Category Archives: beauty news

The last favourites video of the year. I’m actually thinking of changing things up a bit for 2016 and introducing a new video to replace the favourites, but wanted to get your opinion first. Do you like monthly favourites posts? I sometimes think that they just end up being a round-up of the things I’ve posted about here on the website – or, even worse, a random bunch of stuff that is only “favourite” because it happens to be better than anything else that I’ve tested!

I think that “favourites” should be just that – things that have really wowed or that are particularly groundbreaking or interesting. And some months, there just…aren’t that many things. Or the few things that are really brilliant end up on every. Single. Favourites. Video. In. The. World.

You can watch ALL of my Monthly Favourites videos here…

So let me know what you think. I could change things up a bit so that my favourites included homeware, fashion, books and food, if you fancy that? Sort of a “Ruth’s Top Things” video? What do you reckon? Or I could completely replace the favourites video with my new beauty idea. Which I can’t tell you about yet because I haven’t thought it through properly.

I suppose what I’m trying to say, through my crazy Mint-Choc-Magnum-induced sugar-rush-fug, is: are you bored of Monthly Favourites or dearly attached to them? Answers on a postcard please. (Comments section.)

Anyway, here are my December picks. Enjoy. Products are listed below the video screen!

December Faves:

Kindle Paperwhite: http://amzn.to/1NBHi8g

Dior Lipstick Mat in Magique: http://tidd.ly/593752df

Mustela Baby Shampoo: http://tidd.ly/5712632d

Omorovicza Hydra Cleanser: http://goo.gl/VaZcJZ

Liquid Laser Concentrate: http://goo.gl/96jGb4

Busy Bee hairbands: www.busybeecompany.co.uk

Charlotte Tilbury Light Wonder Foundation: http://tidd.ly/5e08ed0a

Bobbi Brown Foundation Brush: http://goo.gl/Zbdb7D

Bobbi Brown Highlighters: http://goo.gl/0IsmKz

Tony Moly at Cult Beauty: http://www.amodelrecommends.com/2015/…

Paul & Joe Owl Eyeshadow: http://www.amodelrecommends.com/2015/…

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Get it while you can! I bought this Diane Von Furstenberg dress ages ago from The Outnet (here) and have only just had a suitable occasion to wear it to. It’s a brilliant dress – drapey and quite low at the front, but doesn’t show any bra; short and leggy, but not so short that you worry about flashing your pants every five minutes. They only have a couple of sizes left on The Outnet, but if you are a 12 (or a large 10) then the US 8 will be perfect, and if you are a UK14 then you’ll be good for the US10. I have a US 6 but have to admit that I would have liked a size larger – it comes up quite short on the body. Sorry – I wish that I had posted this up ages ago when there were still all of the sizes available!

I wore my dress to the Audi Polo Challenge 2014 – I have been for the last three years, now, and it’s great fun. This time I ogled Price Harry as he tried to eat his dinner in peace, and I ate a chocolate horse, pictured above. I accessorised my dress with the black and white Jennie courts from LK Bennett that I love so much and sunglasses from Jimmy Choo. The lipstick is Matte Mandarin from Clarins, see here.

*Since I wrote this post, an extra 30% has been taken from the price of the Melodi dress. You can find it here and there’s loads of other Diane Von Furstenberg stuff here.

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Illamasqua Sophie

I’m sure that all Illamasqua fans know about the Sophie Lancaster Foundation – since its conception in 2008, Illamasqua has fundraised for the foundation. If you don’t know about Sophie Lancaster, she and her boyfriend took a walk through a local park, where they were targeted by a gang simply for looking different. Sophie was one cool girl – red braids in her hair, piercings, lashings of black kohl; all in all, living and expressing her individuality. What happened to Sophie – and there’s no way around this one – is that she was kicked to death. For kohl. By people who had no tolerance for expression and no understanding of individuality.

