here's a nice picture of my mum's birthday flowers that have been brightening up our kitchen on these dreary february days!!

Hello everyone! I'm only a few days late with this one which I'm very happy about hahaha! Finally getting on top of this?!

So my first favourite I'm going to talk about are Colourpop eyeshadows. Because I'm addicted I now have six of these (me and my friends do group orders to get round the huge shipping and customs charges lol). I'm doing a post about these soon, so I'll tell you more about my shades in that, but I have Tassel, Sequin, Weenie (the one in this picture), Wattles, KathleenLights and Central Perk. They are super creamy and super super pigmented, especially the glittery ones which just pack such a metallic punch of colour on the eyelid and they're just so special for a more interesting look. The only one I'm not so impressed with is Central Perk, as it just seems a lot dryer and not at all as pigmented, so I don't know if anyone else has had that problem with that particular shade?

My second beauty favourite is the Morphe 35K palette. I have had one Morphe palette, the 35O for about six months now and love it so so much, so I asked for this for Christmas and my lovely parents got it for me along with a bunch of brushes which I'll talk about a bit later. It does not disappoint, and is just as amazing quality as the 35O. The shimmer shades are slightly more pigmented but that's always to be expected, but the mattes aren't chalky and there isn't much kickup at all which is always a winner for me, as it just makes your makeup so messy! This palette, if you're into blues and browns, is the only eyeshadow palette you'll ever need. There's so so many different looks you can do with it and so much variety. Plus, it's 35 eyeshadows for £22.95 on Beauty Bay. Morphe palettes are such a steal, I swear to God!

Here we have the Jeffree Star liquid lipsticks...again, I'm obsessed. My best friend Rach introduced me to these and I wore her Unicorn Blood to a party back in September, and instantly fell in love with it, hardly daring to believe I'd found a red lipstick that actually suits me! (a more detailed post with swatches is coming up!) So then Rach bought Unicorn Blood for me as a lil present when I was having a difficult couple of weeks, and I was hooked haha. I then asked for some for Christmas (yes, my whole Christmas list was makeup...) and my parents gave me Celebrity Skin, and my grandparents gave me Androgyny and Rose Matter. So, so, so grateful for it :)) I've always said that most of my makeup I do buy myself, my parents don't make a habit of  funding my makeup addiction (and I did a paper round for three years to fund it myself!) but when Christmas and my birthday roll around I do like to ask for some more high end bits and bobs. 

My favourite out of the four I've got has definitely got to be Celebrity Skin. Like I've found my perfect red in Unicorn Blood, I've found my perfect nude in this one. The formula, scent and staying power of all of them are just insane and they are definitely the most comfortable liquid lipsticks I've ever worn! They are slightly drying after a while but that's to be expected with any matte liquid lipstick. In the UK you can find them on Beauty Bay!

So my final beauty favourites are these brushes from Morphe. The bottom five are the ones I got for Christmas and then the top one, the MB16, I got myself a couple of weeks ago. I use all of them every day pretty much and adore them, perhaps with the exception of the E14, just because I don't often pack one colour all over - but I do like to use it for a browbone highlight. The E13 I use to pop a powder all over my lid to set my primer, the E24 for highlighting my inner corner, the E17 for concentrating colours into the outer corner and my crease, the B83 for putting one colour in the inner third of my lid and the MB16 for running colours under my lower lashline. Honestly, with just these six brushes you can do a whole eye look which is so great. They're also really really affordable, and such great quality brushes for the price. I've washed all of them twice and they haven't shed yet which is also a winner. You can find them on Beauty Bay in the UK!

Well that's it for my beauty favourites, I'll have another post in a couple of days for my other random favourites!

Also, just wanted to say that I'm going on my school ski trip this half term, so I set off on Friday! I am going to be scheduling posts over the week then so you won't miss out! I'll also do a lengthy post about it when I get back. I'm super excited because, as I'm in Year 13, it's my last chance to go on a school ski trip, which I've never done before even though I've been skiing since I was about five! I'm also excited to have a little break from life in general as everything's been very hectic lately, but that's only to be expected four months before A Levels, am I right?!

What products have you been loving through January? Let me know in the comments below!

See you all soon,

Emilia xx

City Of Stars, La La Land

Hello everyone! It's me, back again with a little post about this makeup look I came up with a couple of weeks ago. It's loosely inspired by La La Land, which I haven't seen yet but I'm waiting until it comes out on DVD! However, you all know how much I love a good musical so I've listened to the whole soundtrack twelve times over and love every single thing about it. 

