Christmas Countdown - Lavish Vouchers

I was the lucky recipient of a Lavish gift voucher recently, and I think they're great.  Beautifully packaged, and available to spend in more than 300 spas nationwide (including places like The Sanctuary,  plus Dove and Elemis spas around the country), these are the ideal gift for those difficult to buy for people who you think deserve a treat.

Being a nosy person, and knowing that Lavish was set up and is run by one woman - the lovely and very charming Susi Pink - I was so impressed with the Lavish gift vouchers that I had a little chat with Suzi about how she got into the business, here's what she had to say:

I set up Lavish a couple of years ago as I was frustrated with the quality of gift vouchers on the market for spa and beauty treatments.  I found that in most cases if you bought a voucher as a present to celebrate a special occasion or milestone birthday, the vouchers themselves would often arrive not looking very special at all. So I went about developing a new spa & beauty brand that could supply gift vouchers that would feel special and indulgent from the minute the recipient opens their gift.

I also wanted to develop a single voucher that could be used for any treatment, one that was as open and flexible as a book token so that for the 'giver' there was no danger of giving the wrong treatment or risk insulting someone with a well-meant treatment choice which could be the absolute opposite of what the recipient would actually consider having. 

Also many of my friends and family live all over the country and so I wanted to develop one single voucher brand that was accepted anywhere in the UK, so that I could be sure the people I was buying a gift for were sure to find somewhere near them to enjoy having a spa or beauty treatment. 

So the concept of Lavish was born! I worked with a wonderful designer who came up with a brand inspired by the decadent 1920s and some beautiful packaging to make Lavish vouchers a gift that is sure to impress, delight and be adored. Once we had come up with the brand, a website was developed that would serve as a place for gift buyers to purchase Lavish vouchers and also for Lavish voucher recipients to find a salons or spa to spend them in.

We now have over 300 gorgeous pampering locations in our portfolio that covers a range of places from sumptuous destination spas, to city day spas, high street salons and mobile therapists.  We aim to make taking time out to be pampered an affordable luxury for everyone all over the UK, whatever their lifestyle and to ensure that spending Lavish vouchers is a simple and delightful experience.  

So, if you're looking to support an independent business woman and buy a present of time for a friend, then please, pick up a Lavish voucher today, they'll thank you for it.  I'll be spending my day today figuring out where to spend mine ...

The Fine Print: Links are, as always, for informational purposes only, and are not affiliate links.  I'm just a sucker for fancy packaging.  And spas ...

My Favourite ... Neutral Blushers

After a few days showing you my favourite bright lip shades, I thought I'd show you what I wear with them. To be honest, my blusher collection is pretty small, as it's only something I discovered properly a few years ago.  When I was younger, I didn't, really, see the point, but now I know it's actually a vital product for ensuring you look healthy and glowing.  Now, I'm not addicted (much ...) but it's something I'm slowly adding to my collection of.

Blush-wise I find pinks and reds tricksy to wear, so I tend to veer towards peachy/coral and bronze shades (rightly or wrongly) these shades though, are neutral enough to wear with whatever other makeup I'm wearing, and they're hard to overapply.

Clockwise from top left, we have, Avon Earthern Rose, NARS Doucer, Daniel Sandler Natural Beauty, MAC Prism (yes, I do occasionally use MAC) and Le Metier de Beaute in Tenne.

Swatches:

(click to enlarge)

These are all swatched very heavily to show up in the photo, part of the joy of these shades is that they tend to blend in with the skin very well, but that kind of makes them difficult to photograph.

Avon Earthen Rose is the shade with the most orange, and is better when I'm wearing warmer makeup, I like to use this as a very pale bronzer shade, and it's good for using as a contour powder too.  Sometimes, a girl NEEDS cheekbones!

NARS Doucer, my current favourite there's a fair bit of pink in this one, which means that it brightens a wee bit more than the Avon shade, and I find it goes perfectly well with most every kind of look.  I bought a backup recently.  It's exceedingly difficult to overapply, so a perfect blush for these dark mornings!

