Urban Decay Naked Basics Palette

Most of the hype regarding the previous two Naked palettes by Urban Decay passed me by.  Whilst I like a nice range of nude shaded tones as eyeshadows, somehow I just didn't "get" what other people were seeing in the palettes.  They are nice, yes, but, I think I prefer a bit more sludge with my shades - I found it difficult to see which shades went together in the other palettes.

So when I was offered an advance palette by Debenhams of the new Naked Basics palette from Urban Decay, I uhmmed and ahhed a bit before saying yes.  What changed my mind about this one is that it is largely matte, and it's a lot smaller than the other two palettes - I like mixing and matching my shadows from a range of sources (usually singles), and this new palette contains only six shades:

The first thing I noticed is that this palette veers towards the cool, and the pale.  Venus, the first shade on the right there, is the only shade that contains shimmer, and all the rest are completely matte.    For me W.O.S and Naked 2 work best - WOS as an all-over shade, and Naked 2 in the crease, with Faint and Crave as liners.   If I fancy a smokier look, I can use Faint in the crease, or the outer corner of my eye to make things a bit more defined.

Venus and Foxy are a bit too pale to work for me, really.  The shades are really quite pigmented, if not quite as buttery soft as I expected them to be, but they show up well enough on skin.  They are better over a base, of course, but the above swatches are on bare skin, and they still show quite well.  Crave has applied streakily for some reason in the swatch, but in use, applied with a good brush as a liner, it's actually a good, deep black that can be blended out for a smokey liner effect.

All in all, this is a nice palette, that I think I'll get a lot of use out of.  It's not - as far as I'm concerned - the most exciting palette in the world, but it's a good workhorse, and it'll be great for creating no-makeup makeup from now on.

The Urban Decay Naked Basics Palette is available from Debenhams from Tuesday 11th December.  Will you be getting one?  

The Fine Print: PR Sample.

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Friday Snippets

No post on here today (well, not a real one, anyway) but if my absence is making you desolate (and if not, why not?) then you can catch up with my ramblings in a couple of other places. I've been out and about a bit recently!

1) I wrote a piece about trying to find my perfect wedding fragrance for Basenotes recently, and it's just been published.  It's the most fun I've had putting something together in a while, and I'd love it if you read it.  You can read "Buying The Dress Was Easy" here.

2) I wrote about the best red lipsticks around for Erica over at Modern Mum Must Have this week too, did you know they're a fabulous hangover cure?  Find out how that works over at MMM: Red lip = perfect hangover cure.

And finally 3) Issue 8 of SLiNK magazine is out!  I worked my bazingas off helping get this issue ready (with a little - okay, a lot - of help from Kelly of Hair Advice and All Things Nice, makeup legend Mary Greenwell and the fab Nicholas Gilbert of Les Senteurs) it's the beauty issue this time around, so make sure you pick up a copy now ... (and hey, buy someone a subscription for Christmas, will you?)

You won't even notice I'm gone ...

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Smells Like Christmas 4 - Philosophy Old Fashioned Eggnog

All this week, and next, I'm bringing you the best products to scent yourself and your home ready for the festive season.

I've been boycotting Starbucks for years (seriously. Don't ask), apart from twice a year, when they bring out their eggnog lattes.  I have one on the first day they're available, and one on the last. For, whilst I loath their coffee, Starbucks is about the only place us UK peeps even see eggnog from one year to the next, and I LOVE eggnog.  I shouldn't, it's basically rum and nutmeg flavoured custard (served cold), after all, and I'm not a fan of rum either (not a fan of much in the post, now I come to think of it - moi, a masochist?), but somehow eggnog is much more a sum of its parts. 

Philosophy Old Fashioned Eggnog is an easier to get hold of scent than Haus Of Gloi's Eggnoggin', (which I adore) is warm, boozy and spicy, and almost good enough to eat. It has a creamy undertone to the scent, and comes complete with a recipe for eggnog on the label.  What more could you want?  A matching lipgloss?  Philosophy have one of those too.  I did have one of those to show you, but I appear to have eaten it.  Sorry.

The Fine Print: PR samples.  :Burp:
 
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Wedding Preparation - Creative Curl at Trevor Sorbie

Sentences I never thought I'd say ever again: "I've had a perm".

 
Don't worry, this isn't the perm I've just had, this is the perm I had in 1988.  It'll become clear why it's here shortly, I promise.
 
Sometimes you just get an idea into your head and it will NOT go away.  Since I first read about digital perming a few months ago, the idea of getting one has seeped into my brain, and I HAD to have one. But do you know what's an horrific idea?  Getting a major change to your hair in the final weeks before your wedding, that's what.

Regardless, I did it anyway.  Thanks to the wonderful team headed up by Nathan Walker at Trevor Sorbie in Covent Garden, I haven't regretted it, and I'm now the proud posessor of a head full of the curls of my dreams. Look:

This was taken just a couple of hours after processing, but it still looks nice and natural. Actually, what it looks like is what I always think my hair should  look like after air-drying, but never does. My hair is naturally about as curly as this, but only in certain sections, the rest is either just a bit wavy, or not quite straight, and all of it is fuzzy. I've never been a wash and go kind of a girl, even though I'm lazy enough ... if I couldn't be bothered styling my hair, I'd just tie it up. However this is what my hair should look like all the time, even when I don't do a thing to it from now on.  That I can live with!

