A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

The daffs are out, the rain is a little less persistent and I’ve even turned my heating off (for now).  Could it be that Spring is upon us?  Now, as a blogger, I take comfort from the fact that I can resolutely lay claim to no “proper” writing abilities, and so to start this evening’s post, I’d like to – if I may – completely butcher the following light verse from Ogden Nash…

Spring is sprung the grass is riz, I wonder where the perfume is?

Well, here it be… in the form of the limited edition Daisy Eau So Fresh Marc Jacobs Delight Edition.  The juicier, fruitier, and altogether sweeter incarnation of the original Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau So Fresh which was released back in 2011.

And what a pretty perfume she is, resplendent in pink, gold, and green.  Scent-wise, she’s not my cup of tea… by now, you’ll possibly know that I like my fragrances to be a little broodier, a little more… pissed off.  Daisy Eau So Fresh Delight Edition is about as un-pissed off as a perfume can get.  She’s up with the lark, singing “Good Morning” like Judy Garland on acid before you’ve even had time to press the snooze button.

With top notes that include: blood orange, pink pepper, and white tea; you know that you’ll receive a full-force, pink-pepper fruit bowl in your face from the off.  It’s also lacking the resolute bunch of green notes that refused to lay down and die in the original version, giving the fruitiness an added extra.  One that will be either welcomed, or shooed away depending on your tastes.

From here on in, the fruitiness – though never completely subsiding – steps back a little to make way for a floral heart of tiare tahiti, violet, and… err, oh, more fruit in the form of raspberry.  It’s a pleasant scent that evokes feelings of an eternally hopeful, warm Spring day spent enjoying the sunshine.  Heck, the pesky fruit even manages to sneak into the muskier base notes, as apricot skin puts in an appearance… prolonging the good-natured agony.

As a whole, Daisy Eau So Fresh Delight Edition is clean and a little powdery, tender and flirty in a youthful, innocent way.  You’ll probably either fall in love with her, or want to club her with a grumpy stick, this may depend on your age and the current state of your love-life.  Go sniff her out and decide for yourselves!

If you’re a fan of the Marc Jacobs Daisy franchise, you’ll be interested to hear that there is also a while-stocks-last Delight Edition of the original Marc Jacobs Daisy which promises a more vibrant expression of the iconic Daisy signature.  I actually prefer it!

Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau So Fresh Delight Edition is available on counter and online, while stocks last, priced from £52.00 for 75ml

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Now, whilst I’m almost certain that the real name of this recipe isn’t actually “Sheenie’s Spicy Steamed Chicken“, it shall henceforth be known by this name in this household… because without her, I’d have never discovered this ridiculously-easy-to-make taste sensation.

You can read a little bit more about how Sheenie herself finally got to the bottom of this recipe on a recent trip to Karachi by checking out her food blog.  I’m very grateful to her Aunt for divulging the family secrets!

Aside from the resulting dish, the best thing about this recipe is just how damn simple it is.  Infact, it’s so simple and uses so few ingredients that I was genuinely surprised to discover it packed such a robust flavour.

The only thing I want to change about it (in my typical philistinic way) is to “bulk” it up a bit.  As much as I love chicken and sauce over rice, I need moar… a little more substance, some added veg… spinach and chickpeas perhaps?  I’m planning on making it again over the weekend and will edit the post at the bottom to report back on whether I manage to mangle a thoroughly decent recipe with my fiddling.

Anyway, on with the food!

All you need to create a deliciously authentic savoury dish are a handful of ingredients.  I won’t tell you the quantities because Sheenie has the details blogged, but all you need is some: chicken, vinegar, soy sauce, water, chili powder, and chaat masala.  The Chaat Masala will be the only thing you may have difficulty finding, I couldn’t spot any in my local Asda so I ordered a small box online from eBay.  If you have an Asian supermarket nearby, I’m sure you’ll discover it with no problem.

