Outfit for today

Because my sister thought my outfit was really nice today I took a picture and thought I'll upload it onto here ^.^

The top was one of the River Island jumpers which was on sale from £38 to £15, which is a bargain in my books ^.^ its super warm and 100% cotton, which I take as a good sign.
Shorts a fiver from Primark,  one of the five pairs I brought cause they were so cheap :') tights from Primark too!
Doc martins, my favourite! Theres no way around the price if you want the best quality, even my sister ended up getting some after ones costing a bit cheaper broke. I at least know mine will last for ages :))

And finalllyyy....see the hair? Its blended in very nicely with my normal hair so the dip dye experiment was a success!

Note: its a big shirt so my shorts look super short but its only my jumper covering it. If I pull it as far down as it can go...it reaches my knee. Oh dear. Also the mirror is a mess xd

So I did I little bit of shopping today...

Since my sister had gone to university, she had taken all of her make up which I had been previously using with her consent (kind of) with her all the way to Liverpool, so being 2 hours away from me, I could hardly keep borrowing her make up like this. So I went for a bit of shopping and went to Boots to see what I could find.

Yes. A little overboard on the Maxfactor there, but I couldn't help myself.
I'll start off with the nail varnishes and safe the best for last.
I got this lovely red nail polish which was called 'Ruby Tuesday' which I fell in love with as soon as I saw it. I'm currently wearing it right now actually. I think its a very vibrant colour and I think it was £3.99 which is really affordable as well. I've done a separate review for this on a separate post if you want to see that http://zoeishere.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/new-nail-varnish.html
One downside to this nail polish however is the fact it's been about 2 days and it's come off at the tips of the nails, which might be a sign I'm not applying it correctly but I'll just put another layer on tonight so not a major deal, it's still my favourite nail polish right now :D
There is also a larger version of the nail polish as well if you wanted but I thought the smaller pot was quite cute but I'll probably get the larger pot next time.
And you can see there is another nail polish next to it...yeah. I somehow misplaced that within the last 24 hours which is not impressive but its a very girly pinky shimmery colour and I thought I'd try something different because I don't usually wear pink. I've just looked on Ebay and I'm definitely sure it is the Diva Pink colour.

Now moving on to the lipsticks. For some reason I brought two of the exact same colour of different brands....I'm not really sure why I did that but I'm in love with both of them. They're both very pigmented and bright and I love wearing it.
One is the Bourjois Sweet Kiss lipstick in the colour 'Rouge Fashion' and this is really nice as it's very moisturising for my lips which I love because it keeps my lips feeling anything but dry :D
The other lipstick is the Max Factor Colour Elixir in the colour Ruby Tuesday which I use more often because I just love the colour, it's a really rich red and very pigmented and I find I don't have to reapply again and again as well as when applying the lipstick first time I don't have to keep on going back and forth on my lips to make it stand out further. I got slightly confused when I saw the nail varnish and lipstick were both called 'Ruby Tuesday' but guess I just like a certain red and hadn't noticed until now ^_^

Overall I'm super happy with my purchases and I'll be definitely be buying these again! :D As a student I can't afford much but these are really affordable, they're really nice and I feel as if I'm definitely getting my moneys worth, I find some products are far too expensive and of the same quality as the Max Factor brand or Bourjois so I always find myself in the same section in the store! ^_^

Why Exfoliate Your Skin?

I've learnt over the years that some things need to happen in order for you to look your best. As much as I hated to do it, when I came back from holiday with my lovely tanned skin, I had to exfoliate in order to remove dead skin cells. I try put it off as much as possible by pouring moisturiser into my skin but I had to decide between really dry and flaky skin or smooth less tan legs.

The smooth but less tan skin won.

I wouldn't settle for using fake tan at all, but in all honesty exfoliating is incredibly important in my skin routine because you need to remove the dead skin cells. You don't exfoliate everyday, but once every few days. If you exfoliate every day this is more damaging rather than beneficial for your skin.

I always find that after exfoliating my skin my skin becomes dry incredibly quickly, so as soon as I've dried my face, on goes the toner, cleanser and moisturiser and lip balm. However the main difference I feel after that is how soft and fresh my face is- a healthy glow which can only be made from exfoliating products.

But which exfoliating products to use? Personally I use St. Ives Apricot Scrub, which can be brought for normal skin as well as sensitive skin. This is a really great product because you can actually feel the grains when you rub a small amount in between your fingers. I can't describe how annoying it is to buy a product that is supposed to be exfoliating yet when I try it out at home it's like a face wash and doesn't do anything for me at all. Because I hate being disappointed when using a product at home, I always open the caps to smell the product as well as squirt a small amount out and feel the texture of the product.

