After this I did a flying visit down to my home town of Midhurst, before returning to London for Relentless Freeze Festival (according to their website www.londonfreeze.com Relentless Freeze Festival is where London, snow sports and music collide. Every year the world’s best snowboarders and skiers descend on Battersea Power Station to compete on a real snow ramp before some amazing music acts hit three stages for a banging party…)
But I knew none of this having only been asked the previous day by fabulous singer Kiesher Downie aka LiLi if I could pop down and do her trade mark lily eye make up as she was performing at the event with Brighton based Drum n bass outfit The Qemists .

After a long and boring train journey to Battersea park, I found my way to the festival site, only to be told, of course! that someone had lost my pass, so while I was waiting for the lovely Kiesher to come and sort it out, I got chatting with a couple of the stewards who were out side having a cup of tea and a smoke, I asked where they go the tea from and they directed me to a little hut, I went over and politely enquired if I might possibly be able to allowed to have some hot water and a tea bag in a Styrofoam cup, the reaction of the guy you’d think I’d wandered into his living room and asked if his children were for sale ‘THIS TEA IS FOR PERSONAL ONLY, WE’VE ALL BEEN WORKING FOR 8 HOURS, WHAT THE HELL MAKES YOU SO SPECIAL??!!’ ‘well I did just come from Sussex….’ I ventured ‘OUT!!!!’ he screeched, pointing a quivering finger at the door, I left and returned to hanging around vaguely outside the gates, fortunately I didn’t have long to wait before the missing pass was located and I accompanied kiesher to the back stage area (and every nice it was too, I was particularly impressed by the large selection of alcoholic beverages provided.)
We had a chat about her forthcoming tour of Japan with the Qemists while I applied her trade mark LiLi eye make-up. (see above) After this we briefly argued the merits of boots vs trainers before it was time for the band to be off, I joined up with some of their friends who had come down from brighton and, having stocked up on the complementary beers we headed over to the Relentless stage to watch the show.

What can I say, The Qemist played an absolutely blinding set, I’m a bit too out of the loop with music to say sounds like this person or this band, the best I can come up with is drum and bass with a bit of rock thrown in for good measure, but whatever they do it works, they are the sort of band who are guaranteed to get you up and dancing like an idiot.
Best of luck in Japan folks, check them out on their return.

Oh dear its been a madly busy last few days, on Thursday I was doing a shoot with wonderfully talented photographer Ellie rose Harvey,  (View her work at http://ellieharvey.com ) at her Hackney studio, our model was the stunning Rosie Hannah D (you can see more of her here http://lookbook.nu/rosiehannah) If you look to your left you can see a photo from a previous collaboration of the three of us, featuring dress by up and coming designer Arisa Fukumoto, (for more information on her please go to )
Right ok now we've got the credit parts done, the shoot was on a sort of halloween type theme, involving various props such as a polystyrene skull which we attached with great difficulty to Rosie's head to create a strange lady gaga style creation, the skull reminded me a bit of the one out of trapdoor, which I was rather shocked to find the youth of today have never heard of (if you've never heard of it either see below) This Lead onto a conversation about kids TV and childhood in general; mum's into health food and what became of the weird kids etc. Its a funny thing this nostalgia business, as a child I seem to remember spending a lot of time wishing I was a grown up, and now I'm a grown up I seem to spend a lot of time thinking back to being a child......Oh dear how morbid, on a more cheerful note Ellie has recently acquired two absolutely gorgeous cats, a mum and daughter called Sophie and Jaliza rose, who caused havoc running around chasing wires and getting lost in boxes, at the end they rather reuctantly agreed to be photgraphed with Rosie, Pic's to follow......

I've been thinking about doing a blog for a while now but what with one thing and another it never quite materialized, anyway I have now finally got my arse in gear, and here we are ladies and gentlemen entry number one in which I shall be reviewing cosmetics by Victoria Jackson, hope you enjoy....