Chop your chicken into fairly generously-sized pieces.  I used skinless/boneless chicken thigh but you can really use any kind of chicken, on the bone or otherwise.  Using a lidded saucepan, add all the ingredients minus the soy sauce and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.  As a final step, remove the lid of the saucepan and add the soy sauce.  Give the sauce another 3-5 minutes and it should thicken ever-so-slightly.

As Sheenie says on her blog, there’s a little guesswork to be done with this dish when it comes to estimating quantities, I’d say that my resulting sauce was just a little thin but my rice absolutely welcomed the added jus!  It just meant that I used a slotted spoon to serve Mr. L’s portion alongside a naan bread.

Sheenie’s Spicy Steamed Chicken makes for an ideal weekday evening meal, the whole thing takes less than half an hour to rustle up from start to finish and once you’ve got the Chaat Masala in your hot little hands, uses only store-cupboard ingredients.  I’ll hold my hands up and say that this isn’t the best-looking dish in the world but please, please give it a try… it will surprise and delight you!

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Remember when I got all excited about Layla Hologram Nail Polishes? It was a while ago, so I’ll forgive you if your memory is kinda rusty. You can remind yourself by clicking through to my post here which contains a few swatches, alternatively… fire up Google Images and prepare to part ways with your pennies.

You see, as I scoured Amazon late last night for nothing in particular, I noticed that the Layla nail polishes appear to be prettily heavily discounted to the tune of 50% or more.  Whereas I originally paid over £11 a polish, you can now pick them up for under a fiver in some cases!  The only catch is that stock appears to be a little on the short side, so if you wanted to snag a couple, don’t leave it too long!

Here’s what I just picked up for my collection, please don’t tell my husband… I’m supposed to be saving for the “baby”.

There’s also a couple of rather beautiful flakies that nearly found their way into my basket… but I was determined to keep my total in the £20s and not go any higher!

Are you tempted?  If you buy any… please tell me which ones caught your eye!

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Unlike most in the fashion and beauty world, the messy bun and top-knot trends are here to stay.  The truth is that for women with plenty of hair, it’s the perfect solution for sweeping your mane away from your face with the least amount of fuss and bother.  For those of us who are less-than-blessed in the plentiful hair department, it serves as a stark reminder of “shit we can’t do”.

Perhaps you can get away with using a hair doughnut to add a little volume to your bun, or perhaps like me, you find that without meticulous strand-placement, you still don’t have quite enough hair to cover the bulky doughnut without creating a healthy dose of can-you-see-my-doughnut paranoia?  If this is you, I may have found a solution that still manages to keep things just as simple.

The Messy Hair Bun from Foxy Hair Extensions delivers a clip-on solution that works surprisingly well.  All you need to do is scrape your own hair back into some semblance of a pitifully small bun, secured with a hair band.  The single benefit of having such fine hair is the fact that I can keep my baby-bun secure all day with just two bands, one for the initial ponytail and one for the wrapped-around-my-finger bun.

After doing this, all you need to do is place the faux-bun over the top of your own and secure it with the provided clips (and bobby pins if needed).  No faffing about looking for your own methods of securing the extension, just align and clip into place.

For my hair colouring, the shade Dark Chocolate was a good match, perhaps just a hint too dark, but as soon as I redo my roots, it’ll be perfect.  Although the Messy Hair Bun is synthetic, it doesn’t look overly shiny or false, the only thing I’m not sure about is that for me, it’s a little too sleek… a little too… ballerina?  I’d prefer it to be a touch messier without such an obvious, neat “swirl” at the back.  Having said that, it shows promise of looking more naturally untidy with each use… any little tugs and pulls will only serve to create a messier better-looking bun.

You can wear the bun-extension as high or as low as you like, attach it off-centre for an oh-so-fashionable side bun or keep things simple as I did.

The Messy Hair Bun is priced at £14.95 and is available online from www.foxyhairextensions.net in a range of 12-shades from the lightest platinum blonde through to the darkest black.

