Time For Tea | Bea's of Bloomsbury

I know, it's been a while and I apologise for that. I moved back to London in October and since then life has just been incredibly busy. But I'm back with a post about CAKE...

 Last weekend I visited a cute little cafe 'Bea's of Bloomsbury' for a catch up over a delicious Afternoon Tea with my friend Martha. This time last year we went to South Kensington for a Detox Afternoon tea which I wrote about here. This year we decided to ditch the carrot sticks and indulge ourselves. It was such a lovely experience, I thought it needed to be shared! 

The pièce de résistance...a variety of sandwiches made with focaccia bread, home made scones, beautiful cupcakes, chocolate AND blondie brownies, raspberry marshmallows, all topped off with some very cute little meringues. I definitely wouldn't call this a 'traditional' Afternoon Tea. They also have a great selection of teas, we both decided on 'Vanilla' which was surprisingly yummy as it wasn't too overpowering.

If you'd like to just pop in for a snack Bea's also have a delicious looking collection of cakes. We even came across a 'Duffin'...I was very tempted to buy one and take it home for later. But I didn't need to because we still had cakes left from our tower of treats, which were kindly boxed up for us. 

I would recommend booking a table if you are planning on visiting Bea's at the weekend for an Afternoon Tea. The cafe was completely full and even when you do book the slot is for a limited amount of time.

The Afternoon Tea is £19 per person which I think is pretty reasonable for London. The friendly atmosphere and delicious food make it even more worth while. As you can tell, I only have good things to say about this place! 

Maybelline Colour Drama | Intense Velvet Lip Pencil

As soon as I heard about the Maybelline Lip Pencils I knew I wanted to give them a try. I think this is the first lip pencil I've owned, as I haven't been able to justify spending £18 on a Nars Velvet Matte Pencil. I expect they are very similar though! 

The colour range isn't huge, but hopefully more will be released later on. I decided to go for 'Fab Orange', which is bright, but a great all year round shade. I was worried that it might be difficult to apply, but I actually found it more straight forward than using a lipstick. I've given this shade a good test run on two separate evenings and found that it lasts around six hours and when drinking and eating you would probably need to reapply after four or five. These pencils have a matte texture but are not too drying at all, which is what makes them a winner for me. 

One thing that I did find strange was that when I wore this lip pencil for the second time it kept ending up on my chin or smudged across my forehead. This didn't happen at all the first time I used it and I reckon it was just down to me being carless and that it wasn't the product. I was wondering if anyone else has found this when they've used this lip pencil?

Overall, I think these are great value for £4.99 and I've got my eye on a couple of the darker shades for winter.

Have you tried the Maybelline Velvet Lip Pencils? 

Benefit They're Real Push-Up Liner

Benefit's 'They're Real' mascara is very popular and probably my all time favourite mascara- If you haven't tried it then I recommend you do. So I was very excited to see that they have also recently released a push up liner. The interesting thing about this is that it's a gel liner in the form of a pen. I've used a gel liner once before and love the texture and look, but didn't get on well applying it with a brush. 

I've been using this liner for about month now in order to give an honest review because, I wasn't a big fan to start with. I think this is because of it's dry consistency. The key to getting along with this liner is practice, practice, practice. Once you overcome the strange push up technique, it actually becomes a pretty easy and effective liner to use. It drys very quickly, but once it's dry it does not budge or transfer onto your eyelids and has such amazing lasting power. The gel liner is activated when the base is twisted and I learnt pretty quickly that you only need one click to release a small amount of liner which goes a long way. When I was in the States in September I bought the 'Real Steal' set which contains a smaller version of the liner, full sized mascara and a sample of the remover for $24. Such a bargain...especially as it's a great way to try the liner for the first time. Although the liner is a miniature version, it is still substantial and easy to hold (see photo above for size comparison to the mascara).

I can understand why Benefit have made a remover to go with this push up liner as it does take a lot of scrubbing to get rid of. However, a full sized bottle is £14.50 which is very pricey considering a good (cheaper) make up remover can do the same job. 

If you enjoy using gel liner then I would recommend this product. I do feel that $18.50 is over priced, but if you already love the mascara then I would suggest getting it as part of this set.  It's available in Boots in the UK and is only £19.50, meaning that you are in fact getting the eyeliner for free. 

Have you tried this liner before? Did you find it easy or difficult to use?

Fortnight in Photos #16 | Trip to Los Angeles

 I've been a bit quiet on here and that's because I've been in the lovely state of California for two weeks. Well, more specifically Los Angeles. But I quickly learnt that a lot of the places I visited, like Santa Monica, are in fact separate to LA and are not part of the city. Fun fact for you there!

I went by myself which was pretty scary at first. But I soon started to enjoy my own company and met new people and friends of friends. It's such a different world there to what I'm used to and there just happened to be a crazy heat wave, which lasted the whole of the two weeks. I found my accommodation through Airbnb, which I would highly recommend! I stayed in a house in Hollywood looking after three cats and it was so affordable...you can find some great places on there.

I had a great time and wanted to share some photos with you from the trip because they pretty much sum up the weather and the fun things that I got up to. Have you been to LA before? What did you think? 

Santa Monica beach, sitting on the Friends couch at the Warner Brothers studio lot, Hollywood High School, Disneyland, one of the cats hiding under the couch, Venice Beach.

Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach- dipping my feet in the sea, GIANT pancakes at The Griddle in Hollywood, Manhattan beach again, walking through a fridge door to get to a bar, a beautiful roof terrace at The Redbury in Hollywood.