So I got sold to...
Before you ask this doesn't often happen, generally I do everything I can to avoid sales people, charity fundraisers and anyone who looks like they might want to part me from my hard earned cash. But there I was it was a miserable tuesday afternoon, the cafe in which I work was completely empty (yes, yes I still have a day job) when suddenly two girls came running in out of the rain dragging a large suitcase between them, they ordered some coffees and after a while we got chatting, when they told me they were doing sales, I knew they going to start spieling at me and generally I would have told them thanks but no thanks, but because it was make up my little ears pricked up and before I knew what I was doing I found myself handing over £20 for a Victoria Jackson cosmetics kit including a set of brushes, a decent sized palette containing, eye shadow, lip-gloss and blusher, and a set of 4 lip-glosses (in handy zip up case with little brush) sure its very good value, but is it actually any good?
Who is this Victoria jackson person ?
......"Having achieved success as a Hollywood makeup artist, cosmetics entrepreneur and TV infomercial pioneer, Victoria Jackson prefers to think of herself as a goodwill ambassador for makeup"..... (taken from her website www.vmakeup.com)   She is apparently known as the 'no make up make up artist' because she likes to make people look naturally beautiful darrrling, and has worked with various celebrities including Keira Knightly and Jane Fonda. Her make up is mineral based, tested for sensitivity, hypo-allergenic, fits all skin tones and is safe for daily use - I should jolly well hope so! oh and its not tested on animals. Currently available in macy's (seems to be the US equivalent of Debenhams) and apparently heading to a department near you.

Brushes
Powder brush- Not off to a flying start as when I took it out of its packaging it began shedding hairs in all directions! however when I tried it it was perfectly serviceable and probably not a bad one to have in your kit as a back up

Foundation brush- hell no! first of all it had been stuck together at a wonky angle, secondly there are odd length hairs protruding from its tip, finally its cheap synthetic and nasty, verdict - BIN!

'Eyeshadow brush' I can only assume this was a misprint as it would be fucking hopeless as an eyeshadow brush as it is way too large and would give you no control whatsoever, would probably be alright for blending with if it weren't for the odd length hairs protruding from various angles, verdict - give it a hair cut!

Lipbrush - again this needs a trim!

Angled shader and Eyeliner brush, these two were a very pleasant surprise after the last ones as they both perfectly decent serviceable brushes.

Also the little pencil case they come in is rather handy definitely worth hanging on to!

Palette
Nicely designed with removable middle part, and mirror also all the parts can be removed and changed round so very handy if you wanted to take say a lip gloss, eyeshadow and blush in you handbag, and of course in the middle we have a selection of those rubbishy sponge things no one ever uses.
First gripe, the blushers are WAY to small to get a normal sized brush into, they have a nice feel but they hardly come out at all in comparison to the MAC harmony that I am using as a control.

Eyeshadows - My control here is a little Lancome palette my mother gave me for Christmas-Thanks mum! containing similar colours; beige, dark grey, 2 browns (the VJ one also had a blue in it) again the Victoria Jackson one compared very badly, it had a nice feel but was barely visible you had to use a lot to get any sort of noticeable result, it reminds me a bit of those poundshop type ones you would buy with your pocket money when you were about 11.

Lipgloss - I'm afraid I've got a bit into my Lancome juicy tubes lately so first of all it seems a little odd to try on lipgloss that dosn't taste of anything! But in order to stop this seeming like a Lancome advert I am going to test this against my old skool, had it since the dawn of time Kryolan lip palette, you know the one everyone says is rubbish yet everyone has a version of it lurking somewhere in their kit, and I can tell you now, kryolan absolutly pisses all over Victoria Jackson, seriously you'd be better off using vaseline, its hopeless.

Other lipgloss
I am testing this against MAC lipglass, before i start one point in favor of Victoria jackson is it comes with a rather nifty little foldaway brush of surprisingly decent quality - hurrah!
Holy shit can this be? I have actually found something useable, in fact quite decent amongst the Victoria jackson cosmetics range?! Hang on I need to sit down!
well it didn't beat the big daddy MAC, but nice colour, nice consistancy and reasonably durable, nice one Victoria jackson!

Over all verdict
definately worth the £20 I paid for it, if you see anyone selling these round your way get one for the lipgloss set and a few of the brushes, the rest will make a decent present, for a younger cousin/niece etc
Hope you enjoyed my first blog, hopefully more to follow byeee