Listen up, ‘cos you’re about to learn something really important. If you ever find yourself stranded in the wilds of Africa, you’ll thank your lucky stars that you read this post.
If you see a cheetah lurking in the bushes and he’s giving you the eye, run for the nearest tree. If it’s a leopard, don’t. Cheetah’s can’t climb… leopards actually like to drag their prey up the nearest tree, so you’d be doing half the hard work for him.
But how can you tell the difference between a leopard and a cheetah? They’re both cat-like and spotty right?
Study. Those are cheetah spots. Or at least, they’re supposed to be.
BUT THEY’RE NOT!!!
As cute as those new Tweezerman tweezers undoubtedly are (you know how I love my wild prints!)… those are, in fact leopard spots. For shame Tweezerman, you could’ve got a beauty blogger eaten in the wild!
Behold.
The cheetah (on the left) has oval, regular shaped spots whilst a leopard (on the right) has rosette shaped, irregular spots. Now, you tell me… are those new tweezers leopard-print or cheetah-print?
Yeah, no need to thank me. It’s all part of the service. You wouldn’t get this in Cosmo.
.
Tweezerman Safari Print Cheetah *cough* Slant Tweezers are available from next month, priced at £22.00
p.s. I really love my Tweezerman wide grips, I’d even take them on safari with me to catch mosquitos a la Mr. Miyagi – sort of.
Jo Malone have released a trio of floral fragrances this month to celebrate the classically British country garden, a much-loved place (which often exists more in our national pride than reality!) awash with well-cultivated flora grown in haphazard and slightly eccentric ways. The combination of notes within the three fragrances are purposefully juxtaposed, resulting in a playful take on the classic floral fragrance.
The first thing to strike you about the new collection is the departure from the signature Jo Malone look, the beautifully illustrated, botanically-inspired bottles are quite something and tell the story of the scent that awaits you inside. With the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee, the idea of “Britishness” is something that will undoubtedly feature heavily as the year progresses and Jo Malone are clearly striking while the iron is hot on this score.
I received a sample of Iris & Lady Moore* which at first sniff, is all about the Iris. It’s a powdery, traditional floral which initially fails to transcend the expected until just a couple of moments later when the Lady Moore (geranium to you and me) slices through the nobility with a blast of spicy freshness that my nose reads as a tingle with a citrus-kick. All well and good, but then things get truly delightful on the dry down as the vetiver raises its aromatic head. It adds pungency, masculinity, and earthiness laced with freshly-cut grass and delivers just what is needed to introduce a modern twist to the conventional genre.
I would class longevity and sillage as average and do wish for a couple more hours wear, particularly as the longer it warms against my skin, the more deliciously earthy it becomes.
As for the other fragrances, I haven’t had the pleasure of sniffing them yet but have been convinced that I sadly won’t be finding the particular brand of rhubarb that I’m looking for in White Lilac & Rubarb (which by all accounts offers the more acerbic, vegetal kind). I really should stop procrastinating about it and simply purchase Comme des Garcons Rhubarb Sherbert which has been on my wishlist for a very long time.
Peony & Moss promises a beautiful mix of a delicate floral, with a hint of juiciness from the cassis kept well-rounded with an earthy base. I hope that the moss adds something a little dirty and damp to counteract the lightness in the floral, that’s a contrast I’d love to smell.
All three of the London Blooms fragrances are limited edition and stock is already selling fast. They’re priced at £72 for each 100ml cologne.
Before I close this review, I’d like to draw your attention to easily the most breathtaking Mother’s Day gift to grace my inbox this year. Jo Malone have created a beautifully-presented gift in partnership with Wild at Heart, one of the country’s most inventive florists. Costing more than just a pretty penny (but worth almost every one of them), you can choose to have your chosen scent (any of the Jo Malone fragrances qualify) cushioned on a bed of fresh flowers. This is available on the 16th, 17th and 18th March only, instore at Harrods in the Beauty Apothecary Hall.
For such a lavish gift, you can expect to pay £115 – perhaps for only the most deserving of Mums, I suggest deducting £1 for each time your mother made you eat your peas.
From pale to dark, teal is the perfect blue/green combination and it’s everywhere this season. I thought I’d swatch the cream teal nail polishes in my collection to give you some alternatives to Estee Lauder’s Teal Topaz spring sell-out polish.
