Category Archives: beauty look

Today I am going to Cannes Film Festival with Dior and I must say that I am incredibly excited. I have never been to Cannes before and I’m looking forward to seeing all of the glitz and the glamour and perhaps doing a bit of swanning about pretending to be a film star. As you do. And – oh! – almost as exciting as the trip itself: these beauty miniatures (above) that arrived in this week’s post! Many of you will already know about my fixation with miniature things – I have a whole collection of teeny perfume bottles and tubes of face cream and dinky little body lotions. There’s just something about the exactness with which they are scaled down, I find it all very pleasing. Don’t even get me started on dolls’ house miniatures…

The Dior minis are so very cute – but special attention needs to be paid to the tiny, perfectly formed Gris Montaigne perfume; even the bottle top has been exactly replicated. There’s also a dinky lipstick in my stash as well as some posh pots of face mask and eye cream and some lovely little cleansers… I just need to add a toothbrush and a hair comb and I’m ready to go!

You can follow my Cannes shenanigans (she-cannes-igans?) on Instagram here, or on Twitter and Facebook.

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I’ve gone a bit blusher mad recently. I don’t know whether it’s just because I’ve done the whole “subtle bit of bronzer under the cheekbones” thing for so long and I fancied a change, or that my pregnancy hormones are sending me a bit off-piste with everything. Either way, I love the lift that a good blusher gives to the skin – bronzer can add a touch of healthy glow, but there’s nothing like a bit of pinky-peach to make your whole face look more awake. Just a hint of it, swept across the tops of the apples of the cheeks, or a proper colour wash, right across the cheekbones and back towards the ears, with a dab on the bridge of the nose for good measure. (You have to tread carefully with the latter option, obviously – you don’t want to look as though you’ve fallen asleep on the beach after four glasses of Rosé.)

The Bobbi Brown Calypso Cheek Palette in the new “Hot Collection” is just gorgeous – subtle enough to be foolproof for those who tend to be heavy-handed with their brushes, but with great colour pay-off that builds into an intense, peachy colour pop. Here I am sans blush:

And then with a healthy dose of all three shades, blended together:

I bloody love it. If you compare the two photos, it looks like quite a lot of blush going on, but if you just come back to the page and look at the second picture on its own you can see that there’s just this brilliant glow (thanks to the shimmery blush in the centre of the palette) that makes everything look so healthy and fresh. (I haven’t tweaked anything else, by the way – the makeup and lighting is identical in the before and after. I think that my eyes look livelier and perhaps even a little bluer, but I could be imagining!)

So yes, I am a big fan of blush at the present time: I like a big sweep of it over perfectly finished skin with just a simple coat of mascara and that’s it. To be frank, you wouldn’t want to wear a lot of blush and eyes and lips: it’s enough on its own. If you wanted to oomph up the eyes and/or lips, then my advice would be to keep the blush barely-there, but – y’know – knock yourself out if you want to do the Full Face thing…

Bobbi Brown Calypso Cheek Palette is available at Selfridges.com here for £34. My base is Burberry’s BB Cream in shade 02 (love it, review soon, find it here) and the mascara is Roller Lash from Benefit. You’ll be seeing more of Bobbi Brown’s “Hot Collection” when I get going on those lipsticks and Art Sticks!

The post Bobbi Brown Calypso: How To Blush appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Seriously, some brands just can’t help themselves. I’m looking at Dove True Tone Underarm Dark Mark Eraser. On the one hand, Dove does some remarkable self-esteem work – they’ve recently produced some fascinating stats on how women feel about themselves in terms of beauty. But that work is rather unravelled, I feel, when they’re single-handedly responsible for bringing ‘beautiful underarms’ to the attention of most women who had previously not considered this a problem area in terms of beauty. Just while we’re all busy worrying about wrinkles, cellulite, the odd chin hair and all the other little beauty niggles, along comes another guest to the low self-esteem party. Your armpits.

A couple of years ago, I actually met the person who conceived that idea at a conference, and told them what I thought about it. I even took my top off and showed the room my (unshaven) armpits in front of 200 people to make the point that armpits are just places on our bodies that are the least of anyone’s worries. That wasn’t a planned thing – I’ve never done it before or since – but I felt strongly enough to make the point that brands who create insecurities and then come up with cures – we’re onto them!

It’s the sort of thing in beauty that I really mind about – there is a bigger picture behind the lipsticks and new products on BBB. If I get the chance to call out brands, I take it. And, I’m taking it now. Just stop it, Dove. Focus on the things you’re really good at – and there are many – and leave our armpits alone. There are better, happier and more positive things to spend £20 on.

The post Dove True Tone Underarm Dark Mark Eraser appeared first on British Beauty Blogger.

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