A few weeks ago, I was invited to  a party celebrating the Blogger’s Beauty Secrets range with Essence. This wasn’t any old party though, it was in Cologne, Germany! Essence sorted out the flights and hotel for myself and Rachel who was my plus one and at 7:15am on 8th July we flew out to Dusseldorf from Manchester airport. We were picked up at the airport and driven out to our hotel in Cologne, which was the stunning art’otel.

We didn’t know anything about the party, all we had been told was to wear something neon or white so after a quick nap in our room (we’d not slept the night before due to travelling to the airport!) Rachel and I headed down to the lobby to meet everyone else. The first part of the evening was a chance to meet the four different bloggers/youtubers who have created palettes for the range and they talked us through their individual palettes and gave us the chance to ask questions.

We started off with English blogger Mary who created the Shape and Shadows palette. This palette contains three matte brown shades, one shimmery brown shade and one white highlight shade as well as a brow wax to keep everything in place. There’s a double ended applicator with a spoolie at one end and an angled brush at the other. I love this palette and have been using it on my brows everyday since I got it.

We then went over to Dutch blogger Serena who created the Glow Must Go On palette.  This palette features a gorgeous shimmery bronzer with three different tones of brown, a white highlighter which is comparable to NARS Albatross and two matte eyeshadows, one in a rusty orange colour and the other in a dark brown.

Next up was Palmira from Germany who created the Vintage Rose eye palette. This palette contains six different eye shadows in pink and brown hues so you can go all out and create a smokey pink look or you can stick to a more neutral smokey eye. There’s also a brown gel eyeliner to finish off the look.

Finally, we went over to Diana who is also from Germany, she created the Touch Up To Go palette which features two blush colours in a coral orange and pink, three eyeshadows and a ‘one for all’ balm. The balm can be used to transform the powder colours into a lip gloss and Diana showed us how this was done.

It was then time for some food, we headed out onto the patio which overlooked the Rhine where we were treated to a BBQ. There were also some really colourful virgin cocktails and an ice cream bar! Everyone had a lot of fun taking photos with the spray painted pineapples, they really went down well! The weather was great and it was so nice to be outside and looking over the river. We were also just opposite the Schokoladenmuseum (chocolate museum) and there was a food festival taking place just outside of it.

Next we were taken back inside and were given an empty Essence palette each and there were hundreds of different pans we could take to fill it up with. There were so many different choices, from eyeshadows to blushes, to highlighters and bronzers – I ended up going for a row of eyeshadows, a couple of creamy highlighters and then some shimmery and glittery eyeshadows. I figured that this palette would be good to create an eye look for a night out. I didn’t spend too long decorating the front of my palette as I’m just not that creative, instead I opted to use some gold jewelled letters and put my initials on the front.

The final part of the night was the actual party. I don’t have any photos from this as it was dark (and there were a lot of UV lights!) and honestly, I was so knackered from all of the travelling that I just had to go back to the hotel room before 11pm. I had 3 hours sleep in 40 hours and I was exhausted!