Skincare of the Week 8th November 2015

A bit of a mixed bag this week, skincare wise.  Looking at the pictures all in one place kind of makes it clear that I have certain patterns in product usage - Pixi Glow Tonic, for example, I tend to use for two days then swap to Clarins Gentle Exfoliating Toner.  The one product I've used consistently this week has been Medik8 Red Alert Serum, which I'm liking more and more the more often I use it.  I find it gentle and soothing, and my redness, particularly in the mornings is much reduced.  Doesn't make any difference to my redness when I drink booze though ... oops.  I really like the Skinceuticals moisturiser too.  It's quite a lightweight texture, but it is still plenty hydrating on my combination-oily skin, without leaving a greasy residue.  I'll write more in detail about both these products soon, and there's a full review of the gorgeous Votary Cleansing Oil upcoming too.

I've picked up some more of the Pixi Skintreats range this week, as I've been incredibly impressed with what I've tried from the range so far and I was intrigued to try more - you can see the Milky Hydrating Mist and Glowtion Day Dew in Thursday's picture, but I also have the Glow Pads and a couple of other bits as well. And I'm trialling some new things from Dermalogica and Murad over the next two weeks, it's all go on the skincare front, but I'm looking forward to trying them out!  Have a few more Christmas-themed posts coming up this week first though ...

 The Fine Print: PR samples and purchases


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Urban Decay Vice Palette 4 - first look!

  
Okay, it's not a Christmas collection, but I think any makeup addict would be delighted with this in 
their Christmas stocking this year!  The Vice palettes from Urban Decay have long been a cult with beauty bloggers, and I suspect this will be no exception, either.  Inspired by the colours of an oil slick, it's so pretty!

Gloriously detailed on the outside, with iridescent overlays, and coming in a foiled pouch, Vice 4 is beautifully packed up.

Inside though, is what really matters, and inside doesn't disappoint:

A pretty mixture of neutrals and brights (but mostly brights, admitedly) this a gorgeous palette for all ages, especially if you love playing with your makeup.  I can think of one little girl who's going to love this one this year! (it's okay, I don't think she's reading this ...)

Urban Decay Vice 4 palette is instore now, and costs £43 for 20 eyeshadows and one double ended brush.  Will you be splashing out on colour this Christmas?

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Burberry Christmas 2015 - Military Red Lips and Nails

Nothing says Christmas like red and gold, and Burberry have gone out of their way this year to package up some of their cult products (and add a couple of new ones) in a festive manner.  This might be my favourite collection of theirs in quite some time.

Packaged in shiny golden livery, in a festive change from the traditional pewter, the mini-collection consists of Burberry Kisses glosses and lipsticks in either Festive Gold or Military Red,  Nail polishes in the same, an eye cream-shadow in Festive Gold, alongside a shimmering fragrance powder, and a fluid base in Nude 01.  I have the Military Red selections to show you with the fragranced powder today.

Military Red is a perfect bright scarlet, bringing to mind holly berries, and, of course the colour of Christmas itself!  I haven't tried the nail varnish yet, but it'll be the next thing on my nails for sure, it's such a beautiful colour (I've long been a fan of Military Red - I reviewed it first on here back in 2012!).  The golden fragranced powder has only a slight hint of the My Burberry that it is fragranced with, but it's a subtle golden glow for the decolletage and shoulder blades.  If you find a fluffy enough brush, you could possibly decorate your hair with it too.  

In-store (at Harrods) and online now, the pieces in this collection start at £15 for the nail varnish and rise to £45 for the fragranced powder.  See anything you like? 

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Burberry Christmas 2015 - My Burberry

For Christmas 2015 Burberry have re-released a bunch of their cult favourite products in a seasonally appropriate golden livery.  Today I'll take a look at the fragranced products, and tomorrow I'll show you the (beyond beautiful) Christmas makeup.

In beautifully textured golden boxes, My Burberry, a blend of sweet pea, geranium and rose over a base of patchouli, has been released in both a golden "snowflake" version of the Eau de Parfum and a lightly glittering solid version, perfect for your handbag.

