Get Glowy 🌟

HAPPY HUMP DAY!! Hellooooo my gorgeous readers, I'm back into the swing of things again now and hoping to be publishing a new blog every single week, if your lucky I might even blog twice a week!! Since it's Wednesday I thought I would post a nice light blog on how I maintain a 'glowy' look throughout the week, trying to avoid foundation at all costs!! I have LOADS of friends on Facebook and other social media sites who are away on holidays at the minute or who are leaving now within the next couple of days so I thought this post might be helpful and relevant for all you lucky holiday goers!

Now I said two minutes ago 'avoiding foundation at all costs', I am for sure, not saying I hate foundation! It is my all time favourite makeup product and I will be sure to blog about my top affordable picks soon. However, when it's clammy and warm (not that often in Ireland.. haha!!) I absolutely hate wearing it!! It's just because you be so warm it practically melts off your face and goes all patchy and disgusting looking and your contour is just no longer on fleek and your eyebrows have went walkies around your face - not good!! Also I don't know if it is me being silly but I feel like my skin breaks out so much when I wear foundation in the hot weather for the reason that, heat opens up our pores and if we are caking our face in oily foundation in hot weather it is getting absorbed into our wee pores, causing an oil build up (SPOTS!!) So to avoid looking like this I'm going to talk you through some quick steps which I think works for me, and the products I find best for it!

First of all, I think it is good to always have a tan on your face, just nice a bronzed look, not 'night out' tan, its essential for that glowy look! To reach this look I have been using the Righteous Butter Sunkissed Tint Body Lotion from Soap and Glory. The reason I use this product for my 'glowy' look is because it's more of a tinted moisturiser than a tan, therefore it isn't heavy on my skin. Another reason I use it is because it is instant, and washes off straight away again that night when I am cleansing. The tan also isn't extremely dark, because being realistic we don't want orange faces and white bodies, now do we? Its a great wee light lotion, takes two minutes to apply and works as an amazing base for that GLOWY look everyone is loving! Available at your nearest Boots store or online on Boots for only £8 .. LOVE IT 

Swish, Swish Bish.. ON TO THE NEXT!! Now that I have a fab base my glowy makeup routine takes five short minutes to complete. I actually can't believe I haven't blogged about this next product yet because it literally is my all time favourite!! It is the Coca Contour Pallet from Too Faced Products, not to mention all of their wonderful products are cruelty free, no wonder I love it so much!! The contour pallet is literally the best I have ever used, and smells so divine. It is a powder contour pallet and I used the 'deep' version, shown on the right, I known the darkest shade seems extremely dark but honestly it's the best for a deep contour. However, if you do have lighter skin it is available in a lighter shade. The pallet is £32 pound which is quite expensive, it is available from loads of places online and in store like Debenhams and also available on Beauty Bay. I know it is quite expensive, but girls I'm not joking, Kyle got me this a Christmas as a present and you wouldn't even know I've touched it. I use it every single day, and my sister also steal's it every now and then for when she is heading out.. see! I told you all sharing is caring .. haha!! To get my glowy look, after I apply my sunkissed tint lotion, I then move onto shade 'medium coca' on this pallet and give my face an all over go with this shade. It adds a nice colour and tone to the face, helping reduce the redness of any blemishes I may have. Then using a smaller brush I use shade 'dark coca' to help enhance the shadow areas of my cheek bones still having that slight contour, and TADA that's literally all that is needed from this pallet it works a treat!! DO NOT get me started on this pallet when I'm going for a more dramatic look.. ITS AMAZING! Also, Too Faced are a great website to shop off, at the minute they have a little welcoming code set up, if you enter your email address you are immediately given a 20% off code.. why not get on it?

