A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

If you’re sworn off the chocolates this year, how about some LUSH goodies instead?  The high-street heroes have released some Easter treats to ensure that even the strongest of wills are unable to resist the lure of some serious bathtime frivolities.

1. What came first, the chick(en) or the egg?  Well… it depends on what you choose to wrap inside this ridiculously cute Chick Knot Wrap!  Let’s face it, whatever you buy to hide inside, this chick is gonna steal the show – especially when the recipient finds out that the wrap is made from old plastic bottles!  Don’t forget to recycle it yourself, it would make an super-cute bag scarf.

2. Ahh, my favourite – ignore the strange looks and raised eyebrows you’ll get carrying a carrot into the bathroom and get that hot tap running.  Wave The Carrot about under the running water and watch as the bath fills up with (non-carrot scented) bubbles.  Leave our favourite orange veggie on the side of the bath to dry out and it’ll be ready to go again, and again, and again!  Reusable bubble bars?  LUSH!

3. Finally, you may be sworn off chocolate but no-one would begrudge you a few sweeties.  Especially when they’re of the bathing variety.  Fluffy Egg is a candy-mania(cs) dream, scented to smell just like marshmallow, candyfloss and all that teeth-achingly good stuff.  Stick two fingers up at the diet and sit in your Fluffy Egg filled bath this Sunday, eating your Easter Eggs.  Sick.

Fancy winning one of these Easter goodies?

I have a bunch of Carrots (geddit?!) to give away this weekend.  If you want to chance your hand at being one of TEN bathing belles to win a LUSH reusable bubble bar, leave a comment below and answer the following questions.

1. What’s your favourite bath-time ritual?

2. How many Easter Eggs have you hidden away and which one are you gonna break open first?

T&C
1. Entry open to UK residents only.
2. I will choose 10 winners at random.
3. Lipglossiping.com is the sole promoter of this competition.
4. Competition closes on Monday 9th April 2012 at 23.59 BST.
5. Winners list will be published on-site on Tuesday 10th April.

I cherish those precious moments in the day when I can lock myself in the bathroom and jump under a hot shower, pretending that the sound of the water blocks out all outside interference.  Let’s face it, we all love our bathroom indulgences and I’m not talking about quilted loo roll.  The one downside to indulging in this way, is the price.  It’s tough times and I don’t know about you, but some of the first luxuries to hit the chopping block when I’m financially challenged are bathroom toiletries.

Well, here’s one luxury from Elemis that you can reacquaint yourselves with for a limited time only…

Get 2for1 on a selection of shower products, choosing from: Elemis Skin Nourishing Shower Cream Duo, Elemis Exotic Frangipani Shower Cream Duo or Wild Lavender Hand And Body Wash Duo.  My money’s on the Frangipani… trust me, it smells divine.  If you’re feeling particularly savvy, buy one for yourself and keep the other as a gift for someone special – it’s never too early to get those Christmas boxes in order.  Unless you start on Boxing Day, ‘cos that would be kinda cuckoo.

Do you have a favourite from the products on offer in this deal?

Late last year, I talked about a Brenda Anvari candle that I’d been burning, it was full of spice and citrus and all those wonderful Christmassy things that we get heartily sick of by January.  Well, I’m back with another product from her Persian Rose range of scented bodycare products.

Last weekend, I scraped the last few grains from the jar of Persian Rose Body Scrub* and howled a gentle “nooooooooooo” into the air as I replaced the lid.  You see, it’s a really freakin’ beautiful scent.

The rose isn’t the most complex of fragrances, I think of it as pretty universal – it’s kinda safe, being both inoffensive and rather lovely.  Brenda has taken the classic rose and whipped it into a headier form.  Persian Rose takes on a dirtier, naughtier vibe with altogether more earthy qualities.

What I’m saying is, there are two types of people in this world.  Those who like the thought of walking in to find a scattering of rose petals on their bed, and those who like the thought of being physically whipped with a rose, thorns and all.  I’ve always hated the thought of waking up with a rose petal stuck up my nose.  You know?

I also like a good scrub.  And this is a good scrub.  It’s got just the right amount of grrrr going on, it rasps a little at the skin and feels like it’s working some proper skin-smoothing magic.  But if all that sounds a little too intense for you wimps, don’t worry because the salt granules sit in a base of beautifully-scented Persian Rose-infused oil that ultimately leaves your skin feeling nourished and kissably-smooth.

