Fresh Paint: Nails of the week - 27/09/14

Hello everyone, so today I have something that I don't normally post, although I've been meaning to ever since I started my blog. This is my first proper nail related post!!! This post is kind of a nail tutorial/ nail update. 

These are my current nails everyone! They are pretty simple, just black and a thin glitter coat over the top, and anyone can do this look which is the best part! 

What you'll do need for this nail look: 

- Base coat

- Black nail varnish

- A thin glitter top coat

- Top coat 

- Some cotton buds (for clean up round the edges)

- Nail varnish remover (for clean up round the edges. 

I do not have any picture steps for this look as it's pretty easy to follow by the steps I'm about to tell you now. 

Step 1: Paint all your nails with your base coat and wait for it to dry. 

Step 2: Paint 2 coats of your black nail polish, I used Ted Bakers black (which is amazing btw!) and wait for it to dry. At this point if you have any black bits around the edges, just dip your cotton bud in some nail varnish remover and gently go around the edges to clean up. 

Tip: Don't forget to go over the top of your nail (not near your cuticles, the other end), slightly underneath the nail, as on the ends is where they first start to chip. 

Step 3: Apply your chosen thin glitter polish over the top of the black polish, I used BarryM's Diamond Glitter (which is a really pretty thin glitter with some round chunky bits in), and wait for it to dry.               

Tip: To get chunky bits of glitter on your nail, just give your nail polish a bit of shake or swirl your brush around in the nail varnish; when you find some on the brush, take of a little bit of excess, and just press it on to your nail and smooth out the other bits of glitter with it and you have a pretty chunk on your nail. 

Step 4: Finally, apply your chosen top coat and wait for it to dry. I applied my Nails Inc Caviar top coat as it is amazing. It drys your nails in 45 seconds and gives them a gorgeous shine. 

Everyone that is the finished nail look! I hope you liked it and found it helpful! Let me know what kind of nail tutorials you wanna see as I can interpret anything you guys suggest to me (hopefully). If you recreate this look tag me on Instagram: katiej0hnson or send me a tweet to: @omfgitskatiej 

Thank you all so much for reading, I will be posting a makeup tutorial and a pallet review in the next few days! So stay tuned for that. 

Loads of love and hugs 

Katie 

xoxoxo 

Update and a Chit Chat!

Hello everyone, I hope you are all extremely well and have had a good week. I am just here today to just have a normal chit chat and update you on a few things going on in my life.

The first big thing for me is my second year taking Performing Arts at college started properly last week and it's been really good so far. We had a summer project to write a monologue based on a Rik Mayall character and we could write it about anything we wanted to. I chose Rik's character from The Young Ones as his character was hypocritical, rude, and up themselves which is what I've applied to my own character but made those characteristics 10x bigger. My character is called Jazzmyn and she is a typical stuck up brat who thinks she deserves everything and she is rude to her friends. But the big thing about her, is she is a massive Harry Styles fan and thinks she is going to marry him one day. 

On Friday we all did our recordings of our monologues, because it is a voice assessment we have the recording played over us and we just have to act with our bodies on stage as were not speaking anything. But my monologue went extremely well, I was really worried about it all week because I had an awful feeling that it was going to go wrong and I'd have to redo it loads of times. However, I didn't and I did it perfect in the first take! My accent was on point, the emotions were on point, and I felt super confident in what I was saying which is fantastic. We perform them on Thursday to our first years which is extremely exciting as they all want to see us in action and I cannot wait to show them what were made of!

We've also started another project, our mask work. Now, none of us in my year have worked with masks as far as I know. But we get to create a mask based on an activity we did the other day where we had to look at ourselves in the mirror with the mask on and see what the mask was telling us and how it was feeling. My mask showed to me that they were sad, hurt, and angry and later on I realised it was because of something that happened a couple years ago from my past. I found it amazing that by putting a mask on it shows what is really underneath everything you show up front to the world. Also, it's amazing how everything you used to feel is still there inside you, even when you don't think about it. As for me, my eyes say everything that I am feeling and that was all we could see in the mirror, our eyes. I found it an amazing task that really made me re-evaluate who I am today and how I am in a better place now. 

