.Merry Christmas.

Hello everyone!

Merry Christmas for a couple of days ago. I hope you all had a lovely day and that Santa was good to you. I am a diehard Christmas fan, and the countdown to it normally starts in about March, much to the annoyance of friends and family who don't need "It's __ months until Christmas!!!" on every 25th of every month...

As all of our relatives live up in sunny Scotland, it's always just the five of us at home all day on Christmas. I wouldn't have it any other way, as I see Christmas as a holiday to appreciate the people you have around you, and a very family orientated one. I always feel very lucky around this time of the year, as I am more than aware that there are people out there that see Christmas as just another day of the year for one reason or another. My boyfriend Tom normally comes over in the evening and we all sit around eating, drinking, being merry and watching all the soaps and shows that are on the TV - Can I just take this moment to express how AMAZING Downton was?! YAY for Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley - at last!

This post isn't a Christmas haul post, it's more just a 'Christmas themed' post with pictures that scream Christmas to me, pictures of my day and a few gifts I received. I was very lucky on Christmas morning, but don't want to go posting loads of pictures people probably won't be very interested in! If you like these sort of posts, check out the lovely Laura's Christmas blog post here, and if you've done one yourself, please link them in the comments as I adore these sort of posts.

How long have you all got off for the holidays? I'm not back to the School of Make Up until January, so i'm spending my days being lazy and seeing friends and spending time with my loved ones. Today I haven't even got out of my PJs which is incredibly lazy! I'm also super excited as my MUA idol Lisa Eldridge replied to one of my tweets about my shoots from a couple of weeks ago - I had a little fan girl moment. (@katelambie if you would like to follow me.)

Hope you all have a lovely holiday, whatever you are up to...

Kate x

PS. Jemma Kidd Light as Air and Chantecaille Just Skin first thoughts - WOW WEE!!!!



Christmas Starbucks mug.



My darling Chi Pixie in her Santa suit hahaha. So necessary.

Christmas nails - Shellac with red glitter.

Our huge Christmas tree.

The cutest, if not most random decoration we own.



My snowman tree decoration.



White chocolate fingers - WHY don't they have them all year round?!

Christmas eyes - soft smokey with strong brows.

Mum and Dad's amazing Christmas dinner!

My lovely parents and I.

I may be 21, but I still love this!

Mum's Christmas cake.

Merry Christmas!

Mum and Dad's adorable note that came with my Chantecaille Just Skin *dances with delight*

My beautiful Smythson goodies.

Selection of bodycare products - L'Occitane, Shu Uemura and Liz Earle.

.Week Twelve at the School of Make Up.

I cannot believe how fast the make up went. Feels like only a week ago I was on my first train journey up to Stockport, when in fact i've now been there over three months! The last week of make up turned out to be the best! I had an absolutely brilliant time doing the shoots for portfolio week and i'm really happy with how they looked. I'll do a post when I get the retouched images through from the school. Monday was a last minute practice day, so i'll start at Tuesday...

Tuesday.

I had a beautiful black model on Tuesday with amazing skin, so I had to do my beauty look on her, otherwise I knew i'd regret it! Usually you have to pack the make up on for a beauty look, but because her skin was so great I needed to do only half the work. She brought her own foundation with her (Georgio Armani Luminous Silk), which matched her skin perfectly. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of her so you'll have to wait and see how the shoot came out, like I am!

Wednesday.

My model for Wednesday was called Claudia and she had gorgeous full lips, so I decided to do my fashion/creative look on her as the black and red lips would look amazing on someone with plump lips. This was my favourite look of the week and it came out just as I had hoped it would. Claudia was also a fabulous model who really helped make the photos look great. Her hair was all the way down her back so Jon piled it onto her head and it was HUGE.

Thursday.

My model Lia on Thursday also had fabulous plump lips so I went ahead and did my classic liner with bold pink lips on her. I used my Estee Lauder Fuschia Lipliner and Raspberry Lipstick. I love this combination and the liner works in perfect harmony with the lipstick.



Friday.

The only look I had left to do come Friday was smokey eyes. My model Emily had amazing big eyes and looked beautiful with smokey eyes. Her hair was mega curly from a shoot she had in the morning so I decided to leave it as it was and Jon piled it on top of her head.

So there you have it! The end of make up. I hope you enjoyed reading my posts and i'll put up some more in the next couple of days about what we've learnt so far in the hair side of the it!

Kate x



.Week Eleven at the School of Make Up.

