January Favourites

So these are the products that I have really enjoyed using this last month, 2 skincare and 2 makeup, seems about the right balance to me.

Bioderma Hydrabio Creme - I first heard about this moisturiser on Caroline Hirons blog bought and thought it was a bit rich for my oily skin and put it away. It was not an expensive mistake, I think I bought mine during one of the "1/3 off French Pharmacy" promotions which Escentual do every few months or so and it was less than £10 but generally it is around the £15 for 50mls. However as the autumn/winter progressed nothing seemed to touch my rather sensitive, weather beaten skin, but this did.
There is no scent to my nose, the texture is sort of bouncy thick, a bit like butter icing, importantly for me, it does spread but it doesn't disappear. I use it as a day moisturiser and am really liking it. Ruth (amodelrecommends) likes it too.

Bobbi Brown Sheer Finish Pressed Powder - Again another product which I bought and didn't like initially and now am delighting in. I have oily skin and feel as if much of my life has been spent trying to erase the shine, pressed powder has played a considerable role in this. Trouble is that I am not someone who touches up their makeup during the day, I just am not that bothered really, or I forget, and now as my skin is older, I can easily look over powdered. This is very fine textured. I have the shade "white" which is more of a worn out faded white tee shirt white than a brilliant dulux white, and it is really very good. I apply with a brush and sort of stipple/press it on rather than use the supplied puff.

Pai Rosehip Bioregenerate Oil - My skin really has suffered over this winter, thread veins and red patches more frequent, dehydration more prevalent, spots more frequent, sensitivity heightened. I have used rosehip oil and Pai's rosehip oil in the past, but I found the scent a bit much and other facial oils with rosehip oil as an added ingredient rather than the only ingredient took precedence. However in the face (ha!) of increased sensitivity I went back to this and have found that it, I was going to say "soothed" but that would be untrue because this is quite a dry oil on my skin, and sinks in quite quickly, a more accurate word would be "repaired" - I found that my skin looked better after a couple of days use and was more tolerant of other products. I use it immediately post pm cleanse, wait a bit, then apply any other serums and oils, and then reapply before I go to bed. Maybe overkill? But currently it is working for me. 

Zoeva 110 Face Shape Brush -  Lisa Eldridge uses this brush regularly in her videos. I bought it purely on her endorsement, and promptly realised that I am not Lisa Eldridge, it just didn't work for me, I put it away. I always apply my foundation/TM with my fingers and whilst I can see the sense of stippling product in with a brush to cover redness or open pores, I tend to use a flat concealer brush for that. But I persisted and I find that as a sort of finishing brush, to blur the edges and make sure everything is blended evenly, this works very well. A bonus is that it washes quickly and well, and is quite robust.

Veneffect Anti-Aging Lip Treatment

Right, this is based on my 2mls sample size, because a 10mls pot is £68, that is sixty eight whole pounds.

So, this is light in texture, it is not a balm, rather a thicker gel cream. It does have a slightly orangey scent. It doesn't sink in immediately but neither does it sit awkwardly on the lips, rather it applies and sits a bit like a cream, but for the lips.

When I first applied it, my lips were dry, and a bit flaky, and taut feeling. Immediately post application my lips felt more comfortable. I have tended to apply this in the evening before bed rather than during the day, I am slightly put off by the scent, it is not unpleasant but I prefer non-scented lip products, at night I am not so aware of the scent.

In a way it is a bit too early to tell, I am less than a week in of use, but my lips feel better and less damaged. I will continue using.

An eyeliner which works for me

I don't do eye makeup. I have eye lids which do not lend themselves to eyeshadowlinerpencil of any sort. My eyelids are baggy and saggy and have been less than taut for as long as I can remember, ie since first considering makeup circa 1977, I quickly realised that eyemakeup was not for me when I had carefully applied a rather splendid pale grey/green cream eye shadow with gold speckles in it, only to have a contemporary eleven year old say that she liked my eyeshadow because it was really noticeable, and that was it.

However one can dream, and a bit of definition never does anyone any harm, thus Kiko Smart Eye Pencil in #801

It is I suppose a greige shade, that sort of cool neutral mix of grey and brown, a sort of 'shroom colour.

I realised how perfect it was about two uses in, and then panicked when I couldn't find a replacement in my nearest Kiko store, or online. I am hoping it has not been discontinued.

Mineral Powder Foundation: Laura Mercier and Lily Lolo

A grubby photo of two far from grubby products, truthfully these were meant to be in an empties post but that didn't happen, they are empty but this is not about empties, it is about these two powder foundations, neither is it a head to head, rather observations about them.

I have a checkered past with mineral powder foundation, I have an oilier skin and theoretically, powder foundation, beit mineral or not, is suited to an oilier skin, it keeps it matte whilst covering imperfections. However as I have aged, my skin has become less oily, from the periphery in, so my oily "t" zone has become an oily "i" zone and even now this is reducing to an oily nose and chin.

What I like about both Laura Mercier and Lily Lolo is the shades in that they are sufficiently pale and neutral for my skintone, and the density of the powder, as neither have particularly heavy coverage on first pass, and that suits me, I can go in gently and then go in again and even again as necessary.

