Lipstick Collection

A few years ago I was told by someone at work I should "wear a little more colour"

At this time of my life I had been wearing the same foundation since high school and some eyeliner and mascara. I didn't dable. Make up was scary.

So I waltzed into Priceline and picked up a light pinkish shade (Rimmel's Vintage Pink) and felt my life begin to change.

Now a few years later I'm a lipstick fiend.

Here are my swatches and reviews below. 

Australis Velour Lips

L-R: bar-tha-lona, buda-pash, doo-bai, mi-a-mee, ny-cee

Australis Velour Lips are highly pigmented, not drying and very long lasting. These have a doe foot applicator which I'm a little bit on the fence about. I find with the darker shades it's a little difficult to stay inside the lines. Once you make a mistake it's very obvious so take your time! Other than that fact I'm always reaching for these babies. And at $10 a pop you can't really fail!

Revlon Colourburst Matte Balm

L-R: 250 stand out, 210 unapologetic

Revlon Colourburst Matte Balms were raved about on YouTube. These are highly pigmented but I personally found they didn't last very long. 

Kate Moss Rimmel Lasting Finish

L-R:  19, 16, 20, 11, 05

Kate Moss lipsticks are AMAZING! great pigment, long lasting. I couldn't rave about these enough. Number 19 is a perfect nude and it's my daily lip I keep im my handbag.

Kate Moss Rimmel Lasting Finish (Red packaging)

L-R: 106, 103, 107

The red Kate Moss lipsticks are matte lip. 107 is a gorgeous berry red that many YouTube gurus wear. It's a great autumn shade and now that we've just said goodbye to Summer I'm ready to start wearing it again. 

Rimmel Moisture Renew

L-R:  220 Heather Shimmer, 400 Berry Queen,180 Vintage Pink, 360 As You Want Victoria

The Rimmel Moisture Renews were the first lipsticks I tried. 220, 400 and 180 were the shades that were enough to give me colour without going to over the top. Recently they changed the formula and updated the packaging and brought out some new shades and I said hello to 360 - as you want Victoria. 

Rimmel Lasting Finish (Not Kate Moss)

L-R: 084 Amethyst Shimmer, 012 guest lis, 058 Drop of Sherry, 214 Firecracker

Now I say these are "not Kate Moss" as they don't have her signature on the packaging but they are still from the lasting finish range. These lipsticks have a sight shimmer to them. Unfortunately as a result I don't find them very "lasting" at all. 

Revlon Colourbust Lip Butter

L-R: 040 Red Velvet, 070 Cherry Tart

When this range came out I was a little excited as Emma Stone was the face of this range. She is such a stunner and I had to give these a go. They go on so smooth and have a beautiful range of colors. I found these to be fairly long lasting as long as you aren't eating or drinking a lot. 

Sportsgirl

L-R: Love bite, Gossip, Almost Famous

The Sportsgirls Lipsticks are third on my list of favourite go to for the lips. I was so surprised by the quality!! The pigment is fantastic. They are long lasting and even the packaging is cute. I've had many compliments whilst wearing Almost Famous which is a lovely coraly red

. 

Rimmel Provacalips

L-R: Kiss Me You Fool, Play with Fire

These are fairly new to the lip game. When I first saw these I was not interested at all. There is a two step process to these. First the colour then you need to "seal" it with a top coat of clear gloss. I have long hair and I HATE gloss. But after I saw Messy Downunder on YouTube use them I thought. What the heck. Let's give it a go. Firstly, the colour is amazing. Secondly, the gloss I was worried about dries almost matte and thirdly, it lasted me ALL DAY! I got home and had trouble getting it off! You know a lipstick is good when you need a lip scrub to remove it!!

 NYX Soft Matte

San Paulo

Another new one to my lip game. I've fallen in love with everything matte. This is a lovely pinkish nude on the lips. 

Please excuse the mark on my arm. After all of these swatches I started to break out a little from all the scrubbing I had to do to get them off!!!

There were a few others I left out. But I think you get the gist. I love my lipsticks.

Powerhouse Geelong

Today my friend and I went to visit the Powerhouse Station in Geelong for the first "Spray off, shoot out" competition.

The Powerhouse is a derelict abandoned building in North Geelong, near the Vintage Market in Mackey Street.

