A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Wondering whether you should be throwing out that favourite discontinued lippie lurking in the back of your drawer? Cosmetic guidelines have always been quite stringent with regards to shelf life…

Judy regretted not throwing that old cream foundation away…

Do you follow the guides?

Have a look… (red denotes how long it takes me to dump stuff)

• Oil-Free Foundation: 1 year (if it looks/smells and feels ok, I’ll still use it)
• Cream or Compact Foundation: 18 months (12 months… I have a “thing” about cream compacts)
• Concealer: 12-18 months (if it looks/smells and feels like new, I’ll still use it unless it’s in a compact…)
• Powder: 2 years (indefinitely)
• Blush and Bronzer: 2 years (indefinitely)
• Cream Blush: 12-18 months (12 months… it’s the whole compact thing again)
• Powder Eye shadow: 2 years (indefinitely)
• Cream Eye shadow: 12-18 months (compact? 12 months)
• Eyeliner: 2 years (gels – till they inevitably dry out, pencils – indefinitely)
• Liquid eyeliner: 3-6 months (um, till they run out?)
• Mascara: 3 months (till they run out or become unworkable – yes, cardinal sin I know!)
• Lipstick: 2 years (till they get that funky crayon smell)
• Lip liner: 2 years (indefinitely)
• Lip gloss: 18-24 months (yeah, probably no more than 2 years)
• Nail Color: 1 year (till they become unworkable)

I think that a little common sense goes a very long way in situations like this.  If you live in a warmer climate, your cosmetics aren’t going to last as long.  If you buy mostly natural products containing less preservatives, you’re going to want to have a clear out more often.  If you share your cosmetics with your sister or best friend, then I’d be far more vigilant.  If anyone touches mine… they die.  I say trust your nose!

The oldest item in my collection is this 6 year old Bobbi Brown Palette:

My eyeliner obsession started with my Bobbi Brown Shimmering Eye Kohl palette which I bought back in 2004… I’ve dropped it twice (as you can tell – sob)

Tell me about your oldest cosmetic item? What is it and why do you still have it?

Spring is coming, can you feel it?  The evenings are just starting to get the teeniest bit lighter and I for one, am pretty darn excited about it.

Beauty-wise though… Spring, for me, is the dullest season collection-wise.  I don’t really ‘dig’ pastels… they wash me out.  I have to wait nearly a whole year for my favourite to come round again – A/W FTW!

My Spring blues were lifted somewhat though when I saw this post on Cosmetic Candy.

To put it simply, Barielle’s Spring 2010 Wildflower Collection looks hawt.

Comprised of 6 shades, it’s screams: “Hey, I’m doing Spring… but I’m doing it my way!”

The stand-out shades for me are A Bouquet For Eva, June Bug and Daring Dahlia.

Myrza’s Meadow captures my imagination, but I can’t imagine it looking good on my skintone.

Here’s how Barielle describe them:

A Bouquet for Eva – A cool Caribbean blue
June Bug – A teal with fuchsia glitter
Blossom – An opaque peach
Daring Dahlia – A deep fuchsia with a hint of silver metallic
Snap Dragon – A metallic sea foam green
Myrza’s Meadow – A light lime green with silver glitter

Barielle Shade’s polishes are available to buy from the Barielle UK Website and are priced at £8.00ea.  No sign of the Spring Wildflower Collection yet though… Hurry up Barielle, it’ll be Summer soon!

Any of them on your radar?

I bought some Bobbi Brown Metallic Long-Wear Cream Shadows a couple of months ago and thought I’d share my thoughts on them…

The packaging is lovely, nice heavyweight glass jars…. they feel substantial and chunky!

Brown Metal

Starry Purple

Starry Night

Goldstone

Antique Gold

The swatches…

Disappointed is my feeling on these.  They look beautiful in the jar, truly.  But they’re *so* sheer… the swatches show a good number of swipes to get them pigmented enough to photograph.

I love the idea behind them, and I do wear them… I wear them underneath simillar toned powder shades and the only purpose they really serve is to add a bit of sparkle.  You also have to be really careful not to end up with glitter all over your face when applying these.  My  favourite is Goldstone, which unfortunately, is the biggest glitter dropper of all of them.

I’m simply left with the feeling that they could have been so much more.

Do you own any of these?  How do you wear them? Any tips to make me love them?

I received this email in my inbox yesterday and thought it may be of interest to some of my UK ladies.

