A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

A new limited edition polish release from Eyeko…

Rain Polish is a rather delicate smoky blue/grey amalgamation.  It’s instantly clear that a lot of thought has been put into the colour selection by the addition of a subtle amount of shimmer that really lifts the shade and stops it falling into the familiar pale blue trap of looking flat and chalky.

Application was a touch tricky, the formula felt fine…. nicely balanced, but on application it dragged a bit unless I was super quick.  The best way I found to prevent this was by applying thicker coats than I would normally… which then has the knock on effect of taking longer to dry, so I probably wouldn’t wear this without the addition of a quick dry top coat.

It reminds me of Essie’s Sag Harbor from last year’s North Fork collection but with less shimmer.

Do you like it?

Looking on the Eyeko website, I’m only seeing it available as part of a set of 3 (priced at £8.50).  Hopefully they’ll make it available as an invidual shade ‘cos it’s a fairly unique one.

Illamasqua Sob is one of my favourite blushes… the creme texture is a delight and practically blends itself.  The colour is a cool, frivolous candy pink and once on, it doesn’t budge.  Not even in this heat!

Too hot for much makeup…

Face
Bare Escentuals Mineral Foundation in Fairly Light
Illamasqua Cream Blush in Sob

Eyes
MUFE Aqua Eyes Pencil in Black
Bourjois 1001 Cils Mascara in Black

Lips
Guerlain Kiss Kiss Maxi Shine in Lychee Shine

IN

~ Having my niece stay the weekend!  We’ve already made smoothies, lost her precious soft bear (twice), played Littlest Pet Shop and tomorrow – duck feeding and popcorn munching is on the agenda
~ Looking forward to a night away with Mr. L and Leila up in London, everytime we take her she enjoys it more and more.  Gonna attempt to walk out of Hamleys empty-handed this time though.
~ Cream Eyehshadows that last the heat! (with a bit of powder of course!)
~ Re-discovering how nice it is to have freshly painted toenails!
~ New earrings!  I’ve worn small silver hoops and small silver hoops only for the last 7 years… I’ve ventured into the world of dangly earrings, and I’m liking it!
~ Watching Mr. L discover a passion for flash game programming,  He’s so talented, it makes me feel sick.
~ Feeling proud of a friend’s successes, it’s a nice fuzzy feeling to watch people you admire do well.
~ Purchasing a new buggy for Leila, I know… not exciting in anyone’s mind except mine.  My makeup no-buy is paying for this.  I NEED to get excited about it or else I’ll just cry whilst I wistfully think of Jo’Mina.
~ The Cambridge Diet!  I’m gonna go for it!  It’s not cheap at about £40 a week, but I want something that’s really gonna motivate me to shift some flab!

OUT

~ The heat.  I’m sorry, I know we’ve probably only got about 3 hours of this “gorgeous” weather left before we go back to our usual UK greyness, but I’ve had enough of it.  I feel ill from it and Leila isn’t sleeping at night which is making me feel even MORE ill.  Roll on Winter!
~ Losing a lovely new dangly earring last time I was in London… God knows how long I was walking around with only one in.
~ Not allowing myself to splurge in the online beauty sales.  It hurts to be good.
~ Not seeing family members for a longgggggggggg time.  I like my family.
~ My beautiful, beautiful camera is getting a bit ropey.  I don’t have the money to replace it and even if I did, I’m not sure that taking photographs of makeup is enough justification for Mr. L.

One of my new pairs of earrings!

The Smashbox Muse palette is from the 2009 Spring Collection.

10 positively creamy shades… pastels on top, stronger shades on the bottom.

The brush that it comes with is surprisingly soft and useable… the top row shades are gentle and spring-like, whilst the others comple the more dramatic pairing.

I’m delighted that I picked up this palette and right now, it’s an absolute steal over at Just Beauty Direct priced at £13.74

Do you wear pastels?

Last year, they were everywhere and they divided opinion.  Some loved ’em, some hated ’em.

What am I talking about?  Matte Nails of course!

17 Nails Xtras Matte Top Coat Polish 8ml (£3.99) from Boots is due to be released in September and I’ve got a sneaky peek for you!

Well… finally!  A really, thoroughly decent matte top coat with great availability and a price tag to match!

It may a little late to the mass market to be considered the height of fashion, but this budget matte top coat from 17 Cosmetics is gonna be a hugely popular seller in my humble opinion.

