Urban Decay Black Eyeliner Collection

To say I like a bit of black eyeliner would be a mild understatement ... alongside my red lipsticks, I think a decent black liner would be my desert island item.  Well, alongside a full set of Zelens skincare, and a few bottles of Guerlain that is, but I digress ...

Anyhoo, I was superhappy when Urban Decay revamped their black eyeliner collection a few months ago,  Here we have 24/7 Velvet Liner in Black Velvet, a blacker version of their normal 24/7 eyeliner formula,  Ink for Eyes, a waterproof liquid liner, All Nighter, a deeply pigmented twist-up pencil, and a pot gel-liner.

Black Velvet is a sooty black liner, which is very soft and easily blendable.  Ink for Eyes isn't the blackest liquid liner that I have (that would be Illamasqua Abyss, which is unmissable), but it has a lovely thin felt-tip style applicator that is very easy to control.  All Nighter is probably my favourite of the four, being soft and incredibly black, and the nib is perfect for tightlining the upper lash line.  This simply does not budge once applied.  It's not quite as blendable as Black Velvet, but it's great for getting a strong graphic liner look, and it's excellent on the waterline.  It turns out that I'm not a massive fan of pot liners (they tend to dry out too quickly for my tastes, but this could be more of a reflection of the fact that I have about 30 eyeliners in regular rotation, lets face it) generally, but this is a good, highly pigmented and deeply black one.

All in all a fab and really very useful little collection of black liners. There's one for all tastes, and they all deliver.  I'll be backing up my All Nighter, I can tell you that ...

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In the Pink – with Bleach London DIY Dip Dye and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL

By Tindara

Readers, I’m having a mid life crisis. As I write this there is a glinting sheaf of pink visible at the base of my Sunday morning top knot. Yes, in an effort to stave off middle-aged boredom I have dip-dyed my hair pink, and it took some doing. I have very dark hair, with little white or grey. Very lucky at 43, you might say, but since my somewhat failed teen experiments with bleaching, dyeing and straightening, I had resigned myself to my natural black-brown frizzy curls. Until earlier this year, when I started getting Keratin treatments on my hair.

Now I don’t love poker straight hair at all, like most people these days I favour a natural looking wave and after a week or two this is exactly how my keratin treated hair behaves. There is less body, definitely, but it has a nice shiny easy wave to it. And even better, I don’t really have to do anything to it except comb it and put a tiny blob of serum on it every few days. So far, so easy. But then I kept seeing people with great colours on their hair, marshmallow and pomegranate and mermaid blues and minty greens. A close friend dip-dyed her blond bob deep pink and purples and I was introduced to Bleach London by a friend on a forum. So pretty soon, I was dreaming of rainbow tresses, mermaid stripes, blue tips, pink and apricot waves, I wanted pastel colour, dammit.

I was due to have a keratin treatment in a few weeks and had done some research and knew I had to bleach and dye before the treatment. When I bleached my hair, I realised that pastel was going to be a bit of a task. I used Bleach London’s DIY dip dye kit. It was really easy to use, I recommend it, the blending lotion that you apply before the bleach really helped get a gradual effect from lighter to dark. Since my hair is so dark though, my first attempt made the ends a lovely auburn. This look great on it’s own, but it didn’t satisfy my need for bright colour. And when I put Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL Purple Punk over the auburn, it turned the ends a bright but deep cherry red, which was lovely but not exactly what I wanted.

After a couple of weeks letting my hair rest, I used another Bleach London kit to bleach the ends again. They turned out slightly brassy and wouldn’t really take a pastel dye; I tried Bleach London’s Rose and it just went from candyfloss pink to light orange within a few hours. So I chose Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL Shocking Pink to go over the top. Hey presto, proper bright pink ends. Probably, too soon, I had my usual keratin treatment with Alterity Studio in Covent Garden, and now I have straight hair with pink ends. My dip-dyed ends are now soft and shiny, and considering how worried I was that my hair might break after all the bleaching and dyeing, I think it looks pretty good. Not the neatest dip dye in the world but good.

I will continue to use a deeper colour while this keratin treatment wears off as bleaching can remove the effect of the keratin, I understand. I was also told by the lovely Carmen at Alterity Studio that it’s not recommended to dye your hair within two weeks of a keratin treatment either, so be warned, if you’re going to get some colour in your life. I may head to Bleach London and get something more pastel done before my next keratin treatment. If you want to see the results follow @Tindara on Twitter or @tindaras on Instagram.

Bleach London DIY Dip Dye is £7 and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL is £4.

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Autumnal Tones from Barry M A/W Collection

By Emily

I've given in. I will no longer shiver because of my bare ankles every morning, I will not shun my cosy coats and thick socks because I refuse to believe it is no longer summer. You know, October.

