DIY | Personalising My Denim Jacket

I've always wanted to do this! I bought all of the patches of Ebay and my mum sewed them on for me Thanks bae!) It was time consuming but it's turned out more than perfect I think.I was getting bored of my plain jacket and I don't even know where the idea came from but I just wanted to personalise it. Because I love music, I decided to just buy a load of band patches. So far I have a Korn, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Fear Factory, Slipknot, Pearl Jam and Marilyn Manson patch. I can just see myself doing this is almost all of my clothes, haha. Watch this space as I'll probably add alot more to this jacket!

Would you personalise your clothes with patches? 

Love Leah, x x x

CRAZY COLOUR Review | Pinkissimo

PINK HAIR, DON'T CARE! Yeah, that's right :) Can you believe how beautiful and vibrant this wonderful pinkissimo dye is? It is absolutely stunning and god, I feel like a pink princess, haha. My mum found this for me for £2 in River Island because she knows I love my crazy hair colours. This is actually the first time that I've used Crazy Colour and this shade is called Pinkissimo.

I love my hair vibrant so I just used this straight from the bottle but if you want you can add condioner for pastel pink hair. I washed my hair and conditioned and then literally slapped it on. This dye had applied really even on my hair which is a relief and I only had to use one bottle. Because I have different shades of blonde in my hair, the pink dye has taken to a variety of different shades from light pink to bright pink - I love it!! The formula of the dye is amazing too as it felt just like conditioner! I left this on for half an hour and it easily just washed off. My hair feels really soft and shiny.I think this is the happiest I've ever been with my hair and I literally cannot wait to try every. single. crazy. colour. there. is.

What do you think of the Crazy Colour dyes? Do you think you could brave Pinkissimo?

Love Rachel, x x x

Saturday at the Beach

Today we took a trip to Ainsdale Beach. I love going the beach and Ainsdale is an amazing place to go to and relax. Even though the weather was so windy, I still had a really nice time! I was so cold though that I was wearing two jackets and I was still freezing - some summer this is! Hopefully it will be sunnier when we're on the beach in Devon in a few weeks for our holiday!

 I actually wanted to get some pictures of mine and Leah's outfits and our new hair! But obvioulsy our hair was just blowing everywhere. My hair is purple pink but it's kind of washing out right now. Leah has the ends of her hair dyed blue and I just think it looks amazing.

This was my Marilyn Manson t-shirt's second outting. You can't really see it on the pictures but I'll definitely do a ootd post on it soon. I love Marilyn Manson and me and Leah are actually going to see him in concert in November. I'm so excited and I'm already planning my outfit, ha!

Love Rachel, x

Visiting London & Seeing Korn!

The most exciting thing ever happened last Thursday! Me and Rachel went to see Korn in London. Not only had we never been to London before but our favourite band were playing the whole of their dubut album in it's entirety to celebrate the 20th anniversary! No words can describe how excited we were to see Korn but also, it turned into a mini adventure of London too!

We arrived in London on Thursday 16th July, the day of the concert. I was so surprised at how busy London is, I don't think I could live there. Plus, it was SO hot in London. We live in Liverpool but down south seems to have a completely different weather system! Enough about the weather now because then we went to the concert. It was at the o2 Brixton Academy, quite a small venue and the queue to get inside was outside the door and around the building! Everyone there (well, most people) had piercings, dreadlocks, long hair, band t-shirts and crazy coloured hair. KORN WAS AMAZING. Best show I've ever been to and me and Rachel were literally screaming out asses off, haha! We're the ultimate fangirls and with Korn being our favourite band - it was too much to handle!

The next day we went to see the crown jewels and went on a little boat trip around London. It was such a lovely trip and needless to say, going to London has definately made me want to travel more. Traveling isn't too bad when you've got coffee to help you through it!

Have you ever been to London?

Leah & Rachel, x

1000 Followers | Facts About Us!

As we reached 1000 followers on bloglovin! we wanted our followers to know more about the bloggers behind Beyond The Velvet! Thank you to everyone that follows and reads our blog, it means so much to us as this blog means a lot to us. We've always wanted to blog but it wasn't until August last year that we finally started to blog. Since then we have fallen in love with blogging and couldn't imagine not having a blog! Thank you for following and all of your lovely comments mean everything to us!

