Dr Bronner

Alongside roses as a favourite scent, I adore the smell of peppermint, so upon stumbling across a display of Dr Bronner's "magic soap" in the shop nearest my office, my choice of which one to pick was actually pretty easy!

Dr Bronner's soap is vegan, organic, packed with essential oils and it's a fairtrade product too. Simply put, it couldn't tick any more trendy and/or politically correct boxes if it wanted to. However, although the fairtrade certification is new, the soap has been produced in more or less the same way it has been since the company was founded in 1948.


It's available in a liquid or bar form, but I prefer the heft of a decent bar of soap sometimes - that, and I'm currently over-run with bottles of shower gel for some unknown reason - so I decided to try a bar of the peppermint and see what I made of it.

It has a gloriously cool scent, with none of the sugary tones you get in some of the more recent minty products that have been released. Some of them make you smell like a packet of Softmints for some reason. Anyway, it lathers beautifully, and doesn't leave the skin taut or dry at all after using.  The scent, sadly, doesn't linger long on the skin, but that's likely not a bad thing, as it means any perfumes you apply later are less likely to clash.

Dr Bronner say you can use the soaps in around 18 different ways, including as a shampoo, as a laundry soap, and even as a toothpaste! I wouldn't go that far, but I did use the lather as a shaving cream and was delighted with the smooth and silky results! And no scaliness afterward, either.

I really liked it, I'd been put off the product slightly by reading some of the more, er, evangelical reviews about the product that are out there, but as a cheap bathroom treat (my bar cost about £2.79), it's a difficult one to beat.  And any soap that doesn't give me scaly shins after shaving them in the shower is a winner in my book.  I was also sorely tempted by the rose, or lavender, or the almond (smells just like marzipan!) varieties, and I think I might have to invest in a couple of those ones too ...

Tiny placeholding post ...

Just a heads up to let you know my URL has changed to http://getlippie.com.  It won't make any difference to you guys, but it made my inner geek happy today!

Unlike GOSH Darling lipstick, which I bought this afternoon.  It makes me look like death.  DEATH, I tell you. Worse than DEATH, in fact, look:

(apologies for the quality of the appalling iPhone picture)

Hmn, actually, that picture makes it look almost acceptable!  Trust me, in the flesh, it looks like I've had a nasty accident in a lard'n'chalk factory. I think it's because my lips are quite highly pigmented naturally, and beige-ing them out just makes me look ill.  For me, this shade is instant zombification.  Inna stick. This is a very pale pinkish beige, and it's just far too cool a shade for me, I err on the side of caramel when it comes to "nude" shades. So, my search for the perfect nude lipstick goes on, can you make any recommendations? I will say this for it though, it feels more like a balm than a lipstick when you're wearing it.  This is based on approximately 45 seconds wear though.

If you'd like the lipstick - I know it's a really popular shade for other people - please let me know in the comments. I bought it today, applied it once with a lipbrush, and fell into instant HATE.  Doesn't happen often, but I always kick myself when it does.

Makeover: Sharon Pt 2

We created a soft and professional look for Sharon earlier but as we mentioned,  she also wanted a very dramatic look for a "Bizarre Ball" she's going to in a few weeks.  The costume she's going to be wearing is green, so, we used greens as the focus colour for the make up we're about to test here.  Please bear in mind that these pictures are of a make-up test rather than the makeovers we're used to.

First of all, Sharon had to remove the eye makeup we applied earlier:

We used Chanel Precision eye make up remover for this, which I've blogged about earlier, it's my default eyemakeup remover.

Then we applied another layer of foundation over the Max Factor, as dramatic make up demands a flawless and matte base.  Once the foundation was in place, we set it with a sweep of MAC Blot in Medium:

After priming the eyelids with some Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion, it was time to break out some fun colours!  In this post I showed you my pro-colour palette, and this was it's maiden outing.  I'm going to use two shades of green on the lids, the sparkly pistachio shade (top far right) in the inner corner, and the dark forest green (bottom far right) on the outer corner.  Here's how it looked:

I love the way these greens look in the flesh, they're very pigmented, so they're astonishingly striking when you see them on the skin. But, just the green isn't going to be dramatic enough on it's own, so let's add some black in there:

What I've done here is add black in the socket line, and brought it around to meet the same black shadow (Virgin V shadow in charcoal) that I've used to line the upper lashes.

Here's how it looks with the eyes open:

(Have no idea what's happened to the contrast there, please accept my apologies for being such a lousy photographer)

And here's how it looks when we add in a beige lip gloss (this is a Rimmel Vinyl gloss, but the label has worn off, so I've no idea of the shade, sorry!)

As I mentioned, this is a make up test, so, when I re-create this for real I'll make a few tiny changes.  I love the colours, and think they work really well with Sharon's complexion, and planned outfit, but I'll most likely not go quite so far up the socket line with the black next time, wing out the liner more, and make the edges a little sharper.  I couldn't find my synthetic edge brush this afternoon, so the soft edges aren't quite what I'd planned.  This look is just crying out for some mega false lashes too, I'll have to dig some up.

Just hope the ball is fun!

