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Wednesday 30 September 2015

Pixi Skintreats Rose Oil Blend

 

There has been a lot of Pixi Skintreats love in the Lippie household recently, and the Rose Oil Blend is currently my favourite facial oil.  Based on a sweet almond oil base, with jojoba, dog-rosehip, geranium and damascene rose oils, it's a very light texture, so sinks into the skin easily, and doesn't make my combination-oily skin greasy.  It smells only gently of roses, and isn't perfumed artificially, it's great.



I find it really soothing, I've used it on skin that's been irritated by other products and it's helped a lot.  I find it really lovely to use it mixed in with a little foundation to give a glow to the skin.  I've also used it with ColorFX Custom Color Drops foundation (look out for a review of that soon), and it was very good, my favourite way to use it.  I also use it as a serum underneath my moisturiser



If you love oils as much as I do, you'll like this one a lot.   Best of all, Pixi Beauty are launching into Marks & Spencer, and their mid-price ranged skincare products are a real (cheapish) treat.  Pixi Skintreats Rose Oil Blend will cost you £26, and the rest of the range is priced similarly.  Look out for more Pixi Skintreats reviews soon.

The Fine Print: Gift.


This post: Pixi Skintreats Rose Oil Blend originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

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Tuesday 29 September 2015

First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance Pads


If you've spent any time hanging around my instagram page, then you'll have seen these on my daily skincare routine posts a lot recently.  I do love a pre-soaked acid pad, they're usually thinner and more textured than a cotton wool pad, and so you get a good amount of toner on your skin, rather than soaked up by the cotton wool.

First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance Pads are a bargain compared to my usual preferred pads  of choice (Zelens  PHA+ Pads, for reference), costing around £22 for sixty, rather than £65, and they're good and tingly all the same.  Containing a blend of lactic and glycolic acids alongside licorice extract, hyaluronic acid and lemon peel oil, these offer a gentle daily exfoliation, and they're alcohol free.

To use them most effectively, you simply wipe them over freshly cleansed skin and this both helps remove any dead, flaky skin patches, and also helps prepare your skin for any serums or moisturisers that you apply afterwards.  Cleansers are generally alkaline, and washing your face strips away some of your natural acid mantle, so using an acid-based toner will help bring your skin back into balance and your skin will be more easily able to absorb the active ingredients in your skincare.  I love them for making my skin soft and smooth on a daily basis. These pads are quite wet, and I find that giving them a little squeeze before applying to the skin will stop them leaving your face soaking wet.

You must use a sunscreen on a daily basis when using any acidic skincare though, no ifs ands and buts about it.  The worst thing about First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance Pads is that they're a little difficult to get hold of, I had to get mine from Amazon.  Why aren't they in Boots and/or Superdrug?  I wish they were!


The Fine Print: Purchase


This post: First Aid Beauty Facial Radiance Pads originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

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Monday 28 September 2015

Omorovicza Blue Diamond Eye Cream

  I have trouble with eyecreams, the area around my eyes is probably the most sensitive on my face, and many, many eyecreams sting as a result.  However, even if they don't sting, with most of them, I find little to no effect of using them, so I use them for a week or so then usually completely forget about using them at all.

However, I'm coming to the age now where the lines around my eyes are getting more and more noticeable, and less ignorable. Dehydration lines show up quickly, and leave slowly, and yes, I look a bit older than I used to as a result.  Now, I'm quite lucky in that I don't have particularly dark circles, and I don't have huge eye bags, but the lines themselves are beginning to become an issue for me, and I've definitely reached the point where I can't really ignore eye creams any more.  So I decided not to ignore this one, Blue Diamond Eye Cream, by Omorovicza when it arrived.


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Sunday 27 September 2015

What's on my face this week? 27.09.15


I'm coming to the end of my "testing phase" with a few products right now, and to celebrate I'm going to be having a bit of a skincare week on the blog from tomorrow, so look out for some in-depth reviews from then.  In the meantime, here's some pictures of the routines I've been using.  Above is Monday's faceful, I'd dug out some old Aesop faithfuls from the stash, and you'll be seeing quite a bit more of these now we're heading into cooler weather.


Tuesday's face was mainly blue - I brought my Serozinc back out of semi-retirement - and this was a nice routine.


Wednesday brought back Bioderma, no one does these soothing and healing sprays (especially good for skins prone to redness as mine is) like the French skincare brands.

More after the jump.


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Friday 25 September 2015

Ren Flash Rinse 1 Minute Facial


Ren is one of those brands I like, that I’m glad exists, that do nice products, but for some reason, I don’t really love them.  I can’t put my finger on why I don’t love them, but they lack a certain … USP for me. 

That they’re “clean” products is something I appreciate – their ingredient lists are on the small side, which is always a bonus – but they’re rather faceless to me, and I admit that I find their range a little bewildering as a result. It's a large offering, and I never know which products are meant to go together, or where to start looking for my particular skin concerns. 