Now there is a but to this post, and it is more to do with the vagaries of my own skin rather than any deficit in the products. My skin is oily but it is also older, and thinner and menopausal and changeable. What I mean is that it can be dry and oily at the same time, which probably means it is dehydrated but whatevs. I can apply a layer and buff and buff until my arm falls off and achieve a lovely glowy skin like finish, and then when I by chance glance in the mirror, there is migration of product around my eyes (dry) and nose (oily) and generally my skin looks like an old dried out chamois. I suppose I could keep a kabuki type buffing brush about my person ready to whip out every passing hour but really? 

Like I say perfectly fine products trying their hardest on an unpredictable skin.

Hyaluronic cream and weird hand photos

I went to Paris for October half-term last year. It was the first time in over thirty years that I have been to Paris, let alone abroad, I was super excited, as giddy as the sixteen year old I was when I first went, I enjoyed every minute of it, especially the pharmacies.

One of my purchases was this cream.

It is a in essence a cream as in it is opaque and white and can be squeezed out and applied. It is immediately cooling and hydrating, literally like dipping one's hand in cold water, the main ingredient is hyaluronic acid. 

Now it is not easy to photograph the effects of a cream on one's face, it is not easy to photograph skin changes anyway, what one perceives so clearly with the eye, translates so dismally to the screen, for this cream really does hydrate, really and truly.

I applied it to the hand on the right in the photo below, now I know that probably if I applied any cream to my dehydrated hands then there would be a marked difference, but I am not sure that that marked difference would appear on the screen, in the photo below it does.

On a completely random note, why do hands look so alien in photos? 

Perhaps it is just my hands, but I look at them and think, why have my mother's hands appeared at the end of my arms?

The cream is around £14 for a 100mls tube, I do tend to layer it underneath a richer cream and treat it a bit as a creamserum.

Omorovicza Face

I have a fondness for Omorovicza. I like the skin care and the body care very much, I like the packaging, and I like the website, informative, elegant. I also like the makeup, very much. When I want to feel as if I am informative and elegant, this is what I use.

From left to right Mineral Concealer, Complexion Perfector BB Cream SPF20, Complexion Corrector SPF20. 

I have swatched them below in a somewhat back to front order, but the same as pictured above, Mineral Concealer, Complexion Perfector and Complexion Corrector.

Taking each product in order of application the Complexion Corrector is quite white when pumped out, it is thin in texture, a bit like thinned out single cream. On my skin imparts a luminosity as well as blurring the redness, the dark spots, the open pores, the thread veins, the blackheads, the ravages of my ageing skin. I use it most days under any base product which is my current squeeze. I have a back up.

The Complexion Perfector looks rather dark on my swatch and I remember when I purchased this first time without trying it, and gulping apprehensively as this dark putty coloured liquid was pumped out - somewhat magically it transforms into my shade on application, a little goes an extremely long way. It is the only product which when I have worn it my husband has commented that my skin looked amazing. My shade is light.

The Mineral Concealer comes in a slim, stick form, I have the shade light. It is quite dry in texture but is not drying, it is quite yellow but that counteracts my redness or at least neutralises it rather than making me look too yellow. It lasts.

This is not a cheap range, it is a considered purchase for me, but I have purchased the Complexion Corrector and the Complexion Corrector twice, and I am still a fraction of the way through my Mineral Concealer. Whilst I do not use these products exclusively, I use them frequently because they work.

More information from Omorovicza website.

Frederic Malle L'Eau D' Hiver

I am tempting to do the nigh on impossible here and that is to describe a perfume. Goodness I think that fragrance description really is the pinnacle of beauty writing, for how does one describe a scent? One could go down the route of notes or one could hone in on the experiences the smell evokes. Or one could do what I am probably going to end up doing which is a muddle of both.

I love perfume, to me it is a necessary frivolity, necessary because I want to smell nice just as I want to brush hair, it is a given. Frivolity because I can pick and choose on a whim, I can dismiss well known and expensive perfumes because I don't bloody well like the smell hello Chanel No 5, not for me - and I can embrace a cheaper perfumes because, well today I feel like it is a JLo Glow day.

I did not know of L'Eau D'Hiver until I read Sali Hughes's review  and that piqued my interest. I let it alone for a while, mainly because it was not available in my locality, but at the start of this year it became a bit of an obsession and I tracked down a sample, which was enough to make me want to envelope myself in it, and low and behold Father Christmas headed my heavy hints and a bottle appeared.

So for me, this is quite a gentle scent, in that it does not smell citrussy or wakey uppy or zingy in any way. It does not require careful application, I can douse myself in this - partly due to it being an EDT rather than an EDP, it does not last greatly on me, or maybe it does but I can no longer smell it, it is quiet and understated. It is a skin scent rather than a fabric scent - what I mean by that is that it performs better if sprayed on skin rather than on fabric, on my skin and fabric that is.

To me it smells gently spicey, a bit liquoricey, maybe a note of frankincense? It is truly lovely, whether it translates into the height of summer I will wait and see.