I love Lush ladies

Anyone noticed that the ladies (Not being sexist by only referring to the women, I have only ever seen one male SA at Lush and he doesn't work at mine anymore) at Lush are super lovely? Like, my God, they are so lovely.

I've made friends with one of the SA's at my local Lush and now she always remembers me even when I haven't been there in a month. Also we have the same name, Ellie. It's a nice feeling to be remembered, I feel very valued.

I think Lush does a brilliant job at making customers feel valued, even when I'm talking to a Lush girl that I haven't met before, they always seem very interested in me and whatever product I'm wanting. Well done, Lush, my love for you continues to grow.

And! I am loving the packaging changes, putting the dusting powders in bottles like this:

are such a better idea than the old sifter packaging that would spill everywhere and never really close.

Creating matte lip colours from non-matte colours

I bought a new It Started With a Kiss from Lush yesterday so that I could have one for home and one for my purse and I discovered something amazing. It Started With a Kiss, like all Lush lip tints, is a glossyish finish, but, just like glossy lipsticks, you can powder over them with translucent powder and turn them into matte lipsticks! So now I have a lovely matte red to play with yay.

So in more detail what I do is apply the lipstick like normal, blot with tissues, powder the lips, reapply lipstick and repowder. It also makes the colour last longer so that's yet another plus.

New Lush thiiiings!

Oh man, you guys, we have finally gotten the new Lush stuff, only like 3 months late, but whatevs. It's so exciting!

I want to try:
British Nanny moisturiser

I'm so excited about this, it has spf! Straight up sunblock continues to break me out, so I've been relying on the sunscreen in my makeup to protect me, but hopefully now this will work! I am a little skeptical and wondering if it'll aggravate my skin, but we'll see.

Lustre dusting powder

I don't know why I want this, probably because it's sparkly and I am drawn to such things. Well done Lush and their marketing.

Peace massage bar

One of the lovely Lush ladies told me that Therapy massage bar was being discontinued and I was devastated, so I decided that I would find a new bar to become obsessed with before they pull Therapy, so far I'm really liking Hottie, but Peace could be interesting too, they don't say much about the smell on the website, but it's based on their spa treatment, Synaesthesia, which uses oils for "forgiveness, acceptance, calm and content" which sounds nice.

Ro's Argan Body Conditioner

How interesting does this sound? You put it on in the shower and wash it off leaving your skin all lovely and soft. Super stoked to try this.

Lush A Million Kisses lip tint review

So Lush seems to have decided that the fans like lip tints, so they will give us lip tints for a limited time, bastards. I don't know why they keep doing this to us, giving us something awesome and then snatching it away. Because they're bitches, that's why.

So A Million Kisses was released recently for valentine's day and my store just got it in! I of course bought two and will probably buy another one every time I go in.

It's similar to It Started With a Kiss lip tint in that it's red, but really the texture is most similar to Chilli Tingle or Latte from Christmas, much more solid, not super moisturising (but definitely not drying, far from drying), with crazy colour pay off. So it's awesome, pretty much.

A Million Kisses' colour is so awesome, I really hope that we continue getting brighter colours. It's darker and berry coloured than It Started With a Kiss and a little goes a long way, so it'd be easy to build it to a full colour or to keep it sheer. I'm really in love with this colour, I wish it was permanent (though with Lush nothing is really permanent *cough cough* what is this bullshit about all of the hair gels being discontinued?? Why?!)

In other news, there's a bruise on my arm that is getting progressively darker. I don't know how it happened or why it's worsening...It was yellow yesterday, now it's more purplish red. I have no recollection of smashing my arm into anything...

Uses for empty black Lush pots

Storage related
- Travel
- Q-tips - also good for traveling as the larger size pots can close with the q-tips inside
- Raw materials/ingredients for skincare and cooking
- Pills/vitamin storage/travel
- Bobby pins, hair ties and other hair accessories
- Snacks - nuts, crackers, etc.
- Spare change jar (bigger pots)
- Crushed up packaging-less Lush products ready for use, eg. sugar scrubs, bubble bars
- Other package-less Lush products - melted down massage bars, lip balms, shampoo/conditioner bars, smaller amounts of larger sized products eg. Big shampoo, Fair-trade Foot Lotion

Non-storage related
- Pots for small/slow growing plants (cacti, etc.) or seedling containers
- Spider catcher (The bigger ones are very good spider catchers

Best of 2011: Beauty

Skincare
- Lush Ultrabland cleanser
- Perfect Potion Moisture Base moisturiser
- Jojoba oil - as a moisturiser
- Perfect Potion Bare Faced exfoliant
- Manuka honey - for masks
- Lavender oil - for pimples
- Arthur Lawrence Cleanser III - as a mask