Week eleven was theme day week! Scary and exciting at the same time. Normally the week has this run down:

Monday: Shopping day for outfit

Tuesday: Showing outfit to Elaine and making any last minute changes.

Wednesday: Creating a mood board with all the ideas we came up with.

Thursday: Presenting our mood board to the class.

Friday: Theme day.

Due to our location being booked up apart from the Wednesday, we had to move some stuff around. Monday and Tuesday were the same, theme day was actually on the Wednesday and then we did the mood board on Thursday and presented on the Friday.

Our shoot took place at the Stockport Plaza Theatre, which has recently been featured on ITV1's drama 'Just Henry'. It is a fabulous theatre that has been restored, but kept all it's 1930s Art Deco interior. I thought it fitted in perfectly with our Hollywood Glamour brief and was thrilled.

The oufit I decided on was based loosely around the legendary Coco Chanel tweed two piece, with a modern twist. I suppose a lot of people immediately think about long sweeping gowns and plenty of diamonds when they think about Hollywood, but I wanted to do something slightly different. I was leaning more towards old school Hollywood, and when I think of women from forty, fifty, sixty years ago I just think they oozed class. They were very classy and strong and I feel nothing symbolises that kind of woman better than a structured suit. I chose a set from Topshop - Cobalt blue high waisted tweed shorts with velvet lining and a matching peter pan collared cropped blazer and paired it with T-Bar patent black shoes, a silk cream blouse, some lace gloves and my Chanel Classic Flap Bag.

When we showed our outfits to Elaine on Tuesday I was so worried she wouldn't get it, because most of the girls had plumped for gorgeous ball gown style dresses and fur stoles, but thankfully she loved it! She said I should get some gold chain necklaces to pull the look together and because it was quite a quirky look she thought a huge white silk bow around the neck would look amazing - how right she was. So in the afternoon we went and picked up the last bits we needed.

Wednesday came and went incredibly quickly. I had such a fabulous day and my model, actress and model Candy McCulloch was a dream. She pulled my look of amazingly well and we even got her long haired Chihuahua Sissy in on the shoot who behaved perfectly. We shot Candy in the theatre foyer, coming through a door. I will post the pictures as soon as I get them through. I've seen the untouched shots and i'm thrilled with them. All the girls did so well and we all went home on Wednesday on a high, and totally shattered.

Thursday and Friday were nice calm days making and presenting the mood boards. Home time on Friday came around and then it was onto portfolio week - eeeeeek!

Kate x

.Week Ten at the School of Make Up.

First off, please let me apologise for my huge failing recently on the blogging front! College got so crazy and I have been super busy I simply haven't had enough time to keep you all in the loop. Thankfully, i've now got two weeks off college over the Christmas period, so I have plenty of time to update the blog, and more importantly, update all my readers about my progress.

Week Ten.

At the end of week nine, we finished special effects, which I was quite sad about, as I really enjoyed it. Week ten was solely a practice week for us all to recap things we wanted to perfect, and also to go over the looks we were going to create for our theme day and portfolio week...

Theme day: Creating the make up and styling for a shoot shot on location. The school give the students £100 to go and put together an outfit for a brief they have come up with - our group decided on 'Hollywood Glamour'. Your look and make up was all your own choice, as it is what you see the brief as.

Portfolio week: Shot at the school. Four looks over four days with different models each time. The looks we were advised to do was one beauty look, a smokey eye, a fashion look and either another fashion look or a creative.

We had a whole week to go through each look with Jon, and discuss with him what we could change or improve with our chosen looks.

Theme day final look: Black smokey eye with purpley tones, flawless heavily contoured skin and pale, natural lips.

Porfolio week look #1: Beauty look. Hair very simple and off the face.

Portfolio week look #2: Brown/gold toned smokey eye. Natural lips. Hair curly.

Portfolio week look #3: Classic winged liner with bold pink lips. Hair classic beehive.

Portfolio week look #4: Gold leaf all over the lid with a black lined lip, bleeding into a bright red. Hair big and piled onto the top of the head.

Here are some inspiration pictures that helped me come up with my looks.



On the Friday of practice, all of us had a runway show in Manchester for some Manchester Met Uni Fashion students. We left school at midday and arrived at the venue, Victoria Baths, just outside the city centre. It was an amazing venue for a show, even if it was slightly cold!

Because of the location of the show, the students had decided on a silvery, 'underwater' theme for the make up. We sent them lots of images of test make up and they chose this look in the end. Here's pictures of my two models, Laura and Vicki.