I haven’t mentioned the body moisturiser* or the bath oil*, because… well… they’re ok.  There’s nothing about them that makes me not want to recommend them, they make great flankers for layering the scent but there’s nothing that screams “buy me above everything else available on the market” either.  It’s a tough world out there.

If the thought of Persian Rose doesn’t float your boat, other scents available from the Brenda Anvari bodycare range include: Ylang Ylang, Sandalwood & Black Pepper, Lime, Mandarin & Grapefruit, Orange Blossom, and Pomegranate, Raspberry  & Patchouli.  Prices start from £8.95 and you can shop online.

What bath-time scents are you loving at the moment?

* press sample

My mother is obsessed with guessing the ages of celebrities she sees on reality shows, infact – I’m quite certain it’s the only reason she watches them.  She hasn’t quite grasped the fact that with the power of the internet, I can hop on Wikipedia and tell her exactly how old Stefanie Powers is quicker than she can analyse the tell-tale signs from the actress’ neck and hands.  She guessed correctly by the way: Mum 1 – 0 Wikipedia.  Perhaps I should point Stefanie in the direction of the new Elemis Pro-Radiance Hand and Nail Cream, the latest addition to the Elemis sp@home body anti-ageing lineup.

The rich hand cream contains a wealth of skin-loving oils including: Omega 7, Avellana Seed Oil, Macademia Seed Oil, Virgin Plum Oil and Camellia Seed Oil to promote skin suppleness, elasticity and protect from free-radical damage.  It’s delicately scented and leaves my hands feeling nourished without that sticky hand-cream feeling.  It may be a little too heavy-duty for the summer months but it’s been doing wonderful things for my cuticles and hang nails this month.

Formulated free from: parabens, sls, mineral oils and silicones, the new Pro-Radiance Hand & Nail Cream is generously sized at 100ml and will be launching next month alongside a sister (limited edition) product; Perfect Hands Anti-Ageing Treatment (£29.90) which will be contributing £8000 from sales to The Eve Appeal.

The Pro-Radiance Hand & Nail Cream will be priced at £22.00 and available from Elemis stockists nationwide including timetospa.co.uk, spas/salons, selected John Lewis, Debenhams and Harvey Nichols stores.

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How magnificently cute are these?

Not only cute, but pretty darn affordable too at £7-a-piece.  Keep the packaging as a tree decoration whilst bubbling up the contents (a 3-in-1 shampoo, shower gel & bubble bath) in your bathroom.

Choose between: Gingerbread Girl, Snow Angel and Peppermint Bark – but be quick because Philosophy Christmas sets are always in high demand and usually sell out pretty quickly.

Available to buy instore at Boots who are also currently offering 1000 points when you buy 3 or more selected Philosophy

Eat well, look good and smell great are my commandments for Christmas.  Eat well can be resolved by stuffing your face with a few extra mince pies, look good?  Easy – just pile on enough makeup (artfully of course), to conceal the cracks on the moon.

As for smelling great, well you could always ask Father Christmas (not Santa, we don’t say Santa in my house) for this Luxe Bath Essentials set from NEOM.  The scent is Refresh — an invigorating Sicilian Lemon with Fresh Basil combination that manages to be delicious without being foody!

Included in the two-piece set is all you need to turn your bathroom into a mini-spa.  Lock the door — deadbolt the bugger if a family member has had a curry in the past 48hrs — and pour a couple of capfuls of the bath oil into the tub.  Light the candle, relax and luxuriate whilst imagining yourself a thousand miles away on a hillside lemon orchard.  Screw reality, just don’t drown.

NEOM’s Refresh: Luxe Bath Essentials set is available to buy online at a currently reduced price of £39.00 – visit their website for more details about their range of luxury organics.

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I’ve never waxed in my life.  Well, no that’s not entirely true, there was this one time my Mum did a bikini wax on me while I lay on the table in the conservatory.  It left me bruised, bleeding and I swear more hairy than when she began.  You don’t want or need to know the back-story but let me tell you, it was far from successful.

And so I felt a tingle of fear when the Veet EasyWax Electrical Roll On Kit* dropped through my letterbox last week.  It’s waxing gone high-tech with a self-heating unit that dispenses a film of wax as you roll it over the skin.  In theory, this should eliminate all that messy spreading.  In theory.

I’ve done a short video that shows how you put the kit together and then Mr. L made me do a video of my first proper waxing experience.  I think it’s payback for that little episode of cardboard craftiness the other day (it’s STILL not finished btw!)

The kit is simple to assemble and contains comprehensive instructions.  I’ve demonstrated setting the unit up for use in the video below.

