May Glymm Box

My May Glymm Box has arrived! And it's different. Check it out. They've done away with the pink shiny box that came inside the shipping box in an attempt to go green. Let's dig in.

Glymm has gone green. Bravo Glymm! They've provided a card with some information on recycling in the box as an introduction to their new packaging.

The information card is larger, and has larger images of the products that are inside. What I especially like is that now they give you the usage of the samples, rather than just information about the full sizes.

Inside my May Glymm Box is: 

• CK Shock for Her and for Him
• Coola Mineral Matte Cucumber Face Sunscreen
• NuMe HydroPunch Hydrating Conditioner
• Cargo High Pigment Pencil
• Caudalie Gentle Buffing Cream
• Caudalie Vinosource SOS Thirst Quenching Serum
• Caudalie Vinosource Moisturizing Sorbet

Digging in! Underneath the product information and other cards is a tissue paper wrapped bundle. Normally this would be inside the pink Glymm box.

Unwrapped, there's a shiny pink Glymm pouch!

And here are all the goodies!

NuMe Hydro Punch Hydrating Conditioner. Full Size $24.99, 250 mL

Turn dull and damaged hair into vibrant, healthy strands that you can't help but twirl all day long. A punch never sounded so appealing. This conditioner is packed with Argan oil, fatty acids, Vitamin E and powerful antioxidants. 

Sample size is impressive (up to 15 uses). Photographed in my hand for comparison.

Caudalie Gentle Buffing Cream. Full Size $35.00, 60 mL

This luxurious face exfoliator will eliminate your imperfections and make you feel brand new. Gets rid of dead cells and excess sebum by stimulating cellular renewal. The complexion's radiance is greatly awakened, leaving the skin soft and clean. This treatment is ideal for all skin types, even the most sensitive.

Coola Mineral Matte Cucumber Face Sunscreen. Full Size $36.00, 50 mL

Protect your face from UV rays with this hydrating, refreshing sunblock. Coola donates a portion of sales to cancer research. It's infused with certified organic ingredients like vitamins, antioxidants, Shea Butter and Borage Seed Oil.

Caudalie Vinosource SOS Thirst Quenching Serum. Full Size $48.00, 30 mL Give your skin a surge of hydration and restore moisture balance for softer, more supple skin. This high potency serum captures and continually diffuses water deep within the skin to impart intense hydration.

Caudalie Vinosource Moisturizing Sorbet. Full Size $38.00, 40 mL

Save your skin with this moisturizer. Your face will feel refreshed, hydrated and comfortably soft. The gel-cream has immediate and long-lasting calming properties. It awakens the skin's hydration mechanisms and replenishes its water reserves.

Cargo High Pigment Pencil. Full Size $16.00

Rich, deep colour combined with a smudge resistant formula is all you need in an eye pencil. See results with one smooth application. 

CK Shock for Her. Full Size $45.00, 50 mL

"edgy, sexy, impulsive." Shock yourself and everyone around you with this fierce bouquet of passionflower. Top notes: passionflower, pink peony, poppy flower. Mid notes: liquid chocolate accord, blackberry, narcisse, jasmine. Base notes: vanillin, patchouli, ambers, skin musk.

CK Shock for Him. Full Size $45.00, 50 mL

"turn down the lights. amplify the sound. act on impulse." Get addicted to this juicy scent. It's fresh and leaves a lasting impression. Top notes: clementine, purple lavender, cucumber. Mid notes: osmanthus, black pepper, cardamom, black basil. Base notes: chocolate tobacco, ambreine, cashmeran musk, patchouli.

Urban Decay 15 Year Anniversary Eye Shadow Collection back at Sephora

The much sought after, multiple times sold out Urban Decay 15 Year Anniversary Eye Shadow Collection is now available again on Sephora, on-line only for a limited time.

If you missed out the first time, head over there right now and pick up this incredible palette packed with 15 full sized, exclusive and highly pigmented shadows. The palette is $66.00 CA, and for reference, single Urband Decay eye shadows are $22.00 CA, so this palette is like getting 15 eye shadows for the price of 3!

For an in depth excellent review and swatches, please see Temptalia's review part 1 and part 2,

J

Beauty Squared Round-Up - May 20, 2012

Here is what grabbed our attention this week in the wonderful world of the Interwebs:

With her iconic Vidal Sassoon five-point-cut, Peggy Moffitt was one of the faces of the Swinging 1960s thanks the above photo, shot by her husband William Claxton. Still rocking that hair cut and the makeup that made her famous, she takes a look back at her life in this short film made in conjunction with the Total Look exhibit at MOCA's Pacific Design Center.

