Comparison: Black Sugar by Tom Ford, Sulfurous by Guerlain and Facet by Illamasqua

I was picking out my favourite polishes for autumn, and when I had  made my list, I realised that Black Sugar by Tom Ford, Sulfurous by Guerlain, and Illamasqua's Facet are quite similar, so I thought a comparison might be in order. 

When I got the bottles together, I realised that they were quite different, but possibly not *that* different.  

First up, Bottle impressions:

Tom Ford Black Sugar.  This is a browned-taupe, with a quite beautiful red shimmer visible in the bottle which is almost impossible to photograph, in my experience.  Not the end of the world though, as it's impossible to see on the nail too, as it turns out.
Guerlain's Sulfurous is more of a shimmering charcoal in comparison to the other two, and is much, much darker than either. 
Illamasqua's Facet is a softened medium dove-grey, enlivened with lots and lots of bronze shimmer.

On the nails:

Black Sugar has the thinnest formula and is a little prone to dragging.  This isn't helped by the super-long brush handle, which is required because of the super-tall bottle.  If you're a cack-handed muppet like myself, it's the least easy polish to apply in the bunch.  That said though, the Tom Ford nail polish formula is a good one, and the shades tend to wear very well indeed.  It's a nice, slightly flat, browned taupe on the nails, a cooler version of Chanel's Particuliere, in fact, and none the worse for that. It dries a little darker than it appears in the bottle.

I've reviewed Guerlain Sulfurous before, and it's clear I really like the deeply complex shimmering charcoal of it.  I notice in macro-mode, however, that it's a little brush-strokey, but this isn't visible in real life.  It has a wide brush which makes application easier. 

Facet by Illamasqua is an unusual colour on the nail, being not quite grey, and not quite bronze, whilst appearing also not quite khaki too. Whilst it lacks some of the complexity, and (in my eyes) beauty of Sulfurous, it has its own unique loveliness, which I really like.  The brush is a standard round brush, and the formulation is a little thinner than the Guerlain, but spreads really nicely over the nail.  Illamasqua polishes also tend to be extremely hard wearing.

So, all very similar, and all rather different too.  Personally, if I could only have one, it'd be Sulfurous by Guerlain, but the other two are very beautiful too.  Which would be your choice? 

The Fine Print: PR Samples.

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Silent Sunday ...

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Win an entire year's supply of Alpha H Liquid Gold!

Anyone who's read my blog for any length of time knows I'm a big fan of the Alpha H brand, Michelle, the brand owner, is a wonderful woman who I admire greatly, and I'm always aware that the products in the range are ones that have her own personal seal of approval, Michelle knows great skincare*!  They get my seal of approval too, so when Alpha H asked me if I'd like to give away a year's supply of their cult (and hero) product, Liquid Gold, I leapt at the chance!

Featuring ingredients such as glycolic acid and licorice, Liquid Gold is an overnight treatment with a slight difference.  It looks and feels like a toner, but will exfoliate and smooth your skin a treat - there's nothing quite like the Alpha H tingle before bed! Oh, and you don't need a separate night cream, either, so so faffing.  I love waking up to skin you can really tell has had a difference made to it overnight! 

QVC like it so much that they've made Liquid Gold their product of the month, and to celebrate, there's a special "supersize" 200ml edition available at the bargain price of £37!  ml for ml, this would normally cost £63, so this is a heck of a saving, if you ask me.  Which you didn't, but keep reading anyway.

However, you could win an entire year's supply, for free, simply by answering this simple question in the comments on this post:

"Other than Glycolic Acid name the key ingredient in Liquid Gold, known for it’s calming and anti-inflammatory properties, that could be mistaken for a traditional confectionery sweet?"

Please leave your answer, your name, and an email address you can be contacted on in the comments on this post before 8pm on Friday 30th August. 

If you're not lucky enough to win, you can pick up your own supersize bottle of Liquid Gold here, but be quick, as the offer ends as soon as the month does!  Good luck!

Winners will be drawn at random by an independent party on 30th August, and the prize will be delivered by a third party.  Editor's decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.  Email addresses will not be used for any purpose other than to contact the competition winner, and will be removed from the post as soon as the draw is made.

* She also knows origami, but I've been told not to mention that in this post, so just forget you read this, okay?

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Aesop Shine Oil

I've been styling my hair curly recently, and I've found that it always tends to lead to dryness at the ends.  Luckily, this turned up recently, and I'm a little bit in love with it.

