How GHD Compares to Irresistible Me* | Review

The season of humidity is almost over and Monica from Friends has got nothing on me, on the days that I can't be bothered to brush my hair it's like a lion has taken my place.

As you know, I've been trying lots of hair masks and products to tame my dry locks and give me a more sleek finish. For styling, GHD straighteners are what I use on the regs when I'm at home- the brand has become famous for just how brilliant their straighteners are so when Irresistible Me sent me their flat iron to use, I needed to see if it was worth making the switch!

The first noticeable thing about Diamond Flat Iron is the striking pin-up red that they come in. Obviously this has nothing to do with their functionality but how gorgeous is this colour? I'd love if they came in some other colours too, to match my Autumn homeware!

They're ergonomic, with a perfectly placed grippy thumb pad for grip and the tips are cooler than GHD's so you can really pinch your hair between the plates without getting hurt. They ends of the straighteners are further away from the plates than GHD's which means that you won't accidentally pinch the hot plates instead (yay, you get to keep your fingerprints!).

Unlike GHD's, where there's a simple on and off switch (I think their temperature is around 200 degrees or a little more) I.M's straighteners have temperature control from 150-230 degrees celcius. I tested both of these on the default of 200 degrees to see which one straightened better and they both did a great job, though the GHD's left my hair a little softer, my hair always catches in the plates which sometimes split my ends as I pull away.

The Diamond flat iron's plates seemed a little wider too, covering more hair as they went! On a daily basis I curl my hair with straighteners for a wavy look so I was hoping that the flatter shape of this gorgeous red pair wouldn't affect how bouncy my waves usually are- and it didn't. 

The below photos of me are my hair waved/curled and straightened by the Diamond Flat Iron.

I love that it lets me choose what temperature I use, and counts down by degrees when it's too hot to let you know the temperature. They came with a little leaflet that says the ceramic plates cool by -40F when touching your hair which is such an awesome and unique feature!

I'm not sure if the GHD's do this but its' a feature I think all straighteners should have to prevent frying your hair to death, one of the main causes of snapped ends.

Talking aesthetics, an easy way to know if they're turned on (ever been half way through straightening to realise that you accidentally turned them off?) is the green light strip inside, which increases in length the hotter they get. Apparently they're also eco friendly which you KNOW I love, hippie life forever!

GHD have a little beeping mechanism which lets you know when they're hot enough but is easier to accidentally switch off without noticing during use. Both turn off automatically if unused so there's no worrying about burning the house down as you skip off to work.

So, I feel that both of these tools do the same thing just as well as each other but personally, I prefer the Irresistible Me pair because of the grip and temperature control. My curls lasted all day which I'm so happy about! 

For delivery I waited a week which is fab since they've come all the way from America (oh, you need an american adapter but they automatically adjust to any voltage plug) but Sarah from See The Stars only waited three days. GHD have competition, I'll definitely be trying out some more of Irresistible Me's styling range in the future!

How do you like to style your hair? Do you think you'd make the switch to these?

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*this post contains a product or sample sent to me, but all words and opinions are my own.

Morphe 35O Palette | Swatches & First Impressions ⭐

The bandwagon has arrived and I'm jumping straight on it. How could I not for this Morphe Palette that's so perfect in colour for Autumn days and nights? 

A few of my favourite beauty bloggers have been hyping up this gorgeous rust Morphe palette filled with glitters and mattes.

For a while I've been on the hunt for the perfect red shadows, looking at the Modern Renaissance Palette from ABH and Meet Matt(e) Trimony  but in the end I decided to go for the Morphe 35O, because of the reds, burnt oranges (which I'm obsessed with at the mo) and balance of glitters to mattes. 

At around £21, it's such great value for a big eyeshadow palette as each of the 35 shades end up only costing about 60p!

The palette contains a mix of glitters and mattes in around equal measure, and every shade seems to compliment the other in some way. For Autumn I'm most excited about smoky copper eyes, matte sunset eyeshadow and barely there nudes; this palette has it all.

I was skeptical for a minute when the box first arrived as the palette itself is quite light (not heavy at all) which made me think it might be a little cheaper than the quality of Urban Decay or ABH, as promised in other reviews but it hasn't disappointed. 