Daniel Sandler Natural Beauty, the lightest, and peachiest of these shades, this is good for just adding a hint of colour to more dramatic makeup, I find.

MAC Prism is very similar in tone to NARS Doucer, but it's base shade is peach rather than pink.  This is actually a recent rediscovery for me (I found it when I was moving house in October), and I've had it for years, I've no idea if it's part of the permanent line or not.  If my makeup is leaning towards gold I'll pick this up over the Doucer, but I find the NARS is slightly more pigmented, making it easier to apply.

Le Metier de Beaute creme blush in Tenne was one of those shades that I thought was deadly dull and "muddy" when I received it in a goody bag earlier this year, but the muddiness was just the top layer, once swatched, this is actually a glorious neutral creme blush, that is great when I'm just wearing tinted moisturiser.  It's not to be used near powder, under any circumstances!

What do you tend to pair with your brights?

My Favourite ... Red Lipsticks

Yesterday, I showed you my favourite pink lipsticks, today I'm showing you my favourite reds.  My search for the perfect red has been going on longer than the one for the perfect pink, so some of these reds are very old ...

L-R we have Guerlain Geisha, Lord & Berry China Red, Chanel Flash, Chanel Barcelona Red, Beaute Masochist, All for Eve Red, Nars Pop Life.

Swatches:

(click to enlarge)

Guerlain Rouge G and Lord & Berry China Red are very similar in shade, although the Lord & Berry is slightly more matte in texture, both of these are great brick-reds, which are, by far the easiest shades of red for me to wear.  Both longlasting,both vibrant, these are probably my favourites.

The two Chanel shades are rather more brown, Chanel Flash is a limited edition from some years ago, and I bought it mainly because I fell in love with the silver overspray!  As it's probably the darkest shade here, this is one I tend to wear mainly with neutral eye looks.  Barcelona Red is actually quite a bit brighter, but I think being next to Masochist is making it look more brown than it actually is.

Masochist Weighless Lipcreme is the most beautiful glossy shade.  It's impossible to keep neat for more than an hour or so, but it's beautiful.  Very beautiful.

All for Eve Red is the bluest shade here, initially I thought I wouldn't be able to wear it, but it works suprisingly well with my pale olive skin tone.  This is a gorgeous, wearable shade for most people, and it's one I recommend at any and all occasions.

NARS Pop Life is the softest red in this selection, and it veers a little towards coral owing to the fine golden shimmer, again not the longest lasting of reds, but it's a great entry-level red, owing to the softness of the shade.

What are your favourite red lipsticks?

My Favourite ... Pink Lipsticks

 It's coming up to Christmas, and to me, that always means more colourful makeup.  Well, when I say more colourful makeup, what I actually mean is brighter lipstick, which I'm usually happy to pair with a smokey eye look.  I love pink lipstick almost as much as I do red lipstick, although this year, it's entirely possible that my search for the perfect pink lipstick has overtaken my search for the perfect red!

The products you can see above are (l-r) Edward Bess Island Rose, New CID Daiquiri, Chanel India, Tom Ford Pure Pink, Elf Fuschia Fanatic, Guerlain Georgia.

Swatches:

(click to enlarge)

The Edward Bess, whilst it's not - strictly - a lipstick (it's actually a blusher), is one of my favourite shades, a raspberry that pulls slightly cool on my skin, but has a glorious velvety texture, and it's nice, sometimes, to match your lips to your blush.

New CID Daiquiri is a fairly opaque gloss, with golden sparkles.  I find it gives a good, sheer finish, whilst still giving your lips a nice pop of colour.

Chanel India, long discontinued, you can see from the top picture how much I've loved it over the years!  I'm hoarding this last little nubbin for as long as I possibly can.  A more rosey shade than the others, it's also on the muted side for me, but I love it a great deal.  For a long time, this was one of the "brightest" lipsticks I owned, can you imagine?

Tom Ford, Pure Pink, the coolest, and brightest pink of the lot.  I like this one a great deal. Moist, and allegedly made of purest crack, it's the lipstick that may cause me to bankrupt myself ...