The blurb:

We’ve got just the thing to lift you out of the January blues and make you feel fabulous – a free Barry M make-up kit! The five-piece set includes an eye pencil, eyeshadow, nail varnish and lipgloss, which all come in a gorgeous pink cosmetics bag, worth £20*!

To get yours, simply collect four of the tokens that will be appearing in Fabulous magazine every week for five weeks from this Sunday (17th January). Then redeem in any of our Superdrug stores between 7-14th February to collect your goodies.

On a mildly related and not very PR friendly note… does anyone else get the urge to kick Ms. Holden up her smug, bony arse?  Just me then…

Ruby & Millie make some decent brushes at reasonable prices, and this one is my favourite.  It’s great for gel eyeliners and brow powders… firm but supple.

The Ruby & Millie I-Define brush is priced at £6.00 in Boots, but is currently available for a recession-busting £1.00 with a No7/Ruby & Millie till spit*.

I’ve bought a couple since the offer’s been on and plan on getting some more of the Boots No7 Eyeshadow brushes which I enjoy using alongside my MAC 239.

The Boots No7 Eyeshadow brush is priced at £5.75 rendering it a 75p super-bargain with a till spit.  Only larger stores appear to carry these brushes though.  You can usually find them on the bottom shelf of the No7 stand (rather than amongst the general makeup brushes) housed in cardboard boxes.

*till spit = a voucher automatically printed by the till when you spend over £5 in a transaction.  I’m a geek and purposefully split my transactions into roughly £5 amounts to maximize my till spits *blush*

Till spits are valid until the 31st January, so get shopping!

Have you tried either of these brushes?  Do you recommend any other ’till spit’ bargains?

First of all, look how indecently sunny it was on Christmas morning!  After a week of snow and ice, I appear to have woken up in Barbados.  Typical.

Barielle Decadence is the final polish that I was sent by the company.  I wasn’t actually going to show you this one, ‘cos it’s a proper bright jeweled green and I thought that my skintone would do it absolutely no favours.  However, I was looking for something Christmassy and this caught my eye.

Application (as with all the Barielles I’ve tried) was a dream.  It’s a 2 coater and practically applied itself thanks to a smooth formula.  I can’t quite tell if it’s a metallic or a shimmer… I think I’m gonna call it a bit of both.

Check out my glitter tips!  Does this constitute ‘nail art’, have I dabbled for the first time without really meaning to?

Yah, that’s me… Polished Princess…

Is it a bit bogey?

It doesn’t make me feel very princessy… although as greens go, it’s not too bad on my skintone.  Not like OPI Sit Under The Apple Tree which still makes me feel nauseous when I think of how bad it looked.

I didn’t hide my nails whilst wearing this, which can only mean good things!

It applied as beautifully as the other Barielle’s I have been sent to try.  I really think this one would *sing* against a more olive complexion.  But I’d definitely wear it again, it also has a Christmassy vibe going on…  I have a red nail art pen…. I’m sorely tempted to get “creative”

Let’s make it an “of the day” day.  First the nails, now the mug.

I know a few of you have wanted to see how the Ben Nye Grand Lumiere Palette actually translates into everyday use.

Quite wonderfully is the answer (if I do say so myself!)

Eyes:

Ben Nye RL-14 (Amethyst)
Ben Nye RL-17 (Cosmic Violet)
Ben Nye RL-4 (Silver)

Check here for swatches

It’s completely wearable no?

01/02/2010 (UK Date Format) – This post is overdue an update.

I’ve been revisiting this mascara throughout January.  And the formula feels thicker to me now.  It’s less clumpy (although I still wouldn’t advise more than 2 coats) and I’m finding that it nicely defines my lashes.  I need to update with a photo, and I shall do that very shortly.  But I wanted to put this update in now as I saw that I was receiving a few Google search referrals to this page.

As it stands, I would repurchase this mascara… I’m not sure *why* I found it so hard to work with back in November, but it seems like a completely different formula to me now that it’s aged a little… I’m enjoying it so much that I took it on holiday with me as my only mascara, that sounds like a silly ‘compliment’.  But when you have as many mascaras in rotation as I do, it’s a big commitment!

When I was in Superdrug the other day, I was looking for some of Bourjois’ new makeup removers and skincare products when I spied this unremarkable looking tube on the shelves.

Bourjois 1001 Cils…

I adore mascara, I have no less than 7 unopened tubes sitting in my makeup drawers at home, waiting to be put into action, so of course… I had to buy another one.

With mascaras, innovation seems to be the buzz word “du jour” and it’s not about the formulas…  It’s all about the brushes at the moment.  I’ll happily admit that I’m a total sucker for this.  I love me a good explanation as to why a mascara brush is gonna make me look like bambi on steroids.

