Hc45: Hydrocortisone Acetate Cream

I have super bad eczema.

Nothing compared to when I was a kid and was literally covered in it head to toe. But it does like to come back with avengence every now and again. There is no warning it just happens. I know I'm allergic to most washing powders, bubble baths, shower gels etc. but even when I'm not in contact with them I'll get it. The doctors thought it might have been dietary, but even after cutting out food groups I still had it. I got diagnosed with stress at 15 and they think that might trigger it as well.

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It doesn't help I work with my hands a lot; barista/ bartender/ waitress I do a lot of cleaning, my hands get dirty a lot and they never get a rest.

Hc45 is my saviour. Not only is my eczema unsightly, most the time it looks like my hand is slightly decaying but it hurts. A lot. If I don't put a strong motisturiser on before I go to bed I will wake up with a claw and which kills to open as all the skin has to re-crack and split. Not fun.

Hc45 has to be bought at a pharmacy as it's one of those behind the counter medicines. I'm not sure why, I think it might be because hydrocortisone contains/is a steroid and it is a controlled substance.

It is literally a miracle cream. Within 4-5 days it will completely clear up even the worse case of my eczema. If I just have a little bit of dry skin somewhere I will put some on in the morning and by the evening it would have gone.

It comes in a 15g tube and I find that to get rid of my eczema I will barely use a 1/5 of the tube. So after that I tend to just use it as a hand cream and my work takes a lot out of they and it keeps them super soft.

This is defiantly a must for anyone who get dry and cracked skin. And that is everything I have bought today, apart from some pains au chocolat for breakfast and some cheesy chips for lunch. Total spend: 18.19 New points balance of Superdrug Caed: 708

Superdrug Manicure Set

As I said in the last post I got some fake nails before work today. As I was in a super rush this morning and my bag was already full with everything I need for being out of the house for 13+ hours I didn't pack my usual manicure set. That and I was super tired this morning after work 10am- 6:30pm yesterday as well as staff meal and meeting 7:30pm-12am so I stayed in bed till the last possible moment.

Anyway, I grabbed this quickly this morning while in Superdrug. It comes with nail buffer, nail file, cutical/ nail scissors, tweezers and a a toe nail clipped. All of these I already own, but on a bigger scale. They all come in a nice little black bag, which I think will come in super handy for putting in my bag. Occasionally my fake nails will; one fall off and need to be stuck back on or two half snap off. So I will be adding a little tube of nail glue to this set and keeping in my handbag for emergencies. For £3.99 it's not that bad really.

I like that they are all miniatures. It means they will take up little room in my already bursting bag. The nail buffer isn't amazing so I might replace that with the one that came with the fake nails. I think I find it a little bit rubbish because most of the time I have the remain of nail glue on my nails and need a courser buffer to get rid of it. The scissors, tweezers and toe nail clippers are all stainless steel as well so I'm hoping that just using them for touch ups means they'll last a while.

Does anyone else carry emergency mini beauty items in their bag?

Elegant Touch: Classic French in Simply Pink

I buy a lot of fake nails. I wear them all the time. I feel so much better having nice nails, even when I'm having a shit day nice nails make you feel way better. It also make me feel finished, if that makes sense?

This pack came with 24 nails in 10 sizes, nail file and nail glue. Occasionally you'll also get a wooden cuticle stick with some packs but I never really use them and I have a plastic one at home.

I'm on double shifts for the next couple of day. Which means leaving the house at 9:30am and not returning home till about 11pm at the earliest. So on my way to open up my boyfriends cafe/bar this morning I made a detour to Superdrug to pick up some new nails.

Elegant Touch are one of my favourite fake nail brands, I find they stay on a lot longer than most other brands. They are a lot more flexible and slightly thinner which I like. It's got to the paint where it takes me about 5 minutes to do both hands which is nice, so this morning I did my nails after opening up before anyone came in.

The nails I bought today had little tabs on the top of them which makes putting on fake nails about a billion times less messy. I have a little sucker tool at home I usually use for putting them on as it insures that there are no air bubbles between my real nail and the fake one. This is super important when apply French manicure style nails as the majority of the fake nail is translucent, so any imperfection on the nail, or with the glue will show though. Not massively, but I notice and it annoys me.