Topped with a magnificent faux-bakelite knob, the EdP has been tied with a pale golden bow, and the fragrance is filled with tiny golden sparkles.  For the solid version, the brand's signature pewter lid has been switched to gold too.

But let's take a closer look at those sparkles:

Burberry.com will be engraving up to three initials onto My Burberry bottles in the run up to Christmas, and a personalised anything makes a great present!  And this is a gorgeous bottle to engrave, as well.

My Burberry EdP will cost £90 for 90mls, and £55 for 50mls.  The solid fragrance version is £30,  and you can buy it online and from Harrods now.

The Fine Print: PR Samples
 
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Guerlain Meteorites Flocons Enchantes Christmas 2015

The first sight of Guerlain's Christmas collection every year is the real sign that the festive season is on the way, and frankly, this year's Meteorites have excelled themselves.  They're beautiful, and so is the packaging.

Moving away from the traditional fluted tin, Guerlain are presenting this year's Meteorites in a beautiful snowglobe complete with golden accents. The last time they moved away from the tin was a cardboard box, so I'm glad they went all-out to create a beautiful package this time. Inside the globe they're also doing a couple of things they've never ever done before, and they've done them beautifully, but to see more, you'll need to click through below:

Sleek Christmas Collection 2015

I'm a sucker for a Christmas collection, I am and this is a very pretty one from Sleek this year!  Glittering finishes and beautiful metallics abound including the gorgeous i-lust palette above.

Named after famous designers, Margiela and Louis are cream shades and the rest are sparkling powders.  The pigmentation is deep and lush, as you would expect from Sleek, and this is a nice, neutral selection of quite sparkly colours.  Did I mention they're quite sparkly?

To see the lipglosses, and the unusual highlighter collection please click the link to get to the rest of the post:

LipsNspritz 31.10.15

  
It was definitely a week of two halves, lipstick-wise at least! Bright reds, by Guerlain (Rouge Parade), Burberry (Military Red) and Art Deco (Dita Von Teese collection) were the order of the day, particularly on Wednesday, when I felt a real need for power dressing, which called for a hugely long-lasting red (as the Art Deco is), and when paired with Donna Karan Signature fragrance recalled boardroom meetings in the late 80s.  Minus the power-suits, of course ...  Oh, and you can do a lot worse than a bottle of Kim Kardashian to brighten up a doleful Monday morning, btw ...

I mellowed out enough to allow Autumn a look-in on Thursday and Friday, pairing berry-colours from Lipstick Queen (Bete Noire, sheer) and Makeup Forever (Artist Plexi-Gloss 406) with Jo Malone Blackberry and Bay (possibly the most autumnal fragrance I own), and Hermes Eau des Merveilles, which being neither fruity, nor flowery, nor spicy, nor fruity is as difficult to describe as it is easy to love (it's probably best described as a salty orange, without the orange.  Yes, yes, I know).  Then on Saturday I was seduced all over again by Burberry sending me their Christmas collection, which includes a new Military Red in beautiful gold packaging, and a sparkling bottle of My Burberry to boot.  So I wore those, because, why not?


The Fine Print: Mixture of PR samples and personal purchases.


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Skincare of the week: 31/10/2015

A (slightly) different format for Skincare of the Week this week ... Also, I've decided to introduce a little Product of the Week award too! 

This week was busy and stressful, and coupled with a bout of insomnia, it wasn't really fun.  I did have a good facial this week at the Askinology Facial Bar in Leadenhall Market, which is where I discovered Medik8 Red Alert Skin Serum. You can see it in every picture from Wednesday onwards. 

As many readers of this blog know; I'm prone to redness, and sensitivity is one of the banes of my existence.  I was a bit worried after my facial that a rather, ah ... enthusiastic scrubbing with a physical exfoliant (something I would never, ever do at home) was going to leave me red and sore for the rest of the week, but a few drops of the Medik8 before going to bed, and a few drops in my facial routine the following morning seemed to sort it right out.  I've stuck to blander cleansers since though, just in case a flare-up was imminent, but a pinkness crisis seems to have been averted, so far. Just in case though, I've been at pains to avoid essential oils for a few days too - as, with a very few exceptions, they all irritate when my skin is inflamed.  This is a shame, as I am loving the Votary range of oils at the moment and, especially, the cleanser, but they are essential oil-heavy, and delicious with it, but are something I need to wander away from when I think my skin is a bit irritable.