Now that I've accepted it, I am ready to embrace all things Autumnal and Wintery - fireworks! Matching gloves and scarves! Bobble hats!

Every time I pop to a well-know chemist, I take a trip to the Barry M section just to see what's new! A few weeks ago I picked up some colours from their new Autumn/Winter collection which has a distintly spicy feel. My favourites (and the ones that ended up in my basket) were Cardamom and Paprika. Paprika is a really unusual reddy-brown. Not unlike the colour of a brick. Cardamom is a beautiful warm green, the likes of which I've not seen before. They are good at their colours those Barry M chaps.

Now, I have just moved house (STRESS) and it's the busiest season at work (DOUBLE STRESS) so I haven't really had much time for my nails in the last few weeks. But last night I treated myself to two coats of Paprika...it goes in really thick and glossy (as do all Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine polishes) and then because I am incapable of having one-colour nails I went for a quick diagonal effect on one feature nail using the striping tape and the Cardomom colour. Finally I added a line of simple gold studs by IZ Beauty of London, because I can't resist!


Are you a fan of Barry M? What's your favourite colour from their collection?


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Precious Oils: The Body Shop Camomile Silky Cleansing Oil

By Laurin

Two weekends ago, I moved house. In the process of flinging my entire life into twenty cardboard boxes, I uncovered several boxes of old photos I’d dragged across the ocean at some point. Baby pictures, holiday snaps, even old pictures of my grandparents looking impossibly glamorous in the 50’s. I have carried these with me since the day fourteen years ago that I left my hometown with a one-way ticket to London and two bursting suitcases. The Delta check-in agent sweetly looked the other way when I heaved them onto the baggage scales.

I am eighteen in the picture above and I am terrified of fat: both of eating it and of putting it on my face. These are the days of fat-free Snackwell cookies and Molly McButter, a vile yellow dust that promises to taste as delicious as butter, but really just looks like an over-excited daisy got frisky with your jacket potato when you weren’t looking, leaving nothing behind but a sad smear of pollen. I load my plate with plain steamed vegetables and lather my face with a Neutrogena gel that makes my skin feel as though it’s shrunk in the dryer. It makes sense to me at the time. How can you fight oil with more oil?

Thankfully, times have changed. I figured out five years ago that plant oil on my face (and in my mouth, for that matter) is nothing to fear. In 2009, picked up a copy of India Knight’s The Thrift Book and caught wind of DHC Deep Cleansing Oil. Since then, I have been devoted to the oil cleansing method in general and DHC in particular. When I first began using it, it was only available through the DHC website, which made it a difficult sell to anyone without £20 to punt on a facial cleanser that resembled a salad dressing. Happily since then, it’s now more widely available, but I do appreciate that it is still not easily found outside of major metropolitan areas.

The Body Shop, on the other hand, is everywhere. When I was eighteen and snacking on iceberg lettuce leaves during English class, the Body Shop held an exotic appeal, largely because we didn’t have one in Mobile. Since moving to London though, I mostly associate them with fruit-scented lotions for adolescents and Christmas gift sets that inevitably end up gathering dust in a cupboard. My loss, really, for they actually have some excellent products.

The Camomile Silky Cleansing Oil is one of them. I pinched a bottle from Lippie Mansions a few months back and I’ve been using it as my morning cleanser ever since. For £10, it’s seriously good stuff. It’s a paler yellow and slightly runnier than my beloved DHC, but no less effective at removing make-up and leaving your face feeling clean and super-soft. If I’m using it at night, I massage a single pump into my face with my fingers for about thirty seconds, then use cotton wool to remove my eye make-up. I then remove the rest of the oil with a hot flannel. If I remember, I use the Body Shop Facial Roller after removing my eye make-up, but before the hot flannel.

The complaints I’ve heard from those who don’t get on with oil cleansing fall largely into two camps: first, that the oil always runs through their fingers and onto their clothes or down the drain, and second, that it ends up in their eyes and gives them blurry vision. All I can say is that the former has never been a problem for me (perhaps I have exceptionally well-arranged fingers), and the latter stopped happening after a few uses.

Will the Body Shop oil be a permanent replacement for the DHC on my bathroom shelf? Honestly, no. But my preference is largely aesthetic, not based on effectiveness. I like the dark, greeny-gold colour of the DHC, and I like the fact that it smells faintly of olive oil, allowing me to pretend I’m a Greek goddess, rubbing my alabaster skin with precious ointments. But I’d happily buy it if it was the week before payday and I’d run out of DHC. And I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone who wanted to try oil cleansing without splashing the cash for the DHC. It’s a tenner. Take the punt.

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Lipsticks of the (last) Week

Autumn is really kicking in now (anyone else put their central heating on? No?  Just me then?), so my lipsticks have taken a turn for the deeper and darker again ...

