Natural and Simple Bridal Look! Perfect for Summer ☀️

It's that time of year where it seems everyone is going to weddings. Either you yourself is getting married, one of your best friends or maybe you're just attending the reception but we all need a look that we can wear for the day. 

This look was so last minute of me that I decided to make it into a blog post after I wanted to put on a bit of light coverage makeup and made my hair into this bohemian bun. This look is so versatile and adaptable especially for the warmer months as you can wear it with different headbands or even with braids/plaits if you have the time and it is so much more easier to do than it looks! Thus, this look can be used for festivals looks for when your hair is a tad oily or if you have an event or such where you need your hair up but still like it looking flawlessly pretty. The makeup is too very gentle to wear when it's warmer as the base that I used was Clarins HydraQuench Tinted Moisturiser which has an SPF of 15 in it to keep the sun off you for the day and is light on the skin which let's it breathe. Below is what I used for each step of the makeup and how I did my hair for this Summer Bridal Look! 

To achieve the natural makeup, after applying the base I set it with MAC Skinfinish Natural as this is known to keep your foundation in place for the day - a must for special occasion makeup! I lightly contoured my cheekbones with Nars Laguna Bronzer to give my face a little dimension. I applied Benefit's Coralista blush to the apples of my cheeks to give it a natural flush to add to the natural and simple makeup look. 

I filled my brows in with my L'Oreal Brow Artiste pencil as a brow pencil gives the effect of my natural brows as you can easily mimic brow hairs when filling them in. This pencil is great as it comes with a tiny brush on the cap to comb through the brows before and after. Plus one end of the pencil is wax which you can easily set the brow in place with. Although the wax end of this pencil is very soft this means it runs down very very quickly so I don't use it every single time - especially when it was part of my everyday makeup routine.

After filling my brows, I wanted to go for a 'barely there' look for the eyeshadow. I contoured my eyes by placing Laguna bronzer into the socket and crease from my brow bone towards the inner corner to make my eyes less rounded and more 'cat-eye' shaped. I used Benefit's long wearing shadow in the shade Call My Buff to highlight under my brows and in the tear duct area before placing a light petal pink shade from this Sleek palette shown below and mixed it with Call My Buff to place all over the lid and blended into the crease. I used my favourite mascara at the moment, Rimmel London's Scandaleyes RetroGlam mascara - this isn't a natural looking mascara but for this look I really wanted to achieve super long and thick lashes, just to give the look something that stands out for special occasion makeup. To make my eyes brighter, I used Rimmel London's white kohl eyeliner - white eyeliner is great for making your eyes look bigger or brighter and makes you look more awake so it's great in the mornings!

I used L'Oreal GlamShine Stain Splash in Lolita - a gorgeous natural pink coloured gloss - these glosses are just thick enough to last for long periods of time (great for special occasions such as weddings!) but they're not incredibly sticky and disgusting that makes you want to blot it every 20 minutes like some glosses. There's not a huge variety of shades but the colours that are available are perfect for everyday wear.

Moving onto the hair, I wanted to achieve a natural, beachy up-do and interpreted a version I saw on Youtube by Courtney Lundquist but I only curled the front sections of my hair that weren't up. So what I did is I sectioned off those front pieces first and curled them really tightly with a GHD flat iron and sprayed them with Pantene Pro V Ice Shine hairspray and separated the curls from the rest of my hair with the headband that is shown in the photos. I divided the rest of my hair into two top and bottom sections, forming the bottom half of my hair into a ballerina bun by twisting it and wrapping it around itself then securing it in place with a hair band. Afterwards, you just take sections from the top half of your hair and wrap them either over or under the bun you just created. As I said I didn't curl this section but in Courtney's video she did and I admit my hair would have looked a lot better if I had the time to curl it! After wrapping sections around the bun, you just pop in some bobby pins to secure it in place. I'd suggest using those pins that are made for this kind of look - they're grips designed for pinning hair in buns (I don't know what they're called but they are kind of like these I guess - Boots Hairpins) and if your headband is still in place you are pretty much finished when you have pinned all the hair back!

