A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Stay Pout… Stay Put… get it?

I didn’t… It took Mr. L almost 3 minutes of explaining to make me realise that there was a play on words in effect here.  In the end… to save face, I told him to shut up and stop playing with my lipsticks.  He shut up.

I received samples of the new Barbara Daly range last week and have been putting their claims of longevity to the test.  But first, let me show you a few shades…

Diva is a slightly cool-toned red that I’m finding very wearable.  It’s not OHMYGODYOU’REWEARINGREDLIPSTICK red.  More, OOHLALAYOUHASREDLIPS red.  Subtle nuances are really crucial.  On my lips, In The Pink is a warm-toned creamy medium pink.  Very nice.

Perfect is a dark nude… a light swipe gives a ‘my lips but better’ appearance.  Finally, Autumn is a medium brown toned shade which leans slightly more to rose than bronze.  It’s a good shade if you fancy dipping your toes into the whole ‘brown lipstick’ thing which seems to be a bit of an Autumn trend.

I know I look tired, that’s ‘cos I’m wearing no makeup from the lips up!  Got home yesterday, took it all off and then remembered that I hadn’t lip swatched any of the shades!  Above, I’m wearing In The Pink and I’m surprised at how much deeper it looks on my lips than it does in the swatch.  I think it would be worth making use of those instore testers on the back of your hands ladies!

Longevity is pretty impressive… I munched my way through a bowl of ice cream and a cup of tea.  Despite leaving some lipstick stains on the spoon, I still had plenty of coverage on my lips.  The texture is a little varied throughout the shades I tried.  Diva is quite hard and drags when applying but Perfect is really very creamy indeed.  They smell pretty cheap, that old lady lipstick smell that makes you grateful for MAC’s vanilla scented offerings.  Still… you can’t smell them once they’re applied.

As a long-lasting lipstick… these aren’t hydrating and after a couple of hours will accentuate the furrows on your lips.  I’ve tried applying over a thin layer of balm and that makes all the difference to negating any dryness.

My final criticism of these is that they don’t wear so evenly.  On most shades, it’s not a problem… but wearing Diva began to leave me with a heavier outline of red after a few hours.  Easily remedied by smooshing my lips together to redistribute… but kinda uncool if someone else catches you before you get the chance to notice.  I’m gonna nickname this phenomenon, the RROD (Red Ring of Death)… Xbox fans take cover.  Having said that, the last time I wore my True Red Revlon Colorburst, I was so embarrassed to realise that half of it had transferred to my gnashers.  I had absolutely no transfer to my big bunny-like front teeth with any of these lipsticks.

Competitively priced at £5 each and available from Tesco, the Barbara Daly Stay Pout lipsticks should be available instore now.  My pick of the bunch is Perfect.

Yeah, Christmas again!  Sorry!  Bite me.

Check out this Kabuki-inspired Bento Box Lip Set which will be on many a NARS’ fan’s Xmas wish list!

Inspired by the Japanese Kabuki theatre, the set comprises: 2 lip colours (Maiko and Sakura), 2 boxed dish thingies and a rather lovely lip brush. Will the lip colours be in the dishes?  I’m not sure… I got a bit confused at that point but it reminds me of a Japanese curio that Lisa Eldridge talked about.

The lip shades are pretty darn beautiful.  Look!

Heavily pigmented and smooth, a pair of beautifully bright shades that are sure to tantalise and tempt!

I adore this set, it’s a little bit quirky… a touch unusual but thoroughly useable.  What a wonderful Christmas gift this would make… for ourselves of course 😉

No price details or release dates yet, but I shall update as and when they become available.

Do you like it?

EDIT: I’ve now been reliably informed that this set is due to retail in the UK at £95 from November the 1st and will be available at Selfridges.

In Kabuki theater there is a style, Kumadori, which uses shades to represent different emotions and moods: red represents passion and vigor while pink represents cheerfulness and youthfulness. So it is no wonder that François chose to capture the majesty of the kabuki lip with these two colors for the elegant yet modern woman. Maiko, a vibrant red, is the Japanese word for dancing girl and is used to refer to apprentice geishas. Sakura, a hot pink, is Japanese for cherry blossom, the symbolic flowering cherry tree integral to Japanese culture.

Each cup has been hand-filled, weighs the same as a bullet of lipstick, and will provide around 150 uses. Similar to the NARS Yachiyo Kabuki Brush, the lip brush is hand-made and the handle is wrapped in Wisteria, a flowering plant native to East Asian states such as China, Korea and Japan. Only one thousand sets were created for sale in the United States, and just over two thousand in total were created worldwide.

Yes, £95 *jawdrop*.  It’s beautiful n’all… but erm… £95?  Am I going to have to sell both kidneys to fund this I wonder?