So obviously, this is inspired by City of Stars as it's my favourite song from the soundtrack. Hope you like it!

I've kind of been stuck in a bit of a rut recently, and I wanted to go out of my comfort zone a little because I've not really been that adventurous as of late. But, I did get three new Makeup Revolution eyeshadow palettes today so I'm going to play around with them and hopefully come up with some new ideas, which you can keep up with on my makeup Instagram because I post a lot more over there!

PRODUCTS!

Eyes:

♥ Morphe 35K palette (will be featured in an upcoming post but has the most beautiful blues and greys in ever)

♥ Barry M Bold Silver eyeliner in the waterline - I've become so into doing this recently, it adds something so interesting to a look

♥ NYX Roll On Shimmer in Platinum on the browbone and inner corner - again, I love adding this to my inner corner because it just adds a little something else to an otherwise standard look

♥ NYX white eyeliner for the dots and stars - mine is drying out so I did struggle with this! I use it a lot more than I thought I would so I'm going to have to replace it soon!

♥ Maybelline Lash Sensational mascara

♥ FleurDeForce x Eylure lashes in Fully Fleur

Face:

♥ Revlon Skinlights Photoready illuminator underneath foundation 

♥ L'Oreal True Match in 1C

♥ Sleek Cream Contour Kit in Light

♥ The same NYX glitter as before for highlight

♥ Rimmel Stay Matte powder

Lips:

♥ MAC Boldly Bare liner

♥ Jeffree Star Celebrity Skin liquid lipstick

Long product list as always! I so wish it was acceptable to go out with starry eyelids every day, it would make my life so much better! Haha I joke but I do love this look so much, an adaptation of it would be so cool for a night out!

Hope you all loved this look as much as I do!

Emilia xx

2017 // Is It Really New Year, New Me??

Whew, so keeping up with true emilia blogging style, this post is eighteen days late. Clap clap to me. Ah well, better late than never, am I right?

this is one of my four cacti, Caroline. she is now my favourite plant since my beloved Olivia the orchid dropped her final beautiful petals two weeks ago.

New Year is a very odd time of year. On the one hand, you're energised and you're going to make positive changes in your life. You're going to join a gym and eat healthily and start bullet journalling and do more photography and just generally subscribe to a healthier lifestyle. 

On the other hand...what's the point? You know that two weeks later your journal will be discarded at the bottom of your school bag/laptop case/whatever bag you carry around, or maybe it'll just be lying on your desk staring at you, making you feel guilty for not sticking to it. Your gym membership will glare at you every time you open your emails or your purse to see your card, reminding you that you still need to use it for perhaps the third or fourth time. The massive bag of kale and the box of quinoa you bought in an attempt at going vegan? Forgotten. 

So really, is New Year New Me real? Or is it just an ideal we all subscribe to at the beginning of January because we think this year, 2017, is going to be my year, I'm going to find myself this year, I'm going to be who I truly am. 

It's certainly an ideal I subscribed to. My new year new me positivity lasted for all of four days. It didn't help that on the fourth day of 2017 I broke up with my boyfriend and on the fifth day I had the worst parents' evening of my life - yes, even though I am nearly eighteen years old I still get told I'm failing by my teachers with my parents there - and on the sixth and seventh days I cried for a long time. 

But at the same time, none of that really matters. Yes, me and my boyfriend, someone I cared deeply for, broke up. But it's okay - it was the right thing to do, life moves on and if you watched my Letters to November you'll know how important it is to me to love yourself before you can love anyone else in the same way they love you. So that's okay. I'm not there yet - but nearly. Parents' evening? That's easily solvable. Do more work and plan your time and actually just for fuck's sake knuckle down Emilia. There are five months left of this. Five months and then you are free of school and this whole crappy education system. Five months and then the rest of your life begins. It's not that long in the grand scheme of things. Someone who's just got pregnant won't have had their baby by the time your exams are over. Weird analogy, I know, but it's true.

So yes. I had a few shitty days at the beginning of 2017. But I can still make this year my year. So many huge changes are happening this year. Like I said before, my school life ends in five months. I have a whole year before I go to university to do whatever I like. I still haven't decided what I'm doing yet but I am going to make the absolute most of that year. This Christmas I'll be in a completely different place doing a completely different thing and while that terrifies me, in another way I am so, so excited. I'm looking forward to a new chapter of my life this year.