Thank you for reading! As always, if you have any requests please leave them below or email me! Melissa xoxo

Beau-Belle Hair Extensions VS Wish-Dream Best

Beau-Belle and Wish-Dream Best are both small retailers of human hair extensions and hair products on Amazon who I've recently had the pleasure of purchasing from and I've been quite impressed. 

The hair extensions I ordered from Beau-Belle were 18 inch extensions in the shade Dark Brown and I have to admit I was sceptical at first because they were selling for such a cheap price, (£23 on average compared to the £58 I was prepared to pay for a set on FoxyLocks) and they were selling on Amazon, rather than their own individual website. However I took a shot in the dark and I'm glad I did. The Beau-Belle extensions arrived within just two days of me placing my order, a day before the estimate of 3-7 days, which was impressive. The branding and packaging was cute and I definitely felt like someone had gone to the effort to make this product feel special. But let's talk about the hair. The hair is 100% Remy human hair, which means all the cuticles are kept intact and are all aligned the same way as they were on the head (this freaked my sister out and she now refuses to wear someone else's hair on her head). I don't know who's hair this was but my god did they look after it - these locks are so soft and shiny, I didn't think it was possible to fall in love with hair until now! The only issue I had with the locks, which is my fault I have to admit, is the fact is that the hair is a shade too dark for my natural colour. As they are human hair though, I can dye them but I'd rather not for the time being, especially as they are only 70g in weight, not nearly enough to give me voluminous locks, which is again, my fault as I didn't read the full description and got carried away by the affordable price tag.

so shiny

So, I ordered a second set, making sure that it was at least 120g of hair and a shade lighter, a medium brown, but these measured 20 inches. I was going to order from Beau-Belle again, however Wish-Dream Best were cheaper with their full-head sets of extensions. These took longer to arrive, about 2-3 weeks, which of course, was painful. At the time I didn't really know why it took that long but now I know that despite the company having business headquarters in the States, they have suppliers from China, where your order is directly shipped to you from. When these arrived, I was slightly disappointed. Maybe it was the high standard that Beau-Belle had set, but this hair was not soft and shiny really, and felt quite straggly and tangled. However, the colour shade, Medium Brown is exact to my hair colour, I honestly cannot believe how well it blends. These extensions did come with two spare clips, which gained Wish-Dream Best extra points, but the added weight from 70g to 120g of hair was no match for my new healthy and consequently thicker hair. So all in all, I am still sans-perfect hair extensions. 

the photo deceives your eyes trust me it's not that shiny okay

So do I buy more but from which seller? The good quality ones with excellent customer service who put a smile on my face (thank you very much, I think most probably) or the extensions that match my hair colour to the exact shade, that I can't even tell which is my own hair when I wear them, but take ages to arrive and aren't as fabulously silky smooth? DILEMMA.

I need your advice! The links to the hair are down below so you can read other reviews etc to get an overall judgement but your opinions would really help me so if you could leave a comment that'd be fab.

click here to see the Beau-Belle extensions
click here for the Wish-Dream Best extensions


Thanks for reading!
Melissa xoxo

New Hair!

Ahh I haven't posted in so long but I've been so busy with college now that revision for my June exams has started and I'm trying to be more organised with myself but I am not sure that I am completely up to speed!

Anyway, on Wednesday I spontaneously decided to chop my hair off! My hair prior to this was sooooo long (it came down to my waist and probably measured 18-20") and I wanted something new - to be honest I was bored at the time too and saw inspiration to cut it but I didn't really have a style in mind and just went for it! I'm so pleased with how it's turned out, I'm impressed with my hair dressing skills! My split ends were unbelievable and thank God they are all gone because my hair is so healthy and fresh now, so much thicker I just know it.

I'll be posting more frequently (I hope) as I have a lot of ideas down, one of them being an all about my hair post if that's something you would like, just let me know!

Thank you for reading!
Melissa xoxo