Every shade is super pigmented, with and without primer. For the glitters I usually dampen the brush with a little setting spray so that more pigment is picked up but you really don't need to do a lot to use these shades.

My favourites at the moment have got to be the middle shades from the above swatches. The beiges, mauve tones and pinks are beautiful transitional colours and I'd say these shades especially compliment green and blue eyes. Hopefully there's no hitting pan soon with the amount of different shades I'm yet to try and the endless combinations this palette gives, but I'm definitely going to be using it every day for a while! 

Here's a look I did using some of the matte orange's and copper shades. Something a little softer to show that this palette doesn't have to be completely bold! Mauve Matters by Avon is mixed with Kylie Cosmetics Dolce K on the lips. 

One thing I wish they'd do is name or number each shade, but it's inspired me to create my own names for them! We've all wanted to name our own shades before, right?

Morphe is cruelty free (thank god, I forgot to check until after I bought it) and I purchased my palette from eBay (just make sure your seller is genuine) as understandably this sells out EVERYWHERE. 

If you're too nervous to buy from eBay, Beauty Bay also stocks the 35O for similar prices, but you'll have to catch it while it's in stock!

What do you think of the Morphe Palettes? Do you own any?

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Sunday Post #9 | The Ubud Temple

So, today's Sunday Post was supposed to be a tour of my new room/house, but the weather has been so bad here lately that the lighting for house photos has been terrible. Hopefully that post will come next week with a little sunshine! 

Instead, to keep with the theme of easy reading for Sunday Posts, I wanted to show a little piece of something I've been working on for a few long months (on and off, between events and classes). It's how I spend time on when I'm not chillin' in the blogosphere. You might know if you've been reading for a while or follow me on Twitter that I study illustration at uni, that art has always been my biggest passions!

At the start of summer, my boyfriend Alex found a huge door-sixed piece of wood in the basement of our old house so I decided to paint it. 

Wanderlust for amazing places is something that sticks with me wherever I go and sometimes painting these places is how I keep the travel bug at bay. At the time I was wanderlusting over Ubud in Bali and the gorgeous red brick temples- I think I'd been reading too much Eat Pray Love haha.

It's nooooowhere near finished at all and I'm not sure when it will be as 1. It's huge and 2. I chip away at it whenever I feel like it rather than spend hours at a time painting. 

Hopefully it'll be finished sometime this year but there's so much to build detail on. I want the temple to be super detailed and the background to be a little more impressionist, so I've began tiny brush details on the temple door and used a sponge to paint the background. 

You can also still see lots of pencil lines which won't be there when it's all painted over! 

I've put my hand/arm in a few of these photos so you can see the scale of it but here's the whole thing. It's over four and a half feet tall, I'm 5'4" so painting it for hours can be achey work!

There's nothing I love more on a weekend than to put on some music, grab a hot brew and paint. My mind really wanders as painting is so therapeutic, makes me feel better if I'm sad or tired and at the end there's something I'm (hopefully) proud of which makes me happy too.

I usually keep my art and blogging separate but figured that some people might like to see this side of me! Let me know if you liked this post and if you'd like to see more of my art or a post on this piece when it's finished! You can see more of my doodles under the 'art' tab in the top menu.

What do you do to chill out? Where would you like to visit?
p.s: Head to my youtube channel for a new vlog!

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Hidden Treasures🌱 Chesters By the River, Vegetarian Café

Hidden in the footpaths and windy lanes of the Lake District is Chesters By The River, a quirky and modern vegetarian restaurant/café, which welcomes dogs too with the only rule that once they start to outnumber people (and this has happened) that no more will be let in. 

The last time I did a Hidden Treasures post was around my birthday in March on V Revolution, a vegan junk food place in Manchester's Norther Quarter that is equally as amazing as this place- only Chesters offers up a larger menu, whole counters of cakes and more nutritious food.

When I'm at home with the fam we go into the Lake District a lot, and with me being vegetarian for almost a year now (craaaazy!) we decided to head to Chesters for some lunch before heading to Ambleside Park, my favourite childhood place. 

It was such a nice day so we sat outside which was lovely for a few minutes before a family of wasps decided they wanted our drinks. So we moved inside to order at the counter, where there were huge bowls filled with noodle salads and other gorgeous foods. 

There was the option to eat in or take-away if you don't feel like sitting inside, where they have a garden seating section just for take-away orders.