But, the real miracle product in my routine this week has been Pestle & Mortar Pure Hyaluronic Serum, and as such, it's my inaugural "Product of the Week"!  I picked this up on a whim when I was in Liberty recently - my Hydraluron stocks are running low - and I kind of fell in love with it.  A slight bout of insomnia this week (funny thing, I've been interviewing auditors all week, you'd think that would be a cure, not a cause, but I digress) means that I've been aware I've been looking tired - so very tired - when I wake up in the mornings and a quick swipe with two or three drops of this has had my skin plumped up and happy-looking even on the shortest of sleep-cycles.  With one of the shortest ingredients lists I've ever seen* in a skincare product, Pure Hyaluronic Serum is vegan and free of things like phtalates, parabens and silicone.  It costs £33 and is currently exclusive to Liberty in the UK.  If you're a bit tired, snap some up. I'll write about it in a bit more detail soon, but it's great stuff.

*Ingredients list in full: Aqua, *Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice,  *Sodium Hyaluronate,  *Cucumis sativus fruit extract,  Butylene Glycol, *Tocopheryl  Acetate,  *Glycerin,  *Xanthan Gum,  Phenoxyethanol,  *Caprylyl Glycol (all ingredients marked with a * are plant-derived)

The Fine Print: Mixture of PR samples and personal purchases.


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Maison Francis Kurkdjian - Mon Beau Sapin Candle

Yes, yes, I'm having a bit of a candle moment this week.  But, you know, 'tis the season and all that.  This Christmas Francis Kurkdjian is treating us to a golden tribute to the balsam fir:

Housed in a blingy golden container, etched with representations of fir trees Mon Beau Sapin is a smokey-pine-patchouli blend that definitely feels both foresty and wintry.  It's really lovely, I'm burning it now as I write this and it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas ....

Available from November, MFK's Mon Beau Sapin will cost £xx 

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Perfume, A Century of Scents by Lizzie Ostrom

Lizzie Ostrom might be better known in perfume circles as the brains behind the glorious "Odette Toilette" website, which runs inventive and exciting perfume-themed events and excursions thoughout the year.  I've written about several of them here, having visited both the Osmotheque in Paris with Odette and been to the re-run of that event when the Osmotheque visited London earlier this year. That visit to Paris was an important turning point in my life coping with being smell-disabled, but I've been going to Odette events for years, even before I realised just what a big deal fragrance was going to be in my life.  Lizzie is a lovely, and well-respected member of the UK perfume scene and seeing her name in print is a thrill.

I've known this book was on the way for ages, easily over a year, and I've had it on pre-order at Amazon since last April,  so to say I've been dying to read it would be a mild understatement.  Perfume books can easily slip into the either incomprehensibly pretentious or overly-florid (I've read some shockers over the years, believe you me) and Lizzie sidesteps these issues with the judicious application of a delightfully playful sense of humour and by allowing a real sense of love for fragrance - and by firmly acknowledging the occasional absurdity of the business itself - to rise from the pages.

The story of 100 fragrances, organised into ten each per decade of the previous century, Lizzie selects perfumes that best exemplify each era (whether good, bad or indifferent - they just need to be important, not necessarily good), and tells the story of each in just a couple of pages.  Putting each into the context of the time it was released, and discussing the impact of ingredients as well as the pop culture of the time makes this read slightly unlike any other history of fragrance that you may have read before.  By not just focusing on the classics (you're likely to find the "great smell of Brut" discussed alongside the merits of Shalimar in here) Lizzie has found new tales to tell, and it's all the more fascinating to read as a result.

Beautifully bound, and prettily illustrated A Century of Scents is that rare beast, a coffee-table book that is wonderfully absorbing.  For anyone with even the slightest interest in fragrance, this is a perfect Christmas present. At only £16.99, it's a bargain, too.

Look out next week when I'll be giving away a copy of the book to one of my readers. 





The Fine Print: Purchase


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