Once plugged in, I waited just over 20 minutes before attempting my first leg wax!  Wanna see how it went?

Overall, my feelings on this device are a bit mixed.

Priced at £29.99 (with refill cartridges costing £9.99 each), I can see this being a good investment for a regular waxer over the cost of say, wax strips.  I did find that although overall, the unit dispensed the wax fairly evenly there were a couple of patches that seemed to skip and get less wax, leaving a few hairs behind that needed a second go to remove.  I’ve since used “ready to use” wax strips on the other leg to achieve a fair comparison and I have to say, the wax strips did a more complete job – but also hurt more and felt like an expensive way to remove hair.

I didn’t compare to the traditional ‘heat the pot in the microwave’ style simply because I’m not interested in that kind of faffing and messiness, I’d rather buy a razor to be honest.  The refills are supposed to last for 4 waxing sessions, making them much more economical than strips but probably still more expensive than the old-style pots.

My final feelings on the Veet EasyWax Electrical Roll On Kit is that although it doesn’t offer the ultimate solution to at-home waxing, it does offer another alternative that could prove popular for regular waxers.

The Veet EasyWax Electrical Roll On Kit is available to order online at Boots.com priced at £29.99.  There are only 300 available during this pre-launch period, so don’t hesitate for too long if you’re planning on snapping one up!

Do you wax?

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Another supermarket, another vintage-inspired bodycare range… all I can say is, these must sell really well!  Sainsbury’s have Dirty Works, Asda have Ella & Rose and now Tesco have jumped on-board with the new Along Came Betty!

These ranges all look a bit samey (I guess that’s the point) but I can totally see the appeal for those who can’t afford to fill their S&G addictions and I bet Grandmas are forever picking them up for younger, female members of the family!

The lineup features a range of body and skincare products inspired by 1950s screen stars and beauty icons. It includes:

~ So Much Bubble Skin Softening Bath Soak (£3.99)
~ To the Skin and Beyond Ultra Rich Body Butter (£4.00)
~ Hey Sugar Sugar Easily Spreadable Body Scrub (£5.99)
~ Clean Around the Clock Soft Skin Shower Wash (£2.99)
~ It’s a Skin Thing Ultra Light Body Butter (£3.99)
~ Say you Scrub me Scrubby Skin Polish (£3.99)
~ The Big Scrub Mitt (£2.00)

Along Came Betty will be selling at 1/3 off from 16.11 to 06.12 and also available on 3for2 from 7.12 to 03.01 January making it ideal for stocking stuffers and hamper builders alike!

I’m excited to share this with you… because over the past few months, I’ve been hiding a pot of gold.  A little lab sample of Lady Lamb’s latest launch (try saying that drunk).

Lanolips Golden Ointment is a deeply rich, nourishing balm for ultra-dry skin.  The kind of skin that tears at your clothes and makes your tights feel like sandpaper against your shins… the skin we dread each Winter.  If you’re in need of deep moisturisation and instant relief, this could be what you’ve been looking for – provided in the form of some of the most natural, pure and most-overlooked ingredients in the world.

Smelling like warm, buttered-honey, Golden Ointment has a creamy consistency to match.  The ointment is enriched with Ultra Pure Medical Grade Lanolin, Manuka Honey & Vitamin E, and contains no artificial colours or fragrance (of course).

Simplicity always was the recipe for success.

Lanolips Golden Ointment will launch mid-November EXCLUSIVELY at Victoria Health (waiting list available), priced at £17.99 before rolling out across Boots stores nationwide from February.

I’m not a great self-tanner. I mean that in both senses of the word — I don’t do it very often and when I do, I’m pretty shit at it. The historical exception to this rule is with Sally Hansen’s old Airbrush Legs… you can still buy it, but the formula is a little different now and they’ve ditched my shade. I used to love it and would go through cans of the stuff when the weather called for a bit of leg-display.

So, when St. Tropez’s new Perfect Legs Spray landed on my desk, I had barely opened the envelope before I was prising off the lid and putting it to work, ever-hopeful that I might find my pasty-leg saviour.

Look how stained my hand is!! I’ll tell you more about that in a minute…

The new St. Tropez Perfect Legs Spray promises an instant, natural bronzing effect combined with a longer-lasting self tan. The aerosol can contains 75ml of product, which isn’t a lot — about enough to do your legs twice/three times at most. The product is fairly reasonably priced at £10, making it a cost-effective choice for special events or big nights out. Don’t forget that as-well as the instant bronzer, you’re also benefiting from a normal self-tan at the same time. Although, I’d obviously like to see more for my money, I think the price is reasonable for special occasions when compared to alternative options.