Here are some facts about us! 

• We're identical twins.
• Rachel was born 10 minutes before Leah.
• Leah is taller even though she is the youngest.
• We're best friends and we hardly ever fight or argue :)
• We have an older sister called Caroline.
• We love listening to Rock music and heavy metal!
• If we had to choose, Alice In Chains, Korn, Slipknot and Pantera are our favourite bands but is so many great bands out there that we're obsessed with!
• Jonathan Davis (singer from Korn) actually liked our picture (of us!!) on instagram. I literally died. I love you so much Jon! I can't believe he's saw our faces and knows we exist ahaha.
• We play guitar, drums and bass guitar. 
• We were homeschooled since the age of 15 because we were bullied in school. 
• We're both very shy and suffer with social anxiety.
• We smoke the odd cigarette, haha.
• We're aiming to dye our hair every colour of the rainbow (semi-permanent of course!)
• We love the sun and summer.
• We're addicted to Coffee!
• We like to think our style is differnet to the norm. We love anything lace, velvet, vintage, goth and grunge.
• The Walking Dead is just the best show ever! I love The Following too!
• We love accessories and everything with a pentagram on it is just dreamy.
• Leah has a tattoo and we're planning on getting some more soon.
• My favourite lipstick right now is 'Diva' lipstick from MAC.
• We've saw Korn and Slipknot in concert and we're seeing Korn again in July this year! To say we're excited is an understatment!
• Our favourite films is 'Some Like It Hot' 
• Marilyn Monroe is one of our idols.
• Putting makeup on is such a chore but I can never have a day off!
• We want very long hair, so long that we can sit on it!
• I love my little furbaby more than life itself! My little Heidi is just the cutest and I love her so much. My sister's dog Megan is also so cute and loving. I really don't know what I'd do without my dogs in my life. 
• We love, love, love drawing. Art is just so fun and relaxing but it is very frustrating at times.
• I have too much makeup.
• We're both addicted to buying lipstick.
• We're the biggest fan girls you'll ever meet, haha. 

Well, hope that wasn't too boring haha. Thanks for reading and I hope your all having a great Easter Sunday if you are celebrating.

Got any facts about yourself that you'd want to share? We'd love to know :)

Love Rachel & Leah, x x x

Happy Mothers Day Mum!

This is going to be a small post dedicated to our beauiful mum because it's Mothers Day! We want to say Happy Mothers day to the best mum in the whole wide world. Me and Rachel are best friends with our mum and there are no words to even describe how our mum helps us through the bad times. She always cheers us up when we're sad and is there when we're happy too! Mum is the most loving, caring person and beautiful inside and out! Even if she is annoying when we're watching The Following or The Walking Dead and keeps on screaming in horror, haha! But she is always there, no matter what! & needless to say, we both love her to bits! We'd be lost without mum and I hope she knows how much we love her!

Mum, Leah, Rachel on a boat trip too many years ago

Happy Mothers Day, Mum! P.s, I just want to say to anyone out there that doesn't have a close relationship with their mum or has lost their Mother, I hope you have a lovely day no matter what and celebrate yourself instead! :)

We know our mum will read this post as she is the biggest fan of our little blog! 
Love Leah and Rachel, x

Reasons We Love Blogging!

Image from Google.

I saw this post on Jessica's blog from the amazing The Pyreflies and I thought I'd do a post dedicated on my love for blogging too! Me and Leah both created Beyond The Velvet in August last year and to be honest I didn't think we'd keep up with it. I first started blogging in 2013 and I gave up with it pretty fast and I don't know why as I was kind of obsessed with it. Then in the summer of 2014, we were pretty bored and decided to make Beyond The Velvet. At first, we wanted this blog to be a fashion only blog as a beauty blog felt like a lot of work but now we blog about beauty, fashion and we try and add lifestyle posts in too. After six months of blogging, I can finally write down the reasons of why I love blogging so much!

Reasons we love blogging:

It's an excuse to buy more makeup and clothes: Even when I have no money, I always use this one as an excuse.

It's fun!: I always love coming up with new post ideas and taking pictures. It's always great commenting on other peoples blogs too and seeing what other people are up too!

