Broken Warhol Handbag Woes

Years ago I discovered a brilliant handbag I had to have in a local charity shop. It was a shoulder handbag with a bright & cheery painting by numbers design, which turned out to be an Andy Warhol print. 

I totally loved it and used it as my main bag for a good year, until one of the plastic straps broke. I couldn't bear go throw it out and I headed straight to eBay to try and get a replacement. But there weren't any for sale. So I saved the search, and five years or so later STILL not even once has the bag been up for auction or sale.

That's the print, but I can't even find a picture of the bag I owned, let alone find a replacement one to buy.  

The brand that has turned Warhol's classic prints into bags, phone cases and Mac sleeves is UK company Incase.

As of today they only have one Warhol item in store, a phone case, but a quick search on eBay and you can bid on lots of different Incase bits and pieces. Prices are around £20 for Mac cases.  

My painting by numbers Warhol eBay search remains, but if anyone ever sees these bags on sale in a store, please tell me! 

Accidental Goth & The Most Ridiculous Fake Fur Scarf Ever

Revolution at Superdrug: Make Me Tonight Atomic Shade £1

So tonight while doing my makeup I tried my £1 purchase of last week Revolution's Make Me Tonight lipstick from their Atomic range. I seem to accidentally have gone goth.

From my teenage years up I always dressed punk or rockabilly, but never quite goth. I have sort of evolved into just being a normal dresser with the odd crazy accessory or scarf now and again.

One of my oddest accessories, which I don't often wear, but love, is this plush fake fur scarf from H&M. Yes, it has a pretend fox's face on it. 

As you can imagine it can be tricky to find the right occasion to wear a big fluffy toy fox to, but when I saw it in store however many winters ago it was, there was no way in hell that fox wasn't going home with me.

So it's a few seasons old, and only cost £7 I think when it was on sale in H&M, but I've found two on eBay for around £18.50, should you feel inclined to need to own one too. 

http://r.ebay.com/5zaXP1

Don't be put off by the auction photo having Avril Lavigne wearing it, you know you want one too.

He goes very nicely with my big gentleman fox tattoo. Well, you have to match your accssories, don't you?

My fox tattoo by Chris Crooks, White Dragon Tattoo Studio, Belfast

How to get 20% Off EVERYTHING At Benefit in Menary's & Tempest.

For readers outside Northern Ireland, I'm sorry this post can't help you.  Menary's is your Mum's age group's department store and Tempest curates brands like Miss Selfridge, Topshop, Phase Eight and fashion brands for teenage girls up. My local Menary's/Tempest is in my home town of Bangor and I've been in it quite often recently with Michael as our favourite new coffee chain Bob & Bert's have taken over the cafe concession upstairs.

The small beauty hall in Menary's has a decent sized Benefit counter, and I noticed last week they still had one lone bottle of one of Crescent Row's original trio of scents, 'Something about Sofia'. It's a perfume I've owned before, back when they were new, and a friend Clare told me it had notes of Parma Violets about it. I've tried several violet scent recommended perfumes since, and Sofia still comes closest. As you know I'm rekindling my search for beauty products to make myself into a big Parma Violet, so I wanted a new bottle of this. When I saw it was £29.95, I did what every Internet-savvy lady does, I went home an searched for a cheaper price. eBay had none, the main websites were all sold out, Amazon had a bottle for £100! So I was back down to the only place I saw my one last bottle this week to get my mitts on it.

Menary's always is worth checking for a discount, so I asked one of the beauty hall girls was there a voucher or deal I could us to make this purchase. She helped me right out. Currently if you make ANY purchase you get given a voucher to use throughout this month as often as you wish, on two brands of your choice. There is no minimum spend, but you do have to buy something to get the voucher- as they need a till number etc. before they can issue you one. The beauty girl kindly told me even if I bought a £1 lip balm I could get my hands on this voucher to then get 20% off my Benefit purchases, so I bought a £1.29 Yankee Votive Candle and I was all set. 

The voucher can be used on as many purchases as you want until 4th October, and you pick which two brands you want to use it with. So my bottle of Sofia was just under £24. 