It’s been quite a year for luxury lipsticks!

Only just recovering from the Chanel Rouge Cocos and the Tom Ford purse breakers, we’re now faced with the new collection on the block… and it’s a biggie!

Rouge Dior Haute Couleur Voluptuous Care (£22) is a new collection of 32 (yes, 32!) mouth-watering shades.  Each shade has been inspired by (and named after) a vintage Dior Haute Couture dress.  Check out those two beauties in the background!

The range has been grouped into three colour families to make navigating through the line a little easier.  Red to Coral, Pink to Lilac and Beige to Brown, there’s a shade to suit every taste and skintone (if not budget!).

The Rouge Dior Haute Couleur Voluptuous Care collection also promises to plump your lips both in the short and long term using some fancy schmancy hyaluronic technology.  I can’t wait to see the rest of the line up, though I’m already totally drawn to the nude there *swoon*.

If you want to get your hands on one (or seven) of these babies, you need to take your lipstick-loving selves to Selfridges who hold the worldwide exclusive on the range.  Available from yesterday (28th July), these are sure to be hugely in demand throughout August!

Whilst on holiday, I’m working on a shockingly bad laptop with a screwy backlight… in conjunction with an internet connection best suited to 1994, I’m struggling!

I hope that these images are at least somewhat colour accurate… If not, I’ll fix them when I get home – but for now I want to chat about the infamous and generally well regarded Boots 17 Mirror Shine lipsticks.  In particular, the popular shade Beehive.

Thanks to the UK blogging community, I heard about these lippies aaaaages ago… and have been trying to find Beehive in stock for a long time.  Somewhat ironically…. of all places, I finally found it on one of the busiest shopping streets in Britain.

Beehive is a creamy, shiny and almost balm-like lipstick.  The formula is soft and as a result, prone to snapping halfway down the bullet.  Apply with a gentle hand and don’t store anywhere it might get warm to preserve it for as long as possible.  These are quality issues that need looking into, but the sad truth is that if they’re addressed… the lipstick probably wouldn’t feel half as siky as it does in both application and once on the lips.

If you’re looking for a pigmented lipstick, these aren’t for you.  Glossy and sheer are the key words to remember here, but this makes the range light, easy to wear and comfortable with just a hint of colour.  Beehive (£4.49) is a pinky nude shade that evens out the tone on my lips and adds a degree of shine.  It doesn’t blow me away, I don’t think it deserves it’s place on the pedestal it occupies (especially considering it’s quality flaws) but I’m happy to own it and I reach for it when I want a quick polished finish to a natural look.

Let me set the scene…

I’ve just handed over £4.99 for a lipstick.  Ok, it’s no Tom Ford… but then, at £4.99 it wouldn’t be would it?

It’s sellotaped up like a 1950s Tupolev.

It takes me no less than 10 minutes to remove this mummified lipstick from it’s tomb of sticky tape.

Each time I scrape an end up with my nail, it starts to tear diagonally leaving me with about 3mm of tape between my nails and 8394839473892 metres left on the tube.

Finally… it’s removed.

Leaving behind a tacky, sticky, dirty-looking residue that manages to attract approximately 7lbs of fluff and dust in the 2 minutes that I leave it on the desk.

I KNOW why retailers have to do it and I guess I’d rather have my lipstick taped up than ground down to a nub against some pre-pubescent’s cracked lips.  But still…. surely, there’s a better way?  That surgical tape-y stuff… that peels off cleanly doesn’t it?

It’s not sodding rocket science!

Am I being pedantic?  Maybe… but so would you be if you’d just spent 20 minutes unravelling and then cleaning your lipstick.

I wanted to get these out quickly in the hope that the photos/swatches over my overspend haul may be useful to those still making up their minds on what they want to order.  But I failed…

I’m not gonna do any proper reviews, I’m just trying to put some shots out there that are as colour accurate as I can manage.

Without further ado…

The Haul!

Stereo Rose MSF – surprisingly wearable on my pale, cool-toned skin.

Read the rest of this entry »

My love for these Aussie tubes of lip-loving lanolin have been well documented on this here blog and I’m excited to announce that from September we need go no further than the high street to get our hands on them!

Lanolips will be launching in the top 22 Boots stores starting in September before (hopefully) being rolled out to other stores nationwide later in the year.

The original non-coloured 101 ointment (my fav!) will be priced at £10.99 with the sheer coloured lip-ointments retailing for slightly less.

I’m over the Summer now… come on September!

Bourjois Sweet Kiss Naturel, a new lipstick available in 10 shades that promises to contain 100% natural ingredients and long-lasting colour.

These natural ingredients include lovely-sounding things such as: magnolia oil, shea butter, jojoba oil, green tea, beeswax and mineral/plant pigments.

