put it on your face

Slap Happy and Project Beauty have joined forces to become… The London Beauty Review! Gemma and I decided to unite in order to provide more frequent updates in one place. Slap Happy isn’t going anywhere - everything that’s here will stay for your reference. If I can manage it, I’ll be updating both sites, but as I’m really keen to put my energies into the new project at the moment, please check LBR for the latest news.

www.londonbeautyreview.com

We look forward to seeing you there!

Only the other day I was raving about B’s scent sampler… and now it seems I may have to find a replacement for my new favourites.

In a memo circulating Lush today, B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful is announced to be closing. Staff at the Covent Garden store, where it’s very much business as usual, couldn’t shed any light on the situation, but stocking up on your B favourites is probably a very good idea.

The recession may be apparently drawing to a close, but it seems the knock-on effects are still ravaging the boutique beauty sector.

Jelly Pong Pong has closed its Shorts Gardens store in Central London, while news is all over the blogs about Prescriptives’ demise.

As I wistfully sniff my vial of “Dear John” and flip through the B Never catalogue, I wish the industry a speedy recovery and hope this rumour proves to be untrue.

I’ve just begun a new job. In the streets surrounding my office, there’s a huge Boots with tons of counters, a Space NK, a MAC store, an Aveda store, and a Superdrug.

My self-discipline is in for some severe testing in the coming months!

Remember when Collection 2000 was a crummy budget line that nobody but your granny used? OK maybe I’m being harsh, but there’s no denying that C2000 have turned their image right around in the last few years. Their colour range and packaging are now vying for Rimmel and Boots 17’s low-budget cheap-and-cheerful crown. They’ve revamped everything, with the exception of their cheap prices. And with times as they are, that’s a highly attractive strategy.

Their latest addition is Lasting Perfection, a range of foundations and concealers that claim to last through 16 hours of wear.The foundation comes in a surprisingly weighty and sturdy glass pump bottle, and the concealer is in a tube with a doe-foot wand. There are 6 foundation shades and 4 concealers. It’s a pretty narrow range of pale shades, but with a good spectrum of warm and cool casts within that selection. The foundation retails at 5.38, the concealer at 3.91, and for these prices I wasn’t expecting miracles.

But… I purchased the concealer, and so far I’ve been delighted with it. It has a creamy, easy to blend consistency and the wear is excellent, plenty of cover to get you through the working day and into the evening. I’d go out on a limb and say it’s comparable to MAC’s Select Moisturecover in consistency and coverage. I’m not much of a foundation wearer, but if the quality is similar I’ll definitely be picking up a bottle of the foundation for special occasions.

Verdict: Top marks for this outstanding bargain!

What’s more - you can currently win £700 worth of Collection 2000 products by entering the contest on their website

I picked up this little sampler trio when shopping for anniversary gifts for my boyfriend. It proved to be a great purchase - though not for him, but for me. (He got a George Foreman grill - much more practical.)

These three fragrances are marketed mainly at the fellas, but as with everything B, convention is not high on the list of priorities. There are 3 2ml vials of Ladyboy, Dear John and Dirty fragrances, linked by a ribbon and hung with a sort of brocade tassle. The RRP is £7.85, which seems pricey for three samples, but bear in mind that these are high-quality boutique fragrances with premium ingredients and you may be able to squeeze the price-tag out of your mind.

I should state at this point that I’ve always been somewhat on the fence when it comes to B Never and its parent company Lush. On the one hand there’s a lot of ethical reasons to choose them, and they have some heavenly offerings (<3 Cerydwen's Cauldron, Tramp shower gel, etc.). On the other hand, there's the rather pushy salespeople (who often seem insincere in their friendly attentiveness), the propensity of glitter in the B Never items (glitter in the bath just doesn't seem like a good idea to me in any way), and the fact that the presence of a Lush store announces itself in about a mile radius by its exceptionally strong smell of soap.

Reservations aside, these three scents, they're gorgeous, every one.

Dirty is my favourite. It’s cleaner-than-clean, minty, fresh, uplifting, but gentle and layered too. It contains herbal and woody notes and even a hint of musk that offset the toothpastey hit of the topnote and leave a warmer and more sophisticated scent lingering on the skin.

Dear John is the most “manly” of B’s scents, and the literature accompanying it makes this clear. The notes include coffee, tobacco smoke, lime and pine. I think I smell cedar in there too. On my skin, the smoke smell comes out more like church incense, and is offset by the leafy notes. It’s very unique.

Ladyboy contains the downright baffling combination of banana, violets and seaweed. Don’t ask me how, but it works!

http://www.bnevertoobusytobebeautiful.co.uk

I’m a big fan of cosmetic discounter sites, especially when they’re run by people who genuinely love makeup and have an eye for a good product. DiscountCosmetics4U is a great example, and it’s just got a slick new look. Check it out here and pick up some Benefit, Pop Beauty, Revlon or Too Faced treasures at mini-tiny-extra-tempting prices. (No connection to me, just fond of it and wanted to give it a little prop.)

Quick picture post of my new UD palette. I made some errors with the shade listings yesterday. I was writing from memory, and evidently it’s not as reliable as it should be! Corrected now - see below for pics of the shades and and FOTD using Mildew, Painkiller, Snatch, Flash and Zero.

Below is my FOTD. I smudged Zero pencil along the lashline and then went over it with Flash. Other colours applied with a Sonia Kashuk eyeshadow brush over UDPP.