It's an extremely lightweight oil, that spreads easily in the hair - you just need two or three drops which you spread over your palms, then smooth lightly through the mid-lengths and ends of your hair.  It doesn't build up, and - best of all - it doesn't contain silicones.  Far, far, far too many hair "oils" on the market are basically cocktails of silicones with just the scantest addition of argan oil or something, it drives me crazy, as some silicones can build up and actually make the condition of your hair worse.  Not to mention that a lot of them can be heavy and lead to greasiness if you overapply, as what they're actually doing is forming a coating on the outer layer of your hair (therefore making it look smoother, and shinier), rather than being absorbed by it and conditioning your hair from the inside.

Ironically, actual oils are less greasy!  Counter-intuitive, I know. But if you just use a couple of drops, your hair should absorb the oil, and make it less dry or brittle from the inside.  And I do mean DROPS, btw, if you need more just add it drop by drop until you feel like your hair has softened up.  When I style my hair straight, two drops is enough, but when I've had it curly for a day or two, then three or four would be more in order.

You can also use a full pipette (or two), as a pre-wash conditioning treatment.  The oil is chock full of conditioning ingredients such as borage, sweet almond, olive and jojoba oils, and smells lovely, herbal, and somehow fresh at the same time.  You can leave the oil on overnight, or just an hour or two before washing it out.  Whilst it hasn't cured my dry hair problems overnight, (I need a protein treatment or two, I think), it sure has made it less of an issue.

Aesop Shine hair oil will be available from Aesop very soon.

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Shiseido Lacquer Rouge RD 413

 

I'm not a huge fan of liquid lipsticks in all honesty.  I'm a cack-handed muppet and there's a lot of scope for messy liplines when it comes to liquid products, when you add in the fact that one side of my upper lip is fuller than the other, well, liquid lipsticks are an entire world of pain for me.  However, some shades can be worth the pain, is this red from Shiseido one of them?  Let's see.

 I like the sleek and tactile packaging, which mirrors the camellia on the packaging.  RD413 is a bright tomato red, which is a little scary in the tube, even for a bright lip-lover like myself:

To my eye, this looked rather light and bright to me, and I was worried that even I wouldn't be able to carry off the shade.  However, I was reassured a little on swatching, as, whilst it's a rather sheer formula (surprisingly), it's also a beautiful colour:

 
The red is a little on the orange side (my camera is definitely pulling out the orange tones here), but it's definitely a red, and it's beautiful in wear.  However, I do have a couple of issues with the formula, it's sheer and glossy (oh so very, very glossy), but as a result, the pigments can appear a little patchy in close up:

  
In real-life it is less of an issue, as my lips aren't actually THIS BIG. Nearly, admittedly, but my head actually isn't three feet across, so you don't really notice the streakiness so much when my lips are in 3d rather than on a computer screen.

It's comfortable to wear, and non-drying, but it doesn't really have any lasting properties.  The sheerness of the pigment make it more like a gloss than a lipstick, so it needs fairly frequent reapplication.  However, some of the shades in this range are rather more pigmented, so I suspect this problem would be limited to this shade in particular.

Overall, this is a beautiful shade, but has it won me over to the liquid lipstick side?  I don't know.  I'd definitely try more from the range as it's a good, comfortable formula but for £23.50 a pop, well ...

The Fine Print: PR Sample.

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Bodhi Neroli Luce Revitalising Face Oil

 Even in the summer, I'm a big fan of facial oils.  The opportunity came up to try a product from the range of Bodhi, and the Neroli Luce revitalising oil seeemed like the perfect choice, not least because ... well ... Luce is my nickname. But that's not the only reason I picked it, I swear!

Anyhoo.  Bodhi is a UK brand that's been around for a little while now.  Bodhi pride themselves on their ethical products, and quite rightly. All are free from parabens, sulphates, phthalates, propylene glycol, PABA, palm oil, mineral oil, paraffin, petrochemicals, DEA, synthetic colours or fragrances and animal ingredients, which is a heck of a list, and quite a challenge for a skincare brand.  It's quite a tightly edited collection of products, which is slowly branching out into new items, but on the Bodhi website, you'll find facial skincare, shower gels, massage oils, and more.  I can highly recommend the Jasmine Falls Relaxing Shower Gel, btw, it's divine. 

