Just another manic Monday

On Monday I finished work early, and decided to go round the shops and had a mini shopping spree. I really need to stop doing those, but I figured since I'd been paid recently, and it should be fine s'long as I don't do it again for awhile (I'm trying to save up money for big things). Anyways since I picked up two extra shifts yesterday and today, and next weeks crazy, it kinda makes up for me finishing early and spending lots of money-ish. I didn't spend too long shopping as I was meeting my boyfriend, but I did go to Primark and New Look. Most of what I own is from Primark, New Look and H&M, I think I should branch out a bit... oh well, they have cheap pretty clothes! 

I've lusted after the studded collar dress from New Look for awhile now, and finally decided to buy it, since I had 20% vouchers off for being a store card member, and decided to get the t-shirt as well which is kinda   weird for New Look don't you think? It's all spacey with lepards and triangles saying 'MY WORLD' but 'world' is backwards. Anyway as I got to the till and pulled out the vouchers I realised they ran out the day before, gah! But I still bought them anyways!

In Primark I bought a few things (and a dress the other day but I don't have pictures) but these were the two main things (I did buy a scarf, socks, etc but they were a bit boring). I've wanted Dr Martens for years, but don't have the money to buy them, so bought these cheapy super shiny lookalikes from Primark for £18. I'm hoping they'll look better when scuffed up a bit, but I like them regardless of the shine, my boyfriend however hates them haha. I also got that flowery vest top too, since I have a similar vest from there in a see through aztec print which I love and wear all the time. I also figured I could potentially wear that if I worked in a school, since you never know I might get one eventually, but there's no jobs being advertised! Swansea sucks!

In Primark I also bought the false eyelashes, and nivea hand cream on the bottom left of the photo, since they were a pound each. I love the hand cream. It was an impulse buy in the queue, but I always run out of hand cream, and need ones that last me awhile, which this one does. What I mean by last for awhile, as in the effect it has on my hands, so I'm not reaching for the hand cream a million times a day, so then it will last longer too. As for the eyelashes, I haven't tried them out yet but they look more natural than the pair I got in my glossy box (i.e no rhinestones!). I really enjoyed wearing those, which was my first time so I'm looking forward to wearing more false eyelashes now that I've gotten over my 'fear' of applying them, since I thought they would be too hard to do.

The rest of the items I got from Superdrug, and I love most of them. The two dry shampoos were part of a deal which I couldn't resist but they are awful and make my hair look worse! Definitely would not recommend them! I was planning on keeping them in my locker in work to deal with my terrible hat hair but but I think I'll stick to batiste or tesco's own (which works just as well and is cheaper), but I like to get batiste if its on sale since it tends to smell nicer.

I love Aussie products but only buy them when they have deals on, and these were two for £6 or £7 I think. As I've mentioned in loads of posts I'm trying to look after my very long hair right now in order to eventually donate it, so I've been wanting to get a leave in conditioner or hair mask, and then I saw the miracle hair insurance leave in conditioner. Since there was a deal on I also bought the three minute miracle luscious long hair treatment conditioner, and both of these products are magical. My hair felt so soft afterwards, and smelt great too and the leave in conditioner wasn't even noticeable apart from the lovely smell and extra softness. I actually look forward to showering with these products, sad I know!

The two lipsticks were MUA and Beauty UK. I was introduced to MUA by Catherine in the blog package swap I took part in. For such cheap prices they're really fun to try out different shades of nail polish, eye shadow, lipstick and more but I've only bought a few lipsticks so far. I'm trying out new shades of lipstick atm to see what suits me, and decided to try out cheap lipstick first before I get the more expensive lipsticks to see what I like. The MUA one is perfect for the day, as its a subtle pale coral colour, and the Beauty UK, is more of an orangy colour, more noticeable but not too much so but I love it. I didn't think I'd like it that much even though I bought it! I thought it would be for more daring days, but I could easily wear this whenever and not feel self conscious about it. I think both were a pound so you can't really go wrong with them there can you?