From the outside the ground is littered with jagged glass, burnt out grass from bonfires and a sense of Geelong's infamous ghost town tag.

Inside walls or legal street art from floor to ceiling and an enormous amount of talent.

There is something about street art that is quite powerful, political and rather beautiful. If you like something a little quirky and outside of the box then I highly recommend you check this out!

Check out their Instagram

For more info click here

Sydney 2015

Howdy all!

This past week I spent some much needed time away in Sydney. My boyfriend and I recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary and it was also his birthday so we figured we should get out of Victoria an explore another city.

Our plane landed at roughly 7:30 in the morning and we couldn't check in until 12pm. Lucky for us the hotel let us leave our bags until our room was ready so we were free to roam!

We stayed at the Medina Serviced Apartments on Hosking Place, right in the heart of the CBD. we got a great deal on hotels.com.au (I think that was the website) for four nights. The apartment had a kitchen, laundry and lounge room as well as the standard bedroom and bathroom. The view unfortunately was the side of another building but to be honest we never waned to go on the balcony anyway so we were quite pleased with what we got.

Once we left our bags there we set off to find some breakfast. For those who haven't been to Sydney, let me tell you breakfast is expensive. I just wanted eggs on toast or a ham and cheese sandwich, but that alone was going to set me back around $10. Considering I was going to be eating out a lot I opted for an egg and bacon McMuffin from McDonalds...delicious.

We continued to walk around the shopping centres and stopped by Coles to get some bread, Vegemite and magazine for the apartment so we could make our own breakfast each day and headed back to check in. My boyfriend got a fitbit for Christmas so we checked how much walking we had done already. By 12pm we had already walked 12kms! I was stuffed!

After an hour or so of relaxing at the apartment we headed out for MadMex for lunch and came straight back to the room for a nap. After all we had been up since 4:30am.

That night we went out to a nice pup called PJ O'Briens and I had an amazing Chicken Curry. I've never had a curry with chips in it and it was a great addition.

The next day we went roaming around the shops again and checked out the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. We thought the Opera House would have been a bit whiter. TV lies! We took a long walk down Oxford Street and had some amazing Thai Food, I had a look at Sephora (woah! overwhelming!) and roamed around a little more.

On Wednesday we went to the Sydney Tower Eye to look at the Observation Deck and do the Skywalk. If you ever go to Sydney I highly recommend this!

The Tower is located at Westfield and is 250 meters above the ground and the skywalk is actually twice the height if the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I'm not scared of heights but boy was that high!

The tour we went on only had four people, five including our guide. It was nice to have a smaller group as we could take more time to reflect and enjoy the city views.

There are even glass floors so you can peek straight down to the roads below. They took some tourist shots of us but at $40 we decided to give the photo pack a miss and stick with our memories.

The view towards the SCG

Straight down to the city below

The view from the Sydney Tower Eye

On Thursday it was my boyfriends birthday. We took the ferry to Taronga Zoo. Another thing I'll recommend is checking out the Ferry Timetables prior to the day as we discovered when we arrived at 12PM that the ferry wouldn't be heading to the Zoo until after 1pm and that the last ferry home was at 3:45pm. Thats not a lot of time if you really want to take your time at the zoo. Lucky for us we're fast walkers!

We took the ferry at 12pm and went on a short cruise around Darling Harbour where I took some photos. Then we arrived at Taronga Zoo. As it was a very warm day and around feeding time we unfortunately missed a few of the animals. I sometimes wish there were "adult only" times scheduled for the zoo so I could view the animals and take photos with out kids running around in front of me, do you know what I mean?

I'd like to be under the sea, in an Octopus's Garden, in the shade...

Seal!!

I loved watching them climb

A romantic moment captured

We came back in the afternoon and had a pretty relaxing night before our last day in Sydney.

On Friday we checked out of the hotel at 10am and headed out to Bondi Junction to have a look at another shopping centre. Sydney is definitely the place to shop! We headed back to the airport on the train (the best way to get to and from the city when you travel by plane!) and waited for our plane to arrive. We were delayed by a malfunction with the plane's computer which was a bit of an inconvenience. But that only meant we weren't going home to Victoria's horrible weather any sooner!