From left to right: Estee Lauder – Teal Topaz | Misa – Dirty, Sexy, Money| Barielle Shades – A Bouquet For Ava | American Apparel – Peacock | Ciate – Superficial
If shimmers are more your cup of tea, don’t forget that March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month and Lena White are donating £1 to Ovacome – the ovarian cancer support network – for every sale of OPI’s Teal the Cows Come Home.
Are any of these shades catching your eye? What’s your favourite teal?
Thank you for all the Twitter and email entries for my recent giveaway to win one of five Revitalash Volumizing Mascaras (worth £19.50 each)…
… I’m pleased to announce the following five winners, each of whom will receive a Revitalash Volumizing Mascara to add some va-va-voom to their lashes!
If you’re a little colour-shy when it comes to your eye makeup, coloured liners are the best place to start. You can introduce a full spectrum of shades without turning too many heads just by adding a pop of colour to the waterline. My favourite way to wear brights is with a flash of colour just beneath my lower lashes, it brings brightness to my eyes and makes me look a lot bolder than I feel!
Estee Lauder have released two Intense Kajal Eye Crayons this Spring, a chunky pencil with a creamy formula that lends itself well to both lining and using as a shadow. If you’re looking for that pop of colour, might I point you in the direction of 03 Dramatic Teal, a shade that I can see flattering most, if not all, skintones.
Not much to look at in their generic stubby pencil-form, these crayons glide without pulling and yet remain firm enough to achieve some truly precise strokes across the eyelid. The tip stays strong despite pressure and deposits nothing but creamy colour in its wake.
You need to allow around 2 minutes for the pencil to set fast and if your eyelids are particularly oily, you may find these migrate a little. For normal complexions, these should set and hold throughout the day. The only time I had any bother was when wearing a moisturising primer, combined with a cream foundation and to be fair – I was an oil-slick by lunchtime everywhere.
Both shades are limited edition, if you pick up one thing from the Spring Collection, let this be it.
Estee Lauder Intense Kajal Eye Crayon in 03 Dramatic Teal & 01 Dramatic Black are priced at £17 a-piece and available on counter and online from boots.com – the teal appears to be sold out everywhere else!
I received a press release the other night announcing the new China Glaze Prismatic Collection. Six new shades — a chunky glitter fest, complete with holographic particles.
The shade descriptions:
Optical Illusion – Aqua green glimmers with a hint of purple filled with pink, yellow, silver, orange and green flecks Polarized – Silver metallic sheen sprinkled with yellow, pink, orange and green glitters Prism – Grape purple holographic gleams with pink shimmer and glitters with pieces of pink, blue, green, orange, silver and gold Ray-diant – Greenish-gold shimmer filled with specks of cilver, pink, green, orange and blue Liquid Crystal – Bright blue holographic with purple tint dusted with silver, gold, green, pink and orange Full Spectrum – Baby pink bursts into holographic magenta to party with silver, gold, blue, pink and green particles
They sound amazing don’t they? But honestly, I’m over chunky glitters that claim to be holographic and duochromes that only just make the grade. I’m really not seeing much that yells holographic in these and isn’t it about time we had another proper holo collection from the big players anyway? C’mon now…
Maybe it’s ‘cos they’re a bit pastel-ly but I’m just not going to break my neck in the rush to add these to my collection. I was wondering if I might feel differently once the swatches started to appear. Here’s some from Scrangie (who can basically make me want anything) and Nail Stories. I’m still not lemming them, maybe my nail polish lem has been broken?
What about you? Are you excited for the China Glaze Prismatic Collection?
I’ve started delving into my new acquisitions from Pro Beauty and first up is SpaRitual’s It’s Raining Men – a swirl of pastels that look, at least to me, like a big cupcake-y nebula.
Comprising blue, pink and gold – on my nails, you mostly see the pink throughout the day. I enjoyed messing with Leila’s head “what colour is it Leila?”
“Pink! No, it’s blue! Wait…”
Three coats will give a solid opacity, I was expecting to need more for this kinda of multi-chrome paleness but three covers admirably. Any tip wear doesn’t really show too obviously and I didn’t get any chipping after even three days (with a top coat).
It’s Raining Men is available to buy online, priced at £8.50 with free shipping
Thanks to my pale, cool-toned colouring, I’m usually restricted to white-toned jewellery, gold can look quite brassy against my skin tone. My wedding ring is a plain, silver band… not the most luxurious of metals but I’m not a fan of white gold and platinum stretched way, way beyond our student budget at the time.
