SWEETIESAL

If you live or work in Manchester and frequent the shopping mecca that is Manchester Arndale, you may have seen the hashtag #McrMadeUp floating around over the past few weeks.

The Arndale's first beauty focused event took place last weekend and I headed down on Friday Evening to get a lil sneak preview ahead of the weekend of events!

Vlogger Jamie Genevieve designed 4 Manchester Looks that would be showcased over the weekend, along with how-to sessions and general advice and styling. Customers could book in to learn the looks with the Arndale's Beauty Brands and also benefit from some discounts to be used until Sunday 10th April.. so if you have a discount booklet, be sure to claim your discounts before it's too late!

First up we learned about Jamie's fave hairstyle, the Manchester Slicker.. with volume at the crown, slicked back and sexy, this was SO much easier than I thought it would be to create! I mean, I say this but I haven't actually tried to recreate this look on myself yet so I will report back..!

Next up we learned about Jamie's easy winged eyeliner hacks.. she suggested to add a small amount of dark eyeshadow to smoke it up a bit, which conveniently covers any little mistakes and also to use a concealer around the wing part to tidy up! I am not a winger liner lover but having experimented previously, I can see that Jamie's suggestions would make application a lot easier.

Jamie then demonstrated the art of contouring and highlighting.. I am quite lazy when it comes to base and whilst I love the look of contouring, it's not something I feel I have mastered yet.. but my god watching Jamie apply it made me want to run home and unleash all of my contouring and highlighting products on my face! The most useful part for me was the highlighting bit as I never really knew where I was best putting it and generally just fluffed a bit on and hoped for the best.. Jamie highly recommends liquid highlighter pressed into the skin with a beauty blender, which when I attempted this over the weekend I really loved the effect! Something I will definitely introduce into my daily makeup regime.

Last up was the nude pout which again I absolutely love. I have a really quite large and colourful lipstick collection, yet I ALWAYS go back to my fail safe nude lip. Jamie applies a sheer nude lipstick first and then uses a slightly darker lipliner to overdraw the lip line and it had a really gorgeous natural look to it rather than going in with the lipliner first.

We were treated to cupcakes and fizz whilst watching these live tutorials and it was a really fun and informative event! Thanks so much to Manchester Arndale for inviting me!