Benefit Brow Arch March

By Luke

I am very lucky indeed to be a volunteer for the amazing beauty industry charity, Look Good Feel Better.

If you are not familiar with the charity, you can read all about them here http://www.lookgoodfeelbetter.co.uk/, but in a nutshell, women undergoing cancer treatment are able to spend a bit of time in a room full of other women in a similar situation, compare notes, chat, network, and at the same time are able to have some expert advice about their beauty routine from rather amazing volunteers.

There is a goody bag provided by various brands who have kindly donated products which consist of everything any woman would need to look and feel beautiful, let alone when you’re losing your hair, eyebrow, lashes, and having to live with the effects of cancer treatment.

The workshops are rather incredible, and one thing that has been brought home to me from doing these workshops is that there is nothing stronger (or louder or more fun) than a group of women talking about makeup and skincare. At a time in their lives where they are at their most vulnerable, both physically and emotionally, bonds are formed that serve only to make the whole process of survival a lot more bearable, and it truly is a privilege to witness and be a part of.

One of the biggest and boldest of beauty brands, Benefit alongside Debenhams, are teaming up to support LGFB.  Every year in March, when you visit a Brow Bar at any Debenhams Benefit counter, you will receive a complimentary brow shape (normally £11.50), for a charitable donation of at least £5 which will go to the Look Good Feel Better charity.

In addition to this, Benefit are planning to hold a fundraising March through the streets of London passing all major landmark Arches (see what they’ve done there?) on Sunday March 9th. 

The participating ‘Arch Angels’ will be asked to start with minimal makeup, and join the pit stops en route to have little beauty treatments along the way , not dissimilar to those undertaken at a Look Good Feel Better workshop. By the end of the march you will look AMAZING!

A worthy cause indeed!

For more information, visit www.browarchmarch.com, and if you get involved, you can tweet @BrowArchMarch and hashtag the same.


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Body Shop Teenage Cancer Trust Concerts 2014

Seriously, I do not know where the time goes ...  It's that time of year where The Body Shop gets their Corporate Social Responsibility hat on, and sponsors a series of gigs at The Royal Albert Hall to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.  This year they'll be match-funding up to £30,000 worth of donations at the concerts.  Last year, 2013, the series of concerts (which were curated by Noel Gallagher) raised upwards of £500,000 for charity which is a quite magnificent sum!  And, from a person working in the charity sector, trust me, donations like this are simply NOT to be sniffed at. In the current climate, anything that brings in money will help charities do their jobs, and support people in need.  I only wish my charity could do things like this! 

So, who do you fancy seeing?  For me, it would have to be The Cure, or the Comedy Evening (I love a good comedy evening, I do).  Maybe Suede.  But mostly The Cure.  Or the comedy evening ... Anyhoo the gigs run from 24th to 30th March and the tickets go on sale this Friday 31st January.

As an aside, I know it's been quiet here recently, but there is good reason, honest!  Also, there's lots of great stuff going on behind the scenes which will make the quietness a thing of the past, so look out for an exciting announcement (or three) coming soon!

This post: Body Shop Teenage Cancer Trust Concerts 2014 originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Valentine Special - Own A Colour

I don't normally do Valentine-based stuff on Get Lippie, being a big old heartless hairy-armed knee-jerk harpie and all that, but an email fell into my in-box this week, and I had to share it.   I've already got a lipstick named after me, so I thought it was about time the incomparable MrLippie had something named after him, too.  Luckily, OwnAColour.com have come to the rescue.

In a charitable initiative to support Unicef, Own A Colour have linked up with Purple Ronnie and Dulux, and in exchange for a minimum donation of £1 you can gift a colour to your loved one, they get to name it anything they like!  Also, in exchange for your donation, and alongside their choice of colour, Purple Ronnie will write a personalised little love poem especially for your Valentine!  All you have to do is log onto their Facebook page to find out how.

Who could resist? Turns out I couldn't.  Purple Ronnie was kind enough to write me a little poem about the blog, and also drew a little picture of how he saw Get Lippie.  And, as Mr Lippie somehow made his way into the picture, I simply had to share it!

Your make-up can go badly wrong

If you’re not in the know -

Louise makes sure Get Lippie

Is the only place to go!

Not actually a photo.  Spooky resemblance though, right?*

Click onto the Own A Colour Facebook page to get your own poem and colour (no picture, I'm afraid) for your loved one. Help children, please support Unicef.


The Fine Print: NOT a sponsored post - Get Lippie has made a donation to charity as a result of the email. 
 
