I’ve been raving to anyone who’ll listen about my new brow discovery: Benefit Gimme Brow. I find it very difficult to get excited about eyebrows and I must say that I think the nation/world’s obsession with these perfect, drawn-on mega-brows is just weird, but I do like to keep mine groomed and – if I’m doing something snazzy with my eye makeup – I’m partial to a bit of shaping and darkening and “filling in of the gaps”. But whatever I do, it has to be easy – I can’t be faffing about with pots and brushes and five different waxes. If it takes more than a couple of minutes then sorry, I just can’t be arsed.

Which is why I’ve been raving – RAVING I tell you! – about Benefit’s Gimme Brow. Previously I’d been using Speed Brow, which is just a tinted gel, to add a bit of oomph, but when I tried Gimme I was utterly taken aback. Not only did it neaten out my brows and keep them in a nice shape, it actually thickened them slightly, filling in any sparse bits, and gave them just a smidgen more depth. Take a look at my before:

and now my after, in which I look as though I’m doing a kind of Sean Connery impression, but I promise you that most (most) of the lift just comes from having shaped and perfected the left eyebrow!

How spectacular is the left one compared to the right? Gimme Brow is just absolutely brilliant stuff – a total eyebrow makeover for people who are either lazy or complete fools or both. (I pretty much fall into both categories at the moment.)

You just brush it on with the teeny brush (careful to wipe it off a bit on the neck of the bottle, as the bristles get quite loaded up and I’ve had a few smears happen!) and then mess about until you kind of glue your hairs into an acceptable shape. The “volumizing fibre gel” (I have no idea either, but it works, so…) clings to your existing brow hairs and makes everything look fuller and a bit thicker, which I think is a lot more believable and realistic than drawing in hairs with some wispy flecks of powder.

Most impressed. Cost? £18.50. You can find it FeelUnique.com (free delivery here) and Debenhams.com – I use the lighter of the two shades. This month, if you book a brow wax at any Benefit store, you get a free full-size Gimme Brow, so perhaps worth booking in for a quick shape if you’re thinking of investing in the fibre gel? Also, 100% of the profits from your wax will go to charities supporting women and girls (part of Benefit’s Bold is Beautiful project) so it’s a win-win situation!

Find out about the rest of my makeup…

The post Perfect Brows for Lazy People: Benefit Gimme Brow appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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**Apologies to those reading this by email; I wrote the post and then forgot to schedule it, so you’ll be reading this on a Monday! If you’re not subscribed to the email then you can do so here.

1) Top tip: never watch Channel 4’s Supervet on the same day that you’ve had to drop your dog off at the pet hospital. Oh my God, I cried more than I have for months! There was this little Bulldog puppy and it had to be put down and the owners were in absolute pieces and I was bawling for about a full five minutes! Phew. I don’t think that pregnancy hormones mix well with dramatic, heart-rending television programmes. I had burst into tears already that day, when I dropped Dexter off at the vets, because the lady in the waiting room had just had her cat put down and was weeping into a hanky. I wanted to give her a cuddle but then I just loss all sense of self-control and started to cry and had to run out and sit in the car. I am avoiding potentially emotional situations for the rest of my pregnancy. (You can keep up with my pregnancy diary here.) I have a full eight weeks to go yet, so it may prove difficult, but I’m thinking that if I avoid all television that hasn’t been pre-approved (ie I’ve read the synopsis or blurb or whatever it is) and only read happy books….

2) Talking of books, I found myself being incredibly irritated by the ending of Simon Mawer’s The Girl Who Fell From The Sky. Look away now if you’re currently reading it or about to read it (if you’re not then you can find it here online), but for those who have finished it: WHAT THE HELL? What was going on with the ending? I didn’t sit through hours of tense espionage and radio-parts-hidden-in-fannies for that kind of ending! I was bitterly disappointed. I kind of knew that something abrupt and bad was on the cards, but it was all just such an anticlimax. I almost threw my Kindle across the room in frustration. If you’ve read it then let me know what you thought – the rest of the book was top-notch, I was totally absorbed. My new book for this week is Elizabeth is Missing; came highly recommended but I’m only three pages in so I haven’t read enough to comment on it yet! If you want to read along with me then you can find the book at Amazon here.

3) I’ve been a little bit slow with getting my post recently, so I’ve probably missed the boat with this one, but I really liked this “Super Hero” edition subscription box from Parisian brand My Little Box. They do beauty boxes with a difference; each one has a theme or “guest host” and includes a selection of carefully curated non-beauty items as well as a little cloth bag filled with skin, makeup and body treats. It all looks very stylised and cute and I can see why the service has become so popular – it’s more of a lifestyle box than a beauty box.

Some of the things that come through aren’t really my particular cup of tea (what do I do with sheets of stickers now that I don’t have school books to cover?) but then I’m not sure whether I’m slightly out of the age range, at 34. There’s no denying, though, that My Little Box are doing something a bit different and they seem to have built up a really strong identity which can’t be the easiest thing to achieve in the overpopulated beauty box market. Everything is so carefully planned and “on brand”: beautiful web photography, gorgeous product illustrations and a dedicated magazine with interesting content. You can find out more about the My Little Box service here.

The post Sunday Tittle Tattle: Sick Dogs and Superhero Boxes appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Back in the days before internets, brands could price pretty much as liked from country to country – it was always something of a secret that you could find beauty products far cheaper in other countries than you can here. The USA is a good case in point, although you must remember that most websites aren’t showing sales tax which differs from state to state. And the dollar rate fluctuates (most in our favour).

When a BBB reader asked me why a particular NUDE product is less expensive in the US than it is here, I really wanted to know why. It’s completely unexpected from this brand. Most brands will try and keep an acceptable ratio between prices taking into account exchange rates and shipping costs. So, when you’re looking at brands that are more expensive here than in the US, you actually need to be looking at the retailers who are selling the products more expensively.

If a product is with a huge retailer, they’re more likely to want to offer competitive pricing. The retailer is king when it comes to small brands and if they want to sell it cheaper, nine times out of ten, they can do as they please. It can be the case that a retailer agrees to sell at a particular price and then changes their mind.

Which is what happened to the NUDE Rescue Oil I blogged about – one minute it was in price alignment, the next is wasn’t. Although NUDE is part of a bigger beauty conglomerate (LVMH), each brand has to stand on its own two feet.

The same brand can have entirely different retailers across the world and with that comes different audiences and consumers. In light of BBB readers being hot on this issue (and I thank you for it) and educated around pricing variations, I was able to flag it up to the NUDE team as something that needed to be sorted out.

As it turned out the NUDE team were already on it! Some brands would just let it be, but I know the NUDE team and it’s just not their style so I wasn’t all that surprised that they were already actively making changes to the pricing.