Veleza App Review

I discovered the Veleza app whilst scrolling through Instagram when lovingly admiring the #beauty hashtag content that social media has to offer. I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have found it.

Veleza is a free mobile app that provides the space for a community of beauty lovers to come together and exchange beauty tips and advice with fellow beauty fanatics, bloggers, beauticians, make up artists and skincare professionals from around the world. Think Instagram… just purely beauty-based.

I know right… AMAZING.

In a digital world full of paid-for reviews, beauty products can be a minefield; what happens when your current foundation (that you spent years finding) has been discontinued, or if you want to try a new face cream but are scared of a major breakout?

Veleza answers your prayers – all the users provide independent, unbiased and transparent reviews of products, so you get honesty about the coverage of a foundation, or the longwear of a lippy. The app initially asks you a set of questions about your beauty regime and skin type so it can factor this into the suggestions of who to follow, making the integration into the app quick and simple so you can just jump right into the beauty world.

What’s more is that when sharing your beauty experience, the app will tag your post with the products, so that everyone in the Veleza community can discover the product and see the ingredients. For anyone who is worried about finding products specific to intolerances or lifestyle choices, such as vegan friendly, cruelty free, paraben free, fragrance free or organic products, there is a specific filter to direct you to these individual selections.

Veleza also has the most comprehensive beauty product database to date, as well as displaying the best local deals for your most favourite products, including price comparisons from such retailers as Sephora, Amazon, eChemist or FeelUnique - fabulous for saving more money (to spend at a later date on more cosmetics...)

With its awareness of the issues within the beauty world, Veleza is a real gamechanger for me. The embracing community willing to exchange personal recommendations and discuss their fears and issues is genuine and encapsulates the power of sharing in a safe environment where they won't be judged – it feels more like a group of friends having a beauty sesh and sleepover rather than isolated strangers from around the world.

Give it a couple of years and this will be huge: Veleza app is definitely one to watch.

To become an active and engaged member of the Veleza beauty community, download the app here.

'Me Before You' Premiere

Thank goodness the event organisers decided to provide everyone with a pack of tissues before the screening because trust me, you’re going to need them.

The film adaptation of Me Before You is simply a work of art; to be honest, with a such a heart-wrenching plot provided by Jojo Moyes, it would be difficult not to produce something beautiful. With Emilia Clarke nailing the role of Lou Clark, and Sam Claflin playing Will down to a tee, the casting for this film was absolutely perfect. The screenplay itself was gorgeous and understated with a very British vibe the whole way through. By using the dull colours of her hometown to reflect Lou’s initially mediocre life, we are shown the direct contrast with her bubbly personality and illuminate her endless positivity. May I also just say how endearing Will’s grumpiness was – played spectacularly with appropriate subtlety and volume when necessary, Claflin enabled me to see passed his wheelchair prop. I felt his pain and saw his motivations; blatantly the sign of a very talented actor and I have no doubt that he’s only going to go from success to success.

Whilst the film deviated somewhat from the book’s original plot, evidently Jojo Moyes still supported the venture, as she had nothing but golden praise for the film’s director, Thea Sharrocke. All three women appeared (Emilia, Jojo and Thea) prior to the screening to give a brief speech, where Thea sweetly referred to the other two as 'the stripes of her bumblebee tights' (book/film in-joke for those of you unfamiliar with this reference!).

This is a truly touching piece of cinema that resonated with me and left me feeling uplifted thanks to Lou’s lovable quirkiness, along with a deep sense of appreciation for life. Cliché or not, the film’s message was stark and awakening: never take life for granted whilst you still have it and make the most of your time here. Travel the world and fall in love, because we never know when the things dearest to us will be taken away. #LiveBoldly

Number One Bestseller... God knows why!

Anyone who knows me is aware of the book overload I am subjected to at Christmas. One book I received was The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins; after hearing all the raving reviews, and being a bestseller, I wanted to try it.

Well. There's several hours of my life I'll never get back again.

Where to begin?!

The plot itself, to be fair, was original in terms of presentation: seeing a life through the eyes of a commuter showed the notion of involvement through objectivity, as if watching a scene on TV rather than reality, which provided an element of dimension; this was the only patience I had with the god-awful plot/writing style. The use of distance was used well in terms of proxemics versus the emotional involvement of characters but ultimately it was dull and dragged on. And on. And on a bit more.

The characters had no depth, they were all hideously shallow. Without ruining the ending, those characters included in the 'twist' at the end were miserably predictable and it came from nowhere. To make twists believable, there must be a crescendo, some sort of subtle development throughout the text to make it plausible. Here, apparently Hawkins got bored of writing her endless drivel and decided to end it by picking out a character from a hat to pin the murder on.

The use of short sentences was dismal: never having a sentence with more than 10 words just makes it sound like you can't write properly. The vocabulary, although it shows promise in certain places, was of a primary school standard, and when an interesting word did present itself,  it was usually thrown in to appear intelligent, rather than actually contributing effectively to the text. More often than not, one gets the sense that the author has merely used the 'synonyms' option in Microsoft Word.

Severely unimpressive book. I definitely don't understand the hype surrounding this book, but if you disagree then leave a comment!