Naked 3 - Tutorial

Hi everyone :)

Last week I introduced you guys to the Naked 3 palette so I thought it would be quite a nice idea to link you guys to a tutorial using the product.

I have been using the Naked 3 non stop since I got it about 3 weeks ago and I am starting to choose favourites :)

I absolutely love their shimmers as some sort of highlight to wear on top of some of my mat Mac eye shadows. But normally I just wear the mats and combine a couple of them together.

Which is exactly what Poppy does in her tutorial.

She is fairly new to the whole YouTube beauty guru thing but does a splendid job of it.

I think we all know how to use eye liner as well as the problem of never getting both of the lines to look the same. Which is the reason I think that it doesn't matter that the video cuts off there :)

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and can take something away from it. And  if you have a Naked 3, also enjoy using that. I know I do :)
Also I'll link you Poppy's YouTube channel so you can go subscribe.

x

J.

Musical Monday

Hi everyone :)

I have three new tracks for you this week. Well not necessarily new but songs I have been listening to like mad over the past week :)

The next one is a great song and also a great video :)

And I am going to keep bombarding you with this next song until everyone agrees with me that it is is f****** brilliant.

Enjoy and have a good start to your week :)

x

J.

Food Friday - Easter Brunch/ Cake Pops

Hi everyone :)

So I have been getting my baking on again lately. Quite a lot to be honest and I thought there were some good enough things produced so I should really not keep them from you. 

I wont put up all the recipes today and spread them out over the weekend Maybe you can find some things you would like to try :) I always feel inspired after reading blogs about food :D

I tried making Cake Pops and by tried I mean I got so annoyed at one point I just wanted to through them all out haha.

Maybe not my brightest hour of baking but hey....

Take your time with these cake pops and do plan with 2 days because the cake needs to cool down over night. If you don't have that kind of time just put it in the freezer for maybe around 15 minutes, that has always worked for me so far. 

Ingredients:

145 g soft butter

80 g sugar

1 sachet of vanilla sugar

a bit of finely ground lemon zest

2 eggs (medium sized)

150 g flour

1 tbsp baking powder

2 tbsp yogurt

60 g cream cheese

30 g icing sugar

as well as

400 g white chocolate coating

Other things you need:

cake pop sticks

20 cm loaf pan

rotary cutter (whichever you like best really)

Preheat the oven to 180°C 

Mix 125 g of the butter, the sugar, vanilla sugar and lemon zest into a bowl and beat till it gets foamy. Now I know that is what it says in the recipe but to be honest: My mixture has never looked anything close to foamy so don't worry if it doesn't as long as it looks something like this you are fine!

Add the eggs one after another and finally finish off with adding the flour, baking powder and a dash of salt.

Add the two tablespoons of yogurt but don't use the electric mixer instead take like a spoon or something. 

Grease the loaf pan and pour the mixture in and off it goes into the oven for around 50 minutes. 

Let the cake rest over night or at least 2-3 hours. If you don't have that kind of time about 15 minutes in the freezer will do as well. 

After that take your cake and roughly crumble it into smaller pieces so you can grind it to fine crumbs in the food processor.

This was the hilarious part: We didn't have a food processor so we just thought why not do it with a blender? Bad idea I can tell you, it took forever :D

Cake crumbs, cream cheese, icing sugar and the rest of the butter are to be knead together so you have an even mixture.

With your finished mixture you want to try to roll it our and cut out pieces with any form of rotary cutter you like. We made hearts.

That is where it kind of turned into a mess, because the hearts we had were really small so we got like a thousand out of the mixture we had. 

After you have cut them out, heat up your chocolate and then dunk the cake pops sticks in there and impale a heart. 

You can either let that cool down on it's own for a bit or use the freezer option again. I recommend the freezer.

You are almost done now: Just dunk the hearts or whichever form you chose in the chocolate and have them cool down standing up. You can use a egg carton for that like we did or anything else you can stick them into really.

Now you are good to eat them :) They were a s*** load of work because of the small hearts but absolutely delicious nevertheless.

Also do have some fin while baking. We had different kinds of fruit lying around and decided why not have chocolate fondue while we are baking.

That's how sexy I looked trying to eat a chocolate strawberry:

Don't judge, you know you would have done it too :D

Have fun trying this recipe and also making a mess of your kitchen :)

x

J.

YouTube Boyband

Hi everyone :)

So here is just something entertaining for you guys as I am very busy with course work for University.

And to be honest with you, I did not think that this would turn out so well. I actually think they can sing and it doesn't sound half bad.

x

J.

My new found favourites and old loved ones II

Hi everyone :)

Here is part two of this little mini series. I might add a part three but that will be further down the line, definitely. 

Recently I went on a bit of a shopping spree for new make-up related things. I bought brushes and all these kinds of things.

I bought new things in the first place because my skin has really changed over the past let's say one and a half years and many of the products I used back than my skin now reacts to. 

So new things needed to be looked for and I had so much fun trying out new things.

And with this post I just want to show you these new products I bought but obviously only the good ones. Well the ones I like best anyway :)

Lets start with foundation and concealer

foundation: Clinique.even better with SPF 15 (shade: 24)

concealer: Smashbox. camera ready BB cream eyes SPF 15 ( shade: fair)

Both of these products aren't cheap, but as said in my last post relating to this (read it here), I am investing in higher quality products that don't dry out my skin too much. 

I am so so happy with both of these and they are definitely worth every penny I spent on them. 

