REVIEW- Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water

As a beauty blog and Youtube addict, I'd been hearing a lot of good things about Micellar Cleansers, particularly Bioderma. I was due a skin regime overhaul as I'd been loyally using Olay Daily Facials for the past eek 8 years or so!! CRAZY right?!

I didn't really want to splash out on the Bioderma right away as it's pretty expensive at £9.99 for 250ml; so I decided to buy the Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water after hearing such positive things about it. It's currently on offer at £3.99 for 400ml and at full price is still only £5 or so, which I think is really good value. On the bottle it says there are enough for 200 uses of the product, I've not actually been counting but realistically you can probably get a months worth out of it. 

AND BOY WAS I GLAD I DID!...

I have been using this for about a month now, I really wanted to test it out before I wrote about it and I am so impressed!. I'm probably responsible for a slight increase in sales in Nottingham due to the fact I won't shut up about it JOKES!

The water is unscented and the science part of it is basically that there are particles of oil suspended in the water which lift off your make-up. That's to paraphrase massively but you get the idea. I am really impressed with how cleansed my skin feels after using, it probably takes me about three cotton wool pads to remove all my make up and it's not that great at removing ALL my eye make up but it's really gentle on the skin and didn't sting my eyes. BIG PLUS! 

I would definitely recommend you try this product, particularly if you currently use face wipes to remove your make up because this is NEXT.LEVEL and once you've used it you won't go back to wipes.

I'd love to hear from you if you've used this and how you found it! leave me a comment below or tweet me @amandainateacup

A x

Letraset Comic Marker Pad Review

So I went to Hobbycraft the other day to buy myself a few treats...and whilst there I happened to wander into what can only be described as heaven...that's right it was THE DISCOUNT BIT! 

They now have a PERMANENT discount section...AMAZING HUH!

ANYWAY...

I was looking to buy some new sketchbooks as I was running low and there on the bargain shelf for only £2!! was this Letraset Manga Art Supplies Comic Marker Pad. I had never tried this paper before but at that price what did I have to lose? EXACTLY, nowt! 

So as you can see it's an A4 pad of bright white paper, which according to the information on the front has been developed for use with alcohol based markers. 

I use Letraset Promarkers a lot , typically I use a pretty absorbent Daler Rowney Heavyweight paper which I think mutes the colours in my illustrations quite a bit so I was keen to try something that would retain the brightness of the pens. 

This paper in this pad is pretty thin at 70gsm which means that you can use it for tracing. I was worried that this would mean that the ink would soak through badly but it wasn't actually that bad. 

You can see the transparency of the paper here...

I was pretty impressed with this paper, you can see from my illustration that the colours have not bled that much and I was able to use a couple of greens on the leaves which have stayed put pretty well. I like the fact that the Promarker colours are crisp and sharp and the outlines clear.

I am going to keep going with this paper, I think it's going to work well with my pointillism. I still think that cracking the paper is half the battle with illustration, if only it wasn't so confusing. Anyone who can shed any light on the subject, please do get in touch.

The pens I used in this illustration were:

Letraset Promarker in Caramel   0727

Letraset Promarker in Tulip Yellow Y337

Letraset Promarker in Mint Green G637

Letraset Promarker in Marsh Green 

Letraset Promarker in Forest Green

A couple of vintage pens which my friend Catherine gave me (left over from GCSE days) they were...

Letraset Pantone 406-T

Letraset Pantone 468-T

Laterz

Ax