Here we have (l-r):
Vincent Longo's Americana,
Guerlain KissKiss in Cherry Pink,
Bare Minerals Lead The Way,
Revlon Colourstay Opulent Garnet
Revlon Colourstay Divin Port Wine
OCC Matte Lip Tars in NSFW & Strumpet
and Clinique's Superbalm in Black Honey

Here's how they swatch:

Lovely, lovely saturated colours.  Americana is a tomato red, cherry pink is a glorious soft purple with a hint of gold shimmer, Lead the Way is a deep fuchsia with purple overtones.  Opulent Garnet is precisely what is says on the label, and Divine Port Wine is a rich deep wine shade.  I do find both of these quite drying in wear though, so load up on lipbalm if you need it.  I mix NSFW 50:50 with Strumpet for a deep and longlasting pinked red that's my favourite colour of the moment, and Black Honey is an unusual sheer purple-taupe that just adds a hint of depth to my natural lip colour.

Here's how the individual OCC colours swatch.  Strumpet is a cool fuchsia, and NSFW is a bright, bright fire engine red.  Individually, I find both of them a little difficult to wear, but mixed together makes a gorgeous neutral, totally opaque red with just a slight hint of pink, which is easier for me to wear (I keep an old lipbalm tin around so I can carry some ready-mixed around with me for touchups during the day):
 

What's been your fancy this week?

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Lipstick Queen Silver Screen Collection

Lipstick Queen - long one of Get Lippie's favourite lipstick brands - has brought out a companion collection to the gorgeous Velvet Rope collection they brought out last year.  Velvet Rope was a capsule collection of feather-light matte shades in beautiful deco-style packaging.  

In the same (albeit silver this time) beautifully heavy packaging, Silver Screen is a collection of highly-pigmented glossy shades, in a tightly edited collection of BRIGHT colours.

Here we have Made It (a deep wine), Have Paris (glorious crimson) and Stella! (an insanely bright in the bullet purple).

The texture is whisper-light, and even though they're a glossy formulation, they're not at all waxy or greasy on the lips.  Whilst less pigmented than Velvet Rope, and on the sheer side in comparison too, they're not unpigmented:

As you can see on skin, even the frankly terrifying in the bullet Made It and Stella! are both wearable shades, even if Stella! is still on the  ... "editorial" ... side.  I'm sure I can pull it off with the right hair and makeup around it though!

Silver Screen lipsticks cost £35 each and are available from Space NK now, available in seven shades, including nudes and pinks.  You'll love them.

The Fine Print: PR Samples.

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Aveda Shampure Body Lotion, Body Wash and Compostition Oil

By Luke

There aren’t many of us that haven’t been seduced by at least one of Aveda's products. With their natural ingredients, and superb scents in just about everything they do, there was a collective sigh of relief when Aveda first arrived on the scene in the UK, as they proved that harsh chemicals and synthetics in hair products were unnecessary for healthy hair.

It took me a long while to jump on board with Aveda, but when I coloured my hair bright red recently I got involved with the excellent Madder Root shampoo and conditioner. Anyone who has had a similar colour knows that red hair dyes are notorious for fading fast, not to mention they're prone to looking a little lacklustre after few washes, so anything that helps stop those has to be a plus. And the Madder Root range from Aveda really does help and, as a bonus, it smells amazing.

However, Shampure is perhaps the most famous, and most-loved, shampoo range from Aveda. With its extremely distinctive scent that is now synonymous with the brand, it is incredibly popular. This year saw the 25^th anniversary of Shampure, and they've celebrated with the introduction of body products and oils all featuring the distinctive and much-beloved Shampure fragrance. Well, I say "fragrance", but it is actually the result of blending over 25 pure flower and plant extracts, including ylang ylang, lavender, and petit grain, all of which are said to bring on a sense of well being and calm. This is just as well really, as this is the signature scent of all Aveda salons around the world!

The Shampure hand & body wash is sulphate free and has the benefit of added organic Babassu nut oil which can apparently create a naturally cooling sensation on the skin which can help with relaxation and insomnia, I love this. The body lotion is hydrating and easy to apply, and is perfect for keeping that gorgeous Shampure scent with you throughout the day.

Even more recently they have added the Shampure fragrance to the ranks of their superb multi use composition oils. These are credited as being beneficial for body, bath, nails and scalp, and the universal oil can be used for just about everything except cooking (like you'd cook with a scented oil!) and obviously, it smells incredible! It's lighter - and more runny - than the other composition oils in Aveda's range, but it's fabulous for treating dry ends on longer hair, and makes a great addition to a hot bath that will both scent your skin and home beautifully. Use it on your scaly bits too, so if you've ever wanted beautifully scented elbows, now's your chance ... Now, Aveda, sort out a Shampure candle, will you?

Aveda Shampure bath and body, and composition oil available now. Prices range from £17 to £23.

The Fine Print: PR Samples.

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