Mac Fabulous Felines Mini Haul

I expect by now you've all seen this new Mac Collection. It's huge. I wanted lots of bits from it but common sense took hold and I scaled my list down considerably to just four items. I also changed my mind right at the last minute about which quad I was going to get... it was going to be the purple (Burmese Beauty if I recall correctly) but at the last minute I decided upon the Leopard Lux one and I'm so glad I did!

Here's what I got:

 So theres the Desires & Devices Liquid Liner, The Leopard Lux quad (yes you do spy a taupe there), the Wildly Refined Lipglass and Aristo-Cat Lipstick.

And here's two swatch photos because I couldn't decide which was the best....

I would especially recommend enlarging the last picture. I think its obvious which swatch is which but the top row is the liner and quad, underneath is the lipglass and under that the lipstick.

The liner is olive green with lots of gold and dark sparkle, the quad features a camel, an orangey gold, a taupe with gold shimmer (although it's really hard to spot) and dark grey. It's really fabulous. Anyway, as soon as they arrived I had to put the eyeshadow and liner to use :) As usual, I'm not very good at doing eye make up so don't expect a fabulous demonstration of the products, this isn't the blog to read if you want tutorials or fabulous examples of artistry ;)

The Leopard Lux quad is really lovely. It's a bit different from the usual neutrals, I love the yellowy shades, the camel and the gold, which make a change from creams and beige.

So have you bought anything from this collection or is it just too meh for you?

My Guerlain Kohl's Collection

I know I've talked about my love for Guerlain's Loose Powder Kohl's before. I'm not sure how many I had at the time I last posted but I know for a fact my collection has expanded a wee bit. I think it's fair to say that these applied "eastern style" (on both the upper and lower waterline) are perhaps my most beloved make up item. I don't wear them every single day, but certainly several times a week and quite often I find myself thinking my look isn't "complete" until I've whipped some on.

So thats the five I have. Left to right is Noir, Bleu, Oriental Metal, Secret Glow and Lagon. Words cannot express how displeasing I find it that the Secret Glow container isn't transparent like the other pots. I don't like it when things don't match. Anyway, here's some swatches in the same order, Noir, Bleu, Oriental Metal, Secret Glow and Lagon.

 My favourites of them all are Noir which looks fabulous on and Oriental Metal which was a Ltd Edition but if you google you might find a few about.

I've raved about these in the past I know but they simply can't be beaten for longevity. I can put this stuff on in the morning, wash my face at bedtime and look in the mirror and it's still there! Now that's fantastic you have to admit!

Applying the two dark colours can get a little messy so I always have a cotton bud to hand or even the Lord & Berry Eraser Pencil on hand to clean up fall out, but it's so worth it. I'll try and get some pictures of all of them on the eye over the next week or so and get those up too.

Next I need the long discontinued Pourpre and Oriental Bronze.

If you haven't tried these yet then you must. At £20 a pop they are not cheap but my top tip is check ebay! I picked up the pale blue lagon on Ebay from a seller who clearly had no idea what it was and described it as a pretty blue eyeshadow in a fancy pot! It was less than a tenner new. ;)

New Hair - again!

Had my hair cut last night, it's not that different but I've gone for heavy swept over fringe. So queue the posey pictures, I couldn't decide which one to show you!

So there you go! You can see from the pics that all the mid brown dye has washed out now, the blonde you can see is the remains of the previous highlights which look fine but you can't see the roots, so at some point between now and my sisters wedding (end of october) I need to work out what to do with the colour.  There's also a fair amount of grey that needs hiding.  What colour shall I do next?

Let's talk about Taupe!

Taupe. Taupe. Taupe. Pooey brown that changed its name by deed poll in a bid to sound more exotic or a beauty secret I simply don't get?

Now before I go on let's just be clear. I don't mind taupe at all. In fact I quite like it. But I don't love it. I don't collect taupe products and rave about them, after all it's just brown isn't it?

It seems to be the holy grail of colours at the moment, taupe nails (you can call them Greige if you like but we all know it's taupe) and taupe eyeshadows, taupe lips (ok, maybe not so much with the taupe lips) but if you read blogs or are interested in make up, you can't have failed to have noticed the current trend.

I know some of my dearest fellow bloggers are taupe lovers and it's not my intention to belittle anyone, in fact, I'm rather more concerned about what I'm missing!

A professional make up artist recently told me he uses taupe for everything, particularly for adding definition to the eye. I tend to use a colour that co-ordinates with the other shades I'm using, but perhaps I'm missing a trick?

I'm 36 now. Until I started blogging I pretty much only ever wore browns on my eyes, in varying shades, now I've discovered there are more colours out there that I can wear I rarely return to my neutral shades so perhaps thats why I've become the "anti taupe" (thanks to Modesty Brown for that moniker).

Many years ago, and I do mean many years ago, at least ten I think, I became obsessed with taupe nail varnishes. My favourite was a Revlon polish called something like Stone, or Pebble, and I had loads of the buggers, I sought them out, it was all I wore, so perhaps thats why I'm not remotely interested in Barry M's Mushroom or Chanel's Particuliere... I've done them to death.