Unlike my old Sally Hansen cans, this isn’t like makeup for your legs. It won’t conceal veins, freckles or give you a massively airbrushed effect but it excels at what it does deliver: healthy-looking, bronzed pins.

It’s ridiculously easy to use and dispenses a very fine mist. Any slightly larger droplets that appear from holding it a little too close blend easily into the skin for a completely streak-free finish. I blended one leg with my hands and the other with a mit. Use the mit, this stuff sets faster than an 80s perm and despite rushing to the basin mere minutes after my first blend – my hand is perma-tanned. Looking on the bright side, this is obviously great news for my legs as it didn’t transfer once touch-dry.

Product doesn’t leak/drip from the nozzle during operation and the spray works regardless of the contorted angles you put the can through. It may just be, that as a novice, I’m having a hallelujah moment with tans in a can but I simply didn’t run into any problems with this one.

And as for my legs? Oh god, hold on to your breakfasts…

It works well right?  My left leg (right as you look at it) was tanned with the St. Tropez and it doesn’t look remotely orange or streaky!  Honestly, if I can use it… a total fool can use it and make it look good in under 5 minutes. I’m so pleased to be able to recommend this to ultra-pale girls who suck at applying fake tan like me. I’m so jealous of wimmen to whom this stuff comes naturally. It’s a bleedin’ art-form to get it right I tell ya!

St. Tropez Perfect Legs Spray simply takes the hard work out of bronzing. Definite repurchase for those times when tights just won’t do.

St. TropezPerfect Legs Spray is priced at £10.00 and available from the usual stockists.

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I wonder if my body ever gets jealous of my face?

I mean… I spend a fortune on trying to make my face look good, and if you discount x amount of moolah that I’ve spent on dieting over the years… my body is like the poor relation.  The hand-me-down kid.  At least it has my hair to keep it company, I neglect that too.

I haven’t gone mental… (in case you’re wondering).

You see, British brand, Elemis have just released a body version of their incredibly covetable Pro Collagen Marine cream.  It’s specifically designed to target anti-ageing and combat the loss of elasticity allover our *cough* vital areas.

It contains mystical-sounding ingredients such as Castanha Oil, Laminaria Brown Seaweed, Babassu Oil, Bilberry Oil and that ever-intriguing marine extract Padina Pavonica.  It even promises to help breakdown fatty deposits.

AND…

Let’s face it, once we hit 30, everything starts to head South faster than a pair of migrating blue tits.  Yeah, you totally saw what I did there.

But back to my original point.  I love Elemis’ original Pro Collagen Marine formula and it’s one of my very few top-end luxuries (the other being perfume I can ill-afford) and I’d slather it all over my body if I could afford to (oh hello cheaper body version!)…

BUT…

I’m just too lazy you know.

Do you guys make use of the wonderful technologies in your face creams and put them to use on your bodies?  Am I a bit weird for blatantly and completely ignoring what is (in fairness), the largest proportion of skin on my body in favour of this much smaller *circles face* bit right here?

Perhaps it’s more of an upkeep thing?  If I had the body of a goddess… I’d be more willing to put the effort in to keep it that way?  Hell, to get the bits below my neck reach any kind of level worthy of a bikini, I’d need about £20k in surgery and KFC/McDonalds/KrispyKreme wiped off the face of the Earth.  Minimum.

Which leads me to something that’s going to keep me awake tonight.  Do really, really ugly people not bother with face cream?

Elemis Pro-Collagen Body Cream is priced at £49.00 for 200ml and available on counter and online from www.timetospa.co.uk

I haven’t really gotten on board with the whole colour-blocking thing yet, I mean sure — if I buy a dress that makes use of the trend, fine… but as for me putting together my own colour-blocked outfits?  Well, that’s for someone with better fashion intuition than me.  I’m sure there’s a fine line between colour-blocking and colour-clownpants.

These soaps from Fred Butler look a bit color-clownpants to me, but we won’t tell him that.  I can’t look at these without wanting to lick the screen.  They’re not colour-blocked masterpieces, they’re ZOOM Ice Lolly soaps!!

From November, these will be available in three flavours scents: Mojito, Strawberry Daiquiri and Tequila Sunrise  – they inject a bit of 1980s summertime into a miserable slide toward a 2011 Winter.  Now, where did I park my chopper?

They’ll be priced at just £5.50 each (with free delivery) from FeelUnique.com