Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess Bronzing Blush

The ever-lovely Kellie over at BigFashionista was asking me last week how I go about updating my makeup for spring.  Well, the simple fact is that I tend to wear the same sort of makeup all year round (though I do switch to tinted moisturiser rather than foundation when it gets really warm), but in spring, I find that one of the simplest ways to update your makeup is to change your blusher.

Luckily, this time of year is when brands start to bring out their summer ranges, and switching to a warmer blush is easy.   Last year, my favourite blush was actually a bronzing blusher from the annual Bronze Goddess range released by Estee Lauder.  This year's limited edition bronzing blush is too cute, featuring a starfish design:

The darker pink that you see there is a shimmery overspray which disappears on first usage.  On first seeing this, I thought the shades were identical to last year's zebra-striped palette, so I decided to compare the two:

Turns out that my initial thoughts weren't quite correct.  Last year's palette has slightly cooler tones, and is, in fact, slightly more shimmery:

Top is the starfish palette, and bottom is the zebra, and I've swatched them in the order: bronzer then blusher then a mix of the two shades. the top palette has slightly more pigment, and is more matte, whereas the zebra bronzing blush (bottom) has a slightly more sheeny finish.

The bronzing blush is limited edition every year and costs £29.  The rest of the range consists of an eyeshadow palette, a couple of eyeshadow pencils, a beautifully coppery-bronze nail polish and a selection of lip products.  I'll bring you swatches as I have them ...

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Andy Tauer's Carillon Pour Un Ange Review and Giveaway

 Bosky.  It's not a word I use enough on Get Lippie.  It's a word I like though.


Carillon pour un Ange is almost a textbook definition of the word bosky.  Earthy, damp, lightly green and redolent of lily of the valley, the latest release from Andy Tauer's Homages line is purest spring, bottled.


Above the intriguing notes of damp earth, wet leaves and cool cedar is a sharp peal of pure white spring flowers, reminding me of a walk through an English wood on a slightly drizzly spring day.  Lily of the valley and lilac get a bad reputation for being (perhaps) granny-ish, but this mixture of earth and ethereal flowers make this a floral scent which is very different and very, very appealing.  I've worn this a few times over the winter when I've wanted to remind myself that spring is indeed on the way.  


This is one of those scents that you'll find yourself sniffing constantly, being reminded at times of mud pies, and at others of sophisticated white bouquets, but at all times being reminded that it's spring.  The scent has amazing sillage (meaning other people will be able to smell it too - particularly if you apply  with too heavy a hand) and a mere drop or two will last the entire day.


And because it finally is spring, I've teamed up with the lovely Ronny at Scents & Sensibility to give away a full-size gift-boxed bottle of Carillon Pour Un Ange (worth £99) to one lucky reader, prior to it being officially launched for sale in May. 


All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me what your favourite spring scents are - perfumes, or otherwise.  Please be a resident of the UK, and please make sure that you leave me a valid email address.  I will make the draw on the evening of April 10th, so please get your entries in before then!

The Fine Print: Prize will be dispatched direct from Scents & Sensibility, however, Get Lippie reserves the right to disqualify invalid entries, or any entries obviously originating from competition listing websites. 


This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

A Week in Lipstick

Here's what I wore this week:




From top to bottom:

Tom Ford in Pink Dusk,
MAC Viva Glam Cyndi
Dior Addict in Diorkiss
Lancome Gloss 132
Estee Lauder Pure Colour Crystal Lipstick in Elizabeth Pink
Guerlain Rouge G Serie Noir in Rouge Sensuel
Lanolips Lemonaid

Here's how the colours look:




Two nudes, two pinks, and two reds. And a balm (I alway wear something on my lips even if I'm not leaving the house, which I didn't on Saturday). Better mix of colours than usual!

Here are the swatches in the same order:




There really is a swatch of the Lanolips there!

More about lipstick later on in the week.

Give And Makeup

I get emails every now and again from people asking me what happens to all the things I sample for Get Lippie, and wondering if they can buy the samples that I've featured, particularly if I don't seem that enamoured with them, and a lot of people have been asking me recently if I will hold a blog sale.

First things first, I would never, ever sell something that was sent to Get Lippie for review purposes, for me to profit from something that was sent to me free of charge wouldn't be right.  So, what does happen to products that I don't finish, or don't like, or even simply get bored with?  Simply,  I donate them to Give and Makeup, an initiative I've supported since it first started late last year.

