A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Beauty dosing. What’s that all about then?

We’re all too aware of the importance that a healthy diet can play when it comes to promoting clear skin, strong nails, and shiny hair and sometimes you only need to make the simplest of changes on the inside to see a profound effect on the surface.  But, let’s say that you’ve upped your water intake, ditched the junk food, and cut down on the booze… what next?  Well, the beauty industry have some clever concoctions up their sleeve to tempt you into exploring some potential shortcuts to a new, even-more-beautiful you!

Let me show you a few that have caught my eye recently:

01:  You don’t need to spend a fortune to take your first, tentative steps into the world of supplementing your standard beauty regime.  Beauty’in Beauty Drink B Focused contains: Vitamin A, C and E, B2, B6,PP, B12, zinc, selenium, guarana and acerola, all of which promise to stimulate the brain and metabolism to help fight fatigue.  The 340ml bottle contains only 8 calories, so dose-up safe in the knowledge that the only thing you’re beefing up is your levels of concentration!  £3.50, selfridges.com

02:  As William Gladstone once said: “If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.” Tea.  It’s everything.  And if you drink as much of it as I do (milk, no sugar), you might aswell make that afternoon cuppa work a little harder!  Viridian Nutrition describe their latest Ultimate Beautea as a “refreshing and cleansing blend of hibiscus flowers, rose petals (rosa damascena), calendula petals, chamomile flowers, licorice root and cleavers leaf.”  £12.00, nutricentre.com

03:  If you’re fretting over the recent appearance of the sunshine and what it means for those “bikini bodies” we’re all supposed to be unveiling (to great applause), I’m on your side.  I somehow haven’t found the motivation to jump out of bed, straight into 400 crunches every morning.  Until that motivation strikes, there’s always the promise of some serious body toning courtesy of Functionalab whose Body Toning Beauty Dose assures a significant improvement in the appearance of cellulite.  The 30-day program contains Grape seed polyphenols which contribute to fat metabolism and the appearance of smoother and firmer body skin. £33, functionalab.co.uk

04:  Planning a heavy night out this weekend?  Been burning the candle at both ends too ferociously?  Faust’s Potions offer something a little bit quirky to help boost your morale and aid in the recovery of the dreaded hangover.  These 25ml vials deliver a much-needed blend of vitamins, minerals and herbal extracts just when your body needs it the most.  If the reviews on Cult Beauty are anything to go by, these should make essential packing for festival goers nationwide this Summer.  £5.99, cultbeauty.co.uk

05:  If beauty comes from within, this Skin Clear supplement program from Perricone MD is bringing out the big guns.  The 30-day regime delivers an impressive 7 tablets a day which include: B-Complex + Vitamin C, Evening Primrose Oil, Tocospan Vitamin E, and Omega 3.  It offers a convenient and no-fuss way to ensure you supplement your skin efficiently with a system formulated to help improve skin’s clarity while providing toning benefits and improving skin’s texture.  £69.50, uk.spacenk.com

06:  Hailing from the oddest-looking tree in the world comes the much-revered Baobab Fruit.  So revered infact, that this fruit – which has three times as much vitamin C as an orange – has long been heralded as a bit of a cure-all for many health complaints.  Containing almost fifty-percent fibre and fourteen essential vitamins and minerals, it knocks spots off many of the other so-called super fruits in existence.  It’s simply not difficult to see the potential beauty benefits from a fruit with almost five times the antioxidants of fresh acai berries!  Aduna’s Baobab Fruit Pulp Powder provides a convenient way to supplement your diet by sprinkling it on your morning cereal/porridge/smoothies and reaping the beauty benefits!  £17.99, aduna.com

Do you beauty dose?

We all know that concealer is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to create the illusion of a more well-rested complexion, it’s also the most misunderstood and mis-used of tools in our arsenal and the one product that I enjoy the biggest love/hate relationship with. But when is a concealer not just a concealer?

When Perricone MD debut their No Concealer Concealer of course! This new product launches next month online at perriconemd.co.uk and johnlewis.com, it’s priced at a none-too-shabby £37, so just what does it offer to justify that price tag?

Perricone MD’s No Concealer Concealer* builds upon the brand’s previous success: No Foundation Foundation, taking a fresh look at how our makeup interacts in the long-term with our skin. It promises the kind of multiple skin benefits that you’d expect from a high-end cosmeceutical line including:

~ Vitamin C Ester for brightening and collagen boosting
~ Hyaluronic Acid to boost skin’s natural moisture throughout the day and hep minimize wrinkles
~ Phospholipids to deliver essential moisture while creating a barrier to further protect the skin
~ Neuropeptides to address wrinkles, firmness and smoothness
~ Microcirculatory agents to help treat dark circles, making them less visible over time
~ Mineral-based, non-chemical sunscreen to protect against both UVA and UVB damage

It obviously makes sense to combine some of the most potent anti-aging ingredients into the products that spend the longest amount of time in direct contact with our skin and although this theory has often been employed in the form of foundation, less so when it comes to concealer and even more enticingly, this one works nicely in that most time-sensitive of areas, the eyes.

