Step 1: Rub some Texture Gel into your damp hair and leave it to dry (If you’re late for school use a Blow dryer)

Step 2: Pull your hair up (yes you will look like a hedgehog) and then ruffle it up and pull it to the side you like

Step 3: If you want a bit more Texture chuck in some Mess constructor Gel or some Go Matt Clay for the ultimate natural lazy look

Better go run for the bus boys and girls!

Get the Look Video: The Long and Lazy Hairstyle

Compiled by Sarah-Jane Adams | www.sarahjaneadams.com

A normal working day for me is a varied one, I work as a coordinator for the BBC in sunny (!) Scotland. I have worked in TV for the past couple of years and on the most part I love it. Not always glamorous the hours can be very long, but there are so many adventures to go on and new things to try, it is usually worth it in the end.

I am lucky that my day does start not as early as some, I don’t start till 9.30..ish and live nearby , so I often don’t drag myself out of bed until 8.45! I like my beauty routine in the morning to be quick and fuss free, I usually dry my hair at night and either tie it up in a messy bun or let it dry in pigtails, so as to give a relaxed and messy do the next day – one that hopefully looks like I meant it to look that way! Make up wise a touch of foundation to even out the ole cheeks, a healthy blob of under eye concealer, a swirl of blusher on the apples, some liquid black liner for the lids and lashings of Mascara is quick and easy to achieve while in a rush and keeps me from scaring the colleagues with morning face!

I really enjoy walking to work, it gives me time to wake up and look silly mouthing the words to whatever song is on my ipod! This walk  is usually fine and pretty uneventful, I just have to wander through a tunnel over the motorway, over a bridge and I am there but not on the day I am considering sharing with the Superdrug world oh no- my usual bridge is looking a little difficult to cross…. A little later to work it is, oooops!

At work my day is usually a mixed bag of events, nothing too exciting is happening currently so I wont bore you. But here is where I sit and here is my lovely building, all open plan and always something random to look at or listen too. Celeb spotting and  munching on delicious tray bakes in the canteen helps pass the time when I should be at my desk getting on with things! ( I promise I do actually work very hard and love most aspects of my job!)

Now in order to make my days seem slightly more glitz and glam I was pretty pleased to be asked  to do this just before a black tie event I had coming up ( I do not get dressed up like this every day!) I finished at Uni a couple of years ago and while I was there I was involved in my Students Union and every year the president of the place is given a big fancy dinner in his honour, cue a few drinkies, fancy clothes and some bad dancing.

I was proud to be asked to attend along with some of our best friends to celebrate our friend Aarons great year in charge. I took the afternoon off work to go home and pamper myself and get ready, I love taking my time for a special night and getting right down to the details. Although it was  dark inside so no one would really notice all this effort!  It was an amazing night and well worth the worth the blisters, the headache and the dress covered in red wine! Needless to say the next day was a lot less productive than this one!

So there you have it,  a snapshot of my life. I hope you enjoyed it and hopefully I will be back  to share  more summer adventures and hear some of yours soon.

Much Love

Bx

Written by Beautyh2t – one of our trial Insiders! Find out more about our Insider Challenge here

Today was the day of my second to last exam EVER. Therefore today wasn’t the most interesting of days, but it was certainly very, very stressful. It began with me rushing in to the library, and desperately revising before my exam. You know the day isn’t going so well when its highlight so far is eating (albeit surprisingly delicious) soup in the library café.  I thought I had revised the best I could, but my exam went terribly! I even drew a sad face on my exam paper…

My terrible exam! : (

My exam was on Aristophanes, an Athenian comedy playwright from the 5th Century BC. This might seem really boring, but bear with me! In one of his plays he discusses what women in Ancient Athens used to do to make themselves seem beautiful- and I found it really interesting to find that it is more or less exactly the same as what we do today- wearing make-up, perfume and alluring dresses*

I, on the other hand, looked the opposite of alluring today. In a horrible stressed rush, I barely had time to apply my make up (but of course could not go without it all together for fear of people being distracted in their exams by my monstrous bare face!)

As if a third year final exam is not stressful enough- I also had to finalise moving out of my flat which unluckily fell on the same day! My boyfriend and I had to race back to our flat in time to take meter readings and phone all kinds of gas and electricity companies (boring!)

Me with millions of bills, phoning gas and electricity companies! Argh!

Then we had to WALK all the way to the Estate Agents to drop our keys off, as the buses to it stop running after about 5 o’clock! It was a long way, so we had to refuel on the journey by stopping off for a bit of chocolate!

I had a Twirl, mmm!!!

