Category Archives: beauty look

Chanel Beauty Spring 2015

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Jardin de Chanel

I haven’t had time to download and resize the official images yet, but here’s a very first look at what’s coming up from Chanel Beauty Spring 2015 (it’s in stores from end of January) using my own images taken at the event today. The stand-out piece is the Jardin de Chanel blush above, which is a masterpiece of make-up engineering. There are petals raised to three different heights within the same piece. I have no idea how they did this! I did ask if there was any info on the mould or the method – I’m sure I’m the only person to ask, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t get any info back!

Chanel Beauty Spring 2015

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Sunday Tittle Tattle: Pets and Piercings

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ear piercing

I have a new vlog for you to watch – it’s quite random, but I’ve included some gratuitous pet and baby footage to sweeten the pill. I went to get my ears re-pierced but things didn’t quite work out the way I thought they would…

Talking of gratuitous pet footage; I have been trying to film the cat and dog doing stupid and/or interesting things, this week, but they have been failing to perform. By interesting I don’t mean that I expect them to construct a scale model of the Clifton Suspension Bridge or anything like that; just roll over or pat a ball across the floor or – and this is hardly an ask – stare whimsically out into the garden as raindrops stream artfully down the windowpane. But no. They have spent the majority of the week lounging about on the rug or (the cat) sleeping on chairs. Must be the weather.

ruth crilly's cat

Not that I expect my pets to perform for me – please don’t get me wrong. I just wanted to capture some “f.u.n.” clips for a video I’m working on. At the moment it’s looking like a photo slideshow – you’d hardly know it was video if it wasn’t for my shaky camerawork!

Not to bore you with pet stuff (sorry pet-free people) but I have finally managed to train the cat not to claw on our leather dining chairs. Hurrah, success. I’ve been rewarding him with a Dreamie treat every time he goes to his cat tree and scratches on the post and now, if he goes to scratch a chair, he sort of looks around himself and seems to suddenly remember that there’s a better option. I am aware that giving cats Dreamies is probably the equivalent of feeding toddlers Red Bull or something, but hey. It’s only occasional and it saves me having to commission someone to make little protective gloves for his paws. (Is there a market for that?! Mum, I’ve found you a new hobby!)

The post Sunday Tittle Tattle: Pets and Piercings appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Sunday Tittle Tattle: Ray Donovan and the Sabotaged Sleep Routine

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sleep diary

After last week’s Sleeplessness post I tried to make some serious changes to my bedtime routine. Thank you, by the way, for all of your amazing comments – I was really rather touched that so many of you took the time to share your experiences and give advice. And as last week’s post was so well-read, I thought it might be interesting to jot down my sleep patterns. If only to help those of you who find it difficult to nod off: BECAUSE IF READING THIS POST DOESN’T KNOCK YOU OUT THEN NOTHING WILL.

Right-o, here’s what time I went to bed, what I did before bed (stop it) and what time (approximately) I got to sleep for every night of the past week. There’s something a bit narcissistic about these online diary things:  I for one love reading them (especially food diaries, for some reason) but I understand if you feel like telling me to sod off. The rest of you – the voyeurs and devourers of online journals – enjoy. I started this a week ago and finished it (late) last night.

Sunday: after imposing a new “no work after 7pm” rule, I – amazingly – managed to stop work at 6.30, put the baby to bed and not watch any television, making a conscious effort to potter about without any electronics. I even shunned my Kindle in favour of a paperback so that I wouldn’t think about iPads and therefore laptops and therefore work, and I left my iPhone in the living room. I fell asleep at about 10.30 after massaging my feet with that Uma oil from Cult Beauty and – quite literally – slept like a log. One wake-up to feed the baby at 2am, but straight back to sleep and woke up very refreshed at just after 7am.

Monday: no work after 7pm – tick. In bed by 9.30pm, but we watched an episode of Ray Donovan (new television obsession, oh my God) and turned the lights off at 10.30pm. The dog woke us up at about 3am, then the baby at 4am, but overall it wasn’t too bad.

Tuesday: I worked until 8.30pm, trying to finish off some video editing. I should have been more organised in the day, but time just slipped through my fingers. Made a curry and we ate that at 9pm, I can’t go to bed straight after eating so we had a mini Magnum (healthy!) in front of an episode of Ray Donovan. OK, two episodes of Ray Donovan. Bed at 11pm – I tried to read for a while from my paperback, but it was scary (The Good Girl) and also not that good and so dropped into something of a fitful sleep at around 11.20pm. Up for a feed at 3am, back to sleep until 7.40am, woke up a bit groggy.

Wednesday: Mr AMR didn’t get back from his shoot until 8pm, then we chatted until about 9pm (I had already eaten) and decided to retire to watch – you guessed it! – Ray Donovan snuggled up in bed. (We have a telly bed. It’s ridiculous and also amazing.) At 11pm Mr AMR got an email from a client (must have been in the US) asking for a photograph they wanted to use so he got back up to find it and transfer the file. At 11.30pm the baby woke up with teething pains, I got her back to sleep at about 12.15am and then went and slept in the spare room next to her nursery because I was anxious about her. Slept straight through until 7.15am, which is a LONG uninterrupted period of time in my sleep world!