I occasionally find myself reading Ren labels and thinking; "Ooh, that sounds all sciencey and stuff, but I wonder, what does it actually do?"  A body cream of theirs a few years ago, boasting of biosaccharides on the label, might be responsible for this mindset. I remember thinking when I picked it up: “Surely that’s just sugar?  Is that … good  … in a body cream I've bought because it smells of roses?”  There was no explanation of why it the sugar was even thought mentionable, never mind mentioning what a sugary body might be good for (and if you're not thinking that my mind has just headed straight into the gutter now, then you've not really been paying attention to the blog over the years, frankly). Sometimes, simple packaging can be too simple.  If you name a product after an ingredient (especially when it’s a common ingredient and you’re just using the scientific name for it), then jolly well tell me why it’s so important for you to have done so, plz.

Anyhoo, don't worry, there's a product review coming, I haven't forgotten:  Ren Flash Rinse One Minute Facial.  It’s not a rinse, so why call it one?  It’s also not that easy to rinse, so doubly confusing.  You do get to the rinse stage quickly, I guess, but surely “Flash Facial” or “One Minute Facial” would be better.  One Minute Facial  is a nice, soft textured, grainy aqua-shaded balm, which, when used as a mask, promises to leave you revitalised and rejuvenated.  You simply apply it to cleansed skin, dampen it down to activate the Vitamin C in the formula, leave it for a minute and then rinse it off and revel in your new lovely soft skin.  In theory, it sounds amazing, and so it could well be, but this product turned out to be just a little too revitalising and rejevenating in my case. It burnt my face!  It’s my fault, actually, I knew it probably wouldn’t suit my (actually much less than it used to be) sensitive skin just from reading the label, but I went and used it anyway. Buffoon, thy name is Lippie.

The product is a coconut oil balm base with added sugars for both chemical and physical exfoliation (it's a bit scratchy), ascorbic acid (vitamin C), frankincense and some plant-seed oils.  I’d read a few reviews mentioning the smell, but I didn’t find it unpleasant at all, I suspect most of the other users are reacting to the carrot-seed oil (which can smell a bit ferrous or earthy if you’re not expecting it), in my case, I thought it was rather light and apple-y, rather pleasant, actually.  It was easy to use, though I used a spray to activate the ascorbic acid, rather than my damp fingers as directed, because I didn’t want to move a sugar-scrub around my face too much – sugar can really be an irritatant to redness-prone skin – then rinsed as I would any other physical exfoliator (ie very carefully).

And, boy!  Was I impressed with the results?  Yes, I flipping was! My skin was smooth, even textured and not red in the slightest. Beautiful. My pores appeared to have disappeared (that’s an odd sentence construction, but I’m sure you know what I mean), and my skin, indeed, felt like velvet, I couldn't stop stroking it after, it was such a stonking result.  I thought that by following it with a dab of May Lindstrom Blue Cocoon Balm, knowing Flash Rinse to be a highly active product, all would be well.

But it wasn’t.  My lovely new, velvety and evenly textured, poreless beauty lasted around 20 minutes, when I began to think I was having a hot flash.  I was red. Very, very, very red.  So red I had to break out the Dermablend to cover up how red I was. I was redder than David Cameron being presented with a Danepak gift basket for services to bacon marketing.  Just perfect before a lunch-date with my beloved, no?  The red eventually died down after an hour or two (thank you, May Lindstrom), but worse was to come.  The following day, raised red spots on my cheeks followed, alongside intense itching, meaning I had to completely swap out my skincare to my emergency kit, which is essential oil-free, fragrance-free and bland, bland, bland.  It has subsided after a few days, but I won't be using this again for a while, if ever, tbh.

I want to make it clear that this was not the fault of the product. It does say, quite clearly on the packaging that it’s not suitable for the "most sensitive" of skins, but it has literally been years since I had a inflammation this bad. I’ve spent years acclimatising my face to AHAs, BHAs, Malic- Glycolic- and Lactic acids, not to even mention even retinol, so these days I wouldn’t even dream of thinking of my face as anything even slightly approaching the “most" sensitive any more.  Still, every day is a school day, and you live and learn, and a bunch of other cliches re making a silk purse out of a sows ear and that.  My skin is still sensitive, it's just not as reactive as it used to be.  Not a bad lesson to learn, but a very sore one, admittedly.

Ren Flash Rinse One Minute Facial is widely available and usually costs around £32.  If you have sensitive skin however, avoid it like the plague.  I tried it with a bunch of other people, and was the only one to have an adverse reaction.  It really wasn't the product, it was me ;)


The Fine Print: PR Sample

This post: Ren Flash Rinse 1 Minute Facial originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

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Tuesday 22 September 2015

On being an "older" beauty blogger


 


My name is Get Lippie. I'm 45, and I’m tired.  I’m tired of “older” being beauty industry shorthand for “ugly”.  I’m tired of being nagged about my age by the products I use.  I’m tired of constantly reading the same old (ha!) messages all the time which imply that the only quality women have worth venerating is “youth”.  I’m tired of toothpastes and deodorants, and foot creams and handcreams, and shampoos and lipbalms, and practically everything else on the planet using the message: “don’t get old, you’ll be worthless (bitch)” to create panic and stimulate demand for products.

