Guerlain Christmas 2014 - L’Oiseau de Feu Topcoat for nails

There's been a nail polish in the last couple of Christmas collections from Guerlain, and this year is no exception.  Last year we had the sublime Sulfurous which might just be one of my favourite nail polish colours ever.  This year, there is a pale gold polish in Coque D'or, and this, a gold-leaf topcoat L'oiseau de Feu.

Now, straight off the bat, I'm going to come right out and say that I'm not really a fan of chunky polishes, or even glittery polishes at all come to that (bar glitter especially makes me feel a bit sick), and this is no real exception to that rule. However, if you're a fan of this kind of thing, then it's very nice.

You have to dab the polish on thickly, then re-arrange the gold to your liking once it's on the nail.  I find it a bit rough, but the gold is a nice shade, and it dries quite quickly.

Not a must-have for me, but it is pretty.

What do you think of chunky polishes and glitter?

The Fine Print: This week's features are a mixture of personal purchases and PR Samples.

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Guerlain Christmas 2014 - Rouge G "Rouge Parade"

I absolutely cannot resist a limited edition Rouge G. I've tried.  I swear I have, but every new collection, another one comes out, and bingo! My handbag gets ever heavier ...

This year's Christmas Rouge G is ... perfect.  Coated in glossy red lacquer, this is a gloriously bright and seasonally appropriate shade of poinsetta-red.

I think I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the untouched bullet, but there you go.  This is a striking, London-bus red shade, but it's the sort of red you can wear with literally no other makeup on your face and instantly look polished and pulled together.  That's the joy of red lipstick, they do all the hard work for you!

It's the usual Rouge G formula of intense pigmentation, a slightly glossy and deeply comfortable to wear lipstick, but this one is so pigmented, you do need a liner (as you'll no doubt be able to tell from the lip swatch below:

Don't be like me, line your lips first - in my defence I was chasing the light on Sunday afternoon to get these pictures taken, but I'll update instagram soon.

And, just because I can't resist:

All the pretty.  ALL the pretty ...

The Fine Print: This week is a mixture of purchases and PR samples.

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Guerlain Christmas 2014 - Petrouchka Eye and Blush Palette

Inside the rather forbidding oversize lacquered black packaging of the Petrouchka Eye & Blush Palette sits an incredibly pretty compact:

Fastened with a red silk bow inspired by the ballerinas who in their turn inspired the scent of Coque D'or, the palette is very pretty indeed.  Again following the red and gold theme of this year's Guerlain Christmas even the accessories are themed:

Inside the palette are five shades of metallic eyeshadows and four shades of blush:

Firstly, a closer look at the shadows:

From the top we have a metallic wheat shade, a pale gold, a light copper, a deep bronze, and a chocolate brown. The bottom three are deeply pigmented and buttery soft - almost creamy - when applied, but the two lighter shades have a slightly lighter colour pay-off, and I found them a little scratchier (and patchier) to apply:

That said, if you're a warmer-toned individual than I am, this is an incredibly versatile and beautiful collection of shades.  Just be aware you'll need to work harder with the lighter colours when applying.

Below the eyedshadows, we have four blush shades, two warmer (at the bottom) and two cooler at the top.  They swatch quite well, I've generally found the Guerlain blush formula quite hard and difficult to work with, but these are a nice texture:

Clockwise from top left there's a pale pink, a deep rose, a versatile coral, and a tawny peach,  This should cover quite a variety of skin tones - personally, I tend to tone my blusher along the lines of whatever lipstick I'm wearing that day - cool cheeks with cool lips, and warm cheeks with warm lips, so this is quite versatile.

I like that they've not wasted space in the palette itself for the (pretty but rather useless, as always) tools, every inch of the palette space is used for colour, and the tools are kept in the velvet slipcase, which fits both the palette and the tools very well.

If you're a Guerlain completist (and I freely admit I am), this isn't quite as good as the Liu collection from two years ago (which I'm still kicking myself for not picking up at the time, believe you me), but it's a million times better than the Crazy Paris eye palette of 2013.

Anything caught your eye?

The Fine Print: Products featured this week are a mixture of PR Samples and private purchases.

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Guerlain Christmas 2014 - Mereorites Perles D'Etoile

Christmas isn't Christmas (yes, I do know it's October, bear with me) without Guerlain's limited edition Meteorites.  After what was - for me - the relative disappointment with the design of 2013's Crazy Paris collection, this year's Coque d'Or collection is a return back to the beautiful design that I associate with Guerlain's Christmas collection.

The entire collection is themed around gold and red, and the Meteorites follow that right through from the gorgeous scalloped design around the tin, to the pretty red bow on the lid, this is a cute and pretty edition.

The bow is reflected again on the inside, on the red puff, which is an adorable touch.  The pearls are a bit different this year, however:

I can only see two colours instead of the usual five, and they're quite a bit warmer than the pearls in the last couple of editions, being heavily skewed towards the gold side:

There is, however, a surprising cranberry pink pearl in the tin this year:

I can see lilac, cranberry pink, bronze and white gold.  The perles are the regular size this year, but they are incredibly pigmented in comparison to previous years:

If you're worrying that this will make them unwearable, don't worry, the cranberry pink beads are few and far between, and the lilac and white gold/champagne shades are more in evidence in the tin than any other colour.  The coppery-bronze pearls add just a little shimmer to stop the powder from looking too flat or matte on the skin.

