Welcome to Blogmas! | Blogmas Day 1

Hello everybody!

I've got such exciting news today! This year I'll be participating in my very own Blogmas! This means that every weekday in December up until Christmas I'll have brand new content going up on my blog. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are going to be festive posts, whereas posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays are just going to be regular old blog posts about whatever I feel like posting!

Despite having had my decorations up for almost a month already (just trying to get value for money!), I am feeling especially festive today as I sit sipping from my Christmas cup surrounded by cosy candles and Christmas lights! I've got Michael Buble's Christmas album on repeat and I'm singing merrily along. My cat is not too happy about the reindeer costume I've put him in but I'm sure I'll have a photo of him later on. The fact that I'm finally finished uni means I have much more time for blogging and fun... Bring on December!

Also make sure to head over to my Instagram and follow me on there to see daily festive posts about everything I get up to this month!
This is such an exciting time and I can't wait to see what this December brings! Festive mode, engage!
XOXO

#SkyeBBAU Makeup Tutorial | First YouTube Video!

Hello everyone!

This is a very exciting post, as it marks the creation of my first YouTube video! I've been wanting to make a video for such a long time and I'm so happy that I've decided to take the leap and make one!

The video is a makeup tutorial for Skye from this season of Big Brother, and I made it to celebrate the finale this Wednesday. I love Skye so please vote for her to win because I think she's a little ball of sunshine who deserves the world!

The tutorial is for a pretty summery bronzed look, so it's not just relevant to fans of big brother.

I hope you enjoy! Please give the video a like if you enjoy it as I'm very nervous about putting myself out there and posting it! Be nice, it's my first try! I can only get better from here!

Much love,
Kate XOXO

University Assignment | Kate Does Life

This post is going to be a bit different than normal but I always love getting little insights into bloggers' personal lives so I thought I'd do the same on my blog. It will probably be more interesting to me than anyone else, but I just thought I'd like to have a document of this because I spent a long time on it and I'm quite proud!

So if you didn't know, I study communications at university, and this semester I took a course on visual communication. This meant that we had no written assessment, and everything was submitted in visual form. It was really fun to be allowed to be creative at uni and I had a really great time procrastinating by taking these photos! This is around half of the photos I submitted for my assessment.

Our aim was to create any photo story comprising of fifteen photos, which focused on our manipulation of viewpoint and light. Earlier in the semester we had a week where we looked at film noir and since then I knew that that's what I wanted my project to be styled as. My tutor helped shape my story and in the end it ended up as a take on a femme fatale. I love some of the photos I took, so I thought I'd share them on here for a nice little keepsake, to remember that it is possible to enjoy uni!

So here are a few of my favourite photos from the shoot, which has taken basically this entire semester to take and refine into these fifteen photos! *screams from the rooftop about how I AM NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER and there are probably so many things wrong with this but for someone with NO photography experience I think I've done pretty well!*

And there it is!
Talk to you soon!
Kate XOXO

Review: Royal Explosion nails by House of Holland

Hey there sunshines!

I recently got an email from ASOS highlightig a set of Elegant Touch's House of Holland nails. I fell in love with the design featured on the email, Ghetto Gold, but wherever I looked that shipped to Australia had sold out. I happened to be in Priceline and saw that although they didn't have the same style, they had a gorgeous set of black and glittery nails - the Royal Explosion design - that would suffice. I've never worn fake nails before but I've seen a few people wearing the Elegant Touch nails and loved the look of them so I thought I'd try them out.

The pack (and isn't it a beautiful pack?) came with twelve glittery and twelve black (with glitter on the underside - so cute) nails, so the design was up to personal interpretation. It also included nail glue and a nail file. I decided on doing a glittery hand and a black hand, as I knew that a "statement" nail would feel out of place and annoy me after a while. Let's stick to asymmetry.

The application was SO quick and easy. I've never applied fake nails before and I just popped a YouTube video on as I did them, and I was done before the video ended! The variety of sizes that they give you is great as you can really find a nail that will fit nicely in your natural nail bed.

I loved the "claw" style of the nails but found that I couldn't do ANYTHING with them that long, especially type, which is not good for a uni student who blogs in her spare time! I cut and filed them down to a more manageable shape and length, and I'm still going to call them my claws because I haven't had nails this long in a while! I still have trouble texting but they look so good that I can't bear to cut them down any more!

My only complaint is that the glittery nails have an uneven dispersal of glitter - some nails have more than others. My middle finger nail is completely coated where as on the others you can see the black through the glitter. I still love these nails and can't wait to purchase and wear more House of Holland designs. I've also got my eyes on the Little Mix 2 collection, so please stop me from buying them before I take these ones off!

Seeing as I'm new to the fake nail game, let me know some of your favourite brands and I'll try them out!

*tap taps new nails as I type... Weeeee!*

Kate
XOXO

Review: Maybelline Baby Lips Electro Pop

Hello sunshines!

I was at Priceline today mooching about, as you do, and I came across a sale bin of Maybelline Baby Lips lip balms! After returning from England at the beginning of this year with what is probably a three-year supply of the internationally-packaged Baby Lips, I have become increasingly angry at the small and badly packaged range on Australian shores. You could therefore imagine my happiness at finding out that the new Baby Lips Electro Pop range in Australia is packaged like their UK and US counterparts! I don't know why but even the formula of these improved balms seems smoother and nicer, and the packaging that makes them more lipstick than chapstick makes for an all round happy Kate!

I managed to pick up what I believe are the only three available colours at the moment - Pink Shock, Oh! Orange! and Berry Bomb. The packaging is chic and bright, and the formula is smooth and absorbs into the lips instead of sitting on top, which is a feature some of the UK versions sometimes miss. Being a tinted lip balm, the colour is not too vibrant and pigmented, but add a nice coloured sheen to your lips while moisturising them. I'll definitely be wearing these through summer to keep my lips bright and happy!

Oh! Orange! is probably my favourite colour of the three. I'm a sucker for anything orange this season, so I'm loving that this adds an orange sheen as my pasty complexion doesn't agree to well with bright orange shades. The only downside is that this has a very orangey flavour, which I wasn't too peachy keen on, but it's nothing that would stop me from using it.

The next colour I tried was Berry Bomb, which I was dubious about as I've never worn such a bright purple lipstick before. I was pleasantly suprised when the colour came out very subtley, but if you're looking for a super pigmented purple then maybe give this one a miss. The purple one has a lovely berry flavour, which is similar to the flavour of one of the UK Baby Lips balms.

And last but not least, we have Pink Shock. I really love this colour and the only reason that it isn't my favourite is that I already have so many pink tinted lip balms. The flavour of this one is delicious (probably my favourite of them all) and it's a lovely, bright rosy pink colour.

They each retail at $3.95 AUD and I am so happy with all three of them! I'm officially starting up a petition for all Baby Lips products in Australia to be repackaged like the UK/US ones! Let me know if you agree below, and if you've managed to get your hands on them yet!

Much love!
Kate
XOXO