Babyliss Straighteners & Elf haul

As per my last post, I recently bought some new straighteners and here they are - the Babyliss Pro 230 Radiance. Their original price was about a hundred pounds but they are half price in Boots at the moment and even better at forty pounds in Argos, where I picked up mine. I have had previous bad experience with Argos but I couldn't believe how fast I was in and out of there. I reserved them for instore pick up and it literally took two minutes. The straighteners are in the bottom half of the picture, I photographed them with the curling tong I already have because it all matches :) They came with a matching storage bag and heat-proof mat. Personally I have very thick hair and 90% of straighteners seem to be the pencil thin kind, great for my fringe but way too time consuming to do all of my hair. These Babyliss ones have quite wide plates, not quite as wide as my old Remington ones which don't seem to be available now, but satisfactory. The straighteners themselves were pretty good, superfast heat up time, and they did the job. I wouldn't rave about them and declare them to be the "miracle straightener" most people on the Argos website did, but they were fine, my hair came out very straight. I have yet to find a straightener that does work miracles, GHD would be the obvious answer but I have read quite a few reviews about them blowing up and a lot of people claimed these Babyliss ones were more effective than GHD anyway.

I have to guiltily admit that I treated myself to this huge make-up set this week. Well, I did have a tough interview on friday, that I did a lot of work for, and although I had been planning to buy it after Xmas I was browsing on the net and found that Elf (Eyes Lips Face) had a really good offer on. i have read some things about Elf on other blogs, and the consensus seems to be that they do really good quality products really cheaply, especially brushes. I bought a generous-sized blusher brush for three pounds fifty, and their Master Make-up set for thirty five pounds. There is a huge amount of make-up for that price, loads of gorgeous eyeshadows, not just every colour of the rainbow that you wouldn't even use, but all really soft colours. There are six lovely blushers in there as well, and even a face powder that matches my skintone.

My camera is rubbish as you can't even see the make-up in these picture but the colours are really strong, you don't have to put loads on just to be able to see it, I only put one stroke of eyeshadow on and then blended the colour as it was so highly pigmented.

This was my free gift for spending over twenty five pounds, i won't keep this as there is no pale face powder and I dont really use bronzer. There are some lovely smoky eye colours in there though and a nice blusher. Plus an eyeliner pencil and all the brushes you need. If you buy this on its own on the website it costs fifteen pounds, I am going to ebay it unless anyone reading this wants to buy it for ten pounds plus one fifty postage. This was advertised on handbag.com as the best travel make-up kit you can buy, it would be a nice present for someone. The actual Elf website was a bit annoying as it seemed to be crashing all the time. I tried several times to pay for my things and it came up saying there was an error, then after I finally managed to pay I checked my paypal balance and I'd ended up paying three times. I emailed Elf and when they didnt reply within a couple of hours i phoned their customer helpline. It connected a couple of times but there was no one there, then I spoke to a woman who was not apologetic in the least, and took ages to find my order. She said she would cancel the two duplicate orders. Then I got an email reply from the company director apologising for what had happened and when I checked my paypal again he had refunded the two payments. So it turned out ok in the end, they do have a lot of positive feedback on their site so it must have just been a one-off. Not that I would need to buy from them again now I have their ultimate collection...