And yes, I still have depression. But something changed recently and I realised that actually, while I might be depressed for the rest of my life, I don't have to be like this for the rest of my life. I can get myself better, no one else can do it for me. What changes with depression is the way you deal with it. My outlook on life has hugely changed in the last six months and in a way I feel like I'm finally realising who I am. 

And this is me.

I am a girl who loves horoscopes, oversized sweatshirts, boyfriend jeans, studying in Costa with cups of tea and being pretentious trash. I have depression but I'm coping through my art, writing and surrounding myself with people who are going to make positive changes to my life. And as for A Levels? Well, I am a girl who is going to prove everyone wrong. My teachers who told me I'm going to fail if I don't do something? I'm going to do it. I know you don't think I will, and I know you don't think I can do this - but I can and I will and I'll wave my results in your face on Results Day in August before phoning my favourite university to accept my place for September 2018. 

And then the rest of my life begins.

Here's to 2017.

Emilia xx

here is a list of people who have changed my life in 2016.

♥ claire

♥ duncan

♥ jess

♥ heidi

♥ victoria

♥ rach

♥ jack

♥ becca

♥ vicky

♥ emma

♥ james

♥ beccy

♥ sophia

♥ izzi

♥ christian

♥ izzie

♥ honor

♥ libby

♥ georgia

♥ georgie

♥ tom

♥ catherine

♥ conor

♥ jake

...and everyone else who has constantly supported me through mistakes I make when I've drunk too much vodka. 

Something A Little Prettier

Okay, so here's the post I was actually going to put up yesterday but decided to write something else lol

I did this bodypaint a few weeks ago in an evening when my parents weren't home (it sounds worse than it is - it's easier to do when they're not around because they laugh too much at me!), and I wanted to do something really kind of intricate and detailed and just pretty because I hardly ever do things like that and it's something I enjoy doing. I'm getting my fair share of disgusting SFX stuff from Phantom of the Opera at the moment, which we're putting on at school and yours truly is making all the prosthetics! It's the biggest piece of prosthesia I've ever done so I'm very excited. But as I said, that's fulfilling my slightly twisted, gory side so I thought I'd try and do something a bit prettier.

I've been super inspired lately by the work of Elsa Rhae, who's a bodypainter I watch on YouTube, and she's so ridiculously talented and I'm in love with her work. She does a lot of henna/menhi inspired art and I've kind of fallen in love with it too. It does test my artistic ability a lot more than my normal art, as it's so detailed and intricate, but that's what I love about it - it really pushes me to try and do the best I can.

So hold your breath, lads - there's a long product list for this one.

Eyes:

- Urban Decay Half Baked on the lid, Blackout in the crease and Snakebite to blend it all out and repeated on the lower lashline, with Half Baked in the inner corner

- Zoeva gel liner topped up with L'Oreal Superliner

- Diego Dalla Palma Lash Booster mascara (literally my favourite mascara ever)

- Eylure and Fleur De Force Fleur Loves lashes (yep, still in love with these eyelashes)

- NYX Tame and Frame brow pomade

Face:

- Revlon Skinlights Photoready Illuminator to prime

- L'Oreal True Match foundation in 1C (still the only drugstore foundation that matches my skintone)

- Seventeen Stay Time concealer in Extra Fair to highlight under eyes, chin, nose and forehead

- Sleek Cream Contour kit in Fair, darkest colours to contour and lightest colour to highlight

- Sleek Solstice highlight palette, Equinox mixed with Subsolar on nose, cheekbones, forehead and cupid's bow

Lips:

- MAC Half Red lipliner

- Bourjois Rouge Edition lipstick in Shade 14

- Black from iMagic flash palette for the ombre

- Urban Decay Half Baked on the centre of the lips

Body:

- Mehron black Paradise Paint

- Gold from iMagic flash palette (because I don't have $99 to spend on the real deal haha)

I really hope you all like this look and I might just try and do some more for you in the near future, maybe when things calm down a bit!

Emilia xx

Why We Celebrate World Mental Health Day

So I did have a different plan for a post to break my little blogging hiatus but given that yesterday was World Mental Health Day (or WMHD as I'll be calling it because that's just a lot easier and a lot less time consuming) I thought I'd write a post explaining just why we need WMHD and why it is so important.

"A semicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence but chose not to. You are the author and the sentence is your life. Your story is not over."