Makeover: Sharon Pt 1

We're going to do the makeover in two parts today - you'll see why when part two is posted later ...

Meet Sharon:

Sharon is another friend of mine who has volunteered for a makeover. Whilst chatting about how she'd like to look, she had two requests, firstly, she wanted a nice, simple, polished look suitable for interviews and everyday wear.  The second we'll talk about in part two.  As you can see, Sharon has beautiful porcelain skin,  amazing cheekbones, and enormous eyes, realistically, Sharon doesn't need a huge amount of makeup to make the most of those features, so we worked with only three or four products.

First of all, foundation.  As I mentioned earlier, Sharon has lovely creamy skin, so we didn't need much in the way of coverage.  I used a very light layer of Max Factor Seamless foundation, and only used it in those areas where Sharon is prone to a bit of high colour - around the nose, and a little on her cheeks.

As you can see, this has evened out her skintone just a little, and left us with a good base to work from.  Sharon's eyes are bicoloured - she has one of grey, and one of blue - so, I played around with a bluish-grey colour wash to make the most of what I think is a most distinctive - and lovely - feature.

 

Here, I've used Calvin Klein shadow in Granite, just the one shade all over the lid, darker towards the lash line, and blended in more towards the socket line.

Once this was in place, we finished with a touch of the same shadow under the lower lashes as a liner, then a light coat of Lancome Hypnose on the lashes, and Clinique Almost Lipstick in Sheer Blackberry, here's how it looked:

 

So there you go, polished, pretty, and suitable for any business occasion.

However, Sharon also wanted a dramatic - and I do mean dramatic - look for a Ball she's going to in a few weeks.  I'll be posting the details of that one very shortly.

Click here for part two ...

Eye of the Day - Updated!

So, I decided that yesterday's picture of my eyemakeup wasn't the clearest, so I've redone it:







And here it is with the Urban Decay eyeliner in Ecstasy more clearly visible:







A cheery look for a Friday me thinks.

Products used:
MAC Paint - Untitled (as base)
MAC Dovefeather in the inner corner
by Terry Black Grape in the outer corner
Urban Decay liquid liner in Ecstasy
Lancome Hypnose Drama one coat.

Space NK event and EotD

I have an odd relationship with Space.NK.  I love their product ranges, I think the shops are lovely, and they're basically places I should want to spend a lot of time in ... so, why do I so very often find the experience so very frustrating?

Example: last week at the Cheapside branch, I had been greeted five times, and asked if I wanted help six times before I'd even got past the first display counter, a couple of times by people actually standing next to each other.  I'd actually gone in for something specific, so politely declined offers of advice, and made my way to the Lipstick Queen stand.  Then of course, because that display is in the furthest, darkest corner of the store, by the time I'd swatched and made my selection the staff were all happily ensconced in applying lipgloss (straight from the testers  - squick!) to themselves, and gossiping about shoes at the front of the shop.  Was anyone interested in taking my money?  It didn't appear so.  It wasn't very busy in there, so I guess they were bored, but after saying excuse me a few times, and being totally ignored,  I walked out.

It's not been an isolated incident, either.  I'm no supermodel,  I'm not hip and trendy, and I'm quite obviously not a yummy mummy with cash to burn, but that's no reason for a shop assistant to write me off. I know my cosmetics. What's more, I spend a lot of money on them, and further, I'm a personal shopper who knows lots of other people who want to spend their money on beauty products ... Because I may not look like a particular demographic doesn't mean I should be treated like crap in a shop.  Any shop.

On the other hand, I've had wonderful service from them in some stores (I'm thinking Kensington and Covent Garden in particular) and I've even been offered jobs with them!  It's just such a lottery as to whether you're going to get the bored, sulky, snobby staff, or the knowledgeable and welcoming members of the team.

With that in mind, it was with hugely mixed feelings that I popped along to the InStyle Space.NK  shopping event last night.  But, on the whole, I enjoyed it a great deal.  Granted, it could have been better organised - could have been a LOT better organised - but the lashings of champagne kind of made up for that.  I had a wonderful mini-facial using Essential Herbology products (which I'm definitely going to be researching further in the future!), but I was a bit aggravated that the lack of organisation meant that not everyone - including myself - got to have a makeover, if they wanted one.

We got goodie bags:

Which were nice, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it's £95 worth of products!  Four cleansers, three moisturisers (would have been nice to have more, I'm in the market for a new moisturiser at the moment) four perfumes, a pack of cleansing wipes, a muslin cloth, and a lot of sachets.

I did succumb, and buy an By Terry eyeshadow, Black Grape (£21.53) as it's a gorgous colour in the pot.  Not entirely sure it works quite the same on the eye, what do you think?

COLOUR!

I'm going to spend a few hours this week playing with these:

Can't wait!  Loving the look of the reds  - and the greens - in the palette.  And so many shades of grey, which sounds like it should be boring, but I think grey is one of the most versatile colours you can have in your makeup bag.

Also this week, I'm off to beauty events at Space NK, and Benefit, looking forward to it a great deal, and I'll report back as soon as I get a chance ...