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U.S. brand theBalm is now available online at Cloud10 Beauty, and its arrival has brought the latest, much-sought after addition to the brand’s revered “Manizer” range of powder highlighters to the UK.  The new Cindy-Lou Manizer sits comfortably alongside the franchise with its rose-toned hue and familiar finely-milled, softly-textured finish.

The packaging, featuring a blonde pinup lovely with porcelain skin, suggests that this latest member of the family is aimed at filling the gap left by its counterparts, a much-needed pinky highlight for those who may struggle with the warmth of the Mary-Lou and Betty-Lou Manizers.

This is exactly what it does, but cool-toned, pale-skinned girls might not be getting quite what they hoped for from this new addition, so read on and be under no illusions!

theBalm’s Cindy-Lou Manizer is gorgeous, let me make no bones about it.  The texture is sublime, the highlight-effect is subtle but true and the new shade delivers a stunning rose-gold hued highlight that sits beautifully alongside a warm blush.

My only problem with it is that it just doesn’t fill that highlighting franchise gap that I was talking about!  Of course, this just means that theBalm will have to release yet another shade to appease my highlighting-taste (shame!) because personally, my skintone needs something with a cooler, more silvery-undertone.  Don’t be looking at this one (as I did) and thinking, “oh! it’s a pink-toned highlighter, perfect for me!”, because it’s just too pigmented and warm in hue to be a universal highlight on my skin.

Not that I can’t make great use of it… with a touch of care about which blushes to pair it up with, I’m loving a light sweep across my cheekbones, it’s a beautiful highlighter and if you favour a warmer blush, you absolutely need this highlighter in your collection.  If you’re a cool-toned girl who leans toward the dolly-side of pink… just double check that you’ll be able to get the most out of this before purchasing.

theBalm’s Cindy-Lou Manizer is priced at £16.00 and is available to purchase online from Cloud10Beauty.com, I’m hoping they get the instain blushes in next!

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Some “gift with purchases” are predictable but useful.  Some GWPs make you wonder why the marketers bothered, and some… well, some make you tear down to your local counter Roadrunner stylee (meep meep!), leaving nothing but a trail of dust behind you.

I think it’s fair to say that the latest GWP – available when you buy any 60ml Jimmy Choo fragrance this month – very much falls into the latter category.  Please, let me present, the Limited Edition Luxury Jimmy Choo Shoe Case.

Now, you may not own a pair of fancy Jimmy Choos to put in said shoe case, let’s face it… you wouldn’t be alone!  But what else could you put inside?  Your collection of favourite fragrances?  How about employing it as a memory box for your most precious photos?  It’s roomy and solidly-constructed enough for a thousand uses.

Know someone who’s getting hitched this year?  Do they need somewhere to store their princessy shoes?  The possibilities are endless.  Failing all of this, you could just use it to hide your secret stockpile of Cadbury’s Twirl and Wispa bars.  Don’t try and pretend it’s just me that has one of those…

This delightful GWP is available in selected department stores nationwide, with a purchase of any Jimmy Choo 60ml fragrance, while stocks last.

If you want a hot tip on which fragrance to pick, check out my review of the Jimmy Choo Flash EdP

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If you ever find yourself in the position of having only 30-minutes to knock up an impressive-looking dessert, then you’ll want to bookmark this recipe.  You might know by now that I love cooking, baking, and food in general but positively hate the faff that goes with it.  This means that most of my “creations” end up tasting good but looking pretty mediocre.

I watch programmes like The Great British Bake Off with a certain amount of jealousy at the participants’ willingness to spend hours decorating their masterpieces with the patience of a Saint.  I will never be that type of cook.  I have been blessed with very little in the way of a “planning” or “patience” gene.

So it is with a great amount of pride that I present to you my lazy version of a Tarte Aux Pommes.  I’ve got a bit of a cheek calling it that to be honest as it contains very few of the original features of a classic Normandy Apple Tart.  There’s no frangipane in there, and there’s no Calvados.  I deal with what I have in my cupboards, which is generally only the kind of stuf that I’m actually using week in, week out.