The day started to improve after that, we could breathe a sigh of relief, although we were both really sad to move out of our flat. We’ve been living their for the past 2 years and both loved it, but now we are about to become unemployed, moneyless ‘adults’ :’(

Outside our flat for the last time : (

To treat ourselves we went to the cinema, thank God for Orange Wednesdays! We watched Robin Hood, which was okay but Russell Crowe’s depiction of Robin Hood did not compare to Jonas Armstrong (BBC Robin Hood) or Cary Elwes (Robin Hood: Men in Tights.) We then went for a big, fat Pizza Hut. I got goats cheese and spinach on a deep pan mmmm!!! I wanted to take a photo of this but my camera kindly ran out of battery.

We're men, we're men in tight, tight tights!

Then we planned to get the train back to my house, which was quite sad as we’d normally just get the bus back to our flat! Of course, there were no trains for over an hour, so we had to sit and wait doing nothing- not even any of the shops were open in the train station!

I got home to find that a necklace I ordered ages ago off the internet had finally been delivered! I bought it with money from my birthday, and I am really pleased with it!

My new necklace!

I can’t wait to wear it when I finally stop doing exams and get to go out and enjoy myself! Just another week of university and then I will be a free ‘woman’ / ‘girl’ (I am unsure of what to call myself, a la Britney Spears.) I can’t wait, and I can’t wait to (hopefully) fill you in with details of my next few weeks job hunting, holidaying and general university recovery (probably most of which will be done through buying make-up, jewellery and clothes that I really shouldn’t be buying until I have a job!)

But for now, I look forward to a nice lie in in the morning, before facing another horrifying day of revision, in preparation for my LAST EXAM EVER!!!

Wish me luck!!!

I hope you’ve all had a nice day!

Lots of love from,

Rosanna (Rosie)  x

*One of his plays, Lysistrata is about women going on a sex strike to force their husbands to make peace with one another (he was writing at the time of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta- and their respective allies) stresses the importance of beauty for women, in fact being pretty may have been all they were thought of as good for! The play states “The women!- What could they ever do that was any use? Sitting at home putting flowers in their hair, putting on cosmetics and saffron gowns and Cimberian see-through shifts, with slippers on our feet?”… “But don’t you see, that’s exactly what I mean to use to save Greece. Those saffron gowns and slippers…our scent and rouge as well.”

Written by Rosie – one of our trial Insiders! Find out more about our Insider Challenge here

Oh I have had some good times and I’ve got enough pictures to prove it (hence the 1,761 tagged pics of me posing on facebook). I will miss the place, but life goes on. To do what; I am unsure. I am confused, confused about jobs, money, friends, but I fancy an adventure. I love the thought of having my own place with my own rules.

So I am moving on, to Huntingdon, a beautiful town in Cambridgeshire. I have got the keys, my house is set up and filled with all of my belongings, which I have accumulated over the years. All that’s left to do is properly move in. Well that and find furniture. To the right is a pic of my new living room, I’m very proud of it I must say.

For now, I am in Stoke “visiting” for the last time, to say my final goodbyes. Furniture is far from my mind whilst being here, enjoying the sunshine with friends and my boyfriend.

Last night I went to Summer Ball 2010. What a night. I got to see some of the people that have made Uni what it is. We danced throughout the night and sadly for me but not for everyone else, I lost my voice. I’m guessing from that effect I must have been belting out the classic tunes a little too hard (sorry again). All in all I had a great time and made it to the end.. around 6am. This act of craziness gave me the title of Summer Ball Survivor 2010 according to our Student Union..oh how the mother will be proud.

Recovered rather nicely today, expected a tad more sickness, shakes or head pounding, but my body prevailed and I managed to be awake and in a fine shape before midday. I thank you! Shame my appearance didn’t match my mood, I kept the night before’s make-up on for the day, I had to wear my boyfriends size 9 shoes as heels the ‘day after’ are a definite no-no and I remain unshowered at this very moment. What a ghastly creature I am.

So now I sit. I think back to the furniture.. red or beige?? hmm

Written by StephyScribble – one of our trial Insiders! Find out more about our Insider Challenge here

Just a few points to leave you with until I post on Sunday with all the LONDON FASHION WEEKEND goss (yes, I managed to afford the train fare!)

• been going out a fair bit, my best friend has managed to vomit of 2/3 nights out, nice one!
• drinking too much toffee apple cider <3
• went to see The Veronicas tonight – AMAZING IS NOT THE WORD
• stumbled upon a Jeremy Kyle at 11pm on Oxford Road in Manchester in a marquee, surrounded by millions of bodyguards and fans – “WTF”
• broke my phone somehow (the touch screen is like a rainbow, I haven’t dropped it or anything I’m so gutted!)
• drank too much vodka and cherryade, do not want to see or drink it ever again

Uni officially starts tuesday, can’t wait to get my Photography on once again! Night night all, need to get some beauty sleep before my solo train journey tomorrow (meeting my bezzie at Euston) Ta-ra! Back with a proper update Sunday x

p.s WHAT ON EARTH DO I WEAR.