You can read more about Project Semicolon here - it's an amazing non profit movement that I've been supporting for a long time. They are dedicated to spreading hope and love to those struggling with mental illnesses, suicide, addiction and self-harm.  Please consider donating or getting involved in any way you can - it's very special to me.

As I'm sure a lot of you know, I was diagnosed with clinical depression three years ago. I haven't ever been medicated for it because my case wasn't "bad enough" for medication, and I've struggled through the past few years with combinations of CBT and DBT and many other different coping methods proposed to me. For the best part of those three years I self-harmed, and am as of today two weeks and five days clean. I did make it to a year on the 5th May which I was really proud of, but you know, life is full of ups and downs and relapses happen and that's okay.

Mental illnesses are not a walk in the park. I wake up every day feeling slightly different, and I wake up every day wondering how this particular day is going to work out for me. Of course, there are the good days and there are the bad days. The worst ones are the days when getting out of bed takes every little bit of energy I have, and I feel nothing and everything at the same time. I'm so fragile that a single feather could make me explode and whether I explode with anger, sadness or any other emotion is just another gamble I have to take every day. I'm a difficult person for my family to live with and I'm a difficult person to be friends with because my mood can change so quickly, one minute I can be laughing and the next I can be angry and frustrated. I'm so sensitive that the smallest thing like someone raising their voice at me will make me cry and I spend my time trying to find things to distract me from the pain that comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

That's what depression, and other mental illnesses are like. They're enemies that are everywhere and nowhere all at once. They're mountains that we have to keep moving. I have friends that also suffer from a number of mental illnesses and I see the struggle they go through every day and it breaks my heart to know that that's happening to them. As someone who suffers and knows people close to me suffering, I have a vested interest in spreading awareness and breaking down the stigma.

This is why we have WMHD. No, we don't have World Physical Health Day because there's no stigma surrounding physical health conditions. If you break your leg you get taken to the hospital, everyone sighs if you've been a bit stupid, you get told not to do it again and you heal. You get a bit of a fuss made about you and there's nothing wrong with that at all. But if you're having suicidal thoughts, self-harming thoughts, panic attacks, sudden mood swings, and the myriad of other symptoms of a mental health condition, you're labelled as "crazy". You're labelled as fragile and emotionally unstable, and you're made to feel ashamed of it and you're beaten down and told not to mention it to people and "just to act normal". We are accepting of every broken bone, pulled muscle, torn ligament, strained tendon, of every body part that goes wrong, except the brain. If something goes wrong in the brain that we have no control over, it's a huge mystery that we just have to keep hidden.

World Mental Health Day is important for everyone. It's important for the sufferers because it's a day when we truly don't have to be ashamed. I don't feel like I have to hide the depression normally but it always feels slightly awkward to talk about. It's important for us because it's our chance to speak out about our experiences and spread awareness of illnesses that have just as much impact on our lives as physical ones would and do on others. It's important for non-sufferers as well because (and I'm so trying not to sound patronising and I'm so sorry if I do) it just helps you be aware of what people around you may be going through.

Notice how in the title of this post I said "celebrate" as well. It's true. We celebrate WMHD because we celebrate our mental illnesses. They're a wonderful flaw in our lives that make us us, and while they won't be there forever, while they are, they're nothing to be ashamed of. You shouldn't have to hide in fear of letting other people know about your illness because if they think it's embarrassing then they're the ones who have to deal with it, not you. Your friends and family will stick by you through anything. Remember, those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Working together and spreading the message of love and support is the only way we can end the stigma that makes people suffer in silence.

Sometimes it feels like I'm never going to get better, and maybe I won't. Maybe we will have our illnesses for the rest of our lives but what will change is the way we deal with it. Things can always get better and gradually the bad days will be few and far between. There are times in your life where you'll laugh so hard you'll cry,  you'll have sex and get high at eight in the morning and you'll travel to far off countries and look out over the world with not a single worry, and you'll think to yourself "What was I ever thinking? Why did I ever think I deserved to miss out on this?"

Some days will be better than others, but they're just days, and you always have more where they came from. The world keeps turning, the stars keep shining and the sun keeps rising, and you can hold your head high in defiance, because your very existence is a rebellion. Against everyone who said you weren't strong enough, against everyone who knocked you down time and time again. Against everyone who told you you were worthless. Against the very thing that brought you here in the first place.

And, like I said on my Instagram post, if Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez could get through the summer at Lava Springs, then girl you can get through anything.

Emilia xx