It applies a true matte finish, none of this satin semi-matte nonsense.  So far, I haven’t noticed it accentuating any ridges or imperfections in the polish application underneath and it dries fully in minutes.  Actually, that’s my one caveat… you need to apply the top coat quickly as it will dry rapidly.  Once you realise this, it’s not a problem as the polish glides on smoothly anyway.

After wearing for a couple of days, the matte finish does get slightly shinier… more satiny.  But I haven’t noticed an increase in chipping or tip wear as a result of topping up my standard manicure with this little gem.

£3.99?  You’ll want to get this!  Hurry up September!

UK ladies (sorry my lovely international readers), get thee-selves over to the Lipglossiping Facebook Page, Once on there, make sure you “Like It” and leave a comment letting me know that you’d like to throw your name into the virtual hat for a chance to win.

Celebrity Secrets Professional Airbrush Tan in a Can! (£19.74)

As innovative as spray cheese but less messy and probably more tasty!

Here’s what they say about it:

Loaded with our unique vitamin-enriched Celebrity Secrets Natural Tan solution in an easy-to-use can using the 360 degree spray technology, this product contains no alcohol or CFCs, no gasses, just tanning solution in a safe fine mist.

With its long shelf life, this popular product is ideal to top up your tan or can be used to apply 3-4 complete body tans in the comfort of your own home, without the need for professional equipment.

If I’m gonna tan… I need it to be fuss free, which is exactly what this spray tan promises.  Not only that, but it’s also suitable for use on the face and as I’m reading the can now… I see that it also proudly announces itself to be Paraben Free.

Tanning is a chore, but for many ladies an absolute necessity (especially this time of the year!).  Me?  I just thank the heavens daily for the invention that is the Maxi Dress.  No more dazzling people with my pasty fishbelly leges.

Are you a Summer tanner?  Do you have to fake it or are you blessed with a natural glow within days of the sun first peeking out through the clouds?

Good luck if you enter!

I shall draw a winner from all Facebook commenters on the 23rd July!

P.S. – I know that some of you would rather stick hot pins in your eyes than sign up on facebook, so if you wanna join in the fun but are allergic to the “book of faces”, drop me an email with the subject “JULY GIVEAWAY” (and a few lines of text to get past my spam filter) and I’ll make sure you’re entered too!

My final polish from the Urban Decay Summer of Love Nail Set.  I don’t know what took me so long to give this one a spin… look how beautiful it is!

It’s golden without being brassy… bronze without being orange.  It’s quite hard to describe.  A metallic finish that looks beautifully smooth on the nail.  I wasn’t expecting this to suit me, but it suits me very well.

3 coats to achieve a full, opaque finish.  I think this may be my favourite from the set.  I’m truly surprised by how much I love this one!  Longevity on this was also the best… 5 days before I even saw tip wear.  That’s pretty amazing no?

Ugh, I die when I look at that picture… it captures it well… how can it be so metallic and bronzed yet understated.  If I could buy this in a large size bottle, I would.

I’ve attached links to the other polishes from the set including the overview… if you haven’t seen them already – check ’em out!

Urban Decay Summer of Love Nail Kit – Overview
Aquarius NOTD
Magic Bus NOTD
Hashbury NOTD
Woodstock NOTD
Love Love Light NOTD
Psychedelic Sister NOTD
Shine On NOTD

Thanks so much to each and every one of you who entered the Beauty Blender Giveaway which was kindly sponsored by Just Beauty Direct.

The correct answer was of course: The Daily Telegraph!

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And the 3 lucky readers to bag a super-duper Beauty Blender each are…

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Anne (abrit@xxxxxx.com)

Kimberley (Kimberley.Philpotts@xxxx.com)

Rebecca (nailsnailsetc@xxxxxxxxxx.com)

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With nearly 450 entries, I have never in my life wished so hard that I could give each of you a Beauty Blender. Commiserations to those who weren’t lucky this time round , but never fear – I have another giveaway coming up later today.

I’ll email the winners directly this evening, so if your name is up there and you haven’t heard from me by tomorrow – please get in touch ASAP!

Let me give you a quick rundown of The Body Shop event I attended a couple of weeks ago… I’ll point out a few new product highlights, but the full reviews will come soon!

Cupcakes and makeup, it doesn’t get much better than this!  8 eye colours, 4 face products… all baked and very pretty indeed!

Superfluous… but look what Cosmetic-Candy made me!

She presented it to me really sweetly, but then turned nasty.  “Eat it then”… “Go on, I MADE IT for you”.  Proper sinister like….