Thursday: Mr AMR stayed in London after work and so I was home alone and ended up working from 7.20pm, when the baby went to sleep, until about 11pm. Ooops. I lay in bed until about 12.30am Googling miniature bathtubs for my dolls house, then I was too scared to turn the light off and also had the dog on the bed with me as protection (don’t judge) so didn’t get to sleep until around half past one. At two thirty the baby woke up then I slept fitfully until five when I turned the light off because it was starting to get light outside which means that demons can’t get you and then I went back to sleep until half past seven. Phew. A bit of a failure in terms of my new sleeping regime, but at least the lamp kept the vampires/trolls/girl that climbs out of the well in The Ring/zombies away.

Friday: had a late dinner and then watched The Good Wife on catchup TV. I have no idea where the time went after that, I think I was Googling miniature things again (I always have some sort of online shopping preoccupation happening), but before I knew it it was midnight. The baby woke up loads, very grizzly, but finally went back to sleep at about one and then I slept through until almost eight o’ clock. Not bad, despite the Googling – but I couldn’t have dropped off anyway with the baby being all angsty…

Saturday: after a day in London and the baby refusing to have any naps, we returned home at 8.15pm and put the baby to bed, and by the time I had searched eBay for a chair for my office (another current shopping theme) and Mr AMR had watched the snooker it was 11pm. I had three weetabix for my dinner (thank God this isn’t a food diary, I’d be failing miserably) and – at the time of writing this, we are just preparing to settle down and watch the final episode in the first season of Ray Donovan. It will be at least midnight before we go to sleep, because there needs to be the mandatory discussion session after the programme finishes (I do all the talking, Mr AMR pretends to be asleep) and then the dog will need a wee and someone else will need a wee and the baby will wake up…

So there. A week of bedtimes. In summary, I think we can all agree that Ray Donovan single-handedly sabotaged my good intentions with regards to establishing a good sleep routine. I’ll add it to his list of crimes (framing his own father for murder, drink driving, sleeping with a psychotic blonde when his wife is at home worried about him, shooting a priest through the head, to name but a few). If you don’t have a clue what I’m on about then you can watch it on Amazon Prime. I’ve had Prime for too many years to even count, but only recently realised I could watch films and TV programmes on it. You can usually get a free trial for 30 days – enough time to watch all of the Ray Donovan  episodes! After that it’s £79 a year – used to be about forty quid, if I remember rightly, but at that time it was just about getting free next day delivery and they didn’t have all of this new-fangled streaming stuff going on.. Oh, the innocent days of yore! The Amazon Prime page is here.

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Face Powders with Pleasing Packaging…

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best luxury makeup packaging

After quite a long spell of using mostly high street complexion powders in my daily makeup routine (I’ve been doing research, watch this space) I’m rather pleased to be reunited with a bit of luxe. There are so many brilliant bronzers and blushers and face powders from budget brands, but most of them are – not unexpectedly – lacking on the design front. Many don’t have mirrors in the cases, for a start, and you certainly don’t tend to get beautifully decorative compacts like the ones in the photo above…

So I’m enjoying carrying about a bit of eye candy in my makeup bag – powders with amazing packaging that I feel glad to whip out in public for an impromptu touch-up. From left to right, above, there’s the Sicilian Bronzer from Dolce & Gabbana (if you find one of these, snap it up, they seem to be universally sold out), the Beached Bronzer from Urban Decay and the Dreamy Glow Highlighter from Charlotte Tilbury.

best luxury makeup packaging

The Sicilian Bronzer, if you can get it, is quite deep and warm in tone – this is proper bronzing rather than the natural, sunkissed look that I tend to plump for by default. On the other hand, Urban Decay’s Beached Bronzer (centre) is the classic sunkissed sort of powder. Cooler in tone than the Dolce & Gabbana bronzer, it’s a true dust-it-on-and-look-like-a-beach-goddess summer makeup staple. (Find it here – it’s £20. I have the appropriately-named shade “Sun Kissed”.)

Charlotte Tilbury’s Illuminating Youth Powder (right of the photo) is part of her limited edition Norman Parkinson collection, which has a selection of the photographer’s most iconic pictures reproduced on the lids of the cosmetics. The Dreamy Glow highlighter is a soft and forgiving kind of highlighter – no large bits of shimmer or glitter, it has a subtle finish that looks radiant and fresh and a slightly warmed-up, peachy tone that stops things from looking too silvery or harsh. This is great for adding a final flourish to finished skin – it seems to pull everything together and add a bit of life. I rather like it over a sheer face tint on a “good skin day” but it’s equally marvellous for bringing over-mattified faces back from the brink. Find it here – it’s £45.

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© 2016 A Model Recommends®: all opinions are my own and any sponsored or paid posts will always be very clearly marked. I accept press samples and receive product and services to review as part of my job. Outward links to retailers will usually be affiliate links. Please see here for full “about” section and disclaimer.  A Model Recommends and Ruth Crilly are registered trademarks.

