Author Archives: marc

This month’s preoccupation is “interior design”. Despite the fact that my house currently has no interior walls and only half of the outside ones (and groundworks on the new part of the house have yet to even begin), I am sat (often for great lengths of time) studying wallpaper samples and dreaming about the day I’ll be able to move back in. I’ll admit that I’m starting to feel a little bit angsty about the whole thing; the timing is, to put things mildly, unfortunate. It’s debatable whether we’ll be back in the house for my baby due date and so I’ve been Googling the birth centres that are near to my parents’ house in Worcestershire, just in case we end up having to relocate! (We get kicked out of our lovely temporary barn accommodation in mid-May and there is nothing – nothing, I tell you – available for short-let.)

So. Not ideal. And I’m taking my mind off it all by putting carpet samples on the floor and testing the softness (!) and looking at ridiculously-priced wallpaper. (élitis, anyone? Dear God. Extra mortgage.) I will be back to full-throttle beauty testing and makeup-filming next week, once I’ve purged myself of the whole Interior Design Bug. I keep meaning to do a little video about my house project, but so far every time I’ve been back the builders have been there and I am not parading about talking to a camera like a complete tool.

Oh, by the way; the paint swatches on the wall in the top photograph are from 1969 when the house was built. Look at those amazing colours! No “Magnolia” or “Mole’s Whisper” for those crazy sixties kids!

The post This Month’s Preoccupation… appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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1) This week saw me sustain what must be the first cheese-related injury in history. No joke! I took the dog to dog-training and cut my thumb open on a piece of Manchego! You may ask what I was doing thumbing about with a piece of Manchego in dog-training, well: you have to take “highly salient” treats and I didn’t have anything particularly suitable. The trainer suggested tiny bits of cheese. Yes I KNOW they’re not supposed to have cheese, and I never give it, but it was an emergency situation. And given that this dog regularly has things in his poo that I can’t even fathom, I couldn’t really see how one piece of cheese could kill him. At any rate, cheese never made it to dog because the bloody stuff was so hard I couldn’t break it up! And then the rind shot down beneath my nail and cut my thumb and then there was blood.

Incidentally, the training went very well, thank you very much – Mr AMR did all of the proper work, I just handed slithers of chicken and stood there like a lemon, sucking my bloody thumb.

2) From one cheese to another… SMELL MY CHEESE! KISS MY FACE! AHA! Yes, I’m talking about Alan Partridge and, in particular, the fact that last Sunday I did actually kiss his face. Steve Coogan’s, if I’m being accurate, but he very kindly indulged me and slipped into “Alan” mode when I asked him to. What a sport. He probably gets asked “to be Alan” all the time, so: thank you Steve. You made my day. I have ticked one of my lifetime achievements from my to-do list! (Sad, but actually true.)

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Last week we had ten under ten, this week it’s five under five. Next week, who knows? Two under two? Ha! That’ll cut my workload down… Actually, it’s really quite unexpectedly hard to find good things online for less than a fiver, unless it’s all beauty stuff…

So first of all, the book that many of you have urged me not to read… I have to say, I’m sitting on the fence. Do I need lots of harrowing images floating around in my already morbid mind? If you fancy a long – but apparently incredible – read, then A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is currently £3.85 at Amazon here.

I’ve recently discovered this nail polish from KIKO when I was judging nail products for a beauty awards and it’s just absolutely top-notch. Shiny, gel-like with an intense colour. Pro Power Nail Laquer from KIKO is £4.90 here.

I love the print on this A4 (ish) notebook from Ohh Deer. Very sultry and more than a bit House of Hackney, if you ask me… It’s a snip at £3.99 here.

The micellar water that’s cheap and cheerful and lives next to my desk, to be used liberally every time I do any sort of makeup testing. Garnier’s Skin Naturals water does the trick when it comes to speedy cleansing, though not on waterproof makeup – it’s available as an “add-on” item at Amazon for £2.66 here. You get a huge 400ml bottle for that price!

For an inexpensive treat that properly works (and I have to say that I greatly appreciate the humour that has been injected into this product!) the Dirty Works Cucumber Eye Pads from Sainsburys. Cool, refreshing and amusing Instagram fodder… £3

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I’m supposed to be on a self-imposed work ban on this holiday (I’m in Greece), but the other afternoon it started to pour down with rain and Mr AMR was watching old cowboy films on the television and so I decided to kill some time and make a quick beauty video. There’s only so much Kindle-reading a girl can do! (I’ve polished off three huge books now – for my full reading list see yesterday’s post.) I chose to film an evening makeup look with red hot lips (NARS Heatwave) and a little bit of a smouldering eye.

I started the look with just bare, moisturised skin – no foundation, but I had been prepping with the Clarins Radiance-Plus tanner (here) to give myself a gorgeous bronzed glow. Then, just a touch of concealer (Dior BB) and a dusting of Guerlain bronzer before I went in for the main event…

Can I just say right this minute that Illamasqua’s Vintage Metallix cream eyeshadow from the new collection is amazing? You can see in the video that I apply it in one fell swoop with my eye brush and it looks brilliant and perfect with very little effort. It doesn’t budge once it has set and the metallic finish is stunning. You can find the shadow at Selfridges here. £16.50, which I don’t think is too steep at all for such a brilliant little makeup morsel.

And then the lips, lined in a red KIKO lipliner and filled in with dangerously bright Heatwave from NARS, which is a great colour to slick on when you feel a bit bronzed and sexy. You can see the whole step-by-step in the video below – all of the product links are at the bottom of the page. Enjoy – I’m going back to my glass of Rosé!

Clarins Radiance Booster Gradual Tanner: http://tidd.ly/5b3ceb09
Guerlain 4 Seasons Bronzer in shade 2: http://tidd.ly/b420f6b4
Illamasqua Cream Shadow in Embellish: http://tidd.ly/f4c71127
Lancome Grandiose Mascara: http://tidd.ly/a73f0dcd
Dior BB Eye Concealer: http://tidd.ly/af8797fc
NARS Heat Wave Lipstick: http://tidd.ly/4e3fcf74
Barry M Nail Polish in Peach Melba: http://tidd.ly/a7cd53ab

Dress is from Baum und Pferdgarten

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Another lazy post, perfect for a bit of Saturday perusing: you don’t even need to read any words for this one, just click the play button below and I’ll do the work for you. It’s a short video that I filmed the other day when we were visiting the island of Elafonisos (amazing!) and on the hunt for Pavlopetri, a Bronze Age settlement that has been underwater for thousands of years.

Suffice to say, you can’t really see much of Pavlopetri. It’s all under water. I don’t quite know why I was expecting to see great columns and steeples rising out of the waves! But anyway, it was a beautiful day trip – everything from the drive over the mountains to the short ferry ride across still, clear waters…

If you’d like to subscribe to my vlog channel then please click here. I’ll be uploading a couple more travel vids, including a little hotel tour, so make sure you sign up to the channel if you want to see those before I post them up here on the website.

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