And the St. Ives Apricot Scrub? Impressive. I've been so pleased with this product I've used it over and over again, and was devastated one time when I couldn't find it in my local store and it turns out they only redesigned the packaging (few!)  I considered stocking up for the long run in case they actually did stop selling it  :')
This product is really affordable, lasts me ages per container and smells great as well as makes me feel so awake in the mornings! I love love LOVE it!
Make sure you moisturise correctly once you've finished exfoliating because exfoliating your skin makes the skin dry :)
The products I use:
-St Ives Apricot Scrub
-Simple Kind to Skin Facial Toner
-Simple Kind to Skin Purifying Cleansing Lotion

I'm currently hunting down a new facial moisturiser so once I find a really nice one I'll update this post and add it to the 'products I use'

New nail varnish!

So I recently brought this new nail varnish which I think I'm in love with. It is Max Factor Max Effect nail polish in the shade Ruby Tuesday.

Its such a brilliant shade of bright red which I love and this smaller sized bottle was only £3.99 which is really affordable as well and I'm most definitely going to buy the larger version when I run out of this cute little tub.

The picture I tried to take before made the colour look more pink which didn't do it justice at all so I've taken a picture of it in front of a white background,  can you see how lovely and red it is? Red is one of my favourite colours and I don't think I've found a 'more-red' nail polish!
So am I pleased?  Very!

Ombre hair for beginners

So I decided to do a major hair change the other day. Rather than dying it a different colour I decided on getting ombre hair! I was quite worried about the change because I've never done it before and I was worried about ruining my hair as well as it turning out not the way I wanted to.

The bleaching kit I had used was Jerome Russell B Blonde Highlight Kit. In stores such as Boots I found it was more expensive than the one in Bodycare, which was about £4 so very affordable.
My sister applied the bleach onto my hair but basically you just brush it through, starting at the bottom and make sure the bleach is correctly applied to have a natural look because after all you are going to have a line where the hair will go from dark to the bleached light colour so you want it to look as natural as possible.

Picture during the bleaching process: Don't mind the massive white shirt, it's not mine, but seeing as I'm using bleach I had to wear a light shirt on top. As you can see there wasn't much bleach to do much of my hair, but I'm really pleased as to how it turned out.

For someone who didn't know much about what to do when bleaching your hair, I had to ask around on the best way to treat the hair post-bleaching. I was recommended to get this very purple hair shampoo and conditioner to remove the brassiness of the bleached hair. I used Touch Of Silver Shine Shampoo. This shocked me as to how dark purple the shampoo was, which looked pretty threatening, but it smelt amazing and really made my hair feel much more nourished. It only cost £3 which is really cheap as well. You are only supposed to use it every few days so I just used my regular shampoo and condition in between.

I was also told that my bleached hair would be at higher risk of damage so I made sure I brought hair serum as well as made sure I sprayed my hair thoroughly with heat defence in order to protect my hair from heat damage.

Here are some before and after pictures:

Before, taken around Christmas/ New Years

After, taken today, I wasn't wearing any make up and quality isn't brilliianntt and its a bit bright  but I'll put more pictures up later once I've re-dip dyed because I'm not 100% sure with the colour its turned now, it's like a light ginger colour which is really pretty but I don't know for sure that I want it blonde or ginger, or just a light brown yet :') This was just a test but if I plan on doing another bleaching I might just do the ends of my hair to get a nice gradient of colour :)

Products used:

Jerome Russell B Blonde Highlight Kit (40 minutes on hair)

Touch Of Silver Shine Shampoo

John Frieda Collection Frizz-Ease Hair Serum Original Formula

Tresemme Heat Defence Styling spray

I hope you enjoyed this and I shall be updating this section because I'm not too happy on that 'after picture' but it can stay on for now :')

Newbie

Hello everyone!
To those who don't know me (which is probably likely) my name is Zoe, I'm 17 almost 18 and I live in the UK. I don't know what I'm aiming for on this blog but I guess I have to try different things and see where that takes me!

Things going on in my life currently:
-Doing my A Level exams. I take Biology, Chemistry and Communications and Culture :D
-We've just had Easter and April Fools Day, so I'm currently recovering from chocolate and recovering from the paranoia that I'll get pranked on :')
- I've actually just made my first video which I uploaded to my YouTube Channel which was coursework based but I've gotten a good response from that so I think I might start making more videos which aren't schoolwork related :) If you wanted to check that out my channel name is MsZoeishere, I wanted Zoeishere because that's what my twitter is but it was already taken sooo oh well :D

If there's anything that you would like to see me blog about please leave a comment or follow me on here, not really sure whether they have a subscribing thing going on on this site, I'm pretty new to it but I'll learn ^_^

Thank you for reading!
Love Zoe xxx