The last thing I bought was a superdrug mud mask tube to use when I'm down my boyfriends since I can't really cart my lush face masks back and forth, especially since they need to stay in the fridge. I've used it once, and it reminds me of when I was younger and used to do mud masks. It dried really quickly on my face and as usual, left my skin feeling nice and soft. I'm aiming to use masks a lot more lately and see if it helps my skin over the long run, because it's horrible right now.

Anway thats my rambly post on my mini shopping haul, with some reviews thrown in too! What do you think of shopping haul posts? Do you like them, find them boring, too boastful or don't really care? I like seeing them, as I'm a nosey person, and also tend to buy things people suggest too that I wouldn't otherwise normally think to buy. Hope everyone's having a lovely time with the unexpected sun, want to take any bets on how long it'll last this time around? As this is being posted I'm currently at work where there are no windows, is that a good or a bad thing I'll never really know!

Catastrophe Cosmetic: A Lush Review

You could say this is part two in my Lush Fresh Face Mask reviews, with part one being here with Cosmetic Warrior. Even though I loved Cosmetic Warrior, I wanted to try out different face masks, and since I have bad skin, I opted for Catastrophe Cosmetic which claims to help skin 'when disaster looms', which is every day with me right now. 

I keep trying to make a doctors appointment for my skin but my doctors are stupid and you have to phone at 8am in the morning to try and book an appointment for 2-3 weeks in advance and I am always working in the morning! And when I'm not working, they're fully booked and I have to wait till the next week to book it! It's absolutely ridiculous, I have been trying for over a month now and nothings happening so I decided to buy another face mask. 

It retails at £5.75 which is a decent price, especially if you just buy the £1 face mask pouches you can only use once, this works out to be waaay cheaper in the long run. As is says on the lid in the photo above, it contains blueberries, chamomile, Irish moss and calamine, all of which are meant to sooth, calm and cleanse your skin. As with all fresh face masks from Lush, they need to be kept in the fridge and have a short life span, but if you use them all the time like me then you tend to use it all up near the end of its shelf life anyway.

This is what the consistency looks like in the pot, and it's more paste like than Cosmetic Warrior, which I'll probably compare to a lot in this post, since its the only other one I've used. When I first started using it it had a bit of liquid in the top, which was fine when I mixed it in with the rest of it, but now it's gone. It obviously smells like blueberries, what with them being an ingredient for their anti-oxidant purposes. So it smells nice, but a bit powdery. However if you don't like the garlic smell of Cosmetic Warrior for your bad skin, then maybe Catastrophe Cosmetic is better suited to you (sorry if the names are confusing as they both have 'Cosmetic' in them!). 

I'm not showing any pictures with the mask on my face like other people do sorry, but it covers my face evenly and looks more like a face mask usually does, with the occasional blue berry on your face. It says to leave it on for 10-15 minutes, but I usually leave on for longer, and forget to wash it off as I'm reading some blogs at the same time so its very dry when I wash it off. Unlike Cosmetic Warrior, its a bit harder to wash off. I wipe it off my face first to get all the crumbs off (am I the only one who does that?) and then it leaves a powdery substance behind which feels a bit weird, which I then wash off. It does reduce the redness in my skin but doesn't quite have the same effect as Cosmetic Warrior did on my skin. Whereas I used that in the morning or before going out for the night because it helped with applying make up, I use Catastrophe Cosmetic whenever, in the morning, day, night but usually after a shower since it doesn't do that much for me compared to the other mask. While I do enjoy using it and have seen improvements, I would recommend Cosmetic Warrior (which I reviewed here) over Catastrophe Cosmetic, unless you don't like the smell of garlic you vampires :P

1st year Bloggiversary Giveaway!

UPDATE! THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!

Today is my blogs first birthday! Or my first bloggiversary if you will! Lisamello (the blog, not me) is now one years old, and it feels like I just started my blog the other day. I've only recently started getting into it, if you know what I mean, by trying to blog consistently, have features, customise the layout and branch out into reading more blogs and commenting more over the last few months. It's been fun and I'm still not where I want to be with the blog as it's a WIP, but I have a few ideas up in this head of mine for it which I want to do within the next year. I'm hoping I'll still have this blog  next year as I used to change blogs ALL the time and never really stuck them out. My longest blog was for two years, but I only updated it every now and then, so this blog is the longest I've frequently updated and I want to stick with it.