Containing a blend of neroli, frankincense, sea buckthorn and evening primrose oil, Neroli Luce face oil is intended for normal to combination skins, which might be a bit dull, or have a tendency to be slightly blemish prone.  After a stressful few weeks, my combination-oily skin was beginning to get me down, having lost its glow, and starting to get a little congested. 

Neroli Luce is a slightly thick oil, bright orange in colour, which means its packed full of beta carotene, which has an almost instant brightening effect once applied to the face - I find that the orange shade provides a great optical illusion, making my rather rosy-toned face look a little more even as well, which is a god-send! Even though it's rather thick, it's actually quite light, and is easily absorbed into the skin, with a minimum of massage, meaning you don't need to wait a long time in order to be able to apply your normal moisturiser over the top.

You can use it morning or night, or both, but I tend to use it on mornings when I feel I need a bit of a boost (so that'll be every day at the moment, then), and the beautiful scent helps raise my spirits every time I use it.  The combination of neroli and frankincense is a classic one, and I like to cup the product in my hands and breathe the scent in deeply before I apply to to my skin.

The bottle is small, around 15ml, but you use so little of it that I estimate it would last you a good few months, certainly I've been using mine every day for the last month and barely made a dent in the contents.  At £32 for a product with this quality of ingredients, it's a bit of a bargain too.  I'll be investing in a bottle of the Bodhi Desert Rose Rejuvenating Face oil for the winter months, I suspect.  

Ingredients:
Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil, Prunus Armeniaca, (Apricot) Kernel Oil, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Oenothera Biennis (Evening Primrose) Seed Oil, Hippophae Rhamnoides (Sea Buckthorn) Fruit Oil, Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange) Flower Oil, Boswellia Carterii (Frankincense) Oil, Lavendula Augustifolia (High-Altitude Lavender) Flower Oil, Pelargoneum Graveolens (Geranium) Flower Oil, Cymbopogon Martini (Palmarosa) Oil, Cananga Odorata (Ylang-Ylang) Flower Oil, Benzyl Alcohol*, Benzyl Benzoate*, Benzyl Salicylate*, Citral*, Citronellol*, Eugenol*, Farnesol*, Geraniol*, Isoeugenol*, Limonene*, Linalool* (*natural constituents of essential oils)

 The Fine Print: PR sample.

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Guerlain Rouge G Comparison: Madam Batifole vs Provovative

After featuring both the Guerlain Autumn and Winter collections recently, I got a few emails regarding the pink Rouge Gs from each, Madam Batifole and Provocative, so I thought comparing the two was a good idea:

 Madame Batifole (left) is from the limited edition Madame Violette autumn collection currently on counters, and has a fishnet effect etched onto the casing.  Provocative is from the Crazy Paris Christmas collection which will be on counter from November.  Both are rather cool bright pinks, but there are differences:

Madame Batifole is the darker of the two, and Provocative is lighter.  Contextually, Provocative appears the "warmer" shade, but is still quite a cool shade of pink.

Here are some more comparison shots:

Natural daylight

With Flash

 Both are creamy shades, but as you can just make out in the flash picture above, Madame Batifole has a slightly more visible blue micro-shimmer in the formula.  Provocative contains it too, but it's less visible in the bullet. On the skin, however, the shimmer is barely visible, it basically just adds a little depth to the shades and stops them appearing "flat".

Natural Daylight

With Flash

They're both highly pigmented, and creamy.  Here you can see how Madame Batifole on the left is definitely a deeper shade, and Provocative is a little warmer in comparison, almost a bubblegum pink, whereas Batifole appears more magenta in comparison.

Here they are on my (quite strongly pigmented) lips:

I'd say that Madame Batifole is definitely the more dramatic shade to wear, being a little darker and deeper, Provocative is a perfect everyday pink shade, one I'd consider a neutral, but my tolerance to bright shades is quite high, and your mileage might, as they say, vary.

I tried wearing one lip of each to show how the differences aren't, actually, that dramatic.  This is provocative on the top, and Madam Batifole on the bottom. Equally bright, equally pigmented, just one is a  little warmer, and one a little cooler in comparison.

Personally, if I could only have one, I'd have Madam Batifole, as I'm a lover of the dramatic lip colours, but Provocative is a great everyday pink too.  They're both gorgeous, frankly. 

The Fine Print: One's a PR sample, and one was a purchase. It genuinely doesn't matter which one is which.

Mental note: I shall never wear the foundation featured in this post ever again, it looks terrible.  I know.

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