£15 High Street Challenge - March

This month for my £15 High Street Challenge I decided to focus on one brand, e.l.f.  They have a 50% sale on so I thought I'd be able to get a lot of bang for my buck.

There's a caveat on this post though I'm afraid - on the website for the Personal Blend Foundation, they only had Medium and Dark listed, they didn't have a light that was sold out or greyed out etc, so I'd assumed that the Medium shade would be suitable for fair skin.  But when it came I realised it's far too dark for me and I'm having to send it back.  I do wish they'd had it listed on there but as unavailable as I'd been able to avoid this mix up then.  That aside, because of this, I'm now nearly £5 short of my challenge target - that's good because it's always nice to save money, however, I can't really get to the shops easily now I have Squidge, so I do most of my shopping online it's just not worth me spending £5 on something and paying like, £3 delivery... ah well.  Let's take a look at what I bought.

I bought:
Mineral blusher in Rose £5.95
Mineral concealer in Light £5.95
Personal Blend Foundation in Medium £8.95 (sending back)
Mineral Glow in Shimmer £7.95

A grand total of £19.85 (not including the Personal Blend Foundation), but it was 50% off, so the actual total cost was £9.92, bargain!

It's a bit of a mixed bunch really - I always seem to do this with e.l.f - browse their catalogue, buy a few products and wish I'd bought other things - not that I don't like what I'd bought, but I feel like I'm missing out on some real gems of theirs by not researching what I'm buying properly.

Take the blusher for example - I think it's a little dark for me, but on the website it looked perfect - what I should have done was look up swatches in advance, and then I'd have picked a different shade. The Mineral Glow - I'm not really sure on the best way to use this - it doesn't seem to be a highlighter, more like a pressed powder with a bit of glitter in it - so do I dust this over my face before a night out or do I use it as a very subtle highlighter?

The concealer looks great, however I should have listened to my instincts and bought the lighest one as this one, I think, will be the tiniest bit too dark - we'll have to see once it's in place and not on the back of my hand (which is darker).

I'm not disappointed with this months' haul, but I'm not elated either.  I'm looking forward to trying the products out and seeing what they're like, I was just quite excited about the foundation, so I'm disappointed I won't be getting to try that.

Do you have any suggestions on how to use the Mineral Glow?

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A spring meetup in Cardiff

 Carrots!!!

Strawberry massage bar

Gorgeous scented Lush bath bombs

Our lovely new friend, Alice :)

The ever-stunning Charli

The gorgeous Laura

The lovely Claire and Leanne

Rosie - the lovely organiser :)

e.l.f have a 'selfie' mirror, so we took a big camera selfie :)

A gorgeous eye shadow palette, love the shapes!

Pretty containers with pink ribbons dotted about the shop

 Our goodies - lip shine, eyebrow lifter & filler, 2 nail polishes & an eye shadow dust in sweet

A mini e.l.f haul - face wipes, brush cleaner and the small stipple brush

Yesterday myself and 6 other lovely bloggers descended on The Brewhouse in Cardiff for a casual meetup in the name of charity (Give & Make Up).

I got there a little late as I just couldn't drag myself out of bed in the morning, and the traffic was terrible, taking us the best part of an hour to get in (usually a 20 min drive).  When I got to the Brewhouse Rose and Claire were both there snapping away some lovely products that Lush were on-site selling (see pics above).

A few minutes after I got there, Leanne and Chari arrived too, and after a bit of a catch-up, we went and ordered some food.  Because of the pregnancy I'm craving really plain food at the moment, so I opted for a 'Classic Pizza' which is just mozzarella and fresh basil (I think you needed a microscope to find the basil!) - it was a little rich for me so I ended up leaving some, it was only luke warm too, and I'm not good with cold pizza.

After we'd all had some food, we headed over to the e.l.f store for a bit of a blogger event.  They'd prepared some lovely goody bags for us (pic above & my mini-haul).  They talked us through and demonstrated the different products that were in our bags.  It was lovely to see the e.l.f girls, they're really lovely and passionate about the store :)

After that Charli and I headed off, I was getting really tired and needed a bit of a recharge before heading over to my friends house in the evening.

All in all a really lovely day - I love small meetups, you actually get time to chat to people and catch-up, and hopefully meet some new people too (I'm looking at you Alice!).

This months Biggest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Casey from A Topsy Turvy blog

 

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e.l.f shop Cardiff - launch event

 This statement wall/pillar greets you when you walk in

 One of many e.l.f palettes you can buy in the shop

 ** Trying ** to be an artistic shot :P

Some of their mineral lipsticks - swatched one on my hand and felt soft & buttery

It wouldn't be a real event if they didn't have cake pops :P  How amazing do they look!?

Monday evening saw the official launch of the first European store e.l.f have launched here in the UK, in my very own home city, Cardiff.  Home to the Royal arcade, for anyone local, that's the one with Wally's delicatessen in.

Greeted with edgy DJ's booming out music, and barman from Mokka lounge whipping up cocktails in style, I was in awe of the store.  My colleague who I'd gone with asked me what the price range was, she thought they were priced the same as MAC, because that's how good the packaging looked, and more to the point, how stylish the store was.  When I showed her the prices of the products she couldn't believe it.  

This must be the first dedicated makeup shop in Cardiff that isn't the MAC freestanding store.  That's a sad thought, it would be so lovely for there to be more dedicated makeup shops here.  I absolutely love the location of the shop too - I love that they've stayed away from the clinical starchy units they could have had in St Davids 2, but they've set up shop in one of Cardiff's famous arcades where you'll find non-chain shops and little independant gems (Rules of Play and Clare's Buttons being some of my favs, oh and Madame Fromage!).

The downstairs is dedicated to makeup & nails featuring both their mineral line (black packaging) and their more budget line (white packaging).  Head upstairs and you'll find yourself in a studio - one that will see YouTube videos being filmed in, and a space for makeovers.

When I was chatting to Neil (director of Distribeauty who own the e.l.f Europe franchise) about his visions for the future of the store - he sees a future of customers coming in and having 'swatch days' where they swatch palettes and lipstick on their arms to be feature in their blog posts or YouTube videos - their products featured on 'normal' people, not necessarily models, but involving makeup fanatics regardless of whether they're just a fan of makeup, or a blogger etc.

All of the 6 girls who work in the store are fully trained makeup artists too, so you know when you're getting your makeup done there, you're not going to look like you've been shot in the face with Homer's makeup gun like 99% of the department store reps.

I love what e.l.f have achieved here, it's a beautiful cheek shop that's a pleasure to be in, I highly recommend making the trip to see it, it won't disappoint. 

** It's my best blogging friends 30th birthday today (A Scottish Lass), so why not head over and with her a happy birthday on her blog ** :)

This months Biggest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Amy from Srslylou

 

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Elf Haul

Hey everyone - hope you're all having a great weekend? (or whatever day you're reading this on :D)  

So, I decided to pop my Elf cherry and order some of their goodies online and see what everyone's been raving about.  What I didn't do (and probably should have) is had a look at what Elf suff everyone recommends first, instead of going in blind and thinking 'hmm I'll have one of them, one of them...' which means I'm not entirely sure I picked the cream of the crop, but hey ho, here we go :)

My Thoughts

Can't really say much right now as I haven't really used them to any length - I wore the lip gloss for about 30 mins, and swatched the eye shadows testing out the different primers, but that's it :)  I'll post a proper review once I've had some time using them - the only negative initial thought is for the lip stain - it's far too shear, you can hardly see I'm wearing any :S

Pixi3 out

xXx