 I'm not going to lie to you, it's a loooooong process (I was in the chair for around four hours, all told), your hair is clarified with various shampoos, then treated with various potions to protect any damaged areas, and only then is your hair chemically softened, all this before your hair even sees a roller!   

Once your hair is soft enough, your hair is rolled up onto the rods (completely different to rods of old, I think they used about 16 in my hair, of which there is LOTS), and then finally it gets digital.  Essentially, the rollers used have an electrical core, and once they're all connected to the base unit, they heat up to around 190 degrees, which means that your hair essentially "steams" the curls in.  Once your rollers have cooled a little, the neutralising solution is used, and your curls are left to set.  Then you're essentially ready to go!  We used a little mousse on my hair (talk about a blast from the past!), then finger dried it into ringlets and diffused it slightly.

I've left it to airdry since then, and went to a wedding with the resultant beachy-waves.  I'm delighted. Now I can wash and go, and if I want to style my hair with straighteners or whatever, I still can.  My hair isn't crispy, crunchy or processed-feeling, and it feels right, like my hair should.  The team spend  a lot of time in consultation with you to make sure you're prepared for what you will get, and will advise on both the correct haircut for your new curls, and new products too.  They really do know what they're talking about.

Of course, now I get to spend a couple of months playing with new styling products! How do you look after your curly hair? 

The Fine Print: Get Lippie was a guest of Trevor Sorbie. 

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Smells Like Christmas 3 - The Spitalfields Candle Company

All this week, and next, I'm talking about how to decorate your home (and yourself!) in scent ready for the festive season, bringing you my picks of the best scented products around.

Today is the turn of the gorgeously sharp and citrussy Spitalfields Candle Company in Orange and Clove, which is bright, beautiful, and extremely cheerful. I found that it evokes wonderful memories of spiking oranges with cloves to make pomanders as a child!  The scent is almost photo-real in its intensity, and manages to be both nostalgic and utterly modern at the same time. It should burn for around 50 hours in the large size, and 12 in the smaller, the big candle costs just £25.

The Spitalfields Candle Company has grown from making candles for friends, to a market stall and now into thriving online business, which is wonderful.  All their candles are handmade, organic, and contain only the finest essential oils for fragrancing.  No synthetics here.  You should try them, it's the next best thing to getting the orange oil under your fingernails yourself ...

Spitalfields candles are also available from Planet Organic.

 The Fine Print: PR sample, but I'll be making a further purchase soon.

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Mother Hair Interchangeable Straighteners

I have a lot of hair.  A LOT of hair. It's wavy and annoying, and difficult to tame when it's going off on one, so I use straighteners to help me out a lot.  The only trouble with my beloved Cloud Nines is that I only have the narrow ones, and buying a set of wide ones to go with those seems like too much trouble. Not to mention extravagant!

This is where the Mother Hair interchangeable styler comes in, as it is a professional salon-quality straightener, that comes complete with both narrow and wide plates:

The straighteners are titanium, and heat up to a whopping 230 degrees via the digital controller:

They're easy to use, the on-off switch and the heat controllers are on the top, and are difficult to get to in normal use, which is handy.  The plates are also very easy to change, you press the buttons on the side, and pull.  I recommend that you do NOT do this when they are hot though, seriously.

 
I find that there is a slight gap between the plates in use, meaning that they "float" a little over the hair, rather than tug on it, which is nice, but this might be a bit of a problem for people with thicker hair than mine, when you do need to build up a bit of tension to get the hair straight. For my needs (fine hair but a hell of a lot of it) though, they work just fine.

Priced at a fairly reasonable £140 for what is essentially two sets of straighteners in one, you could do a lot worse for your Christmas presents this year! 

The Fine Print: Press sample.

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Smells Like Christmas 2 - Melt Christmas Candle

This week and next I'm showing you the best way to scent your home (and yourself!) ready for Christmas, and bringing you the best in Christmas smells traditional and modern.

Today it's the turn of the Christmas Candle from Melt, which is a blend of cinnamon, clove, vanilla, nutmeg, orange and spice, which is a traditional blend of ingredients that gives an almost "mulled" scent to the air surrounding it, whether it is burning or not. It burns well and cleanly, and promises to last for around seventy hours.

Melt are well on their way to becoming my new favourite candle company, these days. I adore their easy to navigate website, and I like how each fragrance is available in a range of sizes and colours and their prices are extremely reasonable, costing from £7.50 for a travel candle in a tin (22 hour burn) to just £32.50 for a "tall & fat"candle, which should burn for 160 hours.  The "luxury glass candle" you see in the main picture there is just £21, which is little short of a bargain.  I don't think the candles are organic - at least I can't find mention of it on the website - but they are hand-poured, and made without synthetic ingredients.

I've had a couple of candles from Melt now, in a variety of fragrances, and have loved them all. In particular I've really enjoyed the bright and lovely-smelling Verbena and Clary Sage and I'm giving serious consideration to using their candles to fragrance the venue for my wedding reception at the moment too ..



The Fine Print: PR Sample.
 
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