Although the instructions always say to just put the glue on your finger nail, I tend to put a bit on the fake nail as well. I find this will helps with not leaving any air bubbles. I do one hand at a time and make sure I leave any glue that has spilled onto my finger to dry, so when I start the second hand I won't leave any glue residue on the top of the fake nail as this leaves an uneven surface. And the whole point of wearing fake nails is to look completely polished.

Anyone else have any fake nail brands they would recommend?

(You'll have to excuse the low quality photos, I have a blackberry and I've lost the charger to my little Panasonic Lumix camera.)

Sunday Shopping

Seeing as I have enough make-up to last me forever, well forevers a bit of an over statement for the next few months or so, I have successful not bought anymore make-up since my tax rebate haul. So this means I've started spending more money on hair bits.

I can justify them all though.

L'oreal Paris Preference: 10.21 Stockholm: Very Light Pearl Blonde. My roots are insanely bad and I need to re-do them

Thinning Scissors: My hair tends to grow outwards rather than downwards, it needs to be thinned out and it's easier to use these than my kitchen scissors.

Hairdressing Scissors: To avoid dying my hair for a for more weeks, a while ago i re-cut in my block fringe. This has since grown quite quickly and needs to be trimmed again. But I can't find my kitchen scissors so I thought I'd better just buy some semi-proper ones.

Tinting brush: I have lost mine, it was 3 for 2 with scissors and as stated previously I need to do my roots.

Denman Tangle Tamer: My extensions get unbelievable tangled during the day. I'm not sure if it's because I had to tone them three times before they where nearly the same colour as my hair, been servilely attacked with hairdryer, straighteners and curling iron albeit with heat protection spray, or the fact the wind is insane down here at the moment. Or a combination of all of the above. I've already tried out the brush and it is super good. I usually use my paddle brush on my extensions, but they shed so so much. They still shed with the new brush but not even half as much. And it leaves my hair soooooo silky smooth.

Apart from some steaks and veg for dinner tonight, this is a complete round up of todays spending.


Total spending today: £26.17

Max Factor Pan Stik: Colour 13 Nouveau Beige Review

Now as I said in my Maybelline Dream Fresh BB Cream review, I have super light skin, so Nouveau Beige is quite a dark colour for me. But I bought it with the idea of mixing it with a mouturiser which pales down the colour. I did this because It is pretty much a grease paint. This doesn't mean it's greasy, although generally made from oil, it just means that it has amazing coverage and a very deep opacity. I first came across grease paint when I start playing around with SFX make-up and film work. I use it a lot on set for the actors as typical make-up will melt off under bright lights and won't give a glossy finish. I first started using the brand Dema-colour which is generally used for completely covering scars and blemishes, I tended to use it for giving latex pieces and SFX wax wounds a more realistic colour.

Anyway, getting back to the Pan Stik, I bought it because working in a night club it gets super hot. And when the bar gets busy you are making drinks as fast as possible. These things added together equal a lot of sweating. So I needed a foundation which could deal with that as I found all my other ones just couldn't deal with it.

When I use the Pan Stik I use any moisturiser I have to hand and a foundation brush and just mix a bit of each together. I do this because I found my skin does not agree with Pan Stik on it's own as it is a thick product. After I have applied it I set it with powder, it doesn't seem to matter what i use. After it's set, to make sure I don't have any tide lines, I use my usual foundation, Max Factor: Lasting Performance colour 100 Fair currently, over the top. Not loads just a light coating.

This then stays put forever. I have been know to be so tired when I get home at gone 3am than i fall asleep before I get the chance to take my make-up off and in the morning my make-up wipe is pretty dirty with Pan Stik. So that's a good 12 hours plus of it staying on my face.

I will update this with before and after photos when I next go to work. Because of the above reasons I am taking a few days off from Pan Stik as my face is not happy with me.

Maybelline Dream Fresh BB in Light

I bought this as I wanted something quicker than foundation to put on my face before work. I work loads running around a cafe/restaurant and bar/nightclub so I'm knackered most of the time. I like to sleep for as long as I can so this means being able to make my morning routine as quick as possible, Luckily I live less than 10 minutes away from work so I usually get up about 40 minutes before I have to leave the house. Most of the time I hit the snooze which gives me 30 minutes to have a cuppa tea, get dressed, put my make-up on and extensions in. When I write it down it sounds like ages, but in my sleepy state I never feel like it's long enough to do much properly. I like the fact that I can just put a dot of this on my finger tips and just rub it in to my face and I already look more awake than I feel. I don't have time in the morning, if I'm working, to do a whole wash, cleanse, moisturise, prime etc. etc.