A few evenings ago, I was introduced to Tiffany & Co’s new metal. Yes, a whole new metal – created specifically to mark the iconic brand’s 175th year. RUBEDO™ (pronounced roh-bay-doh not roo-bee-doo!) is a beautiful, glowing rose with a warm pink hue which promises to be universally flattering on any skin tone. And indeed it complemented my colouring very nicely, sitting perfectly between the yellow and white spectrum of the usual jewellery options.
Looking at the collection in person, the new RUBEDO™ metal looks to be a little pinker than standard rose gold, perhaps a touch cooler, with more brilliance than I expected and a little less creaminess – if that makes any sense at all. Each piece from the RUBEDO™ metal collection made in this, the brand’s anniversary year, carries the signature of its founder Charles Lewis Tiffany.
I tried on a couple of pieces, the Tiffany 1837™ wide ring in RUBEDO™ metal (£505) and the Tiffany 1837™ cuff in RUBEDO™ metal (£3,050) – funny story, I couldn’t get the cuff off after I’d tried it on. And by funny, I mean so embarrassing I wanted to die. My wrist did the best impression of a sharpei puppy as I tried to wrangle it off. “Oh sorry! It won’t come off so I’ll just have to take it home with me”. Can you imagine?
Estee Lauder are really hitting the nail on the head (pardon the pun) with the shades recently no? They’ve revamped their line of lacquers and have blown the cobwebs away with a real injection of colour. Teal Topaz features in their Spring 2012 collection of Arizona-inspired shades and this one is a corker. But does the formula live up to the kerb appeal?
Honestly? Not quite. The above photo shows three coats, and for a bold creme of this type, I’d usually expect to need only two – and the reason it needed three coats was a patchy application. Whilst I’d mostly covered the nail bed after two applications, it just hadn’t applied smoothly enough to leave it without a final coat. The formula is also fairly thick, which contributed to a little drag… it’s nothing terrible, but at its price point – I’d expect not to have these issues.
On the flip-side, it has great shine, dries quickly and hasn’t given me any wear issues. I do love these teal shades and this one I’d imagine to be particularly flattering on all skintones.
Estee Lauder Pure Color Nail Polish in Teal Topaz* is available to buy on counter and online from Harrods, priced at £14.00 for 9ml
Another fun shade from LittleBu making my little boo a very happy boo indeed…
My daughter’s polish collection is beginning to outdo my own! We picked up another bottle of Emma when we were in London last month to replace her beloved red that sadly met its end when the impatient one sent it flying from the coffee table. There was no lasting damage to the sofa (thank heavens for water-based formulas!) or that would have been the end of Leila’s foray into mini-manicures.
To say that my daughter got a little bit excited when a bottle of the creamy blue Olivia landed on the doormat is an understatement. Well, I think that first photo probably gives you the idea – it was like watching a chocoholic discover a Twix in the fridge after the local co-op had shut its doors for the night. If you don’t have any ishoos with painting your child’s nails (the Little BU formula is non-toxic and completely washes off with soapy water – eventually!) then it is lovely bonding time, and I never realised that L was capable of such patience and stillness! A perfect treat for Mother’s Day?
The polishes aren’t particularly cheap at £9.95 each but the look on L’s face was pretty priceless!
You know, in the world of internet acronyms I’m a bit of a fail. I’m an expert LOLer, can tell my PMSL from my ROFL and do a good line in OMGWTFLOL (STFU). Beyond that though, things get complicated. Between the years of 2004 – 2008 I was in some kind of acronym void and when I emerged blinking into this new world, I remember firmly not having a clue what BFF meant. It’s not really my fault, Mr L is my best friend and he doesn’t go around refering to me as his BFF, I was handicapped from the start.
Cacee is a brand I’d never heard of before seeing a selection of their polishes on a stand at Pro Beauty. I picked up their BFF Nail Polish in Shaina for around £3.50, twirling it in my fingers and coo-ing at the scattered holo particles suspended in a pretty, chocolate brown base. Excited!
It’s a two-coater and applies smoothly, sadly drying to a gritty finish – I guess those holographic particles just aren’t fine enough to sit nicely on the nail. You also lose a lot of the holo effect once on the nail, it’s not an ugly polish by all means (two coats of Lumos sorted out the gritty finish) but it just could have/should have been better you know?
