Zines & handmade pretties

Last two pictures from 'Times Are Hard For Dreamers' issue 1

I bought the lion necklace and badge from Oh My Clumsy Heart on Etsy. If I had more disposable income, I would probably buy everything from sellers on Etsy. So many pretty things.

I received a cool parcel this morning from a swap site on LiveJournal and received some lovely zines (the Up Until Now 3 is from Oh My Clumsy Heart). I haven't bought any zines in ages because I keep threatening to one day go through my enormous zine collection and actually sort it out (this may never happen though), give away/sell any duplicates and catergorise it somehow. Anyway, these zines reminded how cool they still are and will probably prompt a mini zine spending spree.

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Daily 5

These are my current five products that I use daily or nearly everyday.

1. The Body Shop Hemp Hand Protector - I bought this for the first time about two months ago when it was in a half-price sale, a bargain at £5 for the 100ml tube. It's a thick, light green coloured cream with the texture of a body butter. A little goes a long way and it soon soaks into hands with no greasy feeling. I use it once a day before going to bed and wake up to lovely soft hands. This is particularly good if you have very dry hands (I imagine this is amazing to use in winter) or you just want to keep them supple. If you haven't used products with hemp oil in before, then the smell might be a bit off putting at first (it's not particularly gross or anything, just different!) but it doesn't bother me. Although I do love this product, I wouldn't purchase it at full price (£10), only because The Body Shop seem to have sales and offers on all the time and the Hemp Hand Protector is usually one of the featured products as it's a bestseller.

2. Palmer's Cocoa Butter Lotion - My favourite 'budget' body lotion by far. Another product that is usually always on sale somewhere, I generally pick this up and pay about £1.97 for 250ml at Wilkinsons. Most budget body lotions I have tried either irritate my sensitive skin or don't moisturise enough, but Palmer's always works for me. I love the smell of it too, it's a bit like vanilla ice cream! If you're not a fan, they also do a fragrance free version. I don't think it does a great deal to improve the appearance of stretch marks, but as a general all-round body lotion, I love it. This would also be particularly great in winter for making dry skin nice and soft.

3. Clinique Redness Solutions Daily Protective Base - I've always had problems with redness around my nose and whilst it's not a big issue, it does make me feel a bit self-conscious as make-up doesn't cover it. I've tried those colour correcting powders but they don't work for me as the skin around my nose is also very dry so they just draw attention to it. This Clinique product is a thick green coloured cream which corrects the redness and cancels it out. It also doubles up as an oil-free primer and has SPF 15. And it lasts forever as you only need the tiniest amount, not bad at all!

4. Benefit Hoola Bronzing Powder - My favourite (and much loved by many, many others) bronzing powder that is matte. This is definitely its USP, I really don't know why more brands don't do decent matte bronzers? Anyway, it's silky soft and seems to suit a good number of skin tones. I generally use Hoola as a normal face powder in the summer as my olive skin tans very easily, but paler girls can contour nicely with it. Only downsides (other than the price) is that the brush that comes with it is crap and the packaging box thing it is in gets tatty very quickly. It does last me a long time though, I've been using the one pictured for a good few months now and it barely looks used.

5. Everyday Minerals Long Handled Kabuki Brush - OK so technically not a product, but a tool that I use every time I wear make-up. It works well with Hoola above and any other face powders. It is the softest synthetic brush I've come across so far, and feels softer than most of the animal hair ones too! I've been using it for over a year and it's never shed once, brilliant.

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NOTD: OPI's You Don't Know Jacques

Excuse the smudgy nail!

You'll have no doubt seen this a million times before, but it's still one of my favourites.
Applies perfectly in two coats and is a gorgeous dark grey-mixed-taupe colour.

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Modern life is stressful

From top-bottom: Tulip, Dog, Cat, Rabbit, Whale, Cup, House, Piano, Box

Origami should be the last thing I am doing on this grey and rainy Sunday evening, but I find it relaxes me and hopefully creating small paper objects may spur me on to do some actual studying. For the above designs, I used this Easy Origami book that I found in a charity shop for 50p. It's an OK guidebook but some of the diagrams are a little dodgy (you may have to improvise where you fold etc), I'm sure there are much better books out there. The origami paper was a gift but you can find loads of the stuff for cheap on eBay, it's slighter thinner than regular printer type paper so it's easier to work with.




To procrastinate further, I've been reading up on Tarot, just for interests' sake. I play around with The Original Rider Waite Tarot Deck of cards and like this Collins Gem book which I would recommend to beginners as it's fairly easy to use.

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