Here is BB cream when first applied;

I have super light skin, it comes from the snow white/ english rose condition I inherited from my great grandmother. Super light skin, super dark hair. Which makes foundation super hard to find. When I first opened the BB cream I was worried it still wasn't light enough for my skin, but just using a little to cover my whole face, blends nicely. It pretty much does everything it says it does. Apart from "feels fresh" I think it just feels like putting a cream on my face for the first few second, like when you put anything wet on your face, it feels refreshing but it doesn't last. It might be because I occasionally whack on Clean&Clear: Morning Energy rather than BB cream and that feels far more fresher for longer than the BB cream.

Even after an eight hour shift of running around, being in and out of a super hot kitchen and around a coffee machine it still manages to stay put extremely well. It has obviously faded a little, but I still look awake and fresh after I've finished my shift. I would put a photo of after, but I haven't been to work today. It is my first day off in 12 days so I have decided to do very little.

I'm coming to the end of this tube at the moment and trying to decide whether to re-buy this one or try another BB cream. Has anyone got a BB cream they swear by?

3 Quick Film Reviews

I haven't got round to watching all the films I bought in my tax rebate binge, mainly because I rarely get any time off. When I do I just want to watch unbelievably easy films. Which is why I own so many despite being a Film Graduate who should know better. However, these films give me hope that someone will fund one of my stupid ideas. So first things first;

Lake Placid 3

After worrying I wouldn't understand the story line as I have missed out on this second installment of this epic trilogy(not) I whacked this on late one night. It has to be one of the best worst films I own. And as previously stated, I own a lot. The opening sequence is one of the best worst to these types of films, a couple start having some sexy times on the bank of the lake and in these hybrid slasher/monster films sexy time is always a bad idea if you want to live to the end of the film. They inevitably get eaten in a crocodile feeding frenzy.

We then get to move to what I assume is a semi three dimensional story-line, not that you ever particularly need one in these films. The family of the woman who was feeding the crocodiles in the first film are clearing out her lake side house, which looks completely different but I assume is suppose to be her house, after she has passed away. I think she actually got eaten in the second one. Basically, without giving to much away, some animals have gone missing, the park ranger tries to find them, he meets some teenagers on a camping trip, a poacher and some other people and reasonably quickly they discover there are a lot of varying sizes of CGI crocodiles in the lake. Que a feeding frenzy, lots of bloody death.

Basically it's like the first one but without the dark humor or semi-memorable characters.

Boob count: Only 2 sets of naked boobs.

Ozombie

This is pretty much as ridiculous as Lake Placid 3. If not more. If you haven't guessed from the title in this films universe Bin Laden has come back to life as a zombie.

I was aware this would be a slightly racist and ridiculous film, and it did have a £9 price tag. And for me a crappy horror film should never cost more then £5 but, on the back they're is some pretty impresive stills of the zombie make-up. I love SFX-makeup, I did it as my FMP for my degree. So I had to buy this film just to see. I loved it. The make-up was so well done, it made up for the crap CGI blood which was splattered all over the desert and vanished by the end of the fight scenes.

I can't really tell you what happens in this film. There's some NATO special forces people and they're in Afganistan doing something and then there's loads of zombies to fight. Some of them die, some of them survive. I didn't care who lived or died. I just liked the fight scenes.

ZombieLand

If you haven't guessed yet, I like horror films. I have an extensive collection which can rival my local HMVs horror section.

ZombieLand is one of my favorite recent zombie films. It's like an indie film but with zombies, and a budget. It's well written, I can watch it with people who don't particularly like zombie films and it's got Woody Harrelson in. I would agree with The Sunday Mirror that it is "The best zom-com since Shaun of the Dead" but that's because there really isn't many mainstream funny zombie films. Or at least hasn't between 2004 and now. The only one I can think of aff the top of my head is The Mad, I think I liked that more than both of them but it never really got big. Canada comes out with some pretty good horrors ever now and again. Hobo with a Shotgun being one of the latest.

There's been so much hype with ZombieLand I'm sure everyone knows about it. Even though the zombies run a little I don't mind too much. Usually I hate it. Re-make of Dawn of the Dead upset me quite a bit, but for some reason I don't mind it too much in this one.

I've still got Wrecked to watch, so I'm gonna try and find some time this week, but my diary's already pretty filled.