Makeup
- Urban Decay Naked palette
- Sigma brushes
- Sigmax brushes - F84 and P84 for foundation and concealer
- MAC eyeshadows
- NARS Sheer Glow foundation
- Hourglass Veil mineral primer
- MAC Blacktrack Fluidline eyeliner
- Benefit Get Bent liner brush

Hair
- Coconut oil
- Lush The Big Tease styling gel
- Lush Godiva solid shampoo
- Lush Jungle solid conditioner
- Perfect Potion Rosemary Conditioner
- Perfect Potion Chamomile Shampoo

Favourite things of 2011

Numero uno!
Just in general, Sigma brushes. They are the bomb, super dope, high quality, but also very cheap brushes. I love all of mine, they are most definitely comparable to MAC brushes. My favourites especially are the Sigmax kabuki brushes, love the F80 and F82. Neither of them shed at all, like literally not one hair has come off of them in the months that I have owned them.

The F80 is my favourite for liquid foundation, stipple it on, then buff it in. It gives a flawless finish and doesn't absorb the product.

The F82 is my favourite for mineral foundation, just blend it straight onto the face and it all looks perfect and lovely.

Deus
Lush Ultrabland is the best thing to happen to my face in the whole of forever, that shit is insane. Like, life changingly insane.

You can read about my love for it here and also here, because I love it that damn much.

Sanban
Apples. Before I got my braces off this year, I hadn't bitten into an apple in two damn years. The day after I got them off I was on block exams, so I brought an apple with me to eat as a way of celebrating finishing my math exam. When I got out of that test, I was so excited. I took my apple out of my bag, brought it to my lips and stopped. I couldn't even remember how to eat a damn apple, it took my friends' encouragement and getting over the fear that my teeth will break off, but I bit into that apple and it was the best damn apple of my entire life.

I will never forget that apple.

Quatro
The NARS Beautiful Life Palette is so awesome. Before I bought it I hadn't tried any NARS products (damn you, Australia), but now I am so addicted, I must order more! The lip colours in it are super pigmented for non stick lippies, I especially love the darker pink on the right side, Funny Face, that looks really lovely. The multiples are cool, I don't really see all the hype with Orgasm, it's a pretty pink and all, but I'm pretty sure it's all in the name, well done, NARS, well done. Copacabana is an awesome highlighter, I use it all over my face (brow bone, cheeks, nose) and it looks very nice. The packaging is really good, it zips up and it has a huge mirror above the colours.

Fem
Benefit Creaseless Cream Eyeshadows in general are darn awesome, great pigmentation, stay fairly well and are pearly, but not super shimmery, but I love them especially in Busy Signal, Get Figgy and Tattle Tale. I like Busy Signal and Get Figgy as crease colours and Tattle Tale is an awesome highlight colour, also a nice lid colour.

Seks
Lancome Color Fever lipstick in 312 Pink in the Limo is a super pretty bright pink colour that I love wearing underneath Lush Snow Fairy lip tint. It's a nice pop of colour, that isn't too dramatic and I think would look good on all pale gals, but it's sadly been discontinued, though I'm sure there are a lot of dupes.

Shtatë (That's Albanian for "seven")
MAC fluidline eye liners in Blacktrack and Dipdown are my favourite gel eyeliners, granted, I haven't tried many, but these have served me well for some time now. Blacktrack is very black and is easy to make thick or subtle lines with and Dipdown is a softer brown colour that looks good for less dramatic eye looks. They are fairly water-proof, don't smudge and go on nicely.

Otto
Benefit cheek and lip stains, I love them all, Posietine, Cha Cha tint and Benetint, they're all awesome, interesting and fun to use. Great pigmentation, not too much so as it being too hard to get the right amount, but you also don't have to apply a heap to get some colour, love 'em.

Nege
Benefit Get Bent liner brush. When I bought this a while ago, I loved it, then I started trying new brushes and like them more, now I've come back to it and once again I love it. You can create both really thin and really thick lines with it and the bent head makes it really easy to use. Also, I've had it for ages and it hasn't split or frayed.

Tíz
Laura Mercier Tightline Cake eye liner is da bomb. So good for really thin lines and I like that because it's a powder, it allows less bacteria to collect. It's also a bit interesting and different from the normal eye liners on the market and it seems fairly water-proof so far. I just use normal water with it, as I've read some bad reviews of the activator liquid.

Ellefu
Benefit Badgal Plum mascara is my favourite mascara of all time, I just wish it was water-proof, even still, I'll wear it in the rain because it looks so good. It doesn't clump or give you spider lashes or anything bad, it just looks awesome and the purple colour makes your eyes look brighter and whiter.

Twaalf
The British TV show, Misfits, is my current favourite show. Even without Nathan, who was so freaking funny, it's still awesome. I've grown to like Rudy and I'm really enjoying the non-romance between Kelly and Seth. I love Kelly. I fookin' love her!

Well, that's about it, I'm going to go and watch Misfits now, catch ya tomorrow!

New makeup!