In very many respects, I'm a lucky woman, I have a roof over my head, a good job, and a stable relationship, plus I have the means to be able to afford to buy myself those little luxuries that make life seem a little more worth living.  But very many women don't, and, in particular women who are fleeing abusive relationships have neither the time, the money, nor the inclination to remember to pack toiletries to take with them when the time comes to make the break from abusive partnerships.  Further, lots of shelters are extremely short of cash and simply can't afford to provide such "luxuries" as shower gel, skin care and hair care to women and children when they get there.


Give and Makeup is a non-profit making organisation dedicated to distributing unwanted toiletries and cosmetics from individuals and companies who find they have an excess (no matter how big or small) to Refuge and Women's Aid, who then make sure that the products get into the hands of the women who need them.  Founded by Caroline Hirons, it's a simple, but rather genius idea, and donating to Give and Makeup gets easier every week as more and more volunteers sign up to help them expand their distribution network.


I can't deny that being able to donate my unwanted products goes some way toward assuaging a slightly guilty conscience about being such a consumerist in the first place, but, as I've discussed before, being able to take care of yourself in a stressful situation provides a psychological boost that's hard to replicate any other way, alongside Look Good, Feel Better, (another charity I support in a variety of ways) Give and Makeup helps women come to terms with their lives, by helping make demanding life circumstances easier.


Please help. If you have toiletries, cosmetics, hair care, or baby products to spare - lightly used is fine, they don't have to be brand new (although if the product has an applicator - such as mascara or lipgloss - then please ensure they are unopened, for hygiene reasons) then please consider sending them to Give and Makeup.


So, er, yeah, this is why there won't be any blog sales on Get Lippie any time soon, sorry!


This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

A sneaky peek ...

Some people are fascinated by my array of lipsticks, so here's a sneaky peek at something I'll be posting about in more detail very soon:




Doesn't look much there (well, to me it doesn't, but I'm aware that they are jammed in that drawer four or five deep), but that's only one part of my collection ...

Time for a heated debate!

In my spare time - you know, the time I get in between working twelvety million hours a week, and the time I spend blogging - I also moderate a debate forum.  I know, I'm a sucker for punishment.

There was a debate recently about women in positions of power, and someone suggested that the only reason women wear makeup is to attract men.  And that women who go out whilst wearing makeup and reject advances made to them by men are "ball-breakers".  Here are his actual words:

Has anyone ever noticed that there are allot of women in  {...} who will spend literally hours on their hair and make-up...wear hundreds of dollars worth of clothing and expensive perfumes...go out to a dance bar and...

SIT in groups of women, chatting and so on, while every so often a guy will make his sorry-ass way over to their table and ask one to dance. Can you guess the answer he gets more often than not? Sure ya can...

"No thanks...hehehe..." 

I pointed out that there are many reasons to wear makeup:

... women do not {solely} wear makeup to attract men. There are almost as many reasons to wear makeup as there are people wearing makeup. ... neither is it only women who wear cosmetics.  

To which the response was:

Now: "women do not wear makeup to attract men" To which I have to say, that unless the women in question happens to be a lesbian...then Bull S**t! Please...that's just silly. Women wear make-up in order to enhance their appearance and attract a mate...of either sex. Just as these men you speak of who also wear make-up...do so for the same reason. I'll admit there may be the odd exception, but please...its the same thing with jewelry, hair-do's, cloths even. I think that's rather self-evident.

(all spelling mistakes theirs)

So, I was wondering what my readers thought?  Is it self-evident that the only reason people wear cosmetics is to make them more attractive to potential partners? Why do you wear makeup?  


Personally, I think the existence of charities such as Look Good Feel Better disproves his entire theory - not to mention the fact that women who have  partners don't immediately stop wearing makeup, which, if his theory is to be believed, is what would happen naturally.  But I want to  know what you think, please let me know in the comments, thanks!

 

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Project Perfume - an update

Oof, it's been a little while since I did an update, I have to admit!  It's not been because I've had a lack of things to think about, rather the opposite in fact.

If you take a look at the Project Perfume page itself you'll see that I've sniffed, or obtained samples of around about 50% of the list now, which is due in large part to three websites: Luckyscent, one is Scent and Sensibility and last, but by no means least, Escentual.com.  