My outfit was planned literally days in advance and I spent the best part of Saturday night hemming capes til my fingers grew callouses.

See the fruits of my labours??
Pure craft genius.
I sewed the lightning bolt leotard and created the swishy cape with my own little bare hands.
The handiwork is magnificent (shoddy) and the effects left others in awe.

Especially when my friend, Adam and I were making our way to 53degrees (our student’s union club) running past the windows of various Chinese takeaways and kebab houses with our arms in the air pretending that we were flying.

To those of you judging Adam’s excuse of an outfit I would just like to refuse all associations with it. Except for, of course, the cape. Which, I’m sure you’ll agree is the epitome of modern cape design.

The ‘gold bits’, ‘bling’ and tracksuit pants have nothing to do with me.
You know what boys are like…

So anyway, the night itself was great. I love fancy dress and get far too into it for my own good.
That’s why I was pretending to fly/pretending to save people/swishing my cape around.
Do you think I could get away with wearing it every day?

Soph x

Hold on, let me start this again…

It’s Freshers Week this week at UCLan and as a seasoned 4th year student I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what nights to go out on and which venues to attend.
Monday – The first night of the week. Lots of virile young Freshers to corrupt.
Sunday – Last night of the messy week. Nuff said.
This being known, why did I book my Wahanda Experience in Manchester for Tuesday at 2pm?

After sleeping on the train for an hour, Boy & I touched down at Manchester Piccadilly at about 1pm.
All the time this was made entertaining/painful by the games Boy plays when we are in public.
1. When walking past a wall or large sign, he hides behind it so I either carry on walking without him whilst chatting away to myself or I look like a ‘special’ person running around looking for someone who isn’t there.
2. Breaking wind (loudly) and blaming it on me (loudly).
3. Shouting “Sophie!!! Stop making a scene!!” In the middle of shopping centres.

All endearing qualities I’m sure you’ll agree.
So, feeling a little worse for wear and functioning solely on a Pecan pastry purchased at the train station we wound up at the Hilton hotel, Deansgate by chance. Our only directions being, “Head towards the big glass building on the horizon.”
Those directions being dictated by me.

The girls at the spa were waiting for us (we weren’t late, that’s just how posh it was!). They knew our names and they had our treatments ready.

Before they could get their beautifully manicured hands on either of us however, we had to take an exam.
Well, not an exam exactly, but we had to fill out forms.
One question being “Have you consumed alcohol recently?”

I wasn’t exactly going to lie was I?!

Another asked what kind, and how often I exercised. I put “Aerobic, 2-3 times weekly”.
What I should have put is “I occasionally attempt my Ministry of Sound: Pump it Up! workout dvd but usually give up within 20 minutes and go and eat some cake.”

After they’d found out my mum’s star sign we were ready to rock and were taken to separate treatment rooms for our massages.
Francesca told me to strip to the waist, lie on the bed and cover myself with a towel whilst she stepped out of the room.
What did I say..?
“Do I have to take my bra off?!” In a stupid, giggly way.
Great work Soph. Now Francesca knows you’re a loser. If you’d have kept your mouth shut she’d have been none the wiser…

The massage itself was amazing. I couldn’t help thinking that I’m usually so detached from my own body. I rely on my laptop or my phone or the tv so much that I forget about the things that are just organic and relaxing.
And then I thought, “Don’t fall asleep on the massage table…”

And then I fell asleep on the massage table.

I woke up to the pliky plonky music and candle-light. It was brilliant.

My prescriptive manicure was awesome too.
I asked Francesca if she’d ever treated anyone famous in the hotel. She said no but I like to think that she has because then I can tell people that.
She filed and shaped my nails, oiled my hands up something good and then coated my nails in the delicious pink colour that I chose called Raspberry.

“It’ll be about 15 minutes ’til they’re touch-dry,” she explained, “and then an hour or two ’til they’re a hundred percent dry.”
“Right…” I said. This would be difficult.
“I’ll leave you to it then. You might want to get your friend to put your shoes on for you before you leave.”

Excellent.

I sat on the wicker chairs in the waiting room surrounded by bamboo and strategically placed pebbles and wiggled my feet in Boy’s direction.
“…And could you carry this for me as well?” I said, pointing at my handbag. “…And this?” Gesturing to my schoolboy blazer.