I was sent two shades to try: Fuchsia Ardent (04) and Sienne Kiss (09)

The packaging is the same as the original Sweet Kiss range from Bourjois (though a different coloured plastic)… it’s incredibly tactile… I could click and click for hours…

The formula (which promises to be silky, melting and creamy) is a little bit harder than those adjectives would imply.  Though it certainly doesn’t create any drag on the lips, I’ve definitely applied softer-feeling lipsticks.  Also, I’m not loving the scent.  It’s quite waxy… but I guess it’s not easy to be vigilantly natural and delicately perfumed all at the same time… plus, I can’t smell it once it’s on my lips, only if I sniff the tube.

What I would say about the Sweet Kiss Naturel Lipsticks though is that they’re wonderfully light.  I can apply a ton of product and STILL not feel like I’ve built up a layer of beeswax.  This results in fabulous pigmentation without any gloopiness or heaviness on the lip, and that’s a rather unusual and impressive achievement for a ‘drugstore’ lipstick.

This is a few swipes straight from the tube, the lipstick applies sheerly at first but builds up to a great intensity as you can see.  The finish is semi-matte and extremely easy to wear.

Longevity is average despite claims of 8hr moisturising wear… perhaps if I were enclosed in a vacuum… but I do normal girl things like drink tea, eat muffins and chew on pencils, so these lasted around 3 hours on me before fading away leaving my lips just a touch drier than before… nothing that I’m not familiar with from other lip products.

I would say that they bridge the gloss/lipstick gap… but they don’t, they’re too opaque and matte to be drawing any comparisons with gloss.

Overall, at £7.99 (€11.99) each, I think they’re a great buy.  Particularly if you’re usually uncomfortable with the heaviness of a lipstick.  If you give them a try, let me know what you think!

…Strawberry!

I was sent an Arbonne lipstick in shade, Strawberry (£16).  It’s an “almost red” that would suit ladies who fear a completely bold red lip, i.e. me.

The texture is smooth and it feels light on the lips.  I’ve been wearing this applied quite sheerly and blotted with my finger to create a softer matte stain-like finish and as a result, longevity has been impressive.  Applied more heavily, you can achieve a glossier effect, but the flipside is a more noticeably dehydrated lip.

It’s a fun shade for the summer, a pink-ed red that suits it’s name perfectly.

Excuse the silliness, I was being too lazy to go and pose in my usual spot properly!

Visit www.arbonneinternational.co.uk or call Customer Services on 0800 977 5721 to locate your nearest consultant and purchase products.

What reds are you favouring for the Summer?

I done did it!

Thanks lovely ladies!  With your help, guidance and lack of “LIKE DUH, she doesn’t know where to apply her shadowz”, I created a look with the soon-to-be-released limited edition Estee Lauder Blue Dahlia palette I received at the recent blogger launch:

Excuse the wayward eyebrow, I’m honestly not raising it… why DOES it do that?  I look perpetually dubious about something.  I only included it so that I could show you how it looks like with eyes open.

That’s better! (slightly).  How gorgeous is the teal on the lid?  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry teal next to my blue/green eyes very well, but I can just about get away with it.

So here’s what I used (and where):

(Shade #1) On the lid and blended just into the socket line

(Shade #2) In the crease and blended above

(Shade #3) Underneath the lower lashline

(Shade #4) Blended in the outer-v and inbetween the upper lashes to darken

(Shade #5) Just above the upper lashline for a little sparkle when I blink!

Hoorah, I used all shades!  I totally forgot to highlight with anything… so lazy.

I really wasn’t sure about using the teal and navy adjacent to one another, but you guys inspired me and you were completely correct!

I found that all the shades were easy to blend and nicely pigmented.  The white lacks pigment, but I’m certain that it’s inended use is as a layering shade rather than a highlight… it adds a good amount of sparkle without disrupting the tone of the shade you’re applying it to.

The taupe is the softest shade in the palette, with an almost buttery finish.  The blues are slightly rougher in texture, but apply beautifully nonetheless.

I also used a sample of one of the new Pure Colour Glosses in shade Twilight Petal, a very pretty pinky-nude infused with sparkle.  It’s a bit sticky, but the flipside is a long lasting finish.

The Estee Lauder Blue Dahlia palette and Twlight Petal gloss are due for release in August.

Multi-use products often don’t provide the results that they claim.  The innovation is there, but the performance generally isn’t.

Not so with Jemma Kidd Pro Lip Perfector I was sent last month.

Jemma Kidd Pro Lip Perfector is a product clearly designed to fulfill three uses: Anti-feather, Prime and Plump… all housed in a single double ended pen-esque container.