 As I get older, it (the messaging) enrages me more.  Because it’s a lie.  I repeat: It. Is. A. Lie.  When I was younger, I was terrified of old age – turning 30 was horrific for me, I was “officially old” according to the adverts, and the media I was consuming, and I spent the last couple of years of my twenties alternately panicking at the thought of being over the hill, and raging about how “unfair” it was that we have to get “old”.  I was a fucking idiot.  Two years of my life wasted panicking about an arbitrary deadline imposed entirely about someone else’s idea of how women “should” look.  Young.  And worrying that being over thirty (and worse, being over thirty and single) is to be a waste of flesh.  We use old in the beauty industry and media to scare people, to create panic,  to force people not into making peace with their age, but to worry about it.  And as the end result of that fear, that worry and that panic created by the beauty industry itself is (besides, of course, them offering the “cure”) is to make women hate themselves.  To remove the comfort of liking the skin that one is in.  Worse, to make being comfortable in your own skin seem … incongruous.  Eccentric.  Insane. Freaky.

Women start to panic about being old in their late teens.  I see it on Twitter/Instagram and Facebook all the time, young, beautiful, intelligent, humorous women worrying about turning 20/25/30/35 whatever, “this time tomorrow, I’ll be old …” because all the messaging we have in the media is that to be old is to barely be a woman at all. It’s depressing.  And heartbreaking. And infuriating that these women are both beating themselves up over an arbitrary number, and writing off the hundreds of women they know who are older than them as “worthless”, however inadvertently.  Anti ageing products fuel this panic in younger women, and infuriates some of us elderly bitches to boot.

Older women are not ugly, or worthless or useless.  We are, however, invisible.  Oh yes, there’s Jane Fonda, and Helen Mirren. Well, yippee! Bully for them.  But for every Jane Fonda or Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, oh sod it, MILLIONS of … ordinary … women in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even beyond who will never be Jane Fonda, or Helen Mirren.  Don’t even want to be those people.  Don’t care about them.   There are millions of us, but where are we properly represented in the beauty industry?  If you’re not under 25, or haven’t had the genetic blessings (and good cosmetic surgery) to still be considered a (freak!) sex-symbol in your sixties, then you don’t exist.  We use teenagers without a line on their faces to sell wrinkle-cream to older women, then photoshop the hell out of the pictures because even being young, increasingly, isn’t good enough, you also have to be pore-free, line-free, and smooth, smooth, smooth like an egg, only without the personality.  The more we make the images behind the products unreal, the less people will believe the claims for your product.  I am never going to look like the woman in the advert because I used a £35 facecream, and I don’t care how much science went into the pot. I never, ever will.  And don’t use a sixty-something “sex-bomb” in a patronising attempt to appeal to “older” ladies because I won’t look like them, either.  My mum might though.

I don’t want to be younger, I want to not be scared of getting old.  I want my products to stop feeding that fear.  I want adverts to stop telling me that "old" women need to be less like themselves to be acceptable.   No face cream (or deodorant, or toothpaste, or even bloody foot cream for that matter) is going to stop me being the age I am.  I want to be the best me I can be.  I’m happy looking like me, for all I resemble an over-stuffed sofa with a smacked arse in place of a face.  Frankly, the younger, thinner, and inarguably much better-looking me was an even bigger pain in the behind than I am now – I don’t think I’d like her that much these days, and I really didn’t like her all that much at the time, now I come to think about it.

Ageing is a process.  We’re all of us getting older, right from the day we’re born. It’s inexorable.  You’re going to be “ Let’s make the inevitable products required to make ageing less of a chore (because it’s tiring enough just being old without added worry about looking old), and make the message behind them positive, not negative. 

 Beauty doesn’t need a time limit.

... and breathe ...


This post: On being an "older" beauty blogger originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

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Monday 21 September 2015

Christian Louboutin Velvet Matte Lip Colour in Survivita Review


Does the world need a £60 lipstick? More specifically, do I need a £60 lipstick?  Objectively, of course, the answer is no.  I have a bucketful of Guerlain Rouge G's which were £32.50 each (though I remember when they were £28, and rather eye-watering then) and a drawer of Tom Fords, which are £38 each.


However, when Christian Louboutin launched his super-luxe lip colour collection, offering 38 lipstick shades in three different formulations at a whopping £60 each, I was at least slightly intrigued as to what makes a Christian Louboutin lipstick worth almost twice as much as the two of the other most expensive formulations widely available right now.  So I bought one.  Like you (okay, I) do.

The inside of the cap is Louboutin red to match the flocking on the box
Having seen (but not been able to swatch) the different shades at the official press launch last month, I selected Survivita in the Velvet Matte formulation.  A cool, cool red that has a hint of pink, I selected the matte formula because, frankly, if I'm paying £60 for any cosmetic product, then I want it to last.  So, did it pass the Lippie test?  Click through to find out (warning, picture heavy)

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