I didn’t want to stuff my face with cake it infront of all my blogging peers!  Can you SEE how many Smarties the bitch piled on it?  It’s totally clear to me that she just wanted to sabotage my street cred and watch me throw smarties all over myself and the floor whilst looking like a greedy fat bitch infront of everyone.

When she wasn’t looking, I hid it behind a bottle of shampoo.

Chase Aston worked his magic on two delightfully beautiful models.  Here he is, demonstrating one of the new Bronzers from the Baked to Last summer collection.

Such amazing skin!

The Baked to Last Lineup…

I’ve already vented my spleen on the new Body Shop Baked to Last Eye Colours…. they don’t do it for me at all.

But the blushes and bronzers?  A different story altogether.  I’m really enjoying using them.  I’m writing my review now, but it’s still in draft… watch this space!

New Haircare!

Yes!  The Body Shop’s beloved haircare range is getting a revamp with a view to being more ECO Friendly… this means, no silicones, colourants or parabens – thereby protecting aquatic life from our toxic haircare that we flush down the drains daily.  Also coming soon will be new Hair Butters, intense nourishment built along the same lines as their current top sellers, the Body Butters!

The ever-popular Vitamin C range will have to squeeze up and make some room for these new inclusions!

New additions include: Eye Reviver Duo (double ended wand for instant pick-me-ups!), Skin Radiance Capsules, Skin Radiance Powder Mix (super innovative) and Microdermabrasion.

It was a lovely afternoon and good to hear about and discover all the new things that The Body Shop are planning to roll out over the next few months.  I’ll be back with further reviews on the products very soon!

Givaudan, the worlds most respected fragrance manufacturer has released an iPhone App unimaginatively titled: iPerfumer.  It’s for the iPhone?  Better stick a small “i” in at the beginning of the name then *yawn*.

Having said that, I had barely finished scrolling to the bottom of the press release before I’d scooped up my iPhone and zoned in on the App Store.  Combine my iPhone geekery with an undying fascination for the perfume world and it was downloaded and installed faster than a fat kid at a cake buffet.

Now, despite my fascination in perfumes and scents… I’m a total n00b.  I’m clueless, which is great… ‘cos I’m guessing this App is aimed at people like me who struggle to navigate the complicated world of perfumes.

The App itself is pretty basic, you fire it up… enter some personal details and preferences (I had to look up some of the fragrance types – chypre? fougere? wassat!) and finally start ‘rating’ fragrances that you’ve tried, with 5 stars being top marks.

The first thing I noticed was that once I’d entered my personal preferences, there doesn’t seem to be a way to ‘go back’ and edit them.  I’m stuck with having given ‘Oriental’ 3 stars, when I should have given it more.  Make sense?  The only way I can see to fix this is to delete my profile and start from scratch.  Frankly, I can’t be arsed.

It also appears to have a limited database of perfumes… I’m hoping that as time passes, the clever people at Givaudan will update the App to include more and more fragrances.  I couldn’t rate anything by Annick Goutal… still, it let me score SJP Covet (go figure!)  – and no, I’m not telling you what score I gave Covet, you’ll ban me from ever owning another perfume!

Once you’ve rated as many perfumes as you can remember owning or sniffing… click the “Recommend” button at the bottom and the App takes just seconds to whizz up a list of recommendations based on your previous input and ratings.  Clever no?

I’d have loved to have been able to browse through the perfumes in the App’s database… it seems that you can only really access a fragrance’s details if you know the name to search for it directly or get recommended it by the App.  Seeing as I like ‘floral’ perfumes, it would have been nice to have been able to browse through a category devoted to these scents.  It’s all about making the database accessible in as many ways as possible to the user.

I’ll be honest… I don’t know enough about fragrances to tell you whether the recommendations are much cop.  I had a nice selection of floral/oriental fragrances in my list (the image above is a generic screenshot) including Armani Sensi, Ralph Lauren Notorious, Trish McEvoy Gardenia Musk and Serge Lutens Daim Blond.  But having never smelt any of those, I’ll have to follow my nose to my local counters to see what I think.

Overall, iPerfumer is a nifty little App that occupied a good half hour of my time yesterday.  I had fun rating and reading little snippets of info about fragrances I’d never heard of before.  Ultimately, it needs a bit of work and a lot of updating.  But the potential is certainly there, and if anyone can do it… it’s Givaudan.

I’ll be back to let you know what I think of it’s recommendations… if I like the suggestions, then this App will be coming with me on many a Beauty Hall tour!