I can't say I loved the look they settled on in the end, but you have to go with your client's wishes and they loved the outcome, so that's all that mattered.
I really enjoyed my first runway show and seeing how it all comes together with the hair and the outfits was lovely.

I'll leave this post with a picture of my School of Make Up girls, bar Emma who was the photographer!

Kate x

.'Tis the Season to be Pampered.

I do love a pamper, anytime of the year. However, I think the winter months are the nicest times to give yourself abit of looking after, when your skin's abit dry and your hair's abit brittle because of the harsh weather conditions. There's nothing nicer than coming home after a long day, running a hot bath, lighting a candle and sinking in and having half an hour to yourself. This weekend just gone I made my way to Boots, advantage card in hand and in the knowledge that The Sanctuary products were on a 3 for 2 offer with one mission - To leave armed with many many pamper products. Did I fulfil that mission? What do you think?! And I didn't stop there, no siree. I also purchased a couple of other things from different shops to aid in the pampering...

1)  Yankee Candle: Christmas Cookie. (£7.99)

2) The Sanctuary: Salt Scrub (£10.20)

3) The Sanctuary: Body Moisture Spray (£5.87)

4) The Sanctuary: Body Wash (£5.10)

5) The Sanctuary: Mande Lular Sensuous Bath Creme (£9.45)

6) Dove: Nourishing Oil Care Shampoo, Conditioner and Treatment (Amazing value at Sainsburys, between £1.60-£3.00)

7) L'Occitane: Almond Shower Oil 250ml (£16)

1) Who does not love a Yankee Candle?! I personally can't get enough of them, my favourites are Caramel and Vanilla Cupcake and now this. The name is amazing enough, YAY for Christmas, but the smell is gorgeous. It's a little less sweet than Vanilla Cupcake and not as overpowering but it's still there and it still fills the whole house with an amazing scent. They last an absolute age too so even though they're slightly more expensive than a normal scented candle I think it's worth it.

2) I'm not a massive fan of oily exfoliators, normally because I fake tan after exfoliating and hate the oily residue it leaves, but at the moment i'm giving myself a break from tanning so I treated myself to The Sanctuary Salt Scrub and i'm loving it. It leaves my skin so smooth and not at all irritated. I've also read that it's great to put on before you get in the bath and then let it dissolve into a milk once you're in there, so i'm going to give that a go soon. Oily scrubs feel much more luxurious than other scrubs too which is just what I was looking for.

3) I always have the best intentions when it comes to body moisturising, but I never seem to practice what I preach. I hate waiting for it to dry and then even when you get dressed you're left with this horrible sticky feeling. Step forward The Sanctuary's Body Moisture Spray. It's a dry oil spray than you can apply to wet or dry skin and you get no sticky-ness left over product which I am thrilled about. If you have super dry skin you'd need to purchase something alot richer but for me this works brilliantly as a daily moisturiser.

4) I am the biggest biggest fan of Lush's Snow Fairy Hair and Body Wash, and get through bottles and bottles of it when it's released each year for Christmas. Unfortunately I find it quite drying if I use it every day, and no matter how much I love the smell, I love soft skin more. So I picked up The Sanctuary's Body Wash to see if that would help. I really like it actually and it's definitely more nourishing than SF. It has little beads in it that apparently burst when they come into contact with your skin, I haven't actually noticed that and I think it's more of a marketing ploy. For £5.10 I think it's really good value for a relatively luxury product.

5) This Bath Creme/Bubble Bath is so lovely. You hardly need any to create a lather and it really compliments all my other Sanctuary products. It's not in the slightest bit drying, which I always find with many bath cremes i've tried in the past.

6) If you're going to buy anything for your hair this year, buy these products from Dove. I'm usually abit of a haircare snob and my shampoo and conditioner of choice is normally Redken, but this is on par if not better and so much cheaper! All of the products leave my hair soft, frizz free and manageable, not to mention MEGA shiny. I still use my Moroccanoil treatment once a week but these are fabulous products to use daily and if you're on a tighter budget.

7) I adore this product from the amazing L'Occitane. I have been putting off buying it, due to it's kind of ridiculous price but this evening I was overcome and found myself in the store - how convenient! So I finally purchased it and used it tonight in my bath. I can safely say I understand why it's so coveted and why people buy it even for the price that it is. It smells so sweet and works fantastically as a shave cream. My skin feels so smooth after using it and I think I could go without moisturiser afterwards if I was feeling abit lazy. It is a luxury product for sure, but we all deserve a treat once in a while don't we?!

Kate x