It's a great way to spend our free time.

There are a lot of kind bloggers: When we created this blog we didn't think anyone would read it. Seeing that people are reading and commenting on our posts means the world and everyone is so kind. Thank you so much for supporting our little blog! 

It's great to look back on: It will be great to look back on past posts and see what we were doing when we were 17 years old.

It's a great way to write down our thoughts and feelings.

We want to visit more places: We suffer with social anxiety and blogging is helping is slowly overcome this. Looking at new places that we can visit and blog about is exciting! 

We discover a lot of new brands to try out!

It's made me appreciate the small things in life: I love taking pictures of everything now even when I just go for a walk in the park!

Blogging is helping our confidence.

There are many more reasons on why I love blogging but these are probably the top ten reasons on why we love blogging.

Why do you love blogging?

Love Rachel & Leah, x

Things That Have Made Me Happy Recently | Getting Our Hair Dyed!

We both got our hair dyed last Monday and I finally feel like my hair is looking lighter after dying it black a few months ago (my biggest mistake ever!!) I'm gradually getting my hair dyed blonde again and I've had a few more highlights put through it. I love that feeling of freshly dyed hair with no roots. I finally feel like me again. Going over to the dark side wasn't me so I really love getting my hair lighter. The condition is awful though. It's so knotty and dry but I think a few deep conditioning hair masks will do the trick :)

Leah's gorgeous hair is looking so stunning. I'm so jealous. It's still got a few brassy/ginger bits in still after a small hair disaster a couple of months ago (we're not lucky with hair dying, haha) but thankfully we are really pleased!

Apart from getting our hair dyed we also spent our 18th birthday money on buying a new guitar and bass so we've been practising a lot :) and we're going to a drum lesson on tomorrow! Oh my God, so scared but hopefully worth it! 

Hope you all have a lovely week! 

Rachel, x

Things That Have Made Me Happy This Week | Our 18th Birthday!

  
Our presents | Our birthday cake! | Us on our birthday | Mum and Dad suprised us by putting our picture in the local newspaper :) | Birthday ring | The best boots ever | Birthday necklace

Today, we turned 18 years old! I don't know how I feel about this as I still feel about 13 but we've both has a great day :) We both got up really early as we were both so excited. We went downstairs to find the living room decorated with ballons and banners and the cutest birthday cake ever! It has a little rock chick on the top playing guitar! The cake is the first customized cake that I've ever gotten and I almost didn't want to eat it ;)

We've both felt very spoilt today as we got clothes, jewellery books and the dreamiest boots but a birthday wouldn't be complete without makeup! This year we got some Benefit as we're currently obsessed! The Rockateur and Porefessional primer have been on our wish lists for ages and we feel very lucky to have finally gotten them!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes :) 

Lots of love, Rachel and Leah x

Things That Have Made Me Happy | January 2015 Highlights

Winter walks | MAC lipsticks (I know I'm obsessed, lol) | My new ring for my Birthday! | Our precious little Heidi | Benefit skincare is the best skincare! | More fashion finds | Blurry picture but this was us before Slipknot & Korn :) 

January has had it's highs and lows but I've had a great month and that is because I saw Slipknot and Korn on the 22nd of January! I've went on and on about this but it was obviously the best night of both of our lives. I still can't believe I saw my two favourite bands ever!

I'm still obsessed with MAC and I think I've got seven lipsticks in my collection but I know I'll get more soon as this obsession is growing stronger every time I go into MAC. I also love Benefit skincare. I've suffered with acne in the past so I always love it when I find skincare products that work of me.

Look at my birthday ring too! It's so stunning and I can't believe it's mine. January has also been a good month for fashion and I recently discovered Urban Outfitters so I have no money at all. Why is everything so expensive?!

☾ Life: We suffer with depression and anxiety and it's been pretty bad recently :( I won't ramble about this as it is quite depressing but I hope things will get better soon. I'm turning 18 next Saturday so at least that's something to look forward to. I'm also thinking about getting a tattoo but I have no idea what to get!

☾ Music: It's been a great month for music. I've been obsessed with Korn and Slipknot but I love listening to Marilyn Manson too. He is amazing, haha. My favourite song by Marilyn Manson is probably 'Tourniquet' Oh my God, I'm constantly singing it!

