A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

When I was in London earlier in the month I headed over to the huge Westfield to throw myself on the makeup.

I was itching to check out the Inglot store that I remembered hearing about on some forums when Westfield first opened.  And here it is! (please excuse the mobile phone pics)

Check out the range of eyeshadows:

and nail polishes:

Not forgetting the lipsticks…

It’s like an explosion in a Skittles factory no?

Beautiful!

Anyway… after that colour overload, I proceeded to choose myself a trio of eyeshadows to fill a small Pro Freedom Palette.  I went for the safe option (I know, boring!)

But aren’t they beautiful?

They’re ultra pigmented… incredibly smooth and I’ve embarked on a full-on love affair with them.

I can’t remember exactly how much I paid (argh! – can anyone help me out?)  I think it was around £14 for all 3 inc. the palette.

It’s called the Freedom System and you choose which shades you want the SA to put in.

The way I understood it is this…

You can choose from a Large Pro Palette (which hold the square shaped shadows, blushes and face powders – you can see the square shadows in my picture above).

or

You can choose from a Small Pro Palette which will hold the smaller eyeshadows (like mine), lipsticks and concealers etc…

Once you’ve chosen small or large… you can choose how many pans you want the palette to hold (I’m not sure of all the available choices).

You can also purchase items individually if you wish.

Hope that makes sense?!

The small shadows (to my eye) are the same size as MAC 26mm pans, but you get 1.8g of product in each pan compared to MAC’s 1.5g.

The range of colours is mind boggling, each with different finishes… I love me a bit of shimmer though!

I also bought a couple of lipsticks and will be back shortly with a post on those.

Have you tried Inglot? What say you?

…it’s the thought of the BIG Makeup Show coming to town in a month’s time!

IMATS stands for the International Make-Up Artist Trade Show and is produced by Make-Up Artist magazine.  It is held annually across 3 continents and 5 cities.

IMATS will be on at Alexandra Palace on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st January 2010.

Some of the exhibitors I’m particularly excited to visit include:

Crown Brush, Eve Pearl, OCC, Embryolisse, Paris Berlin (love their liquid eyeliner), Yaby (dinky little shadows!) and PAM (who will be selling MUFE) oh no… now I’ve looked again, there’s more (like Fero Beauty for their Mavalas)… sigh… too many amazing exhibitors and a wishlist a mile long right?

There will also be some fab speakers on the day(s) including Terry Barber (M.A.C.’s director of make-up art for the U.K. and Europe) and Eve Pearl (an innovator of high-definition beauty and the Salmon Concealer®).

I’ve booked my hotel for Friday night, so I can get in when the doors open on Saturday morning – keen much?

Will you be going? You can purchase tickets from the Makeup Mag website here

As part of my Dior haul, I also purchased the Dior Sparkling Liner in the Xmas ’09 LE Shade Sparkling Purple.

I actually had no intentions to pick this up until I swatched it on the stand… oh my.

It’s a beautifully iridescent purple liner with a brush that ensures a precision fine line.  It’s massively pigmented and perfect for winter.

Look at that… it just glows and reminds me of stained glass.  I’ve been pairing this up with grey shadows on my lids and have worn it once or twice on it’s own with lots of black mascara.

I’m so pleased I picked it up!

I think I paid around £20.  Do you wear coloured liners?  Any preferences or tips on shade selection for a chick with grey/green eyes?

Are you addicted to blogging your buys/looks/finds and thoughts?  Wanna link up with fellow addicts?

Go submit an application to join Beauty Blog Link Love right away and never be short of regularly updated blogs to read EVER again!

If you have any questions, leave ’em on the BBLL Blog or on here and I’ll wave them under Rae’s nose.

‘appy Tuesday to you x

The lovely VexintheCity got me lemming this cream just over a month ago when she nonchalantly tweeted that it was time to repurchase for the winter.  Repurchase?!  That’s a word I rarely hear in the beauty community and so it was that my interest was piqued!

When I was in London at the beginning of December I headed to The Garden Pharmacy on Long Acre to check out the Art Deco they stock there, but it wasn’t long before my attention was diverted when I saw the Dr. Hauschka display on the shelves nearby.

Dropping the Art Deco like a hot potato (such is the fickle nature of makeup shopping) I made a beeline for the Dr. Hauschka display and started rummaging amongst the plain-looking boxes to find what I was looking for:

It’s a thick, silky-feeling cream which as the name would suggest… is rose scented.  I don’t find the scent too overpowering, but then, I do like rose-scented things.