But we have actually started working on the masks, by making them grotesque and adding features to them. To mine, I've added scowling eyes and defined eyebrows to show the anger in my eyes as the character I am playing. I've also added huge cheeks as when people get angry their face usually gets hot and the cheeks represent the face getting angry by getting puffier. Finally we had to cut out the mouth area so we can actually speak and that was cut in an oval/round shape. 

But apart from the new experiences happening in my year, we have some very special people who have joined us, which is our first years! There's is 25 of them, so a lot more than what there is in my year, we have 14 people now. But the people in the first year who I've started to grow closer to this week are absolutely lovely and I am so excited to see them grow over this year. I feel so much older now as I've been in their position and know how challenging and hard it is going to be, but at the end of the year it is all worth it. But the one thing I do hope, is I find friends in my first years like how I became close friends with some of my second years. It'd be wonderful to be able to find that in the first years somewhere. But, they're all very excited to watch us perform and so far, I am very impressed by their current acting skills as they had to perform a section of our monologues on the first day, and they were all fantastic. 

I also just want to say, a massive good luck to all of my amazing second years who are going off to university, drama school, teaching jobs, apprenticeships etc. I know you're all going to do amazing and come back and visit us sometime! 

 But, some of you are probably wondering apart from my own educational life, what is happening for life on my blog? well, I have some more makeup tutorials coming up at some point, but whenever I do them, it's sometimes just random ones that are unplanned or I've tried them once or twice before and think you guys would like them. But, I am thinking about maybe, doing some celebrity inspired makeup looks, some more reviews, some nail tutorials soon, an autumn look book (as autumn is the best month ever!!!!), and probably another haul at some point as there are a few new items to my wardrobe but not that many! 

But, I just want to say a massive thank you to a lovely girl called Carly, who commented on my last post saying I am such an inspiration. Thank you so much for that Carly as ever since I was 13 I've wanted to be an inspiration in some way or another and with it being something I love doing it means even more, so thank you ever so much as you really made me feel happy and just made my day! 

I will talk to you all again soon, I don't know when I will post next or what I will post next. But until then, thank you all very much for reading and just for viewing my blog in general! 

Loads of love and hugs, 

Katie 

xoxoxoxo

August Favourites & Gemstone Makeup Tutorial!

Hello everyone and I am so happy to finally be posting a favourites from the summer as I have not posted any again in such a long time, but I am hoping for September I have more than I do for August. 

Main cast poster for 13 The Musical

All of my incredible cast and I for 13 The Musical

But my one favourite for August is of course 13 The Musical that I took part in last month. Taking part in YOBOS is one of my favourite things to do each year ever since joining last year because you get to meet incredible new people, make amazing friendships, and put a musical on in a week when most professional performers can't even achieve that. It was really hard work but I loved every minute of it. The story in a nutshell is there is this guy called Evan who has to move to Indiana from New York as his parents split up and his main goal is to get all the cool kids to come to his bar mitzvah  . But along the way you see love triangles, rumours, lies, and just basically everything you want to do at 13 years old but you can't. Evan calls all the popular kids his friends when in reality his true friends were Patrice and Archie. But the main characters were Evan, Patrice, Archie, Lucy, Brett, Kendra, Malcolm, Eddie, Simon, Richie, Charlotte, Cassie, and Molly. I played Charlotte who was part of the popular clique and she was quite gullible and girly and she was best friends with Cassie, Molly, Lucy and Kendra. But Charlotte, Cassie, and Molly only followed who was popular between Lucy and Kendra. I really loved playing her part and her singing part for me was brilliant. I got to riff and do so many high notes and my voice improved so much this year thanks to voice classes at college, and I am just so happy. Missing the shows so much and cannot wait until we do Grease next year!!! 

Gemstone Makeup Tutorial 

Okay everyone, here is my interpretation of a gemstone makeup tutorial. I call this a gemstone makeup tutorial because of the shimmering eyeshadow shades and the contrasting colours of the copper shade on the main bit of the lid and then the taupe/pink ish shade on the outer v. But I absolutely adore this look, I think it is perfect for the day time or night time in autumn and I just love looking like a gemstone. So everyone if you want to know how to get this gemstone inspired makeup look, please keep on reading! 

Step 1

Apply your base as you normally would, I used my NYC Smooth Skin Perfecting Primer to prime my face to just take away any redness and smooth out my skin. But I really like this primer; it's very good for the price you pay. 