I also asked the Benefit girl for a good sized sample of Porefessional. I had tried a little same I got at the House of Fraser event last week, and was impressed, but I want to try a decent sample of it before I would shell out £24, or whatever it will cost with my voucher. It seems to work well to minimise my open pores around my nose, so it's tentatively on my shopping list. 

Anyway, this face below is the face of a child who has just been told, "okay, you may use my 100 colour eyeshadow palette to paint my face". He used the neon pink eyeshadow on me, and my lipstick looked like Miranda Sings. 

Lighting was bad but I'll maybe make a video next time to show you his skills. Mine are just a little bit better, I shouldn't laugh!

The Next Playground Craze are Stikeez : Where to Get Them & All You Need to Know

Remember trekking round the pound stores trying to get your hands on a pack of loom bands last summer? Well here is a heads up and how you can get ahead with this winter's new craze. 

I heard of Stickeez during the summer in a Lidl leaflet, but I hadn't seen them in store yet. My son came home from school yesterday asking could we go buy some, as they've started being pulled out of pockets in the playground already. 

 They come in separate packs for 29p and my local Bangor store has a stand of hundreds of bags at the till as of this week.

Even the submarine shaped collector box is only £1.99, but I didn't see it available to buy in my store. 

Each bag has a little plastic fish character that can stick onto a table or window. One of my Instagram followers said their children attached them to their wall and it pulled the paint loose, so it may be worth warning kids of that. 

For 29p it's not a bad craze, I'm going to buy a bag of them and use them as rewards for getting spellings, homeworks and things like that done. And until the end of this week you get a free Stikeez bag with every £10 spent! We can all agree though, that like loom bands, this will be hectic for a few months then we will never see them played with again! Good luck, fellow parents! I'll see you in the aisles of Lidl soon! 

Wednesday Round-up: Drop a Jean Size 3/4 Mark, New Revolution Make-up & Readers, Can You Help Recommend Me a Hair Product for Crazy Frizz?

I started my drop a jean size challenge last Monday, with the intentions of sticking to The New You Plan diet a bit longer (see here for their drop a jean size journal should you want to do the same).

M&S Feta & Olive Side Salad : Lidl Salmon with Dill Dressing

I've lots going on at the moment, real life important stuff, so I'm not in the headspace to stick to New You 100%. When you are paying for a special diet, there isn't much point doing it by halves, you waste time and money, so I've bowed out of their Secret Slimmers' Facebook support group for now, but I promise I will be back! 

I was 9 days into my drop a jean size, which finishes this coming Monday, and I think I can still do it. I'm definitely shrinking and even though I tried that M&S pizza last night to review it, I only had one slice and a big salad. 

Lunch today is smoked salmon and dill from Lidl with salad. There's feta in the salad so it isn't mega healthy, but it could be worse. I'll let you know if I can fit my size 12 M&S boot cut jeans on Monday then! 

You saw my post yesterday about the giant Revolution 100 shade, £12 eyeshadow palette. It's class and my shadow I used today is a shimmery nude, a cream light brown and a glittery dark brown. I've been trying out different brushes, and got a Revolution blending brush to try to get the effect below. I still need some practice, don't I??

I also got the Revolution Kajal eyeliner crayon which I've owned before, despite my makeup immaturity! My Ballyholme friend Arlene has posted me one of these a couple of years ago, and I found I was able to apply it easily to my lower eyeliner waterline with ease. It's huge crayoness with soft texture, combined with its £2 price tags makes it a good eyeliner for novices or wobbly handed girlies like I was/am! 

It doesn't claim to be waterproof, but it does say smudge proof and it's never let me down, or bled down into my wrinkles. 

I also got a trio of Revolution Amazing Lipsticks that Superdrug didn't have in stock. I need to try them on properly to see which ones work. Under lightbulb lighting, late last night, the darkest one looked a little bit too gothy, but I'll show you soon.

