put it on your face

A notification email just appeared in my inbox - MAC’s Love Your Look collection is now available to buy from their website.

This collection is all about eyeshadow. Ten shades in the limited edition “Starflash” finish are included, including a repromote of 2008’s infamous “Smoke and Diamonds” from the original Starflash collection.

I’m curious to see a chartreuse shade called “Rated R” that looks remarkably like the green half of Nars’ cult “Rated R” eyeshadow duo. Could it be that MAC’s seemingly endless supply of cute and original shade names has finally run dry and they’ve resorted to plagiarism? They’ve also called two of the shadows in this collection by very similar names - Fashion and Fashion Groupie.

MAC - if you need a copywriter, I’m so available.

On my wishlist -

Rated R
Smoke and Diamonds
Fashion
Fashion Groupie

Letting men have a say in makeup can result in some interesting outcomes - Specktra’s Miss Pumpkin is one of the luckier ones. Wonky eyeliner, clown cheeks and Herman Munster brows are common results of amateur males let loose with traincases, if the livejournal communities I’ve browsed are anything to go by.

So when I asked my boyfriend what colour eyeshadow I should put on yesterday, I wasn’t totally surprised when he pulled a mischevious face and said “Yellow!”.

I’m not a piker though - it took about 10 minutes but I finally dug out my one yellow eyeshadow and got to work with it.

Here’s what I used:

Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion
Ruby and Millie Eye Colour Yellow 220M
Illamasqua Yearn eyeshadow
MAC Fluidline (Blacktrack)
Maybelline Full’n'Soft mascara

I’m actually really pleased with this. (Apart from the wonky-looking eyeliner in the second picture - it was alright IRL.) The yellow brings out the green colour in my eyes, which I hoped it would. The green accent on the crease helps too.

EDIT - it seems that Boots have seen the error of their ways and are now offering collect in store free whatever size your order! Go to the Boots main page to see the new details.

Here’s a thing - spend £25 on Boots.com and you can have your bits and bobs delivered to your local store. Free of charge.

This is a definite improvement on their old system, where you had to pay the regular delivery charge for this service, however much you spent.

This is a good way of getting your Urban Decay, Clarins, Clinique, Too Faced etc. delivered to you locally for free if you don’t have a counter nearby.

They could have lowered the minimum charge, but let’s be honest, it’s not difficult to think up ways to spend £25 in Boots now, is it?

DIY Stila palette with pans

I found myself in the position of having more Stila shadows than I did slots in my Stila palettes. That’s a pretty luxurious dilemma, I think you’ll agree.

The reason is that I availed myself of the amazing £2.95 Stila Eyeshadow offer at BeautySpotCosmetics. They’re selling Stila pans at £2.95 each, and you will receive a free palette when you order 6 or more shades. A lot of the colours are sold out now. I’m afraid that’s partly my fault. Sorry.

In order to store my new bounty of shadows without displacing my existing ones from their palettes (I got greedy and ordered more than 6 at a time from BeautySpot), I decided to DIY my own palette using an old Boots 17 freebie one that had long been sitting disused at the bottom of my stash.

Read on to find out how I did it. (NB, it’s not using magic.)

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Seedy Pearl and Sumptuous Olive eyeshadow pans

Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat this week, falling victim to a more urgent but far less enjoyable demand on my time - huge numbers of job applications. However, a trip to MAC yesterday has put me back in touch with what is truly important in my life: Eyeshadow.

With the last of my store credit (left over from Christmas 2008 - never let it be said that I’m not thrifty sometimes), I picked up two permanent-line eyeshadows that have been softly purring my name.

Limited Editions have come and gone, but I remain convinced that most of MAC’s best work resides in its permanent collection. That’s why it’s permanent I guess (although it’s the LE stuff that tends to grab headlines). Passing over the warm shadows from Naked Honey and the Mineralize quads from Colour Craft (is it just me, or are these really sheer?), I picked out Sumptuous Olive, and Seedy Pearl. Two shadows that appeal to my long-standing love of all things duochrome.

Click through for swatches and descriptions.

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A few days ago I announced my intention to use and review some of the curly hair specific products gathering dust in my drawer. Summer’s a good time to do this, since walking around with naturally-drying wet hair doesn’t necessarily result in instant pneumonia and icicles hanging from one’s forelock.

So - Curls Rock Shampoo, Conditioner and Curl Amplifier. There are more products in the range (Curl Booster and Leave-in Moisturiser, I believe) but this trio is what I’ll be assessing for you today. Click through for a firm but fair appraisal - and a picture of my “rocked” curls.

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I’ll be frank with you - there is no stone I leave unturned when I’m looking for a bargain, and never more so than when it’s a bargain of a beauty-product nature. I was thirsty the other day, and rather than pay £1 for a bottle of Evian, I nipped into nearby LIDL to get a 19p no-name-brand spring water instead. And while I was there, I thought I’d see if they had any beauty items worth nabbing.

Lo and behold, I found 400ml bottles of Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner at just £1.45 each. They had a mixture of new and old versions, so I picked up the “2nd gen” conditioner in “Hello Hydration” (that’s the blue coconutty one), and for old times’s sake, a bottle of the old pink rose-scented “Silk’n'Shine” shampoo.

A journey back in time was soon to commence…

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When these neon bottles tumbled out of their jiffy bag onto the garden table, my housemate looked up from his laptop and said “What is that?? Is it makeup?”

Yes, it most definitely is!

Neon PM is one of several nail polish trio collections assembled by stylish new British cosmetics brand Models Own. The pink, green and highlighter-yellow shades are all available to buy individually for £5, while the trio together costs £12.

I’m reviewing all three of these brighter-than-bright polishes. Read on to find out if the result is dazzling or simply extreme…

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I went across to Selfridges yesterday for a browse and paid a visit to beautiful Mika at the Illamasqua counter. He mentioned that the Youtube video I posted of my Illamasqua makeover has been getting a lot of notice, and so I thought I’d give it an official home on the blog.

This was a Makeup Lesson, one of Illamasqua’s counter services. It’s an hour long session with an Illamasqua artist, and it’s all filmed on a DVD for you to take away at the end. What you see here is an hour’s worth of footage, edited into a few minutes.

The Makeup Lesson costs £30, which is redeemable on products at the end of the session. There is also a Transformation session, which is a full-on makeover ideal for big nights out.

www.illamasqua.com

On my left forearm - Juliette Has a Gun’s fragrance “Miss Charming”. A rosey-powdery confection of lacy subtlety and gentle blossom. Maybe a little cloying? Drying down, it gathers warmth, and a kind of bright, cheerful optimism. It’s not quite right for me, but with skin chemistry to complement it this would be a sweet daytime scent for work and days out.

On my right forearm - Juliette Has a Gun’s “Lady Vengeance”. I should confess that it’s already in the lead after one look at the label thanks to my fondness for Park Chan Wook’s sophisticated and gritty thriller of the same name. Like the leading lady of this flick, the fragrance is dark and complex, with a spicy topnote peppering a cedary, burnished base with trailing tendrils of musk. It’s ever so slightly rosey-sweet, too, like a distant cousin of “Miss Charming” perhaps, but definitely not a daytime scent. This is one for the evening, a scent to take out on the tiles.

Juliette Has a Gun is a niche perfume house that has been running since 2006, with an international following. There is a third “sister” to the two fragrances I mention here, “Citizen Queen”. Find out more at juliettehasagun.com