You get 30ml of product for a £20 price tag.  Yes, it’s expensive and I balked at the price.

I suffer every winter from dry patches on my face.  My skin doesn’t seem to be au fait with THE RULES.  It’s supposed to know to be oily on the nose and dry on the cheeks… such is the bane of typical combination skin.  My skin SCOFFS at THE RULES.   Crusty and flaky down the sides of the nose and on the chin/top lip line with a great big pimple on the cheek.

It dispenses easily out of the tube, thankfully at £20 a pop it doesn’t pour out too much product when you squeeze the tube.  As you can see from the following picture it spreads itself quite thinly too, so you really only need a small amount of product to get a great amount of coverage.

It has an impressive list of ingredients which (if interested) you can find here.

So how did I find it? Will I be repurchasing?

I loved it.

I’ve tried many ‘thick’ creams in the winter to combat the flaky bits that make foundation look horrific about 20secs after applying and I’ve tried many creamier foundations in an attempt to stave off that crusty, dry, clumpy effect I get over the dry patches.  Nothing worked until I picked up a tube of Dr. Hauschka’s Rose Day Cream.

I was wary about slathering it on my nose… It *is* thick and heavy feeling and I was concerned that my makeup would slide right off, but it sinks in nicely in about 3 minutes.

The singular reason why I will be repurchasing next winter is this…

It’s an instant cure.  I don’t have to apply this a couple of times a day to see the effect a few days down the line (hello Eucerin) – I simply slap a bit of this on and the dryness is gone.  A gentle rub with a dry flannel to exfoliate and remove any dead skin flakes and they’re not coming back for the day once this has sunk in.  And that’s what I want.  I have cuticles like cactus spikes because I’m not hugely dedicated to the cause of massaging cuticle butter into them 5 times a day.  Ooooh I’m gonna try this on my nails too, that was an instant brainwave right there… you’re watching genius as it happens people!

Anyway, I’m really happy with it.  I’m still gonna shriek at the numbers that pop up on the till next November, but when I think of all the money I’ve spent on rich day creams and foundations in an attempt to battle winter skin problems.  For me, it’s completely worth it.

You can find Dr. Hauschka’s Rose Day Cream online on their website where you can even purchase a sample size (although £3.50 p&p charges may make this seem less tempting).

Shampoo: Mark Hill Gorgeous Brunette Shine Reflective Shampoo
Conditioner: Mark Hill Gorgeous Brunette Shine Reflective Conditioner
Styling products: Kevin Murphy Damage Manager
Shower Gel: Dove Go Fresh Energise Body Wash
Body moisturiser: The Sanctuary Body Moisture Spray
Deodorant: Some Dove Roll on
Fake Tan: Xen Tan Transform LUXE Gradual Tan (review coming soon!)
Cleanser: Rediscovering the awesome gentleness of Cetaphil whilst my skin is dry
Exfoliator: Queen Helene Mint Julep Natural Facial Scrub & Nirvana Spa Salt Scrub
Primer: None, none, none…. annoyed at the non-effectiveness of all primers I’ve tried
Foundation brush: Pout Airbrush & Rediscovering my Body Shop Foundation Brush
Concealer: Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer Kit (amazing for those under eye circles!)
Powder: ELF HD Powder (love it, love it, love it!)
Blusher: NARS Orgasm (boring, I know!)
Bronzer: Illamasqua Powder Blusher in Rumour
Highlighter: NARS Albatross
Eyeshadow base: ELF Mineral Eyeshadow Primer
Eyeshadows: The She Space Mineral Pigments
Eyeliner: Gosh Velvet Touch on the lower waterline and Shu Uemura Painting Liner on the lashline
Curler: ELF Eyelash Curler *blush*
Mascara: Embarrassed to admit I’m revisiting Bourjois 1001 Cils, I think an updated eat my words review may be in order.
Lipstick: MAC Speed Dial and NYX Paris
Lipgloss: MAC Dazzleglass Date Night
Nail Colour: Too many to mention, notable favs: Asda Indigo Dazzle, OPI Shim-mery Chic, Barielle Polished Princess

I’m a terrible blogger… I’m being eaten up with guilt, and it’s got nothing to do with that little shopping trip I took to John Lewis beauty hall just before Christmas…

You’ve been leaving me some lovely comments and I’ve been devouring them all like me a fat kid with chocolate cake… and that’s where it’s ended, with me sitting greedily in the corner wiping the crumbs from my mouth and then running away as fast as my trotters can carry me to lie in wait for the next slice (enough with the cake analogy already) round of lovely comments.

