Fabulous or flop? The 24 Secret Surprises of Advent

Happy New Year! I thought I’d start 2017 off with a beauty review, you may have seen on my Instagram story last month that my beautiful Mom bought me a cosmetics Advent calendar, well that’s exactly what I’m playing around with today!

First things first, the details. This were from House of Fraser and includes a collection of cosmetic items from the brand Colour Couture by Amelia Knight. I haven’t heard too much about this brand before so decided to do a little reading up on it. According to the Amelia Knight website they don’t test on animals, which pleases me to no end. What I do find a little odd however is the fact that they operate a sizeable part of their company in China, which is of course well known for animal testing. This is something I’d definitely like to look further into. There were a mix of items included which can be explored a little more below.

Lipsticks – Red & Nude
These have such a creamy texture it’s unreal! They glide on, are super moisturising and are generally very pleasant indeed. The red one seems to come out more pink toned when swatched but does look more red when applied to the lips. It will take a little building up to get the desired intensity.

Lipgloss – Pink & Peach
The first thing I noticed about these is the smell, they’re so damn fruity and just make me want to eat them. I’m not usually a fan of lipgloss, especially these type as I find them to have a much messier application, also more often than not a gloss will be overly sticky, these however, aren’t too bad. They do have the expected sticky feel but not as much as many I’ve tried in the past and for a gloss the colour pay off on the lips is surprisingly quite good!

Brow Pencil & Spoolie
I bloody love this! It’s become my go to brow product because it’s creamy consistency makes it glide on smoothly, whilst offering more precision and a pretty much spot on colour match to my brow colour! Having the spoolie on the end is a huge convenience too.

Eye Crayons – Black & Bronze/Gold
I adore these, too! Both again have a very creamy consistency which enables smooth and effortless application whilst being perfect for smudging, the bronze toned colour is exceptionally pretty and because they’re chunky liners I find them to be much easier to use. My only issue is that I now need a sharpener big enough to fit them.

Liquid Liners – Black & Glitter Gold
The black liner has an incredibly thin brush making it perfect for thinner wings and such, I find this to be really easy to use and the product is long lasting. The glitter liner has been perfect for the festive season to add a little sparkle on top!

Mascara
I haven’t much to really say about this, I were hoping that it would prove great for thickening the lashes due to it’s thick fluffy type of brush, sadly that isn’t the case. If anything it tends to either apply ridiculously clumpy or just brushes back off any product that’s been applied. It will do as a back up I guess but I wouldn’t switch out my daily mascaras for this one.

Nail File
This is a very simple nail file, it’s quite small but handy enough to have around, maybe to carry in a small bag for any night out nail dramas. After a few uses it seems to lose it’s mojo and doesn’t really do much!

Small Blush Brush
Very small and very soft, I haven’t used this as of yet but feel that it won’t be much use for applying product but that it could prove useful for blending perhaps? Being such a compact brush this would also be perfect to pop into a night out bag for any needed touch ups.

What even is this?
Seriously… I have absolutely no idea what on earth this strange item could be, if you have any ideas please enlighten me, as I’m utterly baffled!

Nail Polish – Red, Burgundy & Black Sequin
The red polish is very bright, a true blood red, and is surprisingly quite thick, as opposed to the burgundy which has a very thin consistency and will need more than one coat. They do however seem to dry quite quickly which is great. The black as expected is an overlay type of polish, so you’d be needing to get out your glitter polish hacks with this one! Overall I’m happy enough with the polishes included.

Nail Art Stickers – Gold & Silver
So there’s one each of these, not very many but then again I don’t often use things like this on my nails as I tend to make a pigs ear out of it. They’re very simple and rather cute so I’ll be sure to get some use out of them when I’ve worked on my nail skills a little!

Little Gold Stars
These are so cute and there’s quite a lot of them, so far I’ve only used these once for a NYE make-up look I created last week. Very fiddly to get hold of though, definitely proceed with tweezers!

Silver Nail Glitter
I’m quite perplexed by the lack of product in this, considering it’s a rather large glass bottle you’d expect a lot more glitter than there is, it makes me wonder if this were a packing fault or something maybe, as there is probably only a quarter filled.

Eye Dust – Pinky Peach & Silver
Both of these are remarkably glittery and so pretty, I know full well I’ll make a huge mess with them though because they’re dust. I haven’t yet tried out using eyeshadow dust so that should be interesting to say the least! The pigment doesn’t seem too crazy although I did only dab the tiniest bit onto my arm, applied right they’ll probably be sensational!

Eyeshadow Trio
This trio isn’t very pigmented so will be great for a very subtle everyday smoky look when using all three colours together. It’s always nice to have a handy trio around too because they can be popped into your bag for easy on the go touch ups.

Blush
This is a very pink blush, not typically something I go for, although the pigment doesn’t seem especially remarkable therefore I feel this will be subtle enough even for me to use.

Overall there are some really pretty items included, I’m especially excited by the dust and my collection of liners! Which items interest you the most? Did you receive a beauty advent calendar? Also, can you please shed light on what that odd black instrument is above? Thanks in advance!

With Love,
Disaster Davis x

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