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L’Oréal Paris Revitalift Laser Renew: The Double Care | AD

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L'Oréal Paris Revitalift Laser Renew The Double Care

You may have noticed that moisturiser reviews have been a bit thin on the ground, recently; that’s because I’ve been in my “testing laboratory” phase again, which is when I try my very best to stick to just one product. (Rarely do I manage more than a week or so without caving in and slathering on about a billion new skincare launches, but I do try to mainly stick to one thing!)

The latest product to get a good old going over? Brand new day cream from L’Oreal Paris; The Double Care. It’s the latest addition to the Revitalift Laser Renew line-up and the most powerful yet in terms of formulation. Combining a stable form of Vitamin C (a brilliant antioxidant, great at fighting free radicals and helping to both prevent and repair sun damage) with 6% Pro-Xylane (revitalises and firms the skin as well as helping to prevent water loss) it is, in effect, two brilliant face creams in one.

L'Oréal Paris Revitalift Laser Renew The Double Care

A key feature of the packaging is the dual-chamber pump which keeps the two lots of ingredients separate until they reach your skin. There’s a reason for this, apart from the bottle looking all modern and hi-tech: the active ingredients in the formula can be used in really potent amounts, which wouldn’t be possible if they were all bunged into one pot. It keeps the actives in optimal condition. I’m trying to think of one of my amazing analogies here, but all I can come up with is two boxers being kept apart until the fight begins and the sparks fly! Perhaps not the most savoury example…

L'Oréal Paris Revitalift Laser Renew The Double Care

But you catch my drift, I hope. High-performance stuff, offering complete rejuvenation both on the surface of the skin and deeper down. I gave it a three week trial – and actually, I didn’t know that I’d be working on this launch so I tried it well in advance as well as more recently. I had a “prototype” version that was given to me at the L’Oreal labs in Paris a couple of months ago, and after applying it for a few days in a row and liking the texture, I decided to carry on.

Now just to go on a little diversion, here: I’ve really been getting into my Vitamin C, skincare-wise, for the past year or so. I’d tried varying strengths and textures, some so powerful that my eyes have nearly popped out of my head, some more pedestrian, but I have to say that I really like the effects. I try to remember to put on some sort of antioxidant (usually heavy on the Vit C) every morning before my day cream, just as an added bit of protection against the various bits of damage that the outside environment can cause. (Even if I’m not going anywhere, I’m a fan of the “Big C” for helping to achieve that sort of even, radiant skintone that exists in my beauty dreams.)

What I liked about The Double Care was that I didn’t need a separate antioxidant serum and day cream – I just used the one product and then went in with my foundation or tinted moisturiser. A standalone, proper SPF if I was outside in the elements, too, obviously… But considering that I had been using a whole wheelbarrow of stuff before my testing period, it was rather a blessed relief to have simplified things! Of course there’d be nothing stopping me from using an additional serum (and on some of my drier days I did in fact go in with a bit of the Revitalift Hyaluronic Concentrate, just to keep things in the family!) but as The Double Care day cream contains the highest dosage of their anti-ageing Pro-Xylane molecule ever used in their products (double the concentration of the existing Laser Renew Day Cream, in fact), it sort of felt redundant to.

L'Oréal Paris Revitalift Laser Renew The Double Care

Clever, really, to make a potent day cream, because so many women don’t use a serum or even know what one is. (About 90% of my friends and family, despite me banging on at them seven days a week.) Most seem to rely on their “face cream” or moisturiser to do everything, which is fine so long as it does do everything and isn’t just a heavy-duty lard-like layer that plops itself down and proceeds to do nothing.

Talking of heavy-duty lard-like layers, L’Oreal tested the Revitalift Double Care against an incredibly popular and well-known luxury face cream (it costs around £200, you can probably guess which one I’m on about – you can read details here) in a blind trial. Coincidentally, I tried this cream myself – I could only manage a week I’m afraid, see below – immediately before The Double Care. I couldn’t get on with it at all, it was greasy and buttery and although my face looked plump in the mornings, it was in more of the way that a chicken basted in fat might look plumper than one that had been pulled straight from the fridge. (Ha! I knew I’d get one of my ridiculous comparisons in…)

So the results  – that 71% of women preferred the Double Care to the luxury, £200+ anti-ageing market leader – make absolute sense to me. Though the textures are really quite different (the Double Care cream is far less rich in feel and absorbs quickly and easily by comparison) 70% still said that they actually found Double Care to be a more luxurious experience. (You can read some of the insights into the consumer study here.) It seems almost absurd that this cream costs a tenth of the other one, but such is the land of beauty and its little quirks.

I’ve worked my way through a good few of the Revitalift range now (the SPF here has become one of my most-used, thanks to its bouncy, juicy texture) and nothing has disappointed. I’ve just been reading through all of my press gumph and seen that Revitalift is – by a clear margin – the world’s number one bestselling anti-ageing skincare brand. Quite a feat. The Double Care face cream is set to be the anti-ageing jewel in the Laser Renew crown, I suspect…

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