I am terribly dubious about most primers (excluding my beloved UDPP) and it wasn’t too long ago that I tried the new Urban Decay Lip Primer Potion, which went a long way to solving my pigmentation issues but was a drag (literally) to apply and left my lips feeling a little dry.

I expected something similar from this.

One end houses the anti-feather ‘nib’.  A waxy translucent lip liner that creates an impenetrable barrier in the same way you would Vaseline your hairline to stop your hair dye from seeping down towards your eyebrows.  The other end holds a concealer-coloured bullet which claims to ‘prime & plump’.  And it does so nicely.

The primer glides on in comparison to the Urban Decay version… it’s a joy.  The concealer colour that it imparts blanks out the colour from my lips and allows for a neutral base.  I would recommend blotting the primer before applying a lipstick ontop just to remove the excess product but keep the neutral colour base.

It does indeed tingle like a true plumper should and doesn’t leave my lips feeling any dryer than normal.  Infact, I applied the primer to one half of my mouth before using a lipstick… and in all honesty, couldn’t see a massive difference in application BUT the primer’ed half felt far more comfortable 10 minutes later, whilst the non primer’ed side began to feel a little dry and tight.

The photo above shows my lips wearing just the Jemma Kidd Pro Lip Perfector with nothing ontop.  You can see that it blanks out all natural pigmentation successfully.  I would recommend this over the Urban Decay Lip Primer Potion because it is so good at creating a blank canvas without drying.  I’m not convinced it gives me any extra wear from my lipsticks, but the addition of the anti-feather product makes this an extremely useful tool to own.

The Jemma Kidd Pro Lip Perfector is £15 and available from QVC online.

Arbonne… you won’t find them on the high street, their products are sold through a network of independent consultants… like the old Avon lady/Mary Kay situation, but with a 21st Century twist.

The Swiss brand are particularly well-known for their skincare, with an almost cult fanbase in some countries.  More well-known in the U.S, Arbonne have only been active in the UK for a couple of years.

Now, the products aren’t cheap… and I’ve so far experienced some rather (how can I put it delicately) “full on” interactions with Arbonne consultants over the internet.  They come across a bit ‘motivational video/live your dreams/come join us and be happy!’ for me and I find it off-putting.  It’s a shame that you can’t just bypass the whole independent consultant bit… but it is what it is.

Having said that, I’m rapidly falling for the products I was sent to try, and one in particular…. the Arbonne Nude Lip Polish.

Exactly the same size as a Revlon Super Lustrous lipgloss, 5.9ml is a pretty average quantity.  Sadly, Arbonne’s version will set you back £16.  I did say it wasn’t cheap.  What I didn’t say, is that in the week I’ve been wearing it, it’s quickly become one of the nicest products I’ve ever worn on my lips.

It’s semi-sheer… but where most lipglosses aren’t buildable (unless you like 7 inches of gunk stuck to your lips) this somehow is.  I usually apply 2 or 3 layers and in doing so, I achieve a more opaque finish without the product becoming denser and gloopier.  On my lips, it feels like a cross between a lip gloss and a lipstick with a satin gloss finish as opposed to a glassy one.

I guess what I’m saying is… if you don’t generally like lip glosses but kinda wish you did, there’s a very good chance that you’ll love this.

The packaging feels pretty luxe, with a nice weight.  The applicator is your standard doe foot affair, and the colour in the tube is true to life.  It’s also extremely long wearing… 2 cups of tea, 2 4 chocolate digestives and a cheese string later and it’s still holding on!  Oh, and another thing I’ve noticed that I’m really impressed by is Arbonne’s comprehensive website.

I can’t link you directly because it’s (stupidly) built in flash… but if you click through to “lips –> lip polish”, not only do they give you a full ingredient list… but they also state the purpose of each ingredient present in the product.  An extremely worthwhile addition to the website in an age where consumers are so information driven and ingredient conscious.

I love doing heavy eyes, so the Arbonne Lip Polish in Nude is pretty much the perfect accompaniment.  I’m still trying to make peace with the price tag and I guess compared to Beaute’s Weightless Lip Creme (around £20) I’m getting a bargain.

Anyway, wanna see?

You can see the satiny finish and how it’s glossy but without being pornstar full-on sucking on a greasy pork chop… (that’s not a euphamism btw).

I’m also wearing Arbonne’s eyeliner in Plum on my eyes and whilst it’s perfectly lovely… it’s also £15.  There’s no way I’m gonna attempt to justify that when I can buy almost 4 GOSH Velvet Touch eyeliners for the same price.  It’s nice… but it’s not £15 nice yano?

The Nude Lip Polish?  Definitely is.

Arbonne products can be purchased through a consultant and you can find your nearest consultant, here.

Have you tried Arbonne?