Now to save me repeating myself about my brow technique, I use the same product everyday for my brows so if you want to check out how I do my brows, check out my  'Bargain Brow's blog. Literally everything you need to know about my brow's is within that blog. Brows are what I complete next, then onto my FAVOURITE step.. HIGHLIGHT!! I actually don't know anyone who doesn't love being overly highlighted.. it's one of my favourite things to do! I actually get excited to finish the majority of my makeup so that I can just highlight the hell out of it .. sorry! What better highlight pallet to use other than the most amazing Suzanne Jackson?? For anyone who know's me, before I blogged SoSu was and still is my biggest inspo, for anyone who doesn't know her or hasn't read her blogs (you are all crazy!), but other than that, get on and get following her, she really is truly AMAZING! So to highlight my glowy summer look, I finish it off with SoSu's 'GLOW BABY GLOW' highlight pallet which is filled with six outstanding highlighters .. aw they make my heart melt! The shades which I find work best for my bronzed 'glowy' look are 'Candy Crush', 'Melted Gold' and 'Peach Smoothie' now without even looking at them highlights, don't they just sound divine? I use these three all mixed together to finish off that lovely tanned glowing look. The pallet is available on a couple of sites including SoSu's very own website for 29,95euro or also available in any H.Sweeney Chemist or Gordons chemist for in and around £25 pound, but honestly well worth it! Also have this pallet since Christmas and not an indent on any of the highlights, very long lasting which makes it well worth the money! 

Now that is the top tips behind my 'getting glowy' look, to finish the look I always just darken my lashes with some mascara and that's it complete! I know there is quite a bit of reading but honestly the look takes a maximum of ten minutes to complete and works a treat for anyone who works in fashion retail or any retail who doesn't want to be working with the public looking like a zombie, but also doesn't want terrible skin caked in makeup.. it's a hard life for us girls haha!! I hope this blog was fun for all you lovelies to read and I hope you all picked up some tips from it. Keep me posted on all your 'Get Glowy' looks this week, I'm super excited to see them all!!

Lots of love,

          MaireMe xx   

Summer Essentials with MaireMe 🍋

Hellooooo my beauties!! I'm so excited to be writing again, I just never get the time to sit down on my laptop and blog because I'm literally never in the house, but today I made it my mission to get a wee hour and tell you all about my fabulous essentials which have saved me for the first couple of weeks of summer. What more do you want during the summer than to be tan, with smooth skin and white teeth?? I don't know about you but for me that's goals. Although I 100% am not your biggest beach babe right now, with these three wee treats I am going to blog about today, I feel like I'm getting there and that's good enough for me - happy mind happy life and all that LOL! 

First I want to tell you all about Marissa Carter's Coca Brown tan, I'm probably about 5 months behind with this but I don't care because it really is a god send. I always hunt for tan that, gives a nice finish (no green or orange hands please..) and one which washes away evenly, and not to mention something that's affordable. I really don't see the point in paying extremely dear for tan when it washes away down the drain after a couple  of showers.. realistically like?? So I found Coca Brown hidden in my sisters bathroom cabinet one night, and well.. I made myself welcome to it, sharing is caring and all that. God bless my big sisters because I really am a torture, everything she buys new I have to get a go of it, mostly before she even gets to try it herself, but sure that's what baby sisters are best known for LOL. Anyways back to the point of looking gorgeously tan, at the time she had purchased the medium shade in the tan, and I usually would wear dark because I would already be naturally tan anyways, but I still gave it a go and WOW!! On the bottle it says '1 hour tan' but when I was applying it I was thinking to myself 'Nope it probably will still need overnight to reach a good colour' .. well within an hour I was a bronzed babe, I am not even lying girls it went on so evenly and it looked so natural.The next morning when I woke up it wasn't much darker but there was a slight difference and it just looked so nice!! I never believe any bottle of tan when it says 'instant' because it never just comes out a lovely bronze colour it always still takes some time to develop, and one wee drop of water and you go patchy NUMBER ONE HATE!! However that wasn't the case with this tan,I genuinely think it would be near impossible to get this tan patchy it just is so easy to apply. Also I thought I'd add in tips on how I apply my tan, people always say to me, your tans so even 'it never goes like that around my hands' and oh my I definitely know the struggles of hand and feet tan, not forgetting them elbows and knees - the struggle is real. All I do to ensure my tan is even is to apply a generous layer of Soap and Glory Moisturiser all over my body before applying the tan,