Thumbs up!  Oh, and did I mention it’s free?  Double thumbs up! (I look like an idiot!)

All aboard!  I have 3 to give away!

My giveaway is closing this evening at 11pm BST – get those last minute entries in!

Click here to find out how to win!

Due to be launched on QVC on the 10th July (that’s just a few days away!), Matte is the latest foundation to be released by mineral foundation pioneers Bare Escentuals.

Available in 15 shades to suit every skintone, I purchased my pot of Bare Escentuals Matte SPF15 (shade: Fair) in a blog sale a little while ago and have been putting it to good use in the warm weather we’ve recently been enjoying.

Just as finely milled as the original version, the foundation feels silky and light to the touch.  I’m starting to realise there’s a bit of a love/hate vibe around mineral foundation.  I will happily swear by the coverage it gives and I rarely get a cakey finish when wearing it.  Infact, I’ve often (ok, twice) been asked what foundation I’m wearing when shopping on beauty counters and both times when I’ve replied with the answer ‘mineral’ – the look of shock from the SA’s has been in “kodak moment” territory.

As with the original Bare Escentuals SPF15 foundation, I’d call this medium coverage.  You *can* build, but that’s when you begin to run the risk of it looking more obvious, especially on dryer skin.  You can purchase fuller and more sheer mineral foundations, it all depends on the ratio of the minerals, but Bare Escentuals in my opinion, offers straight down the line medium coverage.

An irritation with mineral anything, is packaging and portability.  In the past, Bare Escentuals foundations have been fine sitting on your dressing table… but take it anywhere without sellotaping up the holes in the sifter?  BIG MESS!  The new Bare Escentuals Matte foundation offers a very simple solution that quite frankly, should have been implemented years ago…

A little rotating lid like you’d find on your pepper pots covers the holes in the sifter and stops excess product leaking during transportation.  I told you it was simple!

Application is the same for the new Bare Escentuals Matte foundation as it is for the original.  Swirl, Tap, Buff!

Mineral still affords me the quickest and most forgiving of foundation applications.  I have a few great brushes for application: My Body Shop kabuki, my MAC Flat Top 180 or my Bare Escentuals Full Flawless Face Brush.  They all work equally well to provide an even finish, though flat top brushes tend to give a fuller coverage.

I’ve talked about application, packaging and my experiences with mineral foundation in general… let me tell you how I find the new Matte version in comparison to the Bare Escentuals original formula.

On initial application, it is indeed a completely matte finish (thanks to additional oil-absorbing minerals)… it wipes out all traces of shine and oil from my skin, leaving a wonderfully even surface.  The original leaves me with a touch of…. not sparkle, that’s comletely the wrong word.  Natural luminosity?  I would say that if you have more mature skin, you may prefer the more forgiving finish of the original formula.  If your skin is younger and more prone to oil… the Matte formula is something you should definitely try.  Alternatively, something I’ve had success with is wearing my original formula lightly all over before buffing a little Matte into my T-Zone.

I’ll share a little tip that SJ (Bare Escentuals National MUA) told me when I was introduced to the new foundation.  If, in the middle of the day… you think you need a little foundation touch up, grab a brush and simply buff your face with it (no product).  It re-distributes the minerals that are already on your face from the initial application and simply recharges your foundation.  It totally works and is something that I’ve always done with minerals anyway… but it seemed funny to hear a proper MUA confirm something that I do without any thought as to why or how it works.  Silly anecdote, but a tip is a tip!

Here’s a before/after application with the new Matte foundation (no concealer):

Longevity?  Well… that’s my other bugbear with mineral foundations.  It’s a shame that I have to take a brush and buff my face in the middle of the day… but I do.  Bare Escentuals Matte foundation is no different and generally lasts about 5 hours on me before I need a pitstop to the Ladies with my brush in hand to ‘redistribute’ the powder.  Then, I probably get another 3/4 hours out of that before I wanna apply more product.

The nature of the product however, means that it doesn’t matter if I apply a bit more over the top of the rest of my makeup.  It has no ill-effect at all and now that Bare Escentuals has made it portable… well, it’s just not much of an issue for me anymore.  Worth mentioning though.

Overall, it’s not an improvement on the Bare Escentuals Original foundation (bar the new sifter)… but it does sit very nicely alongside, offering an additional choice which may or may not be for you depending on your skin type.

Bare Escentuals Matte SPF15 Foundation will launch on 10th July exclusively on QVC priced at £19.50.

Are you a mineral foundation lover?