☾ Watching: I don't watch much tv but I love watching Stalked. I can't believe it's not going to come back on until March but I can't wait for when The Following starts again! 

☾ Reading: I just love reading amazing story books. I got the 'Angel' series for Christmas and I've been obsessed. I've finished all of the books now and I just feel lost not reading them!

How has your January been?

Love Rachel and Leah, x

Things That Have Made Me Happy This Week

MAC Cyber Lipstick | The best boots that have ever existed | Benefit's easiest nudes ever kit | Slipknot ticket! | Slipknot selfies haha :)

We started off the week with buying a Benefit eyeshadow kit which we love. The kit is perfect for a neutral eyeshadow lovers and you can see our review on it here. We've also continued our obsession with boots by buying these beauties in the River Island sale. They're honestly the best boots I've ever seen and they've even got fur inside them!

I've had my eye on Cyber lipstick from MAC for ages now and I finally got it! It's a really dark purple lipstick and we both wore it to the Slipknot concert on Thursday.
Thursday was honestly the best night of our lives. We saw two of our favourite bands; Slipknot AND Korn. Korn were SO amazing and I still can't believe I saw them. It all feels like a dream :') By the time Slipknot came on my voice was already going with all the screaming to Korn, haha! Slipknot were amazing and we're definitely going to see them next time they come. Time just went so fast and we left the arena in a daze. Now I'm just sitting here and wondering if it ever happened at all. I just had the best time of my life. Slipknot and Korn are magical.

How has your week been? :)

Love Rachel and Leah, x

Things That Have Made Me Happy This Week

Rachel wearing MAC 'Diva' lipstick | Our four new MAC lipsticks! | Amazing tees in Topshop | Benefit mini skincare kit | Birthday necklace | Urban Outfitter's tie dye dress | Best friends Heidi & Megan | Leah wearing MAC 'Dubonnet' lipstick | Finally finished my Audrey Hepburn drawing!

As complete lipstick junkies, we went along to MAC on Sunday and bought four new lipsticks. The shades we bought were 'Diva, Spirit, Dubonnet and Spice it up!' We're gonna write a review on them all that should be up on the blog on Moday :)

Topshop have amazing tees in at the moment like this Megadeth one! Our birthday is coming up in February and my birthday necklace arrived and I can't believe how stunning it is. It's from Swarovski and it was luckily in the sale. This dress from Urban Outfitters was also in the sale and you can see it in our ootd post here. We're also testing out the Benefit skincare for the first time with this mini kit from ASOS. I'm so suprised at how amazing it as and it's definitely on my birthday wish list!

I'm also really happy because I finally finished my drawing of Audrey Hepburn's eyes! I'm still a newbie to art after not drawing for years but I'm really happy with how it turned out at the end! I also included a pic of Heidi & Megan. Megan is our older sister's dog and she's 11 years old. Meg is best friends with our dog Heidi and she's so happy to be staying over at our house for a week while her mum is on holiday!

We hope you all enjoyed this post as we're wanting to do more lifestyle posts on the blog! I hope you all had a great week and have a great weekend! 

Love Rachel & Leah, x

My Perfume Collection

This post is dedicated to my beloved perfume collection. I feel like an outfit isn't complete without a perfume on! Christmas is coming up so I thought this post might help those who don't know what scent to get this year. The perfumes in the pictures above are: Gucci Guilty, Marc Jacobs Daisy, Giorgio Armani Si, Dior Addict, Yves Saint Laurent Opium, Dior Miss Dior, Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne and finally a little sample of Elizabeth Arden's Red Door perfume.

My collection has a variety of scents. My favourite perfumes are vintage smelling scents like the YSL Opium, Red Door or Parisienne. I've bought Parisienne two times now as it's probably one of my favourite ever perfumes. I adore Parisienne, I think I'll always have it in my collection! Another favourite of mine is Gucci Guilty. I've had this perfume for six years now and I know I'll definitely repurchase once I've ran out. Giorgio Armani's Si is my newest perfume and I love how vintage and classy it smells. I think my next perfume will be Si Black as I love this one so much.