When I went out looking for a new foundation, I knew I wanted one that was light to medium covered and wasn't to heavy on the skin. The woman in the store's first recommendation was a Clinique foundation, because they are always very good when it comes to allergies and stuff. She also got this particular foundation because I explained to her that I am allergic to sun, as in I get red dots that itch all over my skin if I go out too much in summe. Due to that you would think I wear loads of sunscreen but that actually makes it worse. So a foundation with a SPF is perfect for me, as it means I don't have to put layers of creams and stuff on my face whenever the sun is out. 

As a conclusion, if you have easily irritated skin that dries out fast do go for the Clinique foundation. And their coverage is really enough guys. You don't really need more, it gives you an even finish and you can always cover really bad spots with  a bit of extra concealer. 

Which brings us directly to the next product: the concealer from Smashbox. 

I again am more than happy with this product. I asked for a concealer that wouldn't dry out fast or sit heavily in the view wrinkles everyone has around their eyes. I also wanted one that didn't light up to much in pictures as some concealers do look really weird when photographed. They make you look like you drew a white stripe under your eyes or something. 

The woman very quickly came up with the Smashbox one and made my exceptionally happy with it.

Yes it is a bit pricey and my very thin student wallet cried a bit afterwards but if I were to buy it again (which I will) my wallet would cry happy tiers, as the price-performance ratio is nothing to complain about. I got exactly what I asked for.

Okay now on to the things that are a bit more fun!

I finally got my hand on the 'Naked Palette 3' and am a very happy bunny :D Thanks to a website I recommended a while back: feelunique.com (post)

Any NAKED palette you order comes with 4 packets of primer, which I always find very thoughtful.

1.strange  2.dust  3.burnout

4.limit  5.buzz  6.trick

7.nooner  8.liar  9.factory

10.mugshot  11.darkside  12.blackheart

If you are not usually one to wear primer please do with these eye shadows. Not because they don't stay in place as well as others but because these colours are far to pretty to have them moving around. I love all the colours so much, I couldn't even say which one is my favourite. What I particularly like about the Naked 3 palette however is the fact that there is no blacks in there. Even blackheart is brown based which is perfect for me, as I don't like how hard black sometimes makes your eye make-up look. 

Last thing I tried is this:

first lip liner, than lip gloss, than lipstick

It is the Nude Lips set from the Karadashian make-up line. It wasn't something I have always wanted but I thought I would give it a try. Now I have to say I use the lipgloss, which is the one in the middle, quite a lot, the rest: not so much. 

The problem I have with this is that it makes kind of a browny nude lip less than a beigy nude. I guess that is fine if you are a bit tan but if you are as pale as I am it looks a bit weird. 

Also the lip liner is very strong and even if you put the lipstick over it you can still kind off see it through. So really go easy on that if you are thinking of giving this product a try. 

On the upside of it all: the lip gloss tastes and smells amazing :D

x

J.

Creative Sunday - Kia

Hi everyone :)

I have said it before and I will say it again: I am not a fan of commercials which has led to me not watching Tv. There somehow is no way around watching commercials though is there?

I will admit though that I have recently been kind of happy that you can't avoid them fully.

I mean how cool is the new Kia advert? I find it absolutely brilliant. It is not your usual car commercial but has actually got a script and a bit of a story that in the end relates back to the car.

Not just two people in a car driving along some desert road or whatever road they find.

I have two car commercials I really like, this Kia one and the one Casey Neistat did for Mercedes.

So here are both of them :) :

They are just different and that is what I like about them!

So they win this weeks award for creativity :) If there was one :D

x

J.

There is this thing....

Hi everyone :)

It is Easter tomorrow and there are a view things about it that I don't know what to think of. So I just want to get them off my chest and maybe here some opinions on it :)

Are we up for that?

So Easter has become this new big thing in spring that everyone seems to go crazy about and I don't get it. Like most people don't even know why we even have Easter and just take it as another excuse to get presents out of their family members.

Not cool people!

Easter shouldn't be turned into a second Christmas! I am absolutely against that. There was a segment on the radio the other day about Easter and it said that parents spend around 45 € on Easter presents. 45€ that is a lot in my opinion. 

We used to get something small for Easter and some eggs that made a great egg hunt. Egg hunts are all Easter needs really, they are fun enough for kids no need for a big present.

I don't think it is okay to turn Easter into a second Christmas. 

And I hate that people seem to slowly but surely forget why we had these holidays in the first place. Like okay don't go to church if you don't want to but please be aware of the meaning of this holiday you are celebrating.

Christmas was the birth of Jesus and Easter is celebrated because god gave his son so our sins would be forgiven and he than arose from the dead.

Teach your kids that, tell them he reason they are getting presents and let them decide for themselves if they want to know more about that please.

I mean these festivities mean so much more than just getting gifts and people just ignore that. I sometimes think it is a bit hypocritical of people who don't believe in god to celebrate them at all. Why would you? The reason it's celebrated doesn't mean anything to you so why do it at all?

We don't all have Ramadan do we? 

Same thing goes for this new trend that is fasting. Again the majority of people does it because it is hip to not eat certain things during this time before Easter but no one bothers to find out why we all seem to do it around the same time. 

Again it's the same with not eating meat on Good Friday, we just don't do it but tend to forget why we don't do it. 

I find that a bit sad especially since I am Christian myself and do actually know where all these things originated from.

Maybe it would be nice to learn the history of things once in a while and not just adopt them into your life.

And if this blog posts results in only one person looking up the meaning of some of these things I will be more than happy to have written it.

I also am going to bed now because I am going to church tomorrow morning :)

x

J.