So what’s the USP of this one?

Bourjois says:

Say good bye to mascaras that only thicken or lengthen the lashes! Bourjois goes further and multiplies your lashes*

* visual effect

Excellent! How’s it gonna do that then?

The revolutionary patented** double helix brush has astonishing powers: with its twelve rows of bristles, it works on every single lash, even the very smallest. In just one application, every lash is reached and fully coated from root to tip without clumping.

** patent pending

Right-O… No clumping, Multiplied Lashes and a Double Helix Brush…

Double helixes rock. It’s true…

Think DNA, responsible for encoding all the genetic information in our sad little lives.

And how about the Double Helix Nebula, found in the middle of our very own Milky Way galaxy?

Not quite so impressive, but interesting nonetheless is Bourjois’ 1001 Cils Mascara Brush:

It’s a plastic spiked brush as opposed to fibre bristled, which usually works nicely for my lashes.  Do you have a preference?

The formula is quite wet… one of those “sneeze and you’ll *really* regret it” types.

The head of the wand is really flexible compared to the shaft.  When I was putting the wand back in the tube, I hadn’t quite aligned it properly and instead of it simply jamming and not going in the tube as what usually happens… the head flexed and “pinged”, flicking mascara on me. Nice.

It clumped on the first coat and spread itself over my eyelid thanks to the thin, wet formula.

I didn’t find it particularly lengthening, volumising or ‘multiplying’.  The only positives I have are that it contains a nice strong black pigment and thanks to the thin brush you can reach the inner lashes with ease.

Here’s some before > afters:

I wouldn’t repurchase.

Bourjois 1001 Cils/Lashes is currently priced at £6.99 in Boots (I can’t remember how much I paid in Superdrug), RRP: £8.99

This week feels like it’s dragging… and it’s only Tuesday!!  Let’s have a quick Eye of the Day for a few minutes distraction…

Eyes:

Inner Corner: B Never Too Busy… – B Delight
Lid: BarryM – #88 Winter Berry
Crease: E.L.F Mineral Eyeshadow – Royal
Outer V: NYX Ultra Pearl Mania – Charcoal
Mascara: Rimmel Sexy Curves – Black
Eyeliner (1st Layer): MAC Fluidline – Silverstroke
Eyeliner (2nd Layer): eBay Infinity Liner – Black

Don’t know if it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, but I love layering my eyeliner like this.  I’m a total eyeliner fiend and have so many, it’s surely the only way I’ll ever get through them all!

Seriously, it’s a great way to wear a pop of bright colour along the lashline, without commiting yourself to making a statement with it.  I often wear gold and blue eyeliners in this way.

Ok, that distraction worked for about 40seconds… hurry up Hump Day!

So, I’m not a big glitter fan.  I’m really not.  I don’t mind how it looks (as long as it’s not rainbow coloured)… but the thought of the removal process makes me want to stick forks in my eyes.

Barielle sent me a couple of shades for review, and I may have physically shuddered in a glitter-induced repulsion when I saw this one.

I mean look…. it’s chunky!

However, the polish itself is a beautiful mid-toned blue, infact it’s quite an unusual combination… I’ve never seen blue and copper combined like this in a polish.  Website describes it as gold, but it’s definitely a more rose gold/coppery colour.

I am *so* on a blue kick since that George beauty.  And this Barielle shade is doing nothing to quench those flames!  B-e-a-utiful!

I don’t like the rough feeling that glitter polishes leave and despite a top coat… my mani still felt bumpy but there’s no denying the blue/copper combination works.

I’ve waited ’till removal before writing up this post, and removal was just as horrible as I had anticipated… in the end, I poured some polish remover into the cap of the bottle and soaked each finger individually before I developed RSI from all the wiping.

These Barielle’s are probably some of the longest-wearing polishes I’ve used.  6 days in with this one and I have absolutely no tip wear.  Application was fine, with no issues at all.  I don’t know if glitter polishes tend to have more or less issue with application than normal?  But this was good.

Are you a fan of glitters?  Any removal tips for me? Liking this one?

Screw my schedule, let’s have some eye candy!

The shadows are huge!  So although it’s expensive… you do get a lot of product for your money.

Here’s some individual shots of each pan…

Finally, check out the rich pigmentation in some skin swatches…

I am completely in love with this palette and would happily go so far as to say that it’s my favourite thing I’ve bought all year!  Which is quite an accolade considering it’s mid-November…