IMATS 2010

Hello :)

As you all probably know by now IMATS (The International Makeup Artist Trade Show) was at London’s Alexandra Palace on the 30th and 31st of January (Saturday and Sunday just gone). Hayden and I planned to get there for around 10am, however his car started playing up on the way from Birmingham to Oxford the night before. He needed a new exhaust (well the a 3rd of one) which not only ended up costing nearly £100 it also made us late setting off. When we arrived at IMATS at around 1pm there were only a few people waiting at the ticket booths. Whilst we waited we saw Wayne of GossMakeupArtist being interviewed which was cool.

Upon walking into the main floor area where all the stands were I felt a bit overwhelmed as there were just SO many people there. And I’m not really a fan of crowds or people haha. We headed over to OCC first and I couldn’t even get to the tables to have a look so we decided to just have a wonder round and see what was there and come back to it later. We went to Crown Brush which was just dreadful. The queue was about 3 people deep when I was waiting. I just chose some brushes from each “section” and paid, I just cant be dealing with people pushing and shoving and having to fight my way to the counter just to have a look. Before I went I had a list of things I wanted, I got most of it haha. I didn’t get anything from MAC purely for the fact that I wasn’t going to wait in a massive queue to get to a brand that I can get anytime. I had also said I wasn’t buying anything from Illamasqua but ended up buying 3 things as they had a great 50% discount on, if it hadn’t been for this I would have probably stuck to what I said. From what I saw most brands had decent discounts on. I didn’t see any talks as I was just so stressed and kind of lost track of time.

We also met up with Charly, Maxine & her mum, Leanne and her friend Matt. We saw Jo and Tali at the Illamasqua counter the first time Hayden and I went there, and Nic from Pixiwoo who was working there. I also saw Koren Zander from EnKore a few times on my travels. All in all it was an awesome day :)

Here is a video of all the pictures I took at IMATS, including one of Hayden with Tom Savini which made Hayden’s day. He also got a signed picture of him which was £10 but it made Hayden happy so I didn’t mind :)

All pictures were taken by me and the song is Morgan Page - "Fight For You"

Is it worth the money and would I go again?
Personally, I don’t feel it is worth the price of the tickets. I would only go again if the ticket price was brought down by a fair bit. Getting there by car isn’t so bad but if I had to get the train/bus I can’t say I would be too happy, it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. But I’m glad I went, its an experience and now I know what its like I can easily give it a miss in the coming years.

I will my haul post after this one, so I don’t overload it with text and pictures haha.

Thanks for reading :)