Taking myself out of my "Comfort Zone" and new brushes!

I know it's been a while since I posted, life has just been so hectic lately and I'm afraid my job as "mammy" has to come before anything else in life!  Anyway, you don't want to be hearing all my excuses, do you?

I started this blog as a way for myself as well as my friends and family, to keep track of my journey through breast cancer.  I wanted to show people that you didn't have to have hair to look good.  I'm not sure that I reached out to too many people but hey, at least I'm trying!  I blog about whatever is in my mind at the time of writing, could be about my family, my health, makeup, or anything else!  But it's MY blog so I'll talk about what I want, right??

Anyway, I've felt lately that I'm really stuck in a rut, makeup wise.  I tend to have about 5 minutes in the morning to do my face and I use that 5 minutes because I don't want to be scaring people with my un-madeup face, freckles galore and barely-there eyebrows. I also do it because I don't feel like 'me' unless I'm wearing makeup.  I'm really not sure if that's a good or a bad thing!

So, for the past few months I've been using my Mac and Inglot eyeshadow palettes and at the weekends, when I might get 15-20 minutes to do my makeup in the mornings, I normally do a quick neutral look using creams and browns.  I tried to put on some blue and green one day, one of my old favourite combinations, and it just looked WRONG!  Maybe I'm just gone too old to be wearing bright colours now, who knows?  But I went through my train case today and thought I'd change it up a bit and have a change from my usual eyeshadows.  I took out my Urban Decay palette which I've had for AGES and I also took out my Mac Hello Kitty Lucky Tom palette which I paid ridiculous money for and have never used! (Those days of being able to afford Mac are long gone now though I'm afraid!  It's all budget stuff these days, but the less expensive makeup that's available now is great and I love it!)

Yes, I admit to using the sponge applicators a few times but I swear I'm throwing them in the bin!  Urban Decay palette on the left, Mac Hello Kitty on the right!

I'll try and take a few pictures at the weekend and hopefully I can start wearing bright looks again because I miss it!!

I've been using a lot of different makeup brushes lately, I have many brands, Essence, ELF, Sigma, Inglot and Mac, as well as some fake Mac ones that my sister bought me for christmas a couple of years ago.  When the Real Techniques brushes came out last year, I bought the stippling brush and I use it every day for my foundation and I LOVE it!  I wanted to get some more brushes but never had the money for them, so when I seen Fitz and Bitz on twitter offering a discount code for an american site named iHerb that sold the Real Techniques brushes at a HUGE discount (about half the price we pay here in Ireland), I started to put away a couple of euro every week and eventually I had the €30 odd I needed to get the brushes I wanted.  I had been eyeing up the Core Collection and the Starter Collection so I got both of those which were $17.99 each (before discount and shipping), and a back up stippling brush which was $9.99 (also before discount and shipping, I paid €16 for mine here last year!).

When I entered my discount code and applied the shipping the total amount came to $41.97, which converts to €32.26 which I was really delighted with! iHerb then gave me my own discount code to pass onto family and friends so if any of you are interested in buying these brushes at a really reasonable price then the code BHS059 will get you $10 off if you spend $40 and $5 off if you spend less than $40!  So, what are you waiting for??  The brushes arrived 2 weeks after ordering which is perfectly acceptable for post coming from the USA!

I haven't used ALL the brushes yet and I did manage to take a photo of them before I used them.  I'm hoping to do a review on them some time in the future but don't hold your breath! ;)

The brushes are all super soft and you won't be able to stop yourself from stroking them when you open the packet, go on, admit it, you know you did the same!!

L-R: Stippling Brush, Core Collection, Starter Collection

I hope I haven't bored you too much with this post, I know it's a long time since I've posted anything beauty related so I hope you stick with me while I try get back into it!

Thanks for reading!