I plan to put this right straight away, so if you have left me any questions or comments that you were hoping for a reply to, check back over the next few days while I revisit all your lovely thoughts and add my nonsense in to the mix.

First of all, look how indecently sunny it was on Christmas morning!  After a week of snow and ice, I appear to have woken up in Barbados.  Typical.

Barielle Decadence is the final polish that I was sent by the company.  I wasn’t actually going to show you this one, ‘cos it’s a proper bright jeweled green and I thought that my skintone would do it absolutely no favours.  However, I was looking for something Christmassy and this caught my eye.

Application (as with all the Barielles I’ve tried) was a dream.  It’s a 2 coater and practically applied itself thanks to a smooth formula.  I can’t quite tell if it’s a metallic or a shimmer… I think I’m gonna call it a bit of both.

Check out my glitter tips!  Does this constitute ‘nail art’, have I dabbled for the first time without really meaning to?

Look, I even scheduled it for 3pm! (edit: although for some reason it posted it at 6am LOL) Sorry, I couldn’t resist! *dons crown and robes*

I’m taking a short break to recharge my batteries and won’t be around so much until the New Year, but I’m hoping my trusty post scheduler holds out for a few updates here and there.

Looking back on the year, it’s been an epic one.

I became a Mother, a makeup connoisseur, a blogger… I learnt how to articulate a review (ish), I developed an expensive shopping habit and discovered how not to remove false nails.  I love that you guys walked with me on my journey through those life changing events… hell, you were even there when I discovered Twitter 😉

Have a wonderful Christmas, thanks for making this year so enjoyable – I’ve loved getting to know you all and have had more fun than I ever imagined possible at that start of this journey.  I hope that next year is as good as this one.  I hope to meet more of you lovely people… both in “real life” and through the written word.

I hope that Christmas brings you everything your hearts desire.  Both superficially and in a more grounded, important non-makeupy way as-well!

Have a good one…

…and try not to eat too many of these:

Charlotte (Lipglossiping) xxx

Well, here we are… day 25… and as they say, all good things must come to an end!

It’s been a whirlwind month of giveaways and I really hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.  It’s been good fun seeing you guys return and I’ve really enjoyed finding new blogs to read and inspire.

The winners of the Advent Giveaway will be randomly selected in the New Year.  As some of you know, my plan to spend Christmas with family got postponed… so I simply won’t be home to package and send out the goodies until around the 10th January.

Anyway…. now for the final giveaway and my personal favourite from the month…

Helena Rubinstein Beauty Shows Palette

A gorgeous Lip, Eye, Cheek palette in taupes and peaches.  Whoever is lucky enough to win this may actually have to prise it out of my hands.

Leave a comment to enter.

Giveaway closes at 23:59GMT on 25th December.  Comments made after this time will not be entered.

Winners will be announced once Advent is over. (i.e. after Christmas)

“Rules” can be found here.

Mavala Black Cherry is one of the shades I was sent from the upcoming Mystic Collection (available from January).

It’s a rich black shimmer infused with a cherry sparkle that isn’t quite red and isn’t quite purple.  The sparkle is very subtle and you have to be upclose with the polish to truly appreciate how much it lifts the polish from the realms of ‘just another black’.

Mavala Black Cherry is a solid 2-coater with a great formula that glides on without flooding the cuticles or suffering from drag.

Every dark Mavala shade I’ve tried looks positively amazing once the top coat is added.  Love it.

Apologies for the teeny tiny image, I’m gonna see if I can get hold of a bigger one once the holidays are over, but for now, I wanted to show you the Mystic Collection as a whole.  You can see that they’re all black based with varying degrees of coloured shimmer.

I also have Black Velvet (purple infused) and Mosaic Blue (blue infused) to swatch for you.  I’m ridiculously excited about Black Velvet which, in the bottle looks divine.

You can purchase Mavala polishes online from FeelUnique and GreenHands, they generally retail for around £3.75 for a 5ml bottle.

Do you like or are you getting tired of the dark shades? I must admit that I’m looking forward to Spring, although I don’t know why as I’m not sold on the pastelly shades that inevitably feature heavily in Spring collections.

I’m on eBay hunting down some of the Mavala Diamond collection from AW 09/10… I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve gone a little glitter crazy!

It’s not the best looking sale I’ve ever clapped eyes on despite it’s promises… but someone might find it useful!

Click the image to be taken to the Nails Inc. sale