The packaging is unpretentious and simple, a self-assembly pump system that works well and allows full control over how much product you dispense. The brand recommend to dispense a single pump for use on both eyes, with any excess applied over other parts of the face that need concealing. I found this encouraged me to pile too much on in the eye area, which in turn, led to some settling into my fine lines. You really don’t need much at all to create a more even appearance. The formula is rich without feeling sticky and despite my dry skin, it left the delicate area feeling nourished throughout the day – that in itself, a bit of a miracle. I usually have to use the lightest of textures in this area to avoid settling and clumping and this one works well despite a heavier texture than I’d usually use.

I’d suggest dispensing half a pump, warming it between the ring fingers and first pressing it to an area of your face (other than the eye area) that needs concealing. Then move immediately to the eye area (without further concealing or blending) to press the product onto the dark circles, socket bones and inner contours.

You can see that the shade is fairly forgiving despite my pale skintone, unlike the No Foundation Foundation (which was too dark for me when swatched). It’s perhaps still a hint too dark to be ideal for the under-eye area but it works particularly well to conceal my redness across the bridge of my nose. I’ll leave you with a picture of the concealer applied on a foundation-less face. I think I applied it a touch too heavy in certain areas, and I’m sure that (as with most things), there’s a learning curve to get to grips with but I’m really impressed with how this both conceals and feels on my skin.

Perricone MD No Concealer Concealer SPF 35 is priced at £37 and will be available to buy online from perriconemd.co.uk and johnlewis.com.

* press sample

When I read on the Perricone MD website that Cold Plasma was “A New Paradigm in Scientific Skincare” – I succumbed to the realisation that I didn’t have a clue what paradigm meant.  I suspected that I might need a degree in something better than Media and Cultural Studies to be able to use that word in company without much sniggering.

I went to Wikipedia to try and make sense of it, but came away even more confused.  Something about exemplars apparently…. so then I got out my dictionary to look up exemplars (whilst wondering how long all this was going to take and couldn’t they have just used the word “breakthrough” instead).  And then I struck gold, the penny dropped, the lightbulb flicked on and I ‘got it’.  It just means something that’s so brilliant, someone else is bound to half-inch the idea soon.

If you all knew exactly what it meant anyway… congrats, you just wasted about a minute of your life reading this.

So anyway, on with the product!

Perricone MD are well-known for their ultra-pricey, ultra-scientific skincare.  They’re like the Hell-Fire club of skincare but without the sex, whips and debauchery.  A pot of Cold Plasma will set you back 120 of your British pounds… that’s a lot of money for 30mls of something that smells like the inside of a fishbowl.

Which is why it was given to me earlier in the year at a PR event… I don’t have the kind of money to drop £120 on a cream that I’ve never sampled before in the hope that it will turn me into Bieber’s younger and more fresh-faced sister.

But that’s also why I was determined to see the pot through to the bitter end and not take this review too lightly.  People out there WILL spend that kind of money because they like to have the best of the best and sometimes, the best don’t come cheap.

I started using Perricone MD’s Cold Plasma around April/May.  The gel texture is cooling, refreshing and beautifully light.  It sinks in leaving me with velvet-soft skin and an almost instantly smoother complexion.  Sadly, this effect never lasted till morning or else I’d be commanding you all to go buy, buy, BUY!  The scent (which has been commented on many times before) is fishy.  Not fish and chips fishy, or harbour-side fishy but aquarium fishy.  There’s a difference…   Have you ever walked into a pet shop?  It doesn’t smell of cats and dogs does it?  It just smells… like a pet shop.  Well, this smells to me like a fish tank, are we clear on this completely unimportant distinction?!

Everytime I used it… I was like “ooooh, there goes £1”, which is quite off-putting when I kept losing about 20p worth under my nails.  Have I mentioned how much I dislike my products packaged in jars?  Squeezy tubes all the way please!

But anyway… I did it!  I reached the bottom of the jar at the beginning of August, which actually means that although I can’t describe this with a straight face as being “value for money” – this stuff did last me a hella long time!  I think because it spread so well over my skin, I really only needed to use a v. small amount each time.  I should downsize that £1 theory.

So, would I actually go and spend £120 on this to repurchase?

Um… no.

Despite it being a thoroughly lovely treat, I just didn’t see enough overall difference in my skin to warrant that kind of purchase.

I mean… Cold Plasma is promoted as helping to combat the 10 signs of aging, which include:

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And I just can’t say that I experienced long-lasting differences to these areas.  Yes, for a few hours my skin felt: smoother, softer and I also think it made my pores appear smaller.  But that effect would only last me through to lunch-time and I’m not even 100% positive that I wasn’t looking EXTREMELY hard to notice these things.

I am skeptical about all things claiming to work miracles but goodness me would I have sung the praises of this concoction from the rooves of the blogosphere if it had delivered.  For me, it delivered around £40 worth of good skin.  And that’s the most I’d give you for it.