My sisters and I all chose different pizzas to eat in. I had sun-blushed tomato with goats cheese and red onion marmalade and my sisters had a margarita so we swapped pieces and I can vouch that they were amazing! Kind of how Elizabeth Gilbert describes Italian pizza in Eat Pray Love.

All of the pizzas are cooked in a stone oven for all to see which really crisped them around the edges and made them taste so much more authentic than a regular shop bought pizza. My stepdad had some kind of egg dish and my mum had a sandwich with pad thai noodle salad on the side.

To share we got two decent sized bowls of home made chips (which were the BEST chips I've ever had, no lie) to split!

Aside from the wasps this was a really nice eating experience which is all you can ask for when choosing to eat away from the comforts of home. Chesters was so clean, had a high chair for Alfie my nephew and the waitresses/waiters were so friendly.

As the name suggests, this little place is by the river so the decking around the building shows a gorgeous view of the river and forest that leads into Ambleside, fully prepared for English showers with happy yellow parasols above the tables. 

I'm sitting there thinking CLEARLY this place is one of the most Instagrammable places ever- light up letters, white tiles, marble bathrooms, colourful tasty food and a view (hence so many photos!).

On the side of the café, just past the take-away area is a shop filled with awesome gifts and books all organised in colour sections. If you're holidaying in the Lakes there's plenty of mugs branded with your favourite fells and if you live in the Lakes and don't need souvenirs there are cookbooks, colouring books, art prints, homeware from terrariums to tin desk lamps. 

I swear I'd set up camp in that shop if I could!

After eating and snooping around, I grabbed a filter coffee from the take-away counter and asked if they had soy milk. They didn't but they had Oatly Frothing milk (basically a milk made from oats, no animal product) and it was SO GOOD. I need to get my hands on it so if anybody knows where to buy it, let me know!

For meals, the food wasn't too pricey. The chips were a little pricey at £4 a bowl and the coffee was small for £2.40 but I'd SO much rather give money to small businesses who really work hard on everything than large copy franchises. Honestly I couldn't have made the food better in my dreams and I'd go again and again, especially if the weather was as lovely! 

I'd love to see more vegetarian café's like this that really prove vegetarian food to be not bland or boring but colourful, tasty, interesting and nutritious. 

Do you ever eat vegetarian or would you consider it? Let me know if you visit Chesters!

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Naturtint CC Cream & Vital 5 Hair Mask | CF Haircare

Through Autumn come winter, my hair always needs some tender lovin' care between dying it and using heat on it to restore some life. Using heat on my hair and dying it so often have been the two things that make my hair lack a little lustre sometimes and I've been trying EVERYTHING to bring it back to it's regular shine.

Nothing makes a bad hair day worse than frizzy ends! 

Since switching to cruelty free products, Lush has been my go-to for haircare as their shelves are chock full of gorgeous smelling hair masks and natural products. I'd been using the R&B hair conditioner which is lovely and leaves hair pretty soft after drying, but I wanted to try something else too so decided to try out Naturtint's CC Cream* (a gorgeous smelling hair serum) and Vital 5 Hair Mask.*

I use a strawberry sized blob on my hair after shampooing it, twist it up into a bun and leave it to soak in for five minutes while I wash my body. Then rinse it out and rub a little extra conditioner through the ends before rinsing it all off. 

Unlike most hair masks, I couldn't feel the effects as immediately when rinsing it off, but like the Lush R&B mask it felt softer, less frizzy and detangled once I'd dried it. 

This seems to be a trend with the natural hair products I've used, maybe because they're sillicon-free? Silicon in conditioners is a plastic based polymer that clings to your hair and can't be washed out with water, kind of like a barricade! So it stops hot oil treatments and other hair-penetrating good stuff from working. Hopefully a silicon free conditioner will keep my hair healthier in the long run!

Once my hair is towel-dried I've been using a pea-sized amount of this Anti-Ageing CC Cream on my hair. Usually Argan Oil or Coconut Oil (a natural GOD SEND) is what I'd use to do the job but they can get a little greasy and if you put too much in and you end up looking like you fell into an oil slick.

The formula for the CC Cream is less greasy and oily, it dries completely once given a rub through and smells incredible. My hair has been less knotted and styles so smoothly since using this!