The fruity, floral smelling perfumes that I own are Dior Addict, Miss Dior and Marc Jacobs Daisy. I'm a huge Marc Jacobs fan and Daisy is a gorgeous perfume. I fell in love with the bottle as it's so beautiful. Dior Addict and Miss Dior are great scents too and I'm sure they'd make amazing Christmas gifts!

Do you own any of these perfumes? What perfumes are in your collection!

Love Rachel. x

Wait and Braid | Side French Braid & New Hair

I finally feel like I'm on the road to being a blonde again! These past few months I've had a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with my hair. I decided to go darker in the summer so I booked an appointment with the hairdresser. The hairdresser then dyed my hair this awful red colour that I just hated! I then put a L'Oreal black casting on it(!) I immediately hated it even more. I had a few days that I decided that I could live with my darker hair but then other days I just completly broke down over it. I have very very very low self esteem and my hair means everything to me. I just felt so bad about myself with my hair being so dark. I just didn't feel like me anymore so I decided to go back blonde again.  Over the weeks, I've been stripping my hair with a JoBaz colour remover. JoBaz is amazing! I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to remove unwanted hair colours/colour build up without damaging your hair as it has no bleach or ammonia. I used it two times and the black casting was suprisingly coming out easy. I then washed my hair with Vosene shampoo which has dried out my hair a lot but I can get the condition back with coconut oil hair masks. After all of the stripping my hair was back to a chestnut/reddish colour that I didn't really like but at least it didn't wash me out as much as my black hair did.

My hair dresser is slowly highlighting my hair back blonde so I don't damage my hair too much. My hair is now a brownish colour with blonde streaks. The streaks do look brassy right now as I have only just gotten it dyed. I am so happy with my new hair and I can't even wait for next month as I'm getting my hair dyed again but with even more blonde streaks - I'll (nearly) be a blondie again! My braid is a gorgeous side French braid which is gorgeous and so easy to do. With my hair being lighter again we'll be posting more braiding posts as we've missed doing them!

What do you all think of my new hair?  Do you like the side French braid?

Love Rachel. x

What's In My Bag?

I've seen a lot of bloggers do this kind of post for their blog so I thought I'd join in! Recently, I've been wearing my beautiful pale pink arm candy from River Island. I love this bag. I got this as a present for Christmas last year and I just adore it. I always have my beloved animal print purse around with me which was also from River Island (can you guess what my favourite clothes shop is?) I also got this purse last year and I haven't stopped using it since then, isn't it gorgeous?! 

I always carry around a good lipstick and most recently I've been wearing my MAC mehr lipstick. I love this dusky pink matte lippie. You can't beat MAC lipsticks can you? I also love using Maybelline baby lips lipbalm. Some people find these balms drying but I personally love them. I have three other colours but I love this pink shade for a pop of colour. My other essentials that I carry around with me are my Marilyn Monroe compact mirror and my mobile phone. I also love using Lanolips hand cream. Hand cream is a must for me, especially during this time of year. The smell is just gorgeous too!

What do you carry around in your bag? 

Love Rachel. x

The Autumn Tag!

This is the first tag that we've ever done on our blog thanks to the lovely Louise from As Seen On Louise. Her blog is absolutely amazing (you should definately check it out)! so it was a real treat when I found out that she had nominated us for The Autumn Tag! Autumn happens to be both of our favourite time of year so let's get started!

1. Coffee - What's your favourite seasonal drink from Starbucks or any other coffee shop?
Here is a confession that might shock people - I've never been to any fancy coffee shop like Starbucks or Costa so I've never had a seasonal coffee or any other seasonal drink! I know everyone seems to have been to Costa but I never have. I don't think I'd like the pumpkin spice lattes that everyone seems to like. You can't go wrong with a good old hot chocolate or cup of tea in the colder weather though, can you?

2. Accessories - What do you opt for, scarf, boots or gloves?
We are both obsessed with boots and chunky shoes. I've recently saw the most perfect pair of boots in River Island that I now need in my life. I hate it when I fall in love with something that I can't buy. The boots are £65! But I love scarf and gloves too. I love evrything about fashion in the colder months.