Anyway! I really love entering giveaways, and winning them (Just the one, but it was so nice!) and creating parcels full of presents for Christmas, birthdays or blog swaps! So I decided ages ago that I'd do a giveaway for my bloggiversary, which is today! (Sorry for all the exclamation marks, I'm an exciteable person!!) It's not much but its a few little things that I personally like, or would like! And its just to say thanks for reading my blog!

You can win a face mask, hair mask and conditioner from Boots, a Barry M Gold Foil Effects Nail Varnish, a bird necklace and some lovebird earrings.

I love the products from Boots, they smell lovely, haven't tried this polish before but love the brand and I picked gold to match the jewellery, I have that necklace, it looks a bit like a Hummingbird but without the long beak, and it has a really long chain which I put a knot in mine, so you can wear it at any length really, and those earrings are cute, and remind me that I need to re-pierce my ears! As I like to 'Theme' my gifts sometimes, it's a somewhat gold bird theme, with hair stuff added in! I know, not very themey, but the jewellery is to do with birds and the nail varnish matches the jewellery!

All you have to do to win is be a follower of my blog via GFC and leave a comment with your email address! Simples! The giveaway will end on the 15th of July at Midnight and I'll hopefully be able to post it within the week after it.

And thanks for reading! :)

UPDATE: It's open internationally too! :) And I'll reply to the comments after its finished so its easier to keep track of.

I am a Cosmetic Warrior!

Or something.... So I've been meaning to blog about this for the past month, and I actually took these photos about two weeks ago, but at least I'm finally doing it, if you're interested. 'Doing what' you may ask, well reviewing a lush face mask of course! (Yeah maybe I shouldn't blog late at night, even though I usually do, and then change the time the next day to make it the right day, or at least before midnight! Anyway where was I?) My skin is a little bit crazy right now, or a lot crazy, which annoys me so much as I thought I was finally getting past all those teenage skin problems, but no, nature wasn't letting me off that easy. It's gotten to the point that I hate leaving the house on a bad skin day since even with make up on as my skin doesn't look right. I know everyone tells you its not that bad etc, but if you suffer from bad skin you know that people saying that doesn't help any. So this is where the Cosmetic Warrior comes in!

I popped into Lush to get some birthday presents awhile ago and they handed me a newspaper with all their products in and I eventually browsed through it a few weeks later and came across their face masks. The Cosmetic Warrior is specifically made for bad skin as it 'combats spots and soothes troubled skins' (sorry for the mega blurry photo above). It contains garlic, tea tree, kaolin and honey and we all know tea tree oil is good for the skin so I though why not. It didn't even cost that much at £5.75 for a decent sized pot. I've already used half of it up and tend to use it every two or three days but did use it every day for the first week. So if you think about it, cheap face masks in pouches are £1 and you use them once, and I've used this well over ten times already which is good value for money. 

That's what it looks like inside, its a thick paste that reminds me of wet clay, with chunks of I don't know what in, and doesn't look that appealing on (hence no photo!) but it does the job. Some say it smells foul, but I don't mind it, its a bit unusual and garlicky so if you hate garlic don't go for it! You keep it in the fridge and then apply a generous amount onto your clean skin and leave for 10-15 minutes. It goes all crumbly afterwards and I find it easier to brush the crumbs off first then wash it off, but I think I'm a bit weird like that? I don't know. It definitely made my skin smoother so I like to put it on in the morning or during the day rather than in the night, as it helps when I'm applying my makeup. It also makes my skin feel incredibly soft and reduces the redness of my skin and tightens up my face, which does a lot I reckon compared to other face masks I've used in the past. When I eventually run out of it I think I might try other face masks just to test them out, but I'll be buying this again in the future (or hopefully not if my skin clears up but it'd be good for bad days). And you know what else is pretty awesome? If you take back five clean and empty tubs (or tubes), you get a free face mask! I was given a lot of Lush products for my birthday so I have a few more tubs and only need to buy a few more and then I get a free face mask! I like things like that, so well done Lush!