Illamasqua Sophie

I mention this today because the anniversary of Sophie’s death passed last week. Each time this comes around, we’re reminded that The Sophie Lancaster Foundation exists to stamp out ignorance about sub-cultures and to remind us to be respectful of individuality. By supporting The Sophie Lancaster Foundation, you’re helping to push away boundaries that shouldn’t exist. So, a quick reminder of the Sophie Blush (£21.50) from Illamasqua above, from which £1 goes to the foundation, and the Sophie Eye Pencil (£15) from which £3 of each purchase goes to to the foundation. You can find them both HERE.

There’s also a brand new download by Bad Pollyanna that’s also raising money for The Sophie Lancaster Foundation, also available in the link above.

The post The Sophie Lancaster Foundation & Illamasqua appeared first on British Beauty Blogger.

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I’ve bought new bed linen. Because my Kelly Hoppen stuff from QVC was such a success (1000 thread count, brilliant white, no longer in stock) I thought I’d splash out again and go for top quality. The sort of sheets that make you think you’re in a swanky hotel, until you wake up in the middle of the night with a dog wrapped around the top of your head and a “lights and sounds!” bathtime turtle digging into the base of your spine.

I’ve bought the Luxury Hotel Collection linen from House of Fraser before (in fact I’m pretty sure I did a post about it) but that was when we had a massive bedroom and a superking bed. If we tried to shoehorn a superking into this bedroom we’d be using the headboard as a shoerack and storing clothes beneath the mattress! So now we need king size, which is a blessing in disguise as linen does work out a bit cheaper. Every cloud, and all that..

The 1000TC from Luxury Hotel Collection is ludicrously priced – £370 for a king sized duvet cover – but, fortunately and also suspiciously, always on sale. At the moment, for example, if you buy two or more pieces from the range you get 70% off, making the duvet cover £111.

(Christ on a bike! I told Mr AMR it was £60. Better keep that one quiet, I only just looked at the invoice properly!)

Anyway, it all came in (sheet, duvet, pillow cases) at about the same price as the Kelly Hoppen stuff and it definitely feels just as luxurious. It’s so heavy, in fact, that it’s almost too much for the warmer summer months. Even without any filling, the duvet cover is approximately the same weight as a collapsed four-man tent, and with stuffing, lying underneath it is like being slowly flattened inside a giant flower press.

On a completely different note, I have the winners of the Alpha-H giveaway for you, emails bastardised, as usual, to protect privacy. Well done to the victors – the rest of you can have another bite of the beauty prize cherry this week when I post up my next epic giveaway!

Bronzer with a “rugged” outer shell? I can get on board with that. Because I do tend to throw my handbag about with gay abandon half the time, accidentally swinging it into brick walls and standing on it and squashing it into impossible spaces in the overhead locker on the aeroplane. Bronzers and powder compacts do not fare well with that kind of treatment – my Chanel Les Beiges powder, for example, lies in around fifty-five small pieces within the casing so that I have to sweep my brush around slowly and carefully in an effort to stop them all from falling out, rather like when those bronzing beads had a bit of a moment a decade or so ago. Makeup powders do not like to be bashed. And so behold:

Yes, these are Guerlain Terracotta Bronzing Powders, but they have a special silicon shell that goes some way to protecting them from lunatics such as myself. These bright, rugged outer jackets just make a cult product even more desirable in my eyes – proper summertime bronzing inside, Miami Beach packaging out. There’s no change to the much-loved Terracotta formulation, it’s just had a wardrobe change. A sexy little wetsuit.

The Turquoise Case houses the classic “Natural Blondes” shade, which is by no means limited to blondes, and the bright pink contains “Natural Brunettes”. Again, not limited to brunettes. You can see, hopefully, that the Blondes shade is slightly warmer than the Brunettes – both pack quite a punch and are not for the ultra-fair or those in search of a subtle bit of flush. (Try Joli Teint if that’s you.) The bronzers with sexy outers (RRP £37.50) are £33.75 each at Escentual.com

The post Guerlain Terracotta: Bronzers in a Sexy Summer Shell appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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