And from the sublimely expensive, to the insanely bargainous: ELF Fuschia Fanatic plumping lipglaze.  A dual-ended lip colour, with a pink stain at one end, and a lightly frosted gloss at the other, you can wear the shades singly or together one over the other (it works whichever shade you apply first too, which is nice), this is a nice, tingly lipcolour that I like to wear for work.

And, what is one of my favourite lipsticks of all time: Guerlain Rouge G in Georgia.  I love this shade. It's a nice, bright (but not as punchy as, say, the Tom Ford), brightening lipstick, that lightens up your whole face when you wear it, it's glorious.  And a wonderful moisturising, but not too greasy formula too.

What are you favourite pink lipsticks?  Tomorrow, I'll be showing you some of my favourite reds ...

Chanel Ombre D'eau Splash and Torrent Comparison

 
 When I wrote this post recently, one of my wonderful regular readers (the always-lovely Modesty Brown) commented that she thought the colour would be less bronze, so I thought a comparison to the decidedly khaki Torrent as released earlier on in the year would be useful, so here goes:

As you can see, whilst both shades do have a decidedly bronze-y cast to them, Splash is definitely more on the grey side, whilst Torrent runs khaki.  However, Splash is only "taupe" in the same way that Chanel's recent "Taupe Gris" eyeshadow is.  Which is to say, not taupe at all, rather more grey-purple, and not quite as brown as a true taupe.

That said, it fits in very well with my love of sludge-shades and both of these shadows are in regular rotation in my makeup routine.  I wish there was more love for these shadows out there, they're great!

Haus of Gloi

I blame London Make Up Girl, as I do for so many things.  This time, and don't ask me how she's done it, the bewitching creature that she is, she's actually converted me to body lotion.

But not just any body lotion, specifically it was her review of the Samhain scents of pumpkin butter and perfume oils from Haus of Gloi that made me think about giving body lotion, well, cream, really, a try.  I tried them a couple of months ago - in  the same scent - and loved them.  Really unusual scents, and a glorious range of products.  I got the bathing dust, pumpkin butter, and bubbling scrub in sample sizes to try, and kind of fell in love.

The major reason I don't really use body oils, creams, butters or lotions is because I don't really suffer from dry skin, once or twice a year I'll get a scaly shin (or two) from shaving but that's about it, so I use body lotions, creams, oils, butters, moisturisers, emollients, etc as an extension of my perfume routine, which is why finding exotically scented body products (etc) is important to me.  If it's not scented, I'm not interested!

Luckily for me, the scents at Haus of Gloi are amazing, and different.  Following my success with the earthy, leafy, almost incense-y Samhain (now discontinued, sorry!) I ordered sample sizes of most of the Yuletide scents and they arrived recently, out of the three I ordered, two I love, and one ... well, one I don't like.  At all.  But hey!  Two out of three ain't bad.  Allegedly.

I'll start with Snow Wolf, Haus of Gloi say:

Bristling and prowling, lonesome and haunting. Three howling firs, white frankincense, vanilla bean husk, tainted by droplets of blood cedar.

Simply put, this smells amazing.  Peppery-spicy, woody and rich with not even a slight hint of sweetness (I can't pick up the vanilla at all), this is a scent perfect for winter, it's highly unusual, almost masculine, and it's something I want to wear every single day.  Oddly, for a spicy scent, it doesn't seem "warm" at all, I think it's because so many spicy scents are based around cinnamon, and clove, that this seems very "clean" for a spicy scent, and is all the better for it.

Hearth.  Haus of Gloi say:

The warm glowing center of any home. Autumns last apple pickings, warm bread, orange rind, various fire roasted nuts, cracked black pepper all nailed down by an oozing sticky benzoin

 In the jar this smells of ginger cake, almost.  Sadly, on my skin, I can't bear it.  At ALL.  It's sticky, sweet and just too food-y.  And something in the formulation clashes with my skin chemistry meaning I want to just scrub the damn stuff off as quickly as possible!  However, I know some people love this scent, so this is just me.  I can totally see it working on other bodies, this is purely my being a bit sensitive to one of the ingredients.  Which one, I don't know, sadly!

