Guerlain Christmas 2014 - Petrouchka Eye and Blush Palette

Inside the rather forbidding oversize lacquered black packaging of the Petrouchka Eye & Blush Palette sits an incredibly pretty compact:

Fastened with a red silk bow inspired by the ballerinas who in their turn inspired the scent of Coque D'or, the palette is very pretty indeed.  Again following the red and gold theme of this year's Guerlain Christmas even the accessories are themed:

Inside the palette are five shades of metallic eyeshadows and four shades of blush:

Firstly, a closer look at the shadows:

From the top we have a metallic wheat shade, a pale gold, a light copper, a deep bronze, and a chocolate brown. The bottom three are deeply pigmented and buttery soft - almost creamy - when applied, but the two lighter shades have a slightly lighter colour pay-off, and I found them a little scratchier (and patchier) to apply:

That said, if you're a warmer-toned individual than I am, this is an incredibly versatile and beautiful collection of shades.  Just be aware you'll need to work harder with the lighter colours when applying.

Below the eyedshadows, we have four blush shades, two warmer (at the bottom) and two cooler at the top.  They swatch quite well, I've generally found the Guerlain blush formula quite hard and difficult to work with, but these are a nice texture:

Clockwise from top left there's a pale pink, a deep rose, a versatile coral, and a tawny peach,  This should cover quite a variety of skin tones - personally, I tend to tone my blusher along the lines of whatever lipstick I'm wearing that day - cool cheeks with cool lips, and warm cheeks with warm lips, so this is quite versatile.

I like that they've not wasted space in the palette itself for the (pretty but rather useless, as always) tools, every inch of the palette space is used for colour, and the tools are kept in the velvet slipcase, which fits both the palette and the tools very well.

If you're a Guerlain completist (and I freely admit I am), this isn't quite as good as the Liu collection from two years ago (which I'm still kicking myself for not picking up at the time, believe you me), but it's a million times better than the Crazy Paris eye palette of 2013.

Anything caught your eye?

The Fine Print: Products featured this week are a mixture of PR Samples and private purchases.

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Guerlain Christmas 2014 - Mereorites Perles D'Etoile

Christmas isn't Christmas (yes, I do know it's October, bear with me) without Guerlain's limited edition Meteorites.  After what was - for me - the relative disappointment with the design of 2013's Crazy Paris collection, this year's Coque d'Or collection is a return back to the beautiful design that I associate with Guerlain's Christmas collection.

The entire collection is themed around gold and red, and the Meteorites follow that right through from the gorgeous scalloped design around the tin, to the pretty red bow on the lid, this is a cute and pretty edition.

The bow is reflected again on the inside, on the red puff, which is an adorable touch.  The pearls are a bit different this year, however:

I can only see two colours instead of the usual five, and they're quite a bit warmer than the pearls in the last couple of editions, being heavily skewed towards the gold side:

There is, however, a surprising cranberry pink pearl in the tin this year:

I can see lilac, cranberry pink, bronze and white gold.  The perles are the regular size this year, but they are incredibly pigmented in comparison to previous years:

If you're worrying that this will make them unwearable, don't worry, the cranberry pink beads are few and far between, and the lilac and white gold/champagne shades are more in evidence in the tin than any other colour.  The coppery-bronze pearls add just a little shimmer to stop the powder from looking too flat or matte on the skin.

All in all this years perles are a winner for me, how about you?

Guerlain Meterorites Perles d'Etoile are available in-store right now at £37.50.

The Fine Print: Products shown this week are a mixture of purchases and PR samples.

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Coming this week ... Guerlain Christmas 2014!

... #It's the most wonderful time of the year ...

Nothing says Christmas in the Lippie household like the arrival of the Guerlain Christmas collection!  Over the course of this next week we'll be featuring all the picks of the beautiful, beautiful Coque d'Or collection.  Keep your eyes peeled!


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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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