All in all this years perles are a winner for me, how about you?

Guerlain Meterorites Perles d'Etoile are available in-store right now at £37.50.

The Fine Print: Products shown this week are a mixture of purchases and PR samples.

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Coming this week ... Guerlain Christmas 2014!

... #It's the most wonderful time of the year ...

Nothing says Christmas in the Lippie household like the arrival of the Guerlain Christmas collection!  Over the course of this next week we'll be featuring all the picks of the beautiful, beautiful Coque d'Or collection.  Keep your eyes peeled!


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Urban Decay Black Eyeliner Collection

To say I like a bit of black eyeliner would be a mild understatement ... alongside my red lipsticks, I think a decent black liner would be my desert island item.  Well, alongside a full set of Zelens skincare, and a few bottles of Guerlain that is, but I digress ...

Anyhoo, I was superhappy when Urban Decay revamped their black eyeliner collection a few months ago,  Here we have 24/7 Velvet Liner in Black Velvet, a blacker version of their normal 24/7 eyeliner formula,  Ink for Eyes, a waterproof liquid liner, All Nighter, a deeply pigmented twist-up pencil, and a pot gel-liner.

Black Velvet is a sooty black liner, which is very soft and easily blendable.  Ink for Eyes isn't the blackest liquid liner that I have (that would be Illamasqua Abyss, which is unmissable), but it has a lovely thin felt-tip style applicator that is very easy to control.  All Nighter is probably my favourite of the four, being soft and incredibly black, and the nib is perfect for tightlining the upper lash line.  This simply does not budge once applied.  It's not quite as blendable as Black Velvet, but it's great for getting a strong graphic liner look, and it's excellent on the waterline.  It turns out that I'm not a massive fan of pot liners (they tend to dry out too quickly for my tastes, but this could be more of a reflection of the fact that I have about 30 eyeliners in regular rotation, lets face it) generally, but this is a good, highly pigmented and deeply black one.

All in all a fab and really very useful little collection of black liners. There's one for all tastes, and they all deliver.  I'll be backing up my All Nighter, I can tell you that ...

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In the Pink – with Bleach London DIY Dip Dye and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL

By Tindara

Readers, I’m having a mid life crisis. As I write this there is a glinting sheaf of pink visible at the base of my Sunday morning top knot. Yes, in an effort to stave off middle-aged boredom I have dip-dyed my hair pink, and it took some doing. I have very dark hair, with little white or grey. Very lucky at 43, you might say, but since my somewhat failed teen experiments with bleaching, dyeing and straightening, I had resigned myself to my natural black-brown frizzy curls. Until earlier this year, when I started getting Keratin treatments on my hair.

Now I don’t love poker straight hair at all, like most people these days I favour a natural looking wave and after a week or two this is exactly how my keratin treated hair behaves. There is less body, definitely, but it has a nice shiny easy wave to it. And even better, I don’t really have to do anything to it except comb it and put a tiny blob of serum on it every few days. So far, so easy. But then I kept seeing people with great colours on their hair, marshmallow and pomegranate and mermaid blues and minty greens. A close friend dip-dyed her blond bob deep pink and purples and I was introduced to Bleach London by a friend on a forum. So pretty soon, I was dreaming of rainbow tresses, mermaid stripes, blue tips, pink and apricot waves, I wanted pastel colour, dammit.

I was due to have a keratin treatment in a few weeks and had done some research and knew I had to bleach and dye before the treatment. When I bleached my hair, I realised that pastel was going to be a bit of a task. I used Bleach London’s DIY dip dye kit. It was really easy to use, I recommend it, the blending lotion that you apply before the bleach really helped get a gradual effect from lighter to dark. Since my hair is so dark though, my first attempt made the ends a lovely auburn. This look great on it’s own, but it didn’t satisfy my need for bright colour. And when I put Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL Purple Punk over the auburn, it turned the ends a bright but deep cherry red, which was lovely but not exactly what I wanted.

After a couple of weeks letting my hair rest, I used another Bleach London kit to bleach the ends again. They turned out slightly brassy and wouldn’t really take a pastel dye; I tried Bleach London’s Rose and it just went from candyfloss pink to light orange within a few hours. So I chose Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL Shocking Pink to go over the top. Hey presto, proper bright pink ends. Probably, too soon, I had my usual keratin treatment with Alterity Studio in Covent Garden, and now I have straight hair with pink ends. My dip-dyed ends are now soft and shiny, and considering how worried I was that my hair might break after all the bleaching and dyeing, I think it looks pretty good. Not the neatest dip dye in the world but good.

I will continue to use a deeper colour while this keratin treatment wears off as bleaching can remove the effect of the keratin, I understand. I was also told by the lovely Carmen at Alterity Studio that it’s not recommended to dye your hair within two weeks of a keratin treatment either, so be warned, if you’re going to get some colour in your life. I may head to Bleach London and get something more pastel done before my next keratin treatment. If you want to see the results follow @Tindara on Twitter or @tindaras on Instagram.

Bleach London DIY Dip Dye is £7 and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL is £4.

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