liner to the tip. The top bit does dry out so I now squirt the first bit of gel onto a tissue. Then you slowly guide the tip along the lash line.

I found the slanted top meant I could apply it evenly to both lash lines – wahooo! I use to end up with one thick line and one thin when I’ve used brushes to apply gel liner in the past.  It does also get into those spaces between lashes and is really long lasting and stays put all day! The only thing I didn’t like was the texture of it, it’s a but chalky and seems to dry out quite easily, I’ve found a few times that  mid application it will come out lumpy and just fall off, making it hard to apply smoothly.

I absolutely love the applicator and hope other brands expand on this style, I’m just not 100% sold on the consistency of the gel, so I’m not sure I will be investing in a larger tube.

My disastrous adventure back into the world of dating...

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I have been single for around 2 years and am not the most confident when it comes to guys. I’ve been pretty lucky this far as in I’ve always been introduced to guys through friends or I’ve we’ve been friends first, so it feels natural. This becomes harder as you get older, your social circle shrinks and you get to know the majority of your friend’s mates. I have had a blast being single and don’t feel I need a boyfriend but do miss having someone there and would like to meet the right man to have fun with. However I am useless at putting myself out there! My friends laugh at me and say I wouldn’t have a clue if a guy was chatting me up, I’m pretty oblivious to this kind of stuff!

It is on my 30 before 30 list to get out there more and start dating again and I recently had a look at the dating app Tinder. Highly recommend if you fancy an entertaining evening at home, get a glass of wine and slide one way if you like the look of the man and the other if you don’t.  If they click they like you too, you get matched and can start messaging. Apart from being ridiculously vain the problem with Tinder is that hardly anyone seems to message. This may just be me but if you actually want to meet people I would necessarily recommend this one!

So on the 1^st January my 2 best friends staged an intervention and signed me up to the dating website, plenty of fish and wouldn’t let me have the password for the first week. The first message was from a guy offering to pay £2700 to do rude stuff to my boobs, to say I didn’t have high hopes for this intervention would be an understatement! 

After a week of them messaging random guys I eventually got the password. I was pretty impressed with their work and it definitely showed how well they know me with their responses. I did delete a few who I didn’t think were my cup of tea and I carried on chatting to the ones I liked. I was having a great time chatting to one guy about travelling, and then he suddenly disappeared so I’m assuming he met someone. Then another guy was I was chatting too asked to befriend me on facebook so I agreed and we became facebook buddies and then he stopped chatting to me! I’m assuming he didn’t like the look of me. Who knows?!

I then started chatting to this mediocre guy, his profile stated how spontaneous he was but his messages were a little generic and boring. However I tried not to judge thinking online dating is an awkward thing in general and he might be my amazing dream man in real life. Therefore I agreed to go on a date with him, so we arranged to meet last Sunday and he would get in touch nearer the time and say a time and place. He text me at 6:30pm on the Sunday asking if we could still meet, err no, I was already in my pj’s and having a hot date with Ben & Jerry. So that one’s fizzled out.

Then I started chatting to a nice guy, for the rest of this he shall be known as ‘wakeboarding guy’. He was entertaining and chatty, he loved being out on the water and liked snowboarding. He gave me his number so we started texting instead. I really liked him and when he suggested meeting up in real life I agreed. So last night we met up in a county pub for dinner, we met at 7pm and relieved and happy to see that he was ridiculously hot and seemed really nice. We chatted about various things, I was ridiculously nervous and talked rubbish, and I also giggle a lot in these situations. He seemed a bit nervous to begin with but then seemed to relax. There were a few awkward silences, and I don’t think me blurting out that I’m 29 and moved back in with parents last year is a particular selling point. So at the end of the evening (9:30pm, not sure if that’s a bad thing?! The pub was bloody freezing!) In true Gemma style we walked to the car park to our cars and I just kind of flung myself on him for a hug and then pretty much ran to my car. Awkward much. He said ‘ill text you’ then paused for a bit and through in a ‘...soon’, what the hell does that mean?! So as you can probably guess I quite liked him.

I arrived home to a barrage of texts from friends asking if I was okay and how it went and I don’t really know to be honest! I then went through the dilemma of should I text him and say thanks for dinner and a nice evening. My friends were split on this one and me not being able to leave things text him. I then got a text saying ‘No worries, thanks for coming x’. According my dating expert friends this is known as a cut off and I won’t hear from him again. Gutted.

This dating world feels cut throat, I feel massively out of my comfort zone, I have woken up feeling extremely anxious and headed straight to the gym to try and sweat it out. It feels like a rollercoaster of emotions and this morning I feel pretty crap.

So I am currently sat here blasting out Beyonces single ladies and attempting to pull myself together and get back out there again. Sigh....

10 reasons why having a birthday in January sucks!

So as you can probably guess I am a January baby, my birthday was a week ago now and for the record this year it was pretty lovely and I got to spend some quality time with my friends and family. However this isn’t always the case and a large part of me is pretty grumpy about having a birthday at this time of year! So for a bit of fun, here are 10 reasons why I think it sucks to have a birthday in January....

1. People actually give you Christmas presents that they received and didn’t want. How do I know this? They forget to remove the original gift tag!!

2. Presents arrive in left over Christmas wrapping paper.

3. No one wants to come out and party as they are too skint from Christmas and New Year.

4.  If they do come out, they can only stay out for an hour/not eat/not drink as they are on a January detox which involves only eating green leaves and no alcohol. They then proceed to rub this in anyone’s face who is indulging, therefore ruining the party atmosphere. 

  

      5. The January blues have kicked in and everyone’s grumpy and in hibernation mode. Everyone’s tapped out emotionally and financially by this point.

      6. When you were younger all you wanted was a birthday party involving a BBQ and a bouncy castle but it was always too cold (this is made more stressful by the fact my sister (June baby) and brother (august baby) could have my dream party! Kick in the teeth!)

      7. Birthdays are just never a big deal. They have been completely over shadowed by the previous month.

      8. "Oh, this is a Christmas and birthday present."

    

      9. Or the flipside, some people from actually explain that you’ll have to wait to next month as they have no money. Err it’s not my birthday next month?!

     

     10.  Folks with January birthdays are usually pretty despondent about having a birthday at this time of year, we all feel pretty hard done by.

But then having a birthday in January means getting to go mad in the sales yourself, being able to add your Christmas and birthday money together to get that big pressie you wanted, finding out who your true friends are (the ones who will still come out and party) and the hideous January blues are postponed till February! So its swings and roundabouts my friends!

A few changes at Lipsticks and Lashes...

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Lately I have had a bit of the blogging blues, I’ve just lost the motivation to blog which hasn’t been helped with the lack of a laptop this month!

It’s not been a completely bad thing though as it’s made me stop and re-evaluate my little space on the internet, why I blog and what I want to be writing about. I think to be completely honest with you all, I have just got really bored of it lately!

So I want to shake things up around here and write about what makes me buzz! For someone who absolutely hates change I am pretty proud of myself for making this decision! High five me! I will still write about beauty as I love it but I want to include a hell of a lot more lifestyle posts too. I want to write about my travel plans I have coming up this year and do more recipe posts. I want to record my adventures and focus on improving my photography.

I want to do a monthly round up of my health and fitness journey to keep myself focused. I am scrapping the weekly motivational Monday posts and am going to do a monthly one instead.

I am going to post when I want rather than having fixed days, I don’t want the pressure of that, and if that means not posting for a few days and loosing followers then so be it! I started this blog for me and this year I am going to focus on that fact!

Change is good so this year I plan to embrace it, I hope your all going to stick around for the ride as I think this year’s going to be pretty epic!