For me it all feels so passe, but it's clearly not, I'm the one out of the loop here, so please! Reignite my passion, tell me your favourite taupes, eyes, nails, whatever and make me love it again so I can join in with the love because now I'm blogging and my love of make up is renewed I can't help but feel I'm missing a trick!

Lancome Teint Miracle Foundation Review

I'm sure most of you have heard about this new foundation launch from Lancome. If not, let me tell you a little bit about it. Teint Miracle claims to be the "holy grail" of foundations. It claims to be super light, water based sheer texture but rich enough to give a perfect complexion.

Where traditional foundations play with the surface colour of skin using pigments, Teint Miracle has new ingredients that hope to aid the absorption and refraction of light.  With 10 times less opaque fillers and almost 40% water it seems incredible that this could create a flawless complexion and recreate skin's natural light. It certainly sounds promising, interesting and impossible! Oh and it also offers SPF of 15.

 Firstly, I love the packaging, it's a lovely glass bottle, elegant, like a perfume bottle with a pump.It goes on so easily, I've stippled, used fingers and a traditional foundation brush, all work well, although stippling is fab and is the method I used in the following pictures. It really does feel weightless on the skin, doesn't dry too quickly to work with and it looks great as I will now (hopefully!) demonstrate.
Here it is in shade and light, applied on it's own, no other make up. Please enlarge for a good look.

 And here it is set with a little powder and with my eye makeup on.

 And a close up of the finish, please feel free to enlarge.

 Well for me I really think this might be my holy grail foundation, great coverage, looks natural, fantastic match to my skin, long wearing (it lasts all day on me with no problems), it's glowy but not oily and it feels like I don't have anything on. I don't have much more to say about it than that, I think in this case the pictures do the talking.

Available from Selfridges now but available nationwide from 1st September and retailing for £25. Go get it!

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar in Hush

Since blogging I've heard a lot of wonderous things about the Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetic Lip Tars. Little tubes of highly concentrated colour, designed to be mixed to achieve your dream shades. For some reason they've not appealled to me at all until recently when I spotted the colour Hush and have been hanging my nose over it a little bit and in the end I had to buy it.

 It's a pretty pinky nude and I took a gamble on it as many nudes don't suit me at all. Luckily this one does. I'm going to show you it on and then talk about my mixed feelings on the product in general.

It's a beautiful colour and the first observation is that it's true what they say, the tiniest bit does go an extremely long way, although, this seems to be part of the hype and I'm not sure why, when I slick a traditional lipstick on it barely uses any product either... It goes on like a cream if you use enough and dries to a matte finish, it's not what I'd call satin, and the finish looks lovely. Matte is absolutely my favourite lip finish so thats fine by me.

However, I've now worn this twice and had two completely different experiences with it. The first not good at all, in fact dreadful. The colour seeped outside the lines of my lips which was not a good look and it was incredibly drying. Within a couple of hours of wearing my lips were chapped and grim looking.

With some trepidation I tried it again, this time there was no bleeding of the colour. As I was on my way out of the door I chucked a lip balm in my bag to help with the dryness I was expecting... except it didn't come this time. It looked good for several hours with no drying at all so I have no idea what was going on the last time, maybe I just didn't put enough on or something.

Anyway, I think the product is nice, Hush is a beautiful colour, but I'll need to try it out a few more times before I think about buying another, it definitely wasn't love at first sight! I bought mine from http://www.love-makeup.co.uk

Yesterday's Fun Challenge

I was chatting to the absolutely immense @kennethsoh on Twitter the other evening about how I rarely wear neutral shadows any more and he was saying how much he loves them but loves to add a twist, a splash of colour. I thought that sounded great and thus the challenge was issued. 9pm the next night, Twitter, post your neutral eye with a twist. It wasn't long before Modesty Brown, Beauty Maze and Get Lippie had all risen to the challenge too. It wasn't a competition, just a sharing of our ideas and it was a whole lot of fun.

I could barely sleep last night my brain was working on ideas so hard! As it happened, I royally cocked it up. I started early afternoon yesterday, thinking I had ages to work on it, but I spent so long on my foundation and sorting out Chloe (who was sat next to me doing her own "make up") that I left myself with 10 minutes to get my eyes done. I messed up my right eye but didn't have time to take it all off and start again as I had to go out (we're house hunting - yay!) so I just had to go with it and accept it was a botch job!

What I used:

Estee Lauder Pure Colour Eyeshadow in Sizzling Copper, Mac Neutral Palette from Spring Forecast (just the bottom left colour), Estee Lauder Pure Colour Eyeshadow in Sugar Biscuit and the Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess Cream Shadow in Aqua Flash.

And this is what I came up with for "neutral with a twist":

 You can see how I cocked it up.. the right eye (left on the pic) liner is so much thicker than the other eye. Just didn't have the time to fix it... especially since those cream shadows don't budge once on. Which generally speaking is a good thing.

So, at 9 last night we all put up our pics to see what we'd all come up with. Everyone had done something beautiful and subtle except me who wouldn't know subtlety if it hit me with a sledgehammer... I was most envious. Still it was great fun to do and I'm hoping that we'll do it again soon with a different theme because it's good to really think about make up and plan a look, and fantastic to see how other people translate the idea.

I'm interested to know, given the details of the challenge, what would you have come up with?