Can having bangs give you a lazy eye? That rumour has been circulating on the Internet this week but MSNBC says it isn't true, so fringe easy.

England is celebrating Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee this year and Harrod's is celebrating by asking 31 designers to give St. Edward's Crown a makeover. You can see the designs by Mulberry, Paul Smith, Cavalli, Valentino, Lanvin and others here.

British fashion design is celebrated in a series of new Royal Mail stamps featuring Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith and Alexander McQueen among many others. 

Despite fashion brands claiming that using thin, young, white models in their advertising is meant to be aspirational for consumers (wanting to be young, thin, white and beautiful means you'll want to wear what that model is wearing), no research has been found to prove this. In fact, women are more inclined to buy when the models in ads looked like them.

Pixiwoo features a makeup tutorial for redheads, using Christina Hendricks as inspiration. It's a very pretty, soft and simple make-up look designed for fair skin but by simply using darker colours, it can be adapted for darker skintones as well. 

If you're on Facebook you've probably noticed some of the above Facebook ads. Dove has launched a new Facebook app as part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, that allows users to "makeover" negative ads. Currently available in the UK and Australia only, but hopefully it'll be available in North America and the rest of the world soon!

H&M was criticized recently for ads in which a model was made to look very, very, very tanned and very, very, very skinny. H&M has apologized since and a clever street artist in Hamburg has put his own touch on the ads as a visual reminder that the images we see are not always real.

Tanning prematurely ages and dries out your skin, and increases your risk of developing skin cancer. As we head into summer, are you feeling shy about baring your pale skin? Take a look at these photos and embrace your natural skintone! 

Ever spot a girl on the street and wonder what products she uses? The FaceTime feature on Stylelist.com features everyday lovelies who reveal some of their beauty tips and tricks.

Yogurt, that miracle food that helps us lose weight, eases digestion and gives us strong bones and muscles, among many other things. But it can also help to prevent acne, according to this 'Foods that Help to Fight Acne' article.

Spring is all about colour, with the bright green grass and leaves, colourful blossoms and fresh-as-fresh-can-be produce available at farmer's market. Take some inspiration from these colours using Makeup Magpie's tips.

A company that allows you to design your own shoes? Sign me up! Check out Shoes of Prey.

Rimmel London Glam'Eyes HD English Oak Swatches, Photos and Review

I spotted this colourful Union Jack-designed eyeshadows in a drugstore recently and couldn't pass by without buying one. I'm an Anglophile, I have to own a Union Jack eyeshadow palette!

Rimmel Glam'Eyes HD palettes come in eight variations (you can see them all here). I chose English Oak, a blend of warm-toned browns, arguably the most easily wearable palette of the bunch. 

Here's what the Rimmel website has to say about Glam'Eyes HD eyeshadow:

Rimmel introduces Glam'Eyes HD, our first creamy powder eyeshadow with Velvet-HD technology creates colour that looks perfect under any light. Prismatic pigments catch light at multiple angles, reflecting the ideal colour for the light you are in. Unique palettes of 4 shades expertly coordinated to work in sequence, adapting as light changes to give perfectly complementary effect in any light. Crease-proof colour lasts all day.

The Glam'Eyes HD eyeshadow palettes retail for around $6 CDN, depending where you find them. 

Instructions on the bottom of the palette

Each palette comes with basic instruction of how to use the colours in it together and one of those useless little double-ended sponge applicators which always come with drugstore eyeshadow palettes. Always just toss these, they're utterly useless.

The palette has four eyeshadow colours, separated into 13 sections. While it looks really cool, it's pretty impractical as the tiniest section, containing the copper shade at the top and bottom of the palette, is difficult to get a brush (or that sponge tip applicator) into. 

Swatches

The shades in the palette range from a deep brown to a shimmery vanilla. From L to R (descriptions are BeautySquared):

#4 lid colour - warm chocolate. This colour is the least shimmery of the four.

#3 crease colour - shimmery copper. 

#2 outer corner colour - shimmery bronze.

#1 highlighter colour - golden vanilla.

The package instructions says to apply the chocolate shade on the lid, the highlighter shade on the brow, the copper in the crease and the bronze on the outer corner. 

