June Favourites || 2015

Another month has come and gone and here's another favourites from that month post. I feel like this month's post isn't as succinct as some previous months but we're just gonna roll with it. I feel like I've probably forgotten a dozen things but you know, that's okay. If I loved them that much then hopefully I'll continue using them in July and remember at the end of July. I'm hoping...

B  E  A  U  T  Y

NARS RADIANT TINTED MOISTURISER
As I said in the post related to this, I didn't expected to like this as much as I do and it still gives me a heart attack every time that I use it. It has such an ominious yellow tint to it that it terrifies me. But like any moisturiser, you have to let it settle. I have to keep reminding myself of that every single time. I reached for this every day we had a late start whilst on the cruise and I could do my makeup because we weren't up and out of the room at 7am. This comes with an SPF of Factor 30 and it protected my skin better than the Sun Cream that I had brought with me and that had the same factor of protection. It was fabulous and evened out my skin tone a lot better than I anticipated. Plus, I wore this to see Idina Menzel in Dublin and if I had the confidence to wear just this and some concealer to see the INCREDIBLE Idina Menzel, you know it's gotta be good.

L'OREAL PARIS SUPER LINER ULTRA PRECISION LIQUID LINER
You all know me, I'm a gel liner lover but this liner has been a secret love of mine that won't be a secret any more. I bought this on a scoot around Boots one day. I think I was looking for one of their other liners but this one spoke to me. Maybe it was the gold packaging or the design of it but I just had to take it home with me. I've been loving this to do a quick flick. The tip of it is so narrow that it moves over the upper lashline like a dream. I can put it on it's side and still have a precise line that isn't too thick and the tip is precise enough to really create a thin wing. I would say that it does dry quite matte and does need a touch up every now and then to darken it up again but it depends on what you want it to do or whether or not you're going out and partying. It's a great wee liquid liner if you have two minutes to do your eyeliner and get out the door.

URBAN DECAY NAKED CONCEALER

I have two shades of this concealer. I bought the lightest one that was available when I was in Barcelona which was Light Warm. It did blend out nicely and didn't really change the colour of my face so I've been using it as a normal concealer for colourisation etc, etc. But I also bought Fair Neutral once home to get something that was a bit more brightening and truer to my skin tone. Because of that my bestie has now nicknamed me Casper. I'm amazed it's taken her 11 years to do that. Bitch. But the girl at the Urban Decay counter in Debenhams at Castlecourt did say that I would've needed the lightest shade because I am so fair. I have been using Fair Neutral religiously as my concealer. When it's under my eyes it brightens the area up because my face has all kinds of uneven colours going on. But when on my forehead, nose and chin, it's the same skintone. My face is weird. But I love the coverage of this concealer and the colour and even the smell. I'm weird for loving the smell, aren't I? Oh well. I'm weird anyway and I'm embrace it. 

DELIPLUS DESMAQUILLADOR

Yes, this is making another appearance in my monthly favourites because it is that epic and I'm out of it and I'm crying real, legitimate tears because I am out of it. Hopefully when you're reading this post, I will have stocked up on it again after a whistle stop trip to Barcelona - I'm talking landing and going to a ship and hoping my friend gets some for me and meets me at the port kind of whistle stop. (I NOW HAVE FOUR BOTTLES OF IT! BOOYAH!)

Throughout June, I was doing more adventurous makeup tutorials for Marvel characters and they were insanely coloured or extremely smokey and I needed something to take that all off without making me look like I had cried for a thousand years. This baby did the job with just ONE cotton pad per eye! Just. One. Cotton. Pad. I have never had a makeup remover that has managed to remove any eye makeup in ten seconds and one cotton pad. Maybe it removed some of the less pigmented shadows but Deliplus makeup remover removed shadows, eyeliner, mascara and even the liner in my waterline and tightline! I cannot even express my shock and jubilation at this because it did that and my eyelids weren't a hot red mess! Maybe a gif can do that...

SEPHORA CREAM LIP STAIN - 01 ALWAYS RED
I hauled this recently from my cruise as my friend picked it up for me because like an idiot I forgot about it when I was in Barcelona with her a couple of months ago. Muchísimas gracias, guapa! Anway, this lip stain is incredible. Actually, incredible. I wore this multiple nights on the cruise and it was my go-to red lip product even though I had brought a couple with me. This baby was my one and only red. It glides on effortlesly. If you're cack-handed like me, you cannot screw this up. The doe-foot applicator makes it so easy to apply and the formulation is a dream. It smells good enough to eat and it doesn't feel drying at all like some matte products tend to be. Sometimes I would forget to apply lip balm before starting my makeup and so my lips would be kind of dry when I applied this. It didn't matter. This went on so easily and stayed put. It wouldn't stay put through eating but it had good staying power when reapplied and I was just drinking. LOVE. IT.

M  U  S  I  C

IDINA MENZEL

I went to see her live in concert in Dublin on June 20th, the night before I went away on holiday from Belfast! That's craziness in one sentence for anyone that knows their Ireland geography. I got tickets to her concert for Christmas from my brother (after bombarding him with pictures of our dogs with their puppy dog eyes). I went down to Dublin with the bestie and I gave her a crash course on Idina Menzel on the journey. She knew of her from some musicals but didn't exactly know her other music. I had music on my iPad Mini and we listened to it on the bus journey down. 

