The NAKED Truth

Naked 2, eyeshadow palette

Now we get to the heavyweight of the brand, one of the renowned Naked palettes. This particular one is Naked 2, and any one from the range will set you back a hefty £38, so it's definitely an investment piece, and only if you're serious about eyeshadow. I bought this one on Black Friday last year, and in the short time I've had it I now swear by it. The palette is formed of 12 shades, oozes luxury, and while I'm usually sceptical of brushes that accompany eyeshadow palettes, this is the best brush I've ever owned for applying and blending. Just be careful to use the right end, I once dipped the blending end in Blackheart and it took me forever to clean it. The shades seem bottomless, and with these colours the combinations are endless. Every shade in here is able to compliment each other, and is perfect for those who shy away from the bolder colours in Urban Decay's range. Unfortunately I have to deduct a point as it seems Urban Decay marketed this with white girls in mind. For those of you with a darker complexion such as myself, I would advise you to always put on a white eyeshadow as a base before using these colours, otherwise they won't show up nearly as well! Unfortunately, this does negate the effects of some of the lighter shades in the palette. 8/10

I'm going to do a quick one line review of all the colours in here though, as there are so many. Bear in mind these reviews are all based on my skin tone Here we go:

Foxy- disappointing highlighter, but could be worse 4/10

Half Baked- slightly grainy, bold,makes a really good look on a night out 7/10

Bootycall- even more pointless than Foxy 1/10

Chopper- for those feeling a bit more daring 8/10

Tease- Not too bad when applied thickly, works well with YDK 7/10

Snakebite- You know my views on this :) 10/10

Suspect- good when used as a highlighter 8/10

Pistol- Gunmetal just with less glitter 7/10

Verse- again, good highlighter but can work as a main colour 8/10

YDK- darker version of Chopper, doesn't show up as well but a subtle look 8/10

Busted- I use this a lot as a transition colour between Snakebite and Blackheart 10/10

Blackheart- the ultimate black, necessity for a good smoky eye. A little goes a long way and heavy handed usage will result in being mistaken for a panda. Approach with caution, and not for the faint of heart 10/10 

Urban Decay- Review

  Calm down people, this hasn't morphed into a beauty blog, the apocalypse has yet to happen. However after my previous post I did feel inspired to do a formal review of the brand Urban Decay, mostly because I felt I was plugging their products a lot in said former post. 

  Ok, so where to start. Well nearly all (and by nearly I mean all but one) of the products I own from Urban Decay are eyeshadow, so I feel this ties in pretty neatly with todays posts. I'm basically going to just rate out of 10 and say why you should buy them. I also feel the need to add in a little disclaimer that anything said in this post is my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the brand. Ok enough of the formal stuff, let's get to the real thing.

Long Lasting Primer Potion

You guys can read the caption, this is primer. For you males reading this, firstly I'm sorry. This is a girly post. Secondly, primer is what you put on your eyes before the colour goes on. Think of it as a base paint. This particular primer is the Long Lasting one from the range. It's probably the most expensive one I've every bought, and retails at £16 in Debenhams for 11ml. Honestly you don't need very much of it for each use, a little really does go a long way. It also prevents my make up from creasing throughout the day, and 9 times out of 10 I won't need to touch up my make up. It also takes less time to remove eye make up at the end of the day. 8/10

Left: Gunmetal, eyeshadow
Right: Snakebite, eyeshadow

  I'll review these one at a time. Gunmetal is actually in the original Naked Palette, but as I only wanted this colour it made more sense to buy it separately. Honestly I was disappointed in this colour when compared to other colours I have, it's too glittery for my liking and doesn't add to any of the other colours I've tried mixing it with. 5/10

  Snakebite is my personal favourite in the range. It's part of the Naked 2 Palette which I own (we'll get to that), but I use it so much I bought it separately too to pop in my bag when I'm out and about, rather than take the whole palette with me. It's an amazing colour and is perfect for when you want a smoky eye with a bit more colour to it. The name is also pretty cool. 10/10 

Also, both will set you back a hefty £14 each, making it not the most wallet friendly option, but I won't deduct points as every penny is worth it. 

All Nighter Make Up
Setting Spray

  This is the newest addition to my collection, the Long Lasting Make Up Setting Spray. This caught my eye over Christmas when I was with my flatmate helping her shop for some friends. It's £21 for 118ml at Debenhams, and slightly more expensive in Selfridges (I think, I may have misheard the woman selling it to me but I swear she said £27. Man I was robbed). I've only used it once but all indications point to it working. A criticism would be I felt a bit uncomfortable wearing what is essentially hairspray on my face, but it wasn't that sticky and my make up didn't need retouching during the day. The only other criticism is that it made it a bit harder taking off make up, but I guess that shows it's effective. 7/10 

The Journey Continues Online

  How has it taken me this long to discover Lord of the Rings Online?? There I was, trawling through the internet as I always do on my days off when I'm not in my usual sloth state of relentless sleeping and eating, when I decided to look for some LOTR related stuff to put on my Tumblr. After doing an initial Google search it didn't take me long to come across a link which has changed life as I knew it. 

  For anybody who doesn't know, Lord of the Rings Online is basically a huuuuggee MMORPG based on J.R.R Tolkiens writings of Middle Earth coupled with the movies directed by Peter Jackson. You basically choose your class out of men, dwark, elf and hobbirt, create an avatar and away you go completing quests, earning deeds and titles and fighting any monsters that cross your path. And obviously you can interact with other players you come across in the game which is always pretty fun. What I find so brilliant about it is literally every town, village and city ever written about by Tolkien is accessible in this game. I've only been on for less than a week but already I've travelled from the Shire, to Weathertop, to Thorins Gate. I even attemped to reach Rivendell and Rohan but my character isn't levelled up enough to survive the journey :( 

  Ok so it looks a bit like RuneScape at first. When I started playing my initial reaction was like "oh no, this looks like a waste of my time", but as I've got the hang of it I'm amazed at how addictive it's become. In a similar way to The Elder Scrolls games such as Oblivion and Skyrim, there is a main Quest storyline you can complete at your own leisure, and you're not tied down to it once you start, you can pretty much come and go as you please or go off and do other quests alongside it which is always pretty handy.

  My only criticism of this game is that in order to have certain things such as horses and houses or to acquire the majority of skills you need to really be successful when playing, you need to actually buy them with real money from the LOTR Online store rather than use in game currency, making it much harder for anyone playing purely for free to level up or get very far in a short period of time. Aside from that, this gets a solid 8/10 from me :) .