GRWM Christmas Party or Dinner / Elegant and Feminine

Hey guys! Today is another GRWM and I love writing and photographing these posts. There also some of my most viewed posts.

Every year my friends and I do Secret Santa and have a meal where we give out our presents. Not only that, but we see it as an opportunity to dress up nice and seeing as it's Christmas we can go full out! I thought one of these looks would be useful given the time period, if you're going to a Christmas party or meal then hopefully you get some idea's from this post.

Now traditionally on Christmas a lot of people wear Christmas colours like greens, red and golds teamed with sparkle for a Christmas party, but I wanted to do something a little different and slightly more girly. I don't often dress up girly, but I do love trying new looks and styles out so I thought I'd team an elegant girly look with a bit of Christmas spirit!

Firstly, lets start with my hair. I aimed to go for a glam curly look. Before I started with the heated products I sprayed a bit of heat protectant on my hair after I showered. I don't often mention this but I think it's really important to protect your hair and especially with mine being blonde it can become brittle quite easily. So now for the fun part. Going for a different method, I used my Babyliss hair rollers in medium and large to get a smooth loose look. I curled them towards my face, and although that's not my usual technique, it's creates a classy style. I left these in for 20 minutes.

While the rollers were in I moved onto makeup. Because of the girly glam theme, I went for a shimmery pink look with golden and warm undertones. As well as contour, I concentrated on blush and highlighter to make sure my face didn't appear too sharp and defined. I added a lot of mascara to make my eyes pop and used a nude/pink lipstick to go with the eyeshadows.

Onto the outfit! You won't be surprised that my outfit is from Missguided because they literally have everything at an affordable price. Going for classy but cute I wore a pink high neck crop top and the sweetheart neck line made the look more feminine. The grey scuba skirt is a very flattering shape which I find really helps my body. For shoes I went with a different colour completely of a dark burgandy purple. I think this helped break up the colours and made the look more seasonal. These were from New Look.

I chose to accessorise with some gorgeous gold earrings (a gift from my sister for my birthday) from Topshop and a gold watch from River Island(a gift from my Dad also). The gold really helped bring out the warmer tones in my makeup.

Finally I sprayed a little bit of perfume. I chose LeeLee from Benefit as it's feminine but sweet!

Here are a few photos including makeup, outfit and hair:

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year. I should be doing another post before them but I'm not the most reliable and organised person, so we will see.

Gina x

Clothes Show Live 2014

A few weeks ago on the 7th of December I visited Clothes Show Live, which has become an annual event for me. For those of you who aren't sure what the clothes show is, it is basically an event held in Birmingham at the NEC arena including a fashion show along with many stalls and boutiques where you can buy vintage and high street clothing. In addition they have a beauty area where there are a range of stalls including brands from the drugstore like Rimmell, BarryM and Models Own. They often have discounts or goodie bags that you can buy for an extremely good price!

 When my friend and I arrived, I decided to buy a clothes show goodie bag, which had a wristband and clothes show magazine. Apparently, this helped get discount off at certain stalls. It also included a map. Unfortunately, it didn't help me with discounts, but it was useful in that I had a guide of my way around, because with the NEC being so huge I didn't really know where I could find certain shops. It was expensive at £8 but I wouldn't say it was a waste of money as it did help me with my way around.

The show itself was phenomenal as always. Our seats this year were better than previous years and I had a great view of the show. To my surprise Jim Chapman (one of my favourite youtubers) was presenting along with a very good looking Rick Edwards. There was also a performance by Stereokicks to get everyone in the mood.

The show began with a scene in New York with very colourful, flamboyant outfits worn by the models, this then changed into a formal work outfit where the women wore faux leather white midi skirts which I adored! The screen at the back of the stage helped with setting the scene and the images were very vivid. There were a variety of colourful scenes, including a jungle theme, a theme park and a disco tech theme. I was pleasantly surprised with the music choices which were very lively and fitted all the themes perfectly. There were too slower scenes, one being a snowy wedding with "Empire" by Shakira being played and a contemporary dance scene with one male and female model. Not only that but all the models were beautiful with extremely chiselled features and my friend and I definitely appreciated the amount of topless models and the array of six packs.

One thing that was different about this year for me, personally, was that I saw a lot more celebrities. I managed to be face to face and inches away from Andy Jordan (from Made In Chelsea) and was next in line for a photo until he ended up dashing off. I also saw Dan Osborne, Lucy Mecklenburgh (both from TOWIE) and Jaimie Laing again from Made in Cheslea.

Sorry for the snapchat usage throughout this post

Onto purchases, I did find some amazing deals and bargains and contemplated buying almost everything, but I walked away at the last minute. Strangely, I was being strict with myself on buying things and I usually would have spent twice the amount I did. One thing I regret not buying was a pair of eyelashes from The Vintage Cosmetics Company. The packaging was so beautiful and I ended up convincing myself I only wanted to buy them because of the packaging, but infact the eyelashes were gorgeous and I didn't quite realise until I got home!

I have to say I spent up in Barry M. I ended up with 8 nail varnishes!! I did get a few other things from Barry M but unfortunately I can't post these because they're Christmas presents and I want them to be surprises.

From a stall named "Pepper Tree London" I bought a purple oversized jumper for £15 and I can tell already this will become a holy grail item, especially in the winter.

This has to be the item I am most content with and it was a skirt made from a shirt which sounds slightly odd. I'd never seen anything similar and it just appealed to me. It was £18 so not cheap or expensive.

After quite a bit of shopping, my friend and I found a photobooth which was inside a cute little car including props that cost £2.50 for a print out. So for a bit of fun we tried it out! Wow, these photo's are attractive.

Oh and if any of you are interested, I wore a high neck burgandy sleeveless top from Topshop, along with a check shirt from Tesco, my Topshop black quilted skirt and my black Dr Marten boots. I also did a classic red lip and curled my hair. Here's a rather moody selfie.

That was all for the clothes show this year. I did manage to see another catwalk on the Olympus Pen which was fun and worth the watch.

Thank you for reading! I would recommend the clothes show to anyone who hasn't been, just be sure to talk some money with you as you won't be able to resist the bargains!

Gina x