I was slightly horrified to realise that I’d seemingly missed a whole raft of product launches from Urban Decay during my recent break from the internet. Wandering around Debenhams yesterday I discovered all kinds of new treasures at the UD counter, including the new Book of Shadows Vol 2, which MA Agnes told me had already sold out. She did have plenty of the Primer Potion for skin, a new 6 eyeshadow palette in two designs, and the limited edition metal lipstick case left. There was also a miniatures kit featuring Pocket Rocket gloss, the new version of Skyscraper mascara, primer potion (of course) and others, plus a new collection of 24/7 miniatures. But I was kind of distraught to think that a new BOS had been and gone without me even getting the chance to agonise over buying it.

Looking around online today though, it seems like Debenhams have got these new items before UD even promoted most of them on their US website - what’s that about? With any luck they will make a further appearance closer to the festive season, but at the moment I can’t find hide nor hair of them online with the exception of BOS 2 advertised as an online exclusive to US customers. I wonder if Boots will be taking all these in the run up to Christmas, as they did with last year’s palettes and Book of Shadows 1?

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the palette I picked up. It’s called “Preen”. It has 6 generously sized round pans of shadow and a miniature 24/7 pencil in Zero. There is also a miniature UDPP genie bottle included in the package.

Shades are:

Snatch (a limited edition version of the old rose-taupe Scratch, but with multicoloured glitter)
Painkiller (a shimmer swimming-pool blue)
Flash (iridescent royal purple)
Smog (an olive-bronze colour)
Toasted (neutral plummy mid-brown shimmer)
Mildew (dark shimmer moss green)

The palette is available in two finishes - one with a black cover featuring a peacock design, and an interior with peacock feathers. The other features cartoon sketches of female figures.
Cost was £18 - total bargain!

Check out the items at Debenhams Oxford St, London.

Bourjois caught the wave of long-wearing eye products a couple of years ago with the release of the Clubbing range. Volume Clubbing mascara and Liner Clubbing came in a variety of deep jewelled shades including bronze, teal, blue and deep purple. As the name suggests, the products were intended to provide dramatic looks that would last through a night of sweaty dancing.

The latest addition is Contour Clubbing eye pencil. Removing the cap reveals a coloured “lead” in a surround of black “wood”, a format that recalls Urban Decay’s 24/7 waterproof liners, GOSH’s Velvet Touch waterproof liners, and more long-wear pencils of a similar bent.

Contour Clubbing has been released in the UK in two shades - Blue Remix, a delicious deep metallic teal, and Bleu Neon, a shimmering Royal Blue. Each costs £4.20 (rrp) and you can take advantage of a 3 for 2 deal currently on at Superdrug to try them both (and something else - recommend Liner Effect mascara).

Both are powerfully pigmented, although Blue Remix has the edge, gliding on to provide a dense hit of mesmerising colour with a single stroke. Bleu Neon is slightly less rich and reflective, but can boast a similar effect when layered once or twice.

The waterproof and long-wearing claims are definitely accurate. I haven’t worn these to a club, but I can confirm that after a few seconds drying, these pencils grip the skin with a smudge-resistant tenacity that’s hard to beat. They definitely outperform Urban Decay’s 24/7 liners which are more than twice the price.

There are also a black shade, two shades of grey and a green, which are currently on sale only in the US market. Let’s hope the full range appears over here soon.

Verdict: A powerful hold and rich, dramatic colour make these pencils a steal at just £4.20 each. Buy both!

A while back, I ordered the Pixi Smoky Eye Beauty Kit online, from discounter Brand Alley. Or at least, I thought I did. It arrived this morning, looking smaller and much more purple than I had imagined.

There seem to be two products made by Pixi with the same name, both masquerading as a smoky eye palette. One is green, has a double ended brush sitting in the compact and 8 deep jewelled shades. That was the one I ordered. Voici:

Then there is a smaller purple one, the size of a credit card, which has 6 eye shades and two pans of primer/concealer. There is also a brush included, but no space for it inside the palette. That’s the one that turned up on my doorstep. Behold!

But, you know, a palette is a palette and maybe it’s good to save on some handbag real estate. The primers might be really great. So I decided to keep it and do a review.

First off, the colours:

There’s a matte black, a deep shimmery green, a shimmery plum (with a surprising and very dominant base colour of brick red), a cooler deep shimmer mauve, a shimmer royal blue, and a shimmer gunmetal/taupe colour.

There’s also the two-ended brush, which is wonderful quality. One side is a soft eyeshadow blender brush, and the other is a beautiful gentle push brush.

As the choice of brushes suggests, this palette can be used for full-on smoky eyes, or for statement eyeliner. I think I prefer the latter, and the royal blue in particular is an incredible eye-popping shade when worn this way. Some of the colours, particularly the brick red/plum, just look way too intense when applied all over the lid. The effect is less “smoulder” and more “bruise”. Or “insomnia”.

Despite lacklustre reviews on Makeup Alley, which I think are for the green palette, I found these shadows very pigmented with a decent staying power, especially when combined with the primer/concealer; I still can’t work out which it’s meant to be. It comes in two shades, which suggests concealer to me - presumably you blend the two together to match your skin? (Provided you are very pale and Caucasian that is, if not, tough, apparently.) It’s decent enough stuff, a little oily-feeling though. I wouldn’t trust it to hold a smoky eye in place solo, I’d want to draft in a more heavyweight primer like UDPP or Too Faced Shadow Insurance.

Overall, this is a sweet little pocket palette that would make a decent addition to your stash. However the fact that the included brush doesn’t fit in the palette makes its use pretty limited as an on-the-go product, unless you are very deft at applying and blending dark shadows with your fingers. Which is no easy task, especially on the top deck of a London bus. I can attest to that.