3. Music - What's your favourite music to listen to during Autumn?
I don't change my music taste, we are rock/metal gals for all year round. We are currently looking forward to seeing Slipknot and Korn in January! Oh my God, I'm so excited I can barely think about it without geting too excited!

4. Perfume - What's your favourite scent for this time of year?
Most of out perfumes smell quite suitable for Autumn/Winter as we're not big fans of the summer, fruity scents. I love wearing Versace perfumes as they are so rich and warm smelling.

5. Candles - What scents will you be burning this season? 
I don't really buy candles but I recently smelt the Yankee Christmas Cookie and I'd love to have it! So expensive though.

6. What do you love best about Autumn?
Everything! Fashion, HALLOWEEN, bonfire night, Christmas coming, the makeup, the leaves on the ground, the darker nights and keeping warm all day long.

7. Favourite make up look?
I always used to favour a bold berry lip but as I'm learning to do my makeup properly I've got obsessed with a dark, smokey eye shadow look that is blended really well with shimmery shades!

8. What are you looking forward to the most in the Autumn?
Counting down the days until Christmas and buying too many clothes in the meantime :)

There you go! and seeing as we are still quite new bloggers, we nominate everyone reading this to fill in their answers to the Autumn tag!

Leah and Rachel.

x x x

Life Updates - Family Time

Everyone loves to read a blog and it's even better when you know a little bit about the people behind the blog! Seeing as we're quite new to the blogging world we thought we'd do weekly life update posts about little things that are happening in our lives. Hopefully, thoughout these post you'll be able to get to know us a little bit more! I hope you enjoy reading.

 Things That Have Made Me Happy This Week:

1. Family Time. We love spending time with our family. We all had dinner out and I had to take a photo of my ice cream desert! Being twins we are very close and go everywhere together anyway but it's great spending time with mum and dad.  
2. Shopping for new clothes. I love shopping but going out on the hunt for snuggly, furry jumpers and winter boots makes clothes shopping even better. We've recently got some great bits from Forever 21, H&M and Primark. I love the colder weather too as long as I'm keeping warm!
3.  Overcoming Social Anxiety. This is something we've both had to deal with for years. Each day is a battle with our anxiety but we keep pushing through it each day. Until a couple of months ago, we were both completely house bound because we had a 'fear' of everyday life like paying at tills or going outside without our mum or dad. This is a topic I'd like to write a post about because I'd like to help people. We suffer with other mental illnesses but anxiety is something that is always overlooked. It is possible to recover from social anxiety and raising awareness is something I'd want to do. We both struggle but it does get easier. The first step is always the hardest. We now go out each day by ourselves, pay for new clothes and go to town on the bus. We feel more normal. I used to be so scared of doing these things; something you wouldn't really understand if you didn't suffer. It isn't just shyness, it's an overwhelming fear of social situations. Social anxiety led us to be home-schooled. So, this week I realised how far we've both came and it's made me really proud of myself! Onwards and upwards now! :)
4. Autumn. This week I've really saw Autumn creep upon us and I absolutely love it! It's so  much better than summer. I almost feel like Christmas is here too. I always get excited too early, haha!
5. Halloween is almost here! I saw pumpkins in the shops this week for the first time this year and it's made me really start thinking about Halloween. We can't wait to start carving pumpkins. 

Hope you've like our first post about our lives this week! What's made you happy this week?

Leah and Rachel. x x x

Strawberry Fields Outing.

One of the best things about living in Liverpool is that all of The Beatles landmarks are just places you find yourself driving past each day! It's unreal to think thousands of people travel to see these landmarks such as Strawberry Fields and John Lennon's house which is just around the corner from the fields. I've always took living in Liverpool for granted so today we decided to make a little car journey down to Strawberry Fields! I've saw so many people get their photographs taken outside the gates but me and my sister Rachel have never taken any photographs outside or even stepped out to see the gates. So why not get some today?

I love the little messages people have left all around the red gates, showing admiration and respect for their idols, The Beatles! I regret not writing my own message but there is always next time! Next time we will go and visit John Lennon's house and hopefully write a follow up post on that! I had a lovely time visiting Strawberry Fields. It's part of music history and being such a massive fan of music I thought this day was a day spent well.

Are you a fan of The Beatles? Have you visited any Beatles landmarks?