If you have long hair you'll know the struggle of looking like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards every morning, so this also acts as a little de-tangler! As I said the scent is lovely, but Lush's R&B has got a lovely jojoba, coconut scent that I can't get enough of (albeit R&B doesn't do as great of a job as untangling).

Pamper night wouldn't be pamper night without a hair mask and face mask so I'm definitely going to keep using these throughout Autumn and Winter to strengthen my ends! I'm so close to having my hair at the length I've been adoring so cutting it would be gutting- these products should keep my ends in tact until I'm due a cut for sure. 

Naturtint are completely vegan and cruelty free, like most of Lush (some of their products aren't vegan, but are cruelty free)! 

It makes me SO happy to see that we can achieve beauty standards from these all natural products just like we can from companies that test on animals. It really highlights that theres less and less of a need for animal testing if we can all look flippen' gorgeous and save the bunnies at the same time. 

You can get Lush's R&B Hair Mask for £11.95 here, Naturtint's CC Cream for £8.49 here and the Vital 5 Hair Mask here for £14.99. It's a HUGE tub so totally worth it.

What do you use to keep your hair healthy and strong through the cold months? Have you ever tried any natural products?

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* this post contains samples sent to me for testing. All words/opinions are my own! See my disclaimer.

Sunday Post #9 | Autumn Homeware Wishlist

lobsterandswan photography

It's been a long while since my last wishlist, but by this time next week I'll be properly moved into my new place for my final year of uni. I can't stop scouring the shops and internet for gorgeous homeware because having a place of my own and being able to do it up is a god send, honestly. I've found that with getting older has come a new love of being independent. 

Being at home (the one with my family) is wonderful, I wouldn't change my home life for the world but the allure of personal space has got me in it's grip. There's nothing more novelty to me than being able to decorate a place exactly how I want it, making it a representation of me- somewhere I feel completely chill and at home.

It's crazy how fast time has gone since the end of summer last year and how much has happened since. My tastes have definitely changed, my new house is smaller and more homely but beautiful and I can't wait to show you it in a home tour vlog when it's all unpacked!

Half of my belongings are moved into my bedroom already but there's a few things I really wish I could squeeze into my budget right now that I thought I'd share with you!

This faux deer fur throw looks SO gorgeous and fluffy, definitely a must for when the cold weather finally sets in and there's nothing to do but bundle up in blankets. I'd never purchase real fur so this is a great second, but is still a little costly at £34.99.

Primark are KILLING IT with their homeware range this Autumn, which is great because they're so afforable! Would I be a blogger without a little copper and marble thrown in? I can see these being in trend for a long time especially with the Zoella Lifestyle release on the horizon. 

I'd have to pick up a couple of these copper candle holders for the fireplace that's in my room. I love that you can hang them too. You can find the marble laundry basket here for £3.50. This wonderful foiled print is from Etsy and is handmade at a really affordable price!

While I was in The Range last week I spotted this fluffy bear cushion (in orange, but that wasn't on the site). I'm all about simple with some injections of colour this Autumn/Winter, so throwing a little orange and red into the mix looks gorgeous. You can find the orange filled cushion here.

You might know if you've been reading my blog for a while that I'm a sucker for succulents and cacti. My boyfriend is too and together we have a whole family of over ten little plants which I've been meaning to put in a terrarium for so long!

This glass fishbowl is a perfect size for some of my favourites, so I'd probably get this one and a smaller one for the rest.

Finally, the second most expensive on the list next to the deer throw is this brushed cotton bedding. There's something so fresh and lovely about plain white bedding, though knowing me I'd spill on it within the first few days.

Brushed cotton feels so luxurious but is actually fairly affordable! Really great for that luxury look for less, especially paired with a faux fur throw or copper fairy lights (which I already purchased, stay tuned for a homeware haul and house tour over on my Youtube channel).

One of my favourite gals, Monami Frost has a huuuuge amazing Hollywood mirror that she built herself! I'm not quite that great at DIY, especially when it comes to electrical so this little dressing table hollywood mirror is a great replacement at only £29.99.

I feel like I'm going to need it come dark mornings when I need to do my make-up but can't see my face. I'm not sure my boyfriend will appreciate it though! Haha.

What's on your wishlist for Autumn? How do you decorate your place?

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