5 TRICKS TO BRIGHTEN YOUR COMPLEXION

This time of year always feels like we must finally be coming out of this long and arduous winter and heading into spring. But guess what? February's here to remind us that we're not. It's still winter and we can just suck it as far as February is concerned. Frankly, it's real bastard of a month. So what can we do to fight back? Dang it, we're going to act like it's spring anyways! Time to crack out the bright colours and dewy finishes my friends. Let's take matter into our own hands. Let's fight this fight. Let's see the light once more. Let's... brighten our complexions. Yeah, that last one lacked dramatic effect. Shall we move onto the 5 tricks to brighten your complexion?

DESIGNING A BLOG: 10 TIPS I WISH I'D KNOWN

When I first started designing my blog I knew absolutely nothing about anything. All I can say is thank goodness I had a friend that was able to teach me the basics. But even with the help of that friend there are a lot of finicky details I wish I'd known before starting because, I'll tell you, I made a lot of irritating mistakes that I had to rectify later on. So in the hopes of having you avoid falling into the same traps that I did, I'm going to warn you about some of these mistakes. For reference I use Blogger. While some of these tips may also apply to Wordpress, some are specifically Blogger related.

FOREVER REPURCHASING WITH LIFE, SET SAIL

As your average, run-of-the-mill beauty junkie, it probably comes as no surprise to you that there are quite a few beauty bits on bobs that hold a fond place in my heart. So when Brittany and I decided to team up for a post and she suggested the subject matter of “forever repurchasing” products I thought to myself “oh yes, oh yes yes yes.” I love to love on quality products and, dang it, I love to love on Brittany! I had a good, long think about what I see myself not just enjoying, but realistically repurchasing again and again and I finally settled on seven items.

FASHION FACES: LOOK AT THOSE BABY BLUES

Sometimes I like to test my confidence levels by surrounding myself with ridiculously good looking people. Just joshing, but in all seriousness, meet Emma, a girl with a face hand painted by Aphrodite herself. Emma has been a rather vocal supporter of my blog from the get go. I.e. she jams it down anyone's throat that will listen. Thanks gurl. You've got my back. Both she and I have been keen to have her do a post with me for ages and this reading break we finally got around to it. Emma has some seriously blue eyes, something that I'm far off from having myself, so I wanted to seize my opportunity and play them up with contrasting colours.

THE NEW GENERATION OF EYELINER PENS

I've never really been able to get on board with pen liners. I love the idea, but the reality is that I find them awkward to use. Even the more flexible felt tip pens don't seem to be quite flexible enough, causing a bit of dragging when applied. My twitchy eyes don't do well with it. So for the most part I avoid reaching for the pen option and instead grab for my trusty gel pot and fine liner brush combo.

MAKEUP STORAGE AND ORGANIZATION

I love having a good snoop around in other peoples' drawers, particularly their makeup drawers. Seeing as I've done my fair share of snooping in all of your drawers at this point (start locking your doors) it seemed only fair that I offer up mine for inspection. Like the rest of the beauty blogging world, I've gone out and got myself a nice Ikea Malm dressing table. I look at a number of other desks from Ikea, but the Malm ended up being a fairly affordable option in comparison, considering it has a drawer compartment.

HOW TO ADD VOLUME TO YOUR HAIR

Who doesn't like big hurr, amiright? I'm not talking about beauty queen hair. I just mean a little summin summin so your precious locks aren't looking flaccid. Anyone else like to slip in foul words every now and then? Now I have quite a lot of hair. I know this because every hair dresser I've ever been to remarks “wow, you have quite a lot of hair” and my powers of deduction are impeccable. However, the quantity of my hair certainly doesn't guarantee it looking voluminous and lush. I find that it still tends to fall flat at the top of my head. I've discovered a few products and techniques in the past year that have helped prevent any cases of limpness – my little blue pills if you will. Hey-oh!

HOW TO DO FLAWLESS, CAKELESS SKIN

The thing that I most appreciate about makeup is its ability to improve the look of my skin. Makeup can do absolutely wondrous things to the complexion. On the flip side it can also have a horrendous effect. There's nothing worse in my eyes than seeing someone whose skin is absolutely caked in makeup. You're undoing all the natural beauty you possess! So I suppose the question is how does one perfect the skin without looking cakey? This is how I do it.

VALENTINE'S DAY LOOK #2: BOLD LIP

Valentine's Day look #1 was for those who wanted to keep it fairly natural and sweet. What we've got going today is for those who want a little more pizzazz. The red lip and black winged liner is a pretty classic Valentines look, but I thought I'd change it up a bit, instead opting for pink and bronze.

VALENTINE'S DAY LOOK #1: SWEET AND SIMPLE

Valentine's day is nearly upon us and you know what that means. Putting makeup on the face time. I debated whether or not to go the sweet route or the saucy route. In the end I couldn't decide so I went for two looks. Today's is the sweet one, as you may have gathered by the title, and I'll tell you how I did it. But before I go on I just have to give a shout out to Brittany for her Valentine's day look. It was absolute perfection in my mind, somehow managing to be both sweet and sexy.

JANUARY FAVOURITES

Apparently I've been a grumpy bum bumps this month because I don't have a huge amount to talk about for favourites. You know how it is. Some months you feel like Oprah – you get to be in my favourites, you get to be in my favourites, everybody gets to be in my favourites – and some months you feel just kind of apathetic. This month seems to have been more of the latter. Nevertheless, there were a few things that stuck out in my mind.

FASHION FACES: 3.0

Fashion Faces is finally back! It's been a good five months since the last one. Granted this news might not be quite as exciting to everyone else, but for me getting to let loose the creativity is the best part of makeup. I've brought my lovely sister back for this third round and, I have to say, every time I photograph her I think “good God,  you could legitimately be a model.” I'm pretty lucky to have her face hanging around. So I'll do a quick run through of what we've gone for today.

HOW TO ENLARGE YOUR POPULAR POSTS THUMBNAILS

Every once in a while I get people emailing me or tweeting me asking about how to do this or that in terms of blog designing. The question that I get asked most frequently is how I got my Popular Posts widget to look the way that it does. The popular posts widget that comes with Blogger, for most people, leaves something to desired. I have no idea why Google hasn't updated some of their most basic widgets to get them looking, you know, not like they're still hanging out in the 90's, but they haven't. At any rate, this presents me with the opportunity to in turn present to you a “how to make your popular posts widget look good with big pictures and writing below and all that good stuff and junk” tutorial. Nailed the description I think.

ACNE PRONE SKIN: THE BEST $8 YOU'LL EVER SPEND

I have got a revelation for anyone out there who suffers from acne. My friends, I introduce to you hydrocolloid bandages, or more specifically Nexcare Acne Absorbing Covers. These little beasties are very popular on r/skincareaddiction, but they're not really something I've seen talked about in the beauty blogging world. I wanted to get the word out because they've been a huge help to me. I'll explain how they work.