Next I applied my foundation which is Rimmel London's Lasting Finish 25 Hour in 010 Light Porcelain and I blended this in with my new best friend, my beauty blender! Honestly, everyone, if your fingers aren't working for you or brushes anymore, try a beauty blender as they are amazing! They make your foundation look more even and some how makes it thinner and you look a whole lot more natural and it's made me fall in love with my foundation again as it started to look caked on which was awful, but now thanks the beauty blender it really looks like natural skin. 

Thirdly, I applied my concealer which is Rimmel's Wake Me Up in the shade Ivory. I just applied this under my eyes, down my nose, under my nose and around any other areas I felt I need to conceal. I blended all of this in with the pointed end of my beauty blender. 

I applied my blush and powder. For my powder I used Rimmel London's Stay Matte powder in the shade 001 Transparent using my massive kabuki brush and then going back over my cheeks with a powder pad as I like more coverage from my powder. Then I applied my blush from Natural Collection in the shade Peach Melba on the apples of my cheeks and going up to the hairline. 

Finally I filled in my eyebrows using Rimmel London's Professional Eyebrow Pencil in the shade 001 Dark Brown. I basically just follow the natural shape of my eyebrows and try and make them even, how I fill in my eyebrows changes a lot so, I don't have a complete eyebrow routine, but at the moment, the image above is how I am filling them in. 

Step 2 

For this look I am using the MUA Undress Me Too pallet as all of you know I am all about drugstore products! 

Firstly I took the shade Wink on a fluffy blending brush and began to work on the outter half of the lid. (image one) 

Secondly, I took Wink again on the fluffy brush and built up the colour intensity and brought it further onto the lid and above the natural crease line. (image two) 

Thirdly I built up the colour intensity and brought the line above completely over the crease. I carried on adding more colour and shaping until I was happy with how it looked. (image three) 

Step 3 

Then I took the shade Fiery on a flat eyeshadow brush and firstly packed the colour onto my lid. I redid this step about two or three times just to make sure I was happy with the colour intensity. (image one) 

Once I was happy with the colour I started slowly merging the two together with my fluffy blending brush and taking another flat eyeshadow brush with both colours, Wink and Fiery on the same side to mix both colours together. 

You must merge both colours together because it will all look flawless and you want the colours to blend onto another instead of there being harsh lines. 

Step 4

Next I took a mix of both Wink and Fiery and smudged it along the bottom lash line and connected it to the top. (left image) 

Then I just tidied up around the edges, as you all know by now, I am not a clean eyeshadow blender as I love that winged point in my eyeshadow looks. I just took an angled eyeshadow brush for this with some of my Stay Matte face powder on the tidy up the edges. 

Step 5 

Here is what it should look like once you're finished on the eyelids. As you can see, I also just took some of the Fiery copper shade for my highlight on my inner corners as I felt a really light shade wouldn't have mixed well with the colours I was using. But at this point it is where you can go back and add in anymore shades or do anymore tidy ups before the mascara is applied etc. 

Step 6

Next I applied my mascara and I used my Volumising Mascara from Bodycare first and then I went over the top with Maybelline's The Falsies Flared. Once again, you can apply eyeliner if you wish guys but, I am not an expert at eyeliner and usually whenever I do eyeliner with eyeshadow looks it goes wrong and then I can't fix it, so I try and avoid it most of the time. 

Step 7 

Final step everyone is to apply some lip colour; because the eyes are quite intense I went for a neutral pink shade. It is Strike a Rose from the Maybelline Baby Lips Electro range and I absolutely love every single one of those shades as I have them all. They're such good quality and easy to apply, especially good for school and if you're a beginner with lip colours! 

Step 8 

Now you're finished and you can go out looking like a gemstone! I just really love this look, I tried it out randomly and fell in love with it, I wear it quite a lot and it's so stunning for the autumn months that are coming. But I hope you enjoyed this make up look and also my August favourites! I am sorry that I am not better at them. But you can follow me on twitter at: omfgitskatiej and also instagram at: katiej0hnson. 

Thank you so much for reading and I will talk to you all again very soon! 

Loads of love and hugs, 

Katie 

xoxoxoxo