The thing is though, it tastes lush and it looks the business and I am far from ashamed of it!  Check it out!

I’ll begin by saying that I used a 23cm tart pan… one of those ones with a removable base, this is important because depending on the size of your tart… you’ll need more or less apples (and obviously pastry) than I am including in the recipe below.  The safest thing would be to buy a little more than my suggestions, I mean… apples aren’t going to go to waste and if you overmake or overbuy the pastry, make some mini-tarts to go with!

You’ll need:

A packet of ready-rolled shortcrust pastry (I told you this was the lazy version, you wanna make your own? Knock yourself out!)
1 Pink Lady Apple (more if you don’t trust yourself to slice it thinly enough or you want to make a larger tart!)
1 Tbsp Melted Butter (blitz it for a couple of seconds in the microwave in the bottom of a mug)
3 tsp Caster Sugar
1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Apricot Jam
1 tsp Water

1. Lay your pastry flat with the base of your tart tin on top, trace around the edge with a knife.  Alternatively, you can trace around a dinner plate and bake the tart on a flat baking tray for a custom-size.  Pre-heat your oven to 190 degrees celsius.  You may need to line your baking tray or tart tin with parchment paper, the non-stick on mine is still in pretty good condition thankfully.

2. Quarter your apple(s) – don’t peel them, the pink skin looks lovely when baked!  Remove the core and slice thinly.

3. Arrange your apple slices over your pastry disc in the traditional Tarte Aux Pommes design.  I love some of the “rose” styles but didn’t have the patience!

4. Brush your apples with the melted butter and sprinkle the Caster Sugar and Cinnamon over the top.

5. Bake your tart in the middle of the pre-heated oven for 15-minutes, before moving it to the top shelf for the remaining 15-minutes if your apples are looking a little pale.

6. Combine the Apricot Jam and water in a small dish before brushing the glaze over the top of the cooked tart to give it a lovely shiny finish.

7. Serve warm with some whipped cream!

Tell me if you try this, I’d love to know how you get on!

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Question of the Week: What’s your current favorite cream eyeshadow?

Answer: I’m a bit boring and tend to only wear a variation of cream/beige/neutral across the lids at the minute… so something like Estee Lauder’s Double Wear Shadow Creme in Buttercreme (discontinued), Benefit’s Creaseless Cream in R.S.V.P, or when I’m feeling more adventurous(!) MAC’s Rubenesque (not adventurous at all really, eh?)

we heart this – Our current hair crush? Briogeo! This natural line works like crazy and smells amazing…and we’re giving away three products to one lucky reader (a $68 value).

EauMG – Do you have a man in your life that needs a fragrance “upgrade”? Has he been wearing the same cologne since he was a freshman rocking tight-rolled jeans? If so, tell him to check this fragrance out.

Gouldylox Reviews – Looking for a new way to wear layered hair? This bubble pony may be just the answer.

Lipglossiping – knows the way to anyone’s heart is via their tummy and Butter London must know this too. Don’t believe me? Come check out Crumpet, it’ll make your mouth water!

My Beauty Bunny – We’re pitching for a good cause! Help spread the word about the no kill rescue organization Best Friends Animal Society and enter to win a Too Faced Teddy Bear Hair Brush Set and Chocolate Soleil Bronzer!

Nouveau Cheap – An eyeliner brush with no bristles? How does that work? Click here and all will be revealed…

Pink Sith – Comes clean about her blush addiction and shows off 2 of the Paul & Joe Beaute Spring 2014 Color Powders in Amaryllis and Azalea.

Prime Beauty – shares her secrets for her Top 10 face, eye and lip primers!

Phyrra – shares her Holy Grail Beauty Products. These products received her Editor’s Choice Award.