I always leave my hands and feet till last. Whilst applying the tan to my arms and legs I avoid my elbows and knees until last and then whatever is left on the tanning mitt I just skim it over. The reason I do this is because the skin on your elbows and knees is hard skin, the tan doesn't absorb very well into these areas instead it just sits on top, therefore if you apply a million layers to these areas its just going to look so dirty, and I just cant deal with that!! Now to my hands and feet, feet aren't that hard to do, I honestly do just think they key is lots of moisturiser, before I put the tan on, I sit a blob of moisturiser on each of my feet, I DO NOT rub it in just yet, I then put on a small amount of tan with the moisturiser and rub it in along with the moisturiser, it makes it easier to apply and ensures it reaches every part not leaving any tracks or white patches. When it comes to my hands I do the exact same thing (please do your feet before your hands and then scrub your hands clean otherwise your going to have extremely orange hands LOL). When tanning your hands please make sure you apply your tan and moisturiser to the top of your hands and NOT the palm of your hands, otherwise the wotsit palms strike again, and that's not attractive!! Other than that do the exact same thing and moisturise the tan and cream into your hands together, I find that sometimes I can have excess moisture on my hands, what I do for this is I get an old towel or a dark coloured one and put it in between my hands and wipe my palms on it then continue to moisturise the tan and cream into my hands, I repeatedly do this until I feel the tan is well rubbed in and my hands are no longer sticky. A tip I also learned off Marissa Carter who is another Irish blogger, (go follow her she is amazing!!) was that lemon juice helps encourage tan to develop, it works as a tan accelerator. The only place where I would use it is my chest, the layer of skin on your chest is usually much thinner than the rest of the body so just like the elbows and knees the tan finds it hard to absorb here, so last week I put a thin layer of lemon juice on my chest just before applying my tan and it worked a treat and really helped the tan develop!! Please test the lemon juice on your skin first to ensure you are not allergic to it, or to ensure the skin does not react in any way, but if it doesn't it really is a useful tip! Coca brown is also only £7.99 in Gordon's Chemist, also available in Primark! Also girls you know me, Coca Brown tan is 100% Cruelty free, so why would you not try it ?? 

I'm wearing Coca Brown in both of the above photos and as you can see, the finish is so glowing and smooth.. I just love it! Definitely recommend you try it girlies!

Know I know some of you have probably got bored, closed out of my blog liked it on Facebook and scrolled on, but this one is for you lucky humans who kept reading - thank you! Because now I'm going to talk about whiter teeth wooooo!! Right so, I wasn't really set out on getting extremely pearly whites asap as i'm going to the Philippines in a few months and i want my teeth at their whitest then, but for now I genuinely was just looking for a better toothpaste, me and Kyle were on Very.co,uk one night and we scrolled across Mr. Blanc Charcoal Teeth Whitening Polish, and if your Instagram is anything like mine, every two pictures I scroll past is them charcoal toothpastes being used by pure babes with nice shiny teeth - depressing I know! But anyways I was like will we try this, it was only £14.99 an usually other toothpastes and teeth whitening strategies are quite expensive so we thought why not and ordered it. Also another point I would like to make whilst I'm on the topic is please don't order anything for your skin or face off eBay for a cheaper price unless you know it is a genuine seller, because I just have such a fear of it damaging your teeth or skin - it FREAKS me out!! Anyways I've only been using this toothpaste for about 2 weeks and I absolutely love it!! I hasn't made dramatic changes to my teeth but I definitely feel better and feel like I have a brighter smile, I will also admit I do not brush every morning and night most days its just the morning, so I can only imagine the difference I would see if I faithfully brushed morning and night! This product is also 100% cruelty free, so don't worry gals I got you covered! TIP: Whilst brushing my teeth I try and leave the charcoal sitting on my teeth for 1-2 minutes before brushing for another 1-2 minutes, I found this was giving me the best RESULT.. 

                                     BEFORE                   AFTER

As I said the results aren't dramatic but girls you get what you pay for and I definitely am impressed!! If you have any more questions about the product do not be afraid to message me on Facebook or Snapchat i'm always happy to help!

So gals (and boys) that's me for today, just a few tips on how to look good, feel good just at the beginning of summer! Happy Mind, Happy Life it is so important to be comfortable in your own skin and feel good about yourself, what better way to do this than to share your beauty tips with others, one reason why I LOVE writing my blogs, it's helping to empower other girls and make them feel better about themselves. Before I get all emotional and deep I'm going to leave it here.. but I promise i'll be back soon and wont keep you all waiting as long next time!

MaireMe xx