Plus Size Fancy Dress, The good, the bad and the ugly!

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all well today whatever you are all up to!

Decided to do a post today on plus size fancy dress, and the trials and tribulations i have encountered whilst trying to get something nice for my fab hubbys 30th birthday.

We are superhero obsessed in this house so I really wanted a superhero theme. I knew that from looking for my own 30th superhero would be so hard to find in plus size ie above the normal UK16. I went on to the normal sites, Ebay Amazon and some other websites that claimed to have plus size superheroes.

Now in my eyes, plus size is without a doubt higher than a size 16, but many of these sites classed costumes an xl as a 16.

A 16 in the UK is the national average, so saying it is an xl, to me what is this saying to young impressionable girls out there, who are constantly concerned about weight and appearance. There were other sites that classed an xl as a 20/22. To me this is crazy, how there can be such a difference in classification!

Okay little bit off track there, but this is a subject that grinds on me daily as a woman who is on a weight loss journey determined to succeed.

So lets get back to the costumes. I am by no means someone who is a frumpy dresser or someone who flaunts their rolls! , but it seems a lot of the plus size outfits are either so frumpy or something that shows far to much skin in my opinion. Now i am not saying that either option is correct, i fully endorse you should be confident in your skin and show as little or as much as you want, but in my opinion i like to leave a little to the imagination.

These images below show exactly what i mean, these both came from google, and i can assure you its not what i ended up ordering!

I couldnt find these in my size, which was gutting cause i think i would have made a hot superhero, so in the end up it was a toss up between a cowgirl or cleopatra, so i ordered the Cleopatra.

I actually cant describe how bad this outfit is, I honestly feel the bigger the size of a costume, the less thought on shape goes into it. See how in the picture the material flows nice over hips and waist, well in my costume it looked like i had an extra set of hips, highly unflattering!

So the hunt went on, I talked to hubby about it, and I said i hoenstly felt that i would be more comfortable as cat woman, to match his fab Batman! But again as we all know cat woman is a leather cat suit, and somehow i dont think the people of my wee town need to see that! So i have decided to get black skinny jeans, knee high boots, a black top and the mask and ears etc along with a long whip that she wears in Dark Knight Rises

This post has been a long winded one, but its a subject that has annoyed me so much, us big gorgeous ladies deserve to feel fab in fancy dress to!

Any gorgeous ladies or guys out there have issues with costumes etc, leave me a little comment below

Love to you all

Ali xxxx



Little pampering at the beauty salon!

Hi everyone!!

Hope you are all fab today wherever you are!

Todays post is about the experience I had at a local beauty salon recently getting an eye package done.

I had heard good reviews about this girl and she had an amazing offer of an eyebrow tint and wax and and eyelash tint all for £10, it would have been rude not to take that offer up I think!

The girl who owns The Beauty Room located within Eclipse Hair Design is Kerrie Coll. On first impressions I felt so relaxed she is a part time beauty therapy lecturer at our local college, so in all honesty I knew I was in good hands!

Her room is located within the hair salon itself and is so pretty. Her beauty couch has sheets on it in the style of Cath Kidston and is so pretty! There was some fab music playing, acoustic covers which were lovely.

We talked about my eyebrows and the fact my brow on the left was slightly shorter than the right hand one, (thanks mum for that lol) and that the little hairs at the end stuck up quite a bit, again mum thanks could I not have inherited your gorgeous sleek hands rather than sausage fingers :(

She said not to worry she would sort me out! She said that she would go with the blue black colour tint as we didn't want it to be super harsh looking.

She went on to cleanse my lashes and brow and then applied a guard to my eye and a barrier cream to the skin around my brows. We chatted away about our love of   Pixiwoo youtube channel (if you don't know who they are you need to check them out on youtube!!) and our shared love of all things MAC.

When she took off the tint, she went on to wax my eyebrows and pluck the wee stray ones out. Normally my eyes water very badly when getting my eyebrows waxed, but this was so quick and painless that they only watered very slightly.

When I sat up to look at my eyebrows and lashes, the first thing I thought was wow, that has made such a difference! I wish now I had of taken pictures before hand to show you the difference. The tint had made my lashes look fab, definitely no need for falsies now!

My eyebrows really were tamed and the wee hairs at the end looked a million times better.

Normally I use a MAC brown shadow to fill in my eyebrows and just a clear gel to set them, but now I am thinking about trying a brow product like a wax or something similar.

Any ideas would be fab, I have heard the Anastasia range is great, maybe worth a little look!

So my little pampering day at The Beauty Room with Kerrie Coll  was fantastic, and I couldn't recommend this girl enough! She definitely knows what she is doing in terms of shape and colour.

Anyone wanting to contact Kerrie can do so on  Kerries facebook or by calling 07713247832 I can assure you that you wont be disappointed. She has fab offers on at the moment, I think I will treat myself to a wee massage next!

Thanks Kerrie

Ali xx

Review of M.A.C Snob Lipstick

Hi guys!!

So I was finding it difficult to decide what to do as my first blog post, would it be a review, a favourites, whats in my bag etc?

So as I was going through my make up bag, I glanced at this MAC Snob lipstick and a pang of disappointment came over me, and I knew I had to do this as my first real post.

I had heard so much about this shade, so many bloggers etc hailed it as MACs hero shade! I knew I needed to have it! So I swatched it in store and it seemed to be quite a nude pink colour, which is a shade I have very little of, so though great, this will be a fab addition to my growing collection.

I got it home and took it out of its pretty packaging and the colour looked very different in my light than it did in store, but I thought it will be grand just try it out!

I tried one  light coat of it, and it was pretty matte. I had expected this as it is a satin finish, but it still had a creamy feeling to it which was lovely and felt quite moisturising. It didn't emphasis any lines or dryness on my lips, which is something I battle with on a daily basis! The colour itself is very cool toned, with a purpley blue tone to it. To be honest, I felt a little bit like a Barbie doll, and I don't think the colour suited my very fair but highly coloured cheeks.

I remember reading somewhere when researching this colour before purchase that MAC described it once as a lady like shade, I can assure you on my pale skin it wasn't!



You can see in the swatch above on my hand that it doesn't come off as Barbie pink as it does on my lips. I have since mixed it with darker lipglosses to make it more wearable for day time. I know that the lipglass in this shade makes it very Barbie like, but this is something I would possibly think about for a summer night out if I had a little tan.

So overall I don't honestly think this would be a repurchase at all, so everyone I am still on the hunt for the perfect nude pink, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

So that's my first proper post done, any critiques etc would be fab.

Love to you all

Ali xx

Welcome to passionsandpreening

Hi everyone! So after too much procrastinating, I decided to create my own blog, and then passionsandpreening was born. The blog will be loosely based on beauty, plus size fashion, my mad life and everything that falls in between, so definitely a mixed bag! I need to say a special thanks to Dave Lackie who is the editor of online beauty magazine Beauty the Guide. He has been the one to motivate me to get writing, and for this I will never thank him enough. I am not a writer or make up artist, and I don't claim to be, I just adore beauty, make up and I wanted somewhere to do some reviews, rants and everything else If there is anything in particular you guys would like to see including tutorials, advice etc just leave a wee comment and I will be only to happy to do it! Any of the product reviews I will be doing, will be unbiased and if I ever get to a stage I am paid for reviews, these will also be unbiased and will always be honest, but I will always make it clear if this is the case. So I will go have a nosey round the mad world of blogging and see what I can make of it! You can follow me on my twitter @passionandpreen for lots of beauty tips and snippests of wisdom Thanks Ali xxxx