Guest Post of the Week, as chosen by we heart this – Rachel of the Beauty Professor is a triple threat; beautiful, smart and sweet. We’d hate her if we didn’t love her! Check out her review of another love of ours Armour Beauty lip gloss.

What’s your current favorite cream eyeshadow?

This sparkly little number from Butter London looks great in the bottle.  A blitz of golden glitter, suspended in a clear base.  But when all is said, done, and painted… I’m left feeling distinctly underwhelmed by this one.  Take a look for yourselves…

Now, I’m all for a bit of understated glamour, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I need it to look like the interior of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom on Strictly nights before I coo over a bit of sparkle.

However… let’s be honest, I could have snorted from Leila’s stash and phyically sneezed more glitter in a single coat.

Sponging the polish on results in a slightly-more-mpressive topper but with the number of golden glittered top coats available across the market, this is one I’d leave on the shelves.

Butter London Stratford Honey is available to buy online, priced at £11.95 from powderrooms.com

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I bet there are generations reading this post right now who grew up without ever using an old-fashioned bar of soap as part of their daily cleansing routine.  I think I just missed the moment that soap became thoroughly unfashionable because throughout my 80s childhood, we never did a monthly shop without picking up a couple of bars.  Wrights for my Mum who adored the smell, Pears for us kids because we all loved the fact that it was see-through (simple things, simple minds…), and Imperial Leather for my Dad, because, after all… he is a man, man!

Soap was kind of a big thing in our household and looking back, I can’t remember when this changed.  But change it did, nowadays… the only time soap gets bought is when I spot something on the shelves at TKMaxx that smells (or looks) so damn good, I just can’t leave it behind.  I never purchase bars of soap as a bathroom necessity, simply because it’s not as convenient as its liquid counterparts.

The decline of mass-market purchasing of soap bars isn’t without its benefits though.  Moving into more of a niche market means that manufacturers have been able to really concentrate on turning the humble soap into an indulgence rather than a necessity and nowhere is this more apparent than with a brand like Crabtree & Evelyn.

Now, the truth is… there’s just not an awful lot I can say about soap.  Even soap that’s as beautiful as this Crabtree & Evelyn Heritage Vetiver & Juniper* one.  It smells amazing, it lathers, and it cleanses.  I don’t use it on my face… my skin would never forgive me, but I do have fun chasing it around the shower.  But most of all, you’d pick this up because of its scent, “Incroyable!” as the French would say.

I don’t mind admitting that I called in a sample of this purely because I adore masculine Vetiver and/or Juniper smells… I wanted that gorgeous clean MAN smell near my nose, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s warm and woodsy, outdoorsy and a little bracing… Mr. L has taken to shaving with it, and I’ve taken to sniffing him regularly.  Soap just got interesting again.

The British brand do an entire range of Heritage Soaps including: Avocado & Olive Oil, Black Sea Mud & Seaweed (tempted), Milk & Honey, Crabapple & Mulberry, and Verbena & Lavender, priced from £6.00.  Your nose should check them out as a matter of urgency.

This one, the Crabtree & Evelyn Heritage Vetiver & Juniper Milled Soap is priced at £7.00, and is available instore and online at crabtree-evelyn.co.uk.  It’s also currently online a little cheaper, at escentual.com.

Do you appreciate a good bar of soap?  Do you ever buy it?

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** I can’t stop singing “soap, perfect soap, is the gift of Christ our Lord” – huge kudos if you remember changing the lyrics during assembly too!

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Smashbox’s answer to the Urban Decay Naked franchise is finally here, and for anyone who can’t get enough of these nude eyeshadow compendiums, prepare to have your head turned by another claimant to the throne.

The Smashbox Full Exposure Palette features a full set of complementary shimmer and matte shades.  Complementary in the sense that they pair up beautifully… you’re not really looking at a full palette of fourteen-different shades, it’s less convoluted than that.  Consider it more like a palette of seven daily-use shades that give you a choice between two textures.