Luckyscent (based in the US) and Scent and Sensibility (based in the UK) both specialise in niche, or hard to find perfumes, and I've been purchasing samples from both of them for a while now, I ordered a bunch of Andy Tauer perfumes from Ronny at Scent & Sensibility at the end of last year, and they turned up very quickly and beautifully packaged, and there was a little treat of a sample of Hilde Soliani's Vecchi Rossetti perfume included too, which is about as perfect a scent for a beauty blogger as can possibly be, as it's inspired by the scent of theatres and theatrical makeup.  Violets, roses and beeswax combine to make this smell of the makeup your grandmother used to wear, ladylike and powdery, and just a tad old fashioned, it's a gloriously glamorous scent which evokes the forties and fifties and just needs a beautiful powder compact to make the image complete.  It's not something for everyday wear - it's definitely a fragrance that requires a bit of dressing up to accompany it, but for those days when I prefer my pearls to my edgy silver jewellery, it's wonderfully evocative.

I'll talk more about Luckyscent and Scent & Sensibility next week (look out for a special post next week where I've teamed up with S&S to bring you something I'm very excited about indeed), but I wanted to talk about some scents I've been sent by Escentual.com this week.  

I'm hugely indebted to the lovely Louise (are there any other kinds of Louises?  I rather think not - however long term readers of this blog may have views that differ ... ) at Escentual who saw my list of perfumes and got really on-board with the project, thanks to Louise, I was sent samples of fully a fifth of the perfumes on my list, and it's been wonderful over the last few weeks having a "lucky dip" of some wonderful - and some er ...slightly less so - perfumes to choose from every day!  I suspect my workmates have been a little confused by some of the scents I've been wearing recently, but hey ... 

First off, Calandre by Paco Rabanne:

On first spray this is metallic, and flowery.  And, as is the way of these things, I had an initial impression of tinned peas.  The perfume doesn't, in fact, smell anything like tinned peas, but everytime I wear this, they're what I think about, at least for the first few minutes.  There's a tinny, metallic accord on first spray, which will tickle the back of your nose - and in my case, get the old brain cells working overtime - but, once this ticklish phase is over, there's a beautiful (and I do mean beautiful) essence of roses and glorious full-bodied florals, which leaves me sniffing my wrists in ecstasy.  It's perfume-y, but not at all old-fashioned, which is rather a wonderful trick to pull off, particularly for a scent that was first released in 1966. It's fresh and floral, and rather lovely, I've worn my sample of this one a lot since it arrived, to the detriment of a few other samples that appeared in the same batch.

It wasn't until I went back to Luca Turin and "the book" that I realised where the tinned peas thing came from. Luca talks about Rive Gauche a lot in conjunction with Calandre (allegedly, the two are almost identical), and Rive Gauche is a perfume that my mother wears.  As for the tinned peas, well, there's a very metallic note in Calandre, and my mother ... well ... my mother fed us a lot of tinned vegetables growing up, and that's the scent-memory my subconscious dragged up ...  

Lippie Rating: Lovely.

 Carrying on with the vegetable theme, I next tried Fahrenheit 32 by Dior.  Described as an unpretentious "minty vanilla" by Luca Turin, this is exceptionally difficult to find in stores, I tried everywhere before it turned up.  Yes, it's very definitely a minty vanilla, it's both herbal and sweet, cool and comforting.  For some reason, I do find a lot of vanillas rather too reminiscent of custard, and I'm uncomfortable in them for that reason, but this is very green, and I'm occasionally reminded of watercress (this isn't a criticism, I love watercress, and would eat it every day if I could), with a hint of orange blossom, and the vanilla just takes the edge off the sharp, green herbs, and rounds off the orange blossom a little.  If I want to sharpen it up, I add a little "fizz" with a drop or two of Commes des Garcons Rhubarb (from their "Sherbet" series), and the minty rhubarb'n'custard that results is perfect for carefree weekend days, and wearing with jeans and sitting down the pub in.  
Somehow though, I can't convince MrLippie to wear this, the big wuss.  Although, that might be because I've refused to hand it over to him since it arrived.


Lippie Rating: Weird - but good.


More on Project Perfume coming soon ....


This post originated at: http://getlippie.com/ All rights reserved.