PS: Sorry to have spoiled your Valentine surprise, M!  I have no idea how Purple Ronnie found out about the dicky bow thing ... oh, and by the way,  we are TOTES getting matching T-shirts with this on, oh yes.


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

Give As You Live

Hands up, who is ready for Christmas?  I admit, I'm certainly not.  £6.8 billion pounds will be spent on Christmas presents this year, even though things are a little tight in quite a few households around the UK this year.

Things are certainly a little tighter than usual in the Lippie household this Christmas, but, after the events of the last couple of months, we have come to realise just how very, very, very lucky we are. Every two minutes in the UK, someone faces losing their home.  Every two minutes. Think about that, just for a second. That is 30 people an hour.  720 people a day.  262,800 people a year.  All facing the prospect of losing their home.

For a while this year, Mr Lippie and myself were amongst those statistics, and, whilst it was happening, it was - quite simply - hell. We are still dealing with the after effects of our experience, and, whilst we still have a way to go yet, we know we couldn't have gotten even this far without the help of our friends and in particular, our families.  We can't even begin to tell people just how grateful we are.

We also couldn't have got by without the support, advice and occasional real-life hands-on help from both our Twitter followers and even some readers of this blog, who I now consider to be real friends too.  Without those people to help us, our situation would have been very different, and there isn't a day that goes by where we don't give thanks that we had such a support network around us.  We have a roof over our head, a place of safety of our own, and we no longer spend our days in fear of what would happen to us next. 

(Don't worry, I'll be bringing this whole post back around to lipstick soon, bear with me)

Many people who face similar problems to MrLippie and myself aren't as lucky.  They may have less of a support network, or may simply be unable to help themselves get away from their situation because of a lack of finances, or family commitments, or their work situation, and this is where Shelter comes in, to be that support network for people who don't have those resources, or the right information to be able to help themselves. 

Shelter say that having a home is about more than just having a roof over your head, and they're right.  Being robbed of our peace of mind, and being forced to live in genuine fear, both for ourselves and our possessions was by far the worst part of what has happened to me and Mr Lippie. We may well have had a roof over our head for the whole time, but we definitely didn't have a home, and it's only now that we're learning to deal with how the whole experience has affected us.

Shelter do wonderful work, and it's not just about people sleeping on the streets, they help people just like you and me, who find themselves in what were previously unimaginable circumstances. They actively campaign to prevent homelessness too, and fight for legislation to help people who have been affected by malicious landlords.  I never thought I could be a homeless person, and I bet you don't expect you could be too.  But you never know what is around the corner.

Shelter helped me out this year, so, I'm going to be helping them out a little bit too.  As I mentioned back in the first paragraph, things are a little tight in the Lippie household right now, which is why I was so utterly delighted to meet Polly Gower yesterday, who heads up Give As You Live, yesterday.

Give As You Live is one of those seemingly beautifully simple ideas, that is actually also an extremely good idea.  Essentially, Give As You Live has teamed up both retailers and charities so that shoppers like you and me can give to charity by ... shopping.  If you shop online with retailers through the Give As You Live website, or app, retailers will donate between 1% and 4% of the retail price to the charity of your choice. 

The best part of this is that it will cost you - the shopper - absolutely nothing.  No prices are inflated, and you will pay the same through the website or app as you would purchasing online ordinarily.  Also, the scheme is linked to every single registered charity in the UK, so if you want to donate to a charity that means something to you - as Shelter does to me - then you can. 

There are more than 200,000 registered charities in the UK, and potentially, every single one could benefit from this scheme.  I think this is amazing.  Remember that £6.8 billion I mentioned way back in the beginning?  If every single purchase making up that figure was made online through Give As You Live, they would raise £170 million for charity, without you or I, or anyone else for that matter, having to spend an extra penny on our Christmas gifts.  

You can buy from Liberty, Harrods, John Lewis, Selfridges, LastMinute.com, Debenhams, Play.com, Itunes, Sainsbury's, Amazon.com, and around 1,500 other online retailers.  They've already raised £2.2million, but they want to raise more, so make that bottle of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle or Tom Ford Lipstick (or Body Shop body butter, depending on your budget!) really count this year, and do something for charity whilst you're about it.  If you're anything like me, you'll never have planned to need a charity to hold your hand, but you'll be glad they're around if the worst happens.

I'd already decided to buy my presents online this year, and donate to Shelter, now Give As You Live  has given me an extra reason, and a new way to do it.

The Fine Print: Give As You Live, and their associated company, EasyClick both have a blogger affiliate scheme.  I am NOT taking part in the affiliate scheme, and this post was not sponsored.  I just had to tell you about it anyway.  Buy a lipstick, and help someone help themselves. It could be you.

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