Here's what the recommended application looks likes:

I found the colours all kind of looked the same applied the way the packaging recommended. Either I blended way too well or the shades maybe shouldn't be worn this way. Unless you like spending lots of time putting together an eye look that could have been achieved using one or two colours. 

I love all of the shades individually though, they're all very, very pretty and applied in a way that allows them to stand out a bit more is perfect. 

The shades will work ideally on blue or green eyes since they're all warm brown and copper shades. They'll also work nicely with hazel and brown eyes.

Review:

I was very impressed with how well these applied although getting the shadows onto a brush was difficult due to the packaging. I recommend using a small, stiffer brush or a brush with a tapered tip with these palettes, not a fluffy brush. I found the product crumbled a little when I worked my brush into the palette and the colours powdered into each other a little. Still, the palette isn't expensive and it's easy enough to tidy up when you're finished.

The shadow formula is very creamy, very blendable, and has a great level of pigmentation. The colours are all shimmery, which is to be expected from most drugstore eyeshadows, but the largest shadow, the chocolate shade, has less shimmer. 

Application-wise, they go very smoothly and have a creamy consistency. It didn't take much product to get a good effect and they blended well. The colours in the English Oak palette are very complimentary to each other, making for a very easy way to get a sultry eye look. 

The colours stayed true throughout the day, giving approximately 10 hours of wear without creasing (with Urban Decay's Primer Potion underneath). The shimmer is a bit too intense for workday wear, but would be fantastic for evening and night. I have not tried the more colourful Glam'Eyes palettes but if English Oak is any indication, the colours of the other palettes will go on well and stay true for a long time.

Have you tried any these super-cool looking Rimmel palettes? 

C.

Jacob Flirty Bikini Lip Duo Review, Photos and Swatches

Jacob is a Canadian clothing company that launched its first fragrance a few years ago. This year, they're expanding their beauty line with nail polishes and lipsticks. You can see their beauty collection here. As an aside, I LOOOOOOVE the use of the gorgeous Karine Vanasse who recently starred in the TV series PanAm in their current ad campaign.

Karine Vanasse

I picked up one of their Lip Duos, in Flirty Bikini, to see what it was like. Their lip duos are a lipstick and a lip gloss in one. 

I photographed the wand in my hand to give you a sense of size.

And also, here it is next to a MAC lipstick and lip glass to show the size. It's about as thick as a lipstick tube and the length of a longish lipgloss tube. 

The size of the lipstick and the pot of lipgloss is less than you'd get buying them individually. But these lip duos cost $10 which is very reasonably priced for two separate lip products. 

Flirty Bikini lipstick end

Flirty Bikini lip gloss end

Here is Flirty Bikini swatched on the inside of my arm. The lipstick has a nice creamy texture and coverage. It's not a matte shade, but it's got no frost to it either. It's somewhere in between and has a nice shine to it. I was very impressed by the texture and the colour. The gloss is quite sheer and doesn't have much impact apart from shine on my lips as a result. It's thin and non-sticky, but the gold sheen as seen in the above photo doesn't really come through. The swatch on my arm is three layers of gloss. Shade-wise it reminds me of MAC's Full of You lip glass. It's a nice, easy-to-wear gloss and presumably it's designed to top the lipstick. On my lips the colour is the same as my natural lip colour.

Flirty Bikini lipstick and lip gloss swatches

Flirty Bikini lipstick and lip gloss swatches

 Below are the two swatches with the gloss on top of the lipstick.

Flirty Bikini lipstick and lip gloss swatches

 Here is Flirty Bikini lipstick on me. 

Flirty Bikini lipstick

Looking at Flirty Bikini lipstick I thought it looked similar to a lipstick I already own. And sure enough, you guys, I've found a dupe for MAC's Hibiscus which came out with last summer's Surf, Baby! collection. 

L to R: Jacob Flirty Bikini and MAC Hibiscus

Flirty Bikini is slightly more orange than Hibiscus, which is more red-pink than Flirty Bikini, but they're pretty close. Texture-wise, Flirty Bikini is more opaque.

L to R: Jacob Flirty Bikini and MAC Hibiscus

So there you have it! Jacob's foray into lip products has impressed me. I love this lipstick and will wear it quite a bit this summer. The combination wand is great to carry with you in your purse for three different lip looks. And at $10, it's a steal. Well done, Jacob!

C.