I've loved Idina for years! I was probably first introduced to her about eight years ago when a friend sent me a link to Wicked. I became obsessed with Defying Gravity and No Good Deed. I remember walking down Botanic Avenue in Belfast with my mp3 player and mouthing No Good Deed during my years at uni. I probably looked nuts but I didn't give two fiddlers. Then I got her first solo album and loved it. I was excited when she appeared on Glee so that more people could know her awesomeness. Then she voiced Elsa in Frozen and everything went into hyper-drive. I hadn't followed the build up to Frozen and so didn't know it was her voice until the start of Let It Go and I turned to my boyfriend at the time and said, "I think that's Idina Menzel". Cue me slying going onto IMDB in the middle of the showing. There were only four people in it so whatever. I nearly lost it when I found it that it was Idina. 

I love her voice and seeing her live was something else. It was akin to magic. Honestly. Even when she messed up Take Me Or Leave Me because a girl had a 'Kiss Me, Pookie' sign in the air, she improvised and got members of the audience to sing with her after jumping off the stage. She was an absolute riot, a hoot and a half and genuine sweetheart. To see her was worth the stress of having to pack earlier than I would have normally done, got to puppies to boarding kennels, travelled to Dublin, survived the humidity that was plaguing the city and then going back up to get 20 minutes sleep and then going back out to go to the airport. Thanks, brofuss! 

Y  O  U  T  U  B  E

RACHHLOVES

Rachel had appeared in my suggestions box for a while and much like with grav3yardgirl, I kinda dismissed it until one day deciding to click and I ended up binge-watching her channel. Rachel has the craziest editing and I LOVE it. She's bonkers and bubbly and adorable and adorkable and I just love her videos. She does 'Lazy Girls Guide to...' videos and in her video for exercising, she started singing Mulan. SUBSCRIBE RIGHT NOW!!

BEAUTYLIFEMICHELLE

I found Michelle's channel after a shout out from velvetgh0st in her May Favourites. Michelle is an Irish YouTuber living in Sydney, Australia. All the points to her! I have to support my home girls especially when they have a gorgeous Southern accent. Michelle does beautiful tutorials from natural to glam to seriously looking like an Olsen. The girl has skills and she's super cute to boot. 

C  O  M  I  C  S

UNCANNY AVENGERS: MARCH TO SIXES #24

A comic book? What? Yes, a comic book or rather books because I'm featuring two in here. I bought this one on a whim when in Belfast with the bestie one day. We went into Comic Book Guys in Spires Mall because it was new comic book day for her and we're friendly with the guys that run the place. Her more so than me because I don't live in Belfast. But I was helping her find some Black Widow comics and I picked this one out for myself because it has Scarlet Witch on it. I bought it and I read it that evening. I really enjoyed it. Scarlet Witch didn't feature too much in it as it was more focused on Rogue but she was sassy in the final pages. I liked that.

SPIDER-MAN AND THE BLACK CAT

This was actually gifted to me by a friend of mine years ago. I started reading it back when I got it but never got around to finishing it. After redecorating my room and doing a great purge of university and high school work, I found my graphic novels from him and started reading them again. This consisted of all 9 comics in the series with Black Cat. I loved Black Cat aka Felicia Hardy when I watched the Spider-Man animated series when I was younger. I even started writing a mock screenplay for my Creative Writing class at university. I wrote the first five pages for a weekly assignment and then continued it on to about 20+ pages. I even mentally cast Emilie Ullerup as Felicia Hardy because she was such as badass as Ashley Magnus in Sanctuary (I'm still furious that they killed her off! Absolutely fuming because Ashley was my girl! Screw you Powers That Be & Damian Kindler). 

When I started to read this again, I couldn't put it down. The artwork was absolutely incredible and the storyline was so gripping. There definitely is something to be said about comics and I'll get into that in a later post or else we'll be here all day. I was hooked by the storyline from the get-go. Thankfully the entire series was here so that I wasn't let on tenterhooks by the cliff-hangers because those were dosies! I will however say that Black Cat's 'confession' didn't feel very in character as a raison d'etre. 

The comics aren't photographed amongst everything because I lent them to the bestie.

S  P  E  C  I  A  L     F  A  V  O  U  R  I  T  E

ROYAL CARIBBEAN: VISION OF THE SEAS

I've only just arrived home from my holiday on Royal Caribbean's ship Vision of the Seas. For twelve nights I felt like I was on the most amazing adventure. My brother and I took our mother on this holiday for a big birthday celebration and we actually got to celebrate her birthday on board which was made extra special by the crew. Happy birthday, Mum!

This was our third cruise with Royal Caribbean and our first time on Vision of the Seas and it was my far my favourite holiday in a very long time. The locations were incredible and places that I have always wanted to visit. I loved everything about the places we visited. But what really made this cruise spectacular was the people. We met so many wonderful people at our dining table, our waiters were amazing, the staff were fantastic and I swear, I laughed so much that my sides were hurting and tears were streaming down my face!  The craic was immense, people. The craic was immense!

What a month! July, the gauntlet has been laid down!