Eggnoggin':  What Haus of Gloi say:

The Haus 'nog! Cream, sugar and a shot of dark rum topped with fresh grated nutmeg.
 

I should hate this.  Technically, it's more or less everything I dislike in a scent, creamy, sweet and a little indistinct.  However, I don't. I love it.  Alongside the warm, creamy sweetness is just a tiny hint of spice (from the nutmeg) and the scent all together on my skin is dazzling.  It's one of those perfumes you wear just for yourself, occasionally sniffing random parts of yourself to remind you how good you smell.  I love it.

The formulas of the products are good too.  The pumpkin butters are an amazing texture, thick and creamy but almost immediately absorbed by the skin, and they perfume your skin beautifully.  I'm also a fan of the bubbling scrubs, despite not having any dry skin in need of exfoliating (don't hate me, I neglect it terribly you know!) they're almost solid, and don't go runny until you actually are exfoliating with them, and this makes them much easier to use than traditional sugar or salt scrubs.  I just wish they hadn't discontinued the bathing dusts!  I think a jacuzzi full of Eggnoggin' would be huge fun!

I've just ordered full-size backups of both Snow Wolf and Eggnoggin' pumpkin butters, bubbling scrubs and perfume oils.  That's how much I love them.  Hearth, however is going to languish on the shelf until I find someone to give it to.... Haus of Gloi?  Haus of Joi more like ...

Love Story - The Musical

Or, time for something completely different.

No, I haven't gone completely crazy, one of my very first posts on this here blog was about opera, which I don't think anyone ever read, so I think it's okay for me to talk about my love of musical theatre here too.  And, I do love it. Growing up we were banned from watching musicals in my house, as my mum hated them - used to say that "people just don't do that" whenever people burst into song.  As a result, as an adult, it's entirely possible that I love them a bit too much.  I may have more musical soundtracks on my ipod than is entirely healthy, but hey, a good tune is a good tune!

However, I have to admit that when the opportunity to watch a preview of Love Story, which has been made into a musical by Howard Goodall and Stephen Clark, and has been produced by Michael Ball came up this week, I boggled a bit.  "But how's that going to work?" I wondered to myself, imagining such delights as the "Leukemia Boogie Woogie" and other such nonsense.

Luckily, the starkly staged, surprisingly non-schmaltzy musical bypasses such cheese (aside from during the Pasta song, which is actually rather amusing, and it's a tune I've had in my head ever since) and is played both well, and admirably straight.  The one act chamber-musical zips by, drawing you into the heart of the piece, and making you care for the characters, in spite of their flaws, and almost eradicates the memory of the incredibly saccharine seventies film it's based on.

Everyone knows how it ends, of course - and if you don't, they tell you in the first few minutes - and this should, realistically, stop you getting that engrossed in the story, but I don't mind admitting that I had the biggest, most painful lumps in my throat throughout the last 20 minutes of the show, and I am one of the biggest cynics of all time.  And, I had something in my eye - yes, something in my eye, dammit - at several points, too.

I adored the simple costuming of the characters and Emma Williams (who plays Jenny) has one of the most gorgeous wardrobes I've seen in a long time. I wasn't too sure that choosing to signify her illness via the cunning use of a cardigan was a great idea though.  It's a simple motif, but hey, Cardigan of Death?  Hmn ...

If I have a criticism of the play, it would be that Michael Xavier, whilst more than adequate, isn't actually good-looking enough to play Oliver.  Shallow, perhaps, but hey, I'm a beauty blogger, sue me. It was just always in the back of my mind that - as written - Oliver is a bit of a boor (not to mention a bore, but that's more the fault of the source material than the play), and it's hard to see why Jenny would be so dazzled with him in the first place.  Your mileage, as always, may vary.

So, why did they do it?  The answer is, I guess, because they could.  And they did it well, if you ask me, I didn't roll my eyes once.  And,  I haven't enjoyed crying so much in ages.

Find out more about Love Story on Stage here. Or you can see their facebook page here.