The housing is pretty substantial in a I’m-not-very-portable kinda way.  If you don’t mind the chunkiness of the UD palettes, then this won’t bother you but if you prefer something a little more streamlined, take a look at the recent Clinique offering as an alternative.  The front of the Smashbox palette features some too-gorgeous-for-words holographic lettering that made me go a little weak at the knees.  I’m not ashamed to admit that my head gets turned by such frivolity… it’s beautiful.

Once inside, there’s a large mirror, the fourteen eyeshadow pans, and a high quality, double-ended brush.  The brush is worth a particular mention as it’s been designed to work in partnership with the textures in this palette.  One end should be used for applying the matte shades and one for the shimmers.  It’s a nice touch.  There’s also a mini mascara included.

Onto the shades themselves, this is, afterall… the heart of the palette.

I would have prefered to see the mattes along the top row here… they are, after all, the workhorse part of the palette.  The mattes are beautiful, non-chalky and rich in colour.  They apply with great pigmentation and blend smoothly… a reason in themselves to pick up this palette.  The seven shades offer the full-spectrum from palest to darkest along the neutral line and I can’t really fault them.

I can’t say the same for the shimmers.

The top row of the palette will confound you.  How can the mattes be so uncomplicated and these beautiful shimmers so… high-maintenance?  The easiest way to give you an idea of how they apply is to remind you of the “notorious” glitters from Urban Decay, the likes of Midnight Cowboy… such a beautiful shade but so finickity.  With the Smashbox Full Exposure Palette, you’re basically getting a set of seven of these along the top row.

Are they unworkable?  No.  Are they useless?  No.  But you have to learn to love them if you don’t want to cast the whole thing out the window.  The learning curve for this isn’t steep but for many, it will be an ask too far.

The base of the shimmers is only lightly pigmented, meaning that you’re going to need a primer for these shades to display anything more than a pretty scattering of glitter across your lids.  This isn’t a problem and I recommend using something like the Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy which still works better for adhering glitters to your eyelids than anything else I’ve tried.

Alternatively, you can just go with it and ride this palette bareback.  Embrace a dusting of complementary light (and lack of colour) across the matte base that you’ve applied from lower portion of the palette.  That is after all, I’m assuming… the reason why these shades work so nicely paired as you look at them from top-to-bottom in the pans.  Just be sure to do your eye-makeup before your foundation routine to work around any fall-out issues.

Basically, this palette, beautiful though it is… has its pitfalls.  There’s room for post-purchase disappointment if you don’t know what you’re getting from it… so do go and check it out on the counter with an open but cautious mind about whether it would fit in with your beauty routine.

A final special mention goes to the rather nifty eye-shape chart that the brand have included.  It features mini-tutorials on how to use the palette to suit a variety of eye-shapes from almond to round, downturned to monolid, and even includes some tips and techniques for hooded eyes.

Have you tried this palette?  What are your thoughts?

The Smashbox Full Exposure Eyeshadow Palette is priced at £36.00 and is available to buy instore and online from boots.com or smashbox.co.uk

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Have you seen the square crumpets that Asda do? Oh my… they’re huge and fill the toaster to the edges…crying out for a slathering of butter, jam, nutella or whatever gets your taste buds excited in the morning!

I can’t have them at the moment because anything that tastes deliciously carby in the mornings makes my obstetrician shake his head at me.  And so, instead of a hot, buttery treat… I’ll have to make do with this tasty morsel of another kind…

Butter London’s Crumpet was released last year as part of the brand’s Starkers collection, a trio of nudes to suit most skintones.  Of the three, crumpet is the middle-toned shade… and as you can see, looks fairly happy sitting against my uber-cool skintone.

The brand describe this one as a “warm caramel creme” and it’s opaque in a couple of coats.  I find wear to be pretty standard throughout the Butter London range and I easily get 5-days before the tip wear begins to appear.  Of course, with shades such as these, this isn’t hugely noticeable even when it does set in.

Butter London Crumpet is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

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