Lastly, a shout out to my readers, I need some help. I have very thick, long hair, which has been treated with bleach to achieve a lighter effect at the ends. I use John Frieda cream serum, as the oily one I don't like, plus a balm type serum of the same range that I apply AFTER the hair is dry too. I use a good quality shampoo and use Aussie 3 Min Miracle Conditioner on my hair EVERY DAY when I wash it. I also straighten it with GHDs. But it's STILL frizzy. 

Has anyone any secret products they can recommend? Is Mane & Tail worth the price tag? Talk to me on @rudedoodle on Twitter or Instagram and help me out! 

IKEA's #PolitePlacemats : Apple Genuis? Or Are Your Manners Too Far Gone?

This is the IKEA Sittning placemat, and it could be the answer to anti-social dining. 

It's £1.50 and its clever feature is its little phone pouch. I'm as guilty as anyone of Instagramming the heck out of a good 50% of my meals, but this pocket has a place specifically for my anti-social device, to stop me placing it on the table and checking it constantly throughout the meal for those precious 'likes'. 

The thing is, I think it might make me EVEN worse. I usually pop my phone in my pocket and maybe take it out when I've finished eating to check, but if it's sitting inside its little placemat sleeping bag, where I can SEE if it lights up with a notification- surely I'm more likely to use it? 

Anyway, it's a cheap and cheerful IKEA design, and if you don't think the pocket would work well for phones, then it could be a neat way of setting the table with your cutlery tucked in there, or a nice napkin- IKEA napkin designs are always epic. 

What do you think? Give me a tweet #politeplacemats and have your say. I could do with one with a bigger pouch for a certain small someone's Kindle Fire HD! 

I Smell Like a Great Big Parma Violet

A reoccurring theme on The World of Kitsch, since I launched in 2009, is my devotion to finding anything and everything with the scent of the classic Swizzels Matlow sweets, Parma Violets. 

One of my most viewed posts, week in and week out, is a March 2014 post about a range of sugared violet beauty products. I did a bit of backwards search engining and found if you Google search 'Parma Violet perfume' it's one of the top results. This is ironic as I'm STILL asking Twitter even this year for other people's recommendations of perfumes that smell like the sweets.

This week I ebayed for some more Parma items and came across this body butter from  Squeaky Soaps. It was only £2, £3.99 postage mind you, and delivered in two days. It's VERY thick and super whipped. It feels heavy but with it comes a lot of moisturisation. It would be great for dry skin, and if violets aren't your thing there's a marshmallow scent on sale too.

I've ordered a couple of other small, handmade businesses' items with the same scent on eBay, so watch out for them this week. 

If you fancy checking out my really popular Parma Violets' beauty range blog post  you can visit it here!

M&S Pizzas- A Second Chance & New Flavours to Try

Pizzas £4 each : Salads two for £4

I love M&S food, and 99% of the time I'm happy to pay the slightly more than other supermarket prices for their products, because the quality is always there. But, I have a secret. I hate M&S pizzas.

I tried them a few years ago and just didn't like them. I didn't like the base, the toppings, the way they cooked- nothing. So when my lovely PR contact at M&S asked me to pick up the new stone baked varieties from Sprucefield to try, I wasn't as enthusiastic as I usually am about my trip to Lisburn. 

I picked the classics, and the new combinations, all of which cost £4. The new pizza recipes are BBQ Pulled Pork, The Magnificent Meaty and The New Yorker. The latter appealed to me the most with pastrami, gherkins and what looks like American mustard toppings.

Every pizza is totally loaded with toppings, no half measures. But, did I like the M&S pizzas now? A few years on and I can safely score them off my dislikes list. The bases cook really well, the toppings are lovely and I would definitely buy them again. I think I'd still avoid the boxed pizzas which were the ones I didn't care for previously, but this range is everything you'd expect from M&S. Filling, delicious and very tasty.

That's the pepperoni one below, which my son and I shared this evening with their olive and feta salad. He gives it a big thumbs up too. The New Yorker is the one I'm most curious about, so keep an eye on my Instagram (@rudedoodle) and I'll let you know how it goes when we cook it.