Nyaaa, someone stop me. It's Christmas time and Christmas time is makeup palette time and I keep on ordering them...so far I have three coming. Nyah!

I've also been shopping in real life (real life, what?) and I am very excited about some things I've recently purchased.

So something I bought yesterday was the Revlon Photoready concealer, I'm 002 if you're interested, and I'm really excited about it, but I also received in the mail the costal scents camo quad (light) on the same day...so I get to try out two new concealers, which is exciting, but then I will eventually decide I like one more than the other and the other will be taken to the wasteland of half used makeup. So I'm muchos excited about them, I played with them both when I got home last night and the main things I have to say is that the camo quad is a tad light for me, even though I'm super pale, so it might have been better to have gotten the medium one and used the white concealer that comes with all of them to lighten the colours a bit. I'm not sure that the Revlon concealer is going to be good for my under eyes, which is what I bought it for, because it's kind of thick and doesn't blend super easily. And lastly, I think I'll need to use my fingers to apply and blend for both of them (I was using a fluffy brush before with the much more liquify Lancome Effacernes concealer).

I also went to Lush and bought Daddy-o shampoo, I don't have blond hair, but one of the Lush girls a while ago said that she dyed her hair red, put Daddy-o on and left it for a few hours and when she washed her hair it was pink! And I'm going to be dying my hair over the holidays, so I want pink hair!

And that is all of my shopping adventures.

Lush Christmas products!

I love Lush Christmas, definitely my favourite Lush holiday.

So here are my favourite Christmas products from Lush (in order of when I remember them):

Snow Fairy

I love Snow Fairy, it's my favourite scent, so girly and pink. For anyone who hasn't smelt Snow Fairy before (go to Lush and smell it, you crazy person), it smells like candy floss, pink, sparkly deliciousness, like sickly sweet icing, so good.

The shower gel is awesome still, each year the colour changes a bit, I like it this year, it's really bright and really pink, last year (or the year before last, I can't remember which), it was a kind of pepto bismol pink with sparkles at the bottom.

I love this shower gel as a shampoo as well (all Lush shower gels can be used a shampoos, and some don't have SLS, if anyone so inclined is interested), this one has SLS, and it doesn't really have anything beneficial to hair (but no silicone), it just makes my hair smell amazing.

I was really excited to get a new Snow Fairy lip tint this year, but sadly, the pigmentation isn't as good as last year, which is disappointing because it's not super moisturising either, so it's main use is scent, it does smell awesome though!

Magic Wand reusable bubble bar

Awesome idea, also it smells like Snow Fairy, so double awesome for scent.
What you're supposed to do is swirl it in your water filled tub until there are the desired amount of bubbles and then lay it out to dry. The SAs said it could last 15 baths, the website says "several", so somewhere in between there, still more baths than one of the bigger bubble bars.
It's a bit hard to tell how long to swirl it for, I didn't swirl it for long enough (it felt like it was going to fall off the stick and I got worried), but after it dried it looked exactly the same, so I think if you do less bubbly baths it will last a very long time.

Candy Mountain bubble bar

This one smells sweet and pink too, but it's Creamy Candy in a mountain shape rather than Snow Fairy scent. It's pretty much the same as Creamy Candy, but with a white swirl, so it looks prettier, but still smells the same.

Candy Cane soap

My first time trying it. My Lord, so good. I love candy canes (nearly as much as I love plum pudding) and this smells exactly like them. Mint lovers should most definitely try it.

Celebrate lip tint

and

Chilli Tingle lip tint

See here for a review of both

So White bath bomb

Smells like apples, yum. My friend got this one last year and left it in a box all year because it mad her room smell like apples, downside of that is that when she finally used it, it didn't have much smell left, fair enough.

The Jilted Elf shower jelly

Smells like an alcoholic fruit punch and it has sparkles on the top layer! Only issue with this one is that it has vodka in it, which is pretty drying on the skin, so it's not something I use often, but it smells awesome so it's hard to resist.

So good news, I'm a witch

Yep, everything's going swell here. I used my magic powers to open a bottle of juice not one minute ago. Apparently, tapping the top on the side of a table actually works. I have, however, been unsuccessful in curing myself of whatever illness has befallen me.
There's something wrong with me, don't really know what...

ALSO! I am continuing my rein as spider queen. Another mothertrucker wandered into my bathroom yesterday, luckily, I was armed with my trusty cup and managed to concur him.

I saw it just as I was about to take a bath in this lovely Lush bath

Look! The water's navy! (Christmas Eve bubble bar)

I also did some pretty awesome stuff for Halloween, me and some friends went to a Halloween fair, it was sick, I ate two snow cones and three slushies.
One of my friends went as a unicorn, doesn't she look majestic?

Other friend went as a bumble bee, it cost her a total of $6 to create her outfit.

Serious unicorn

She also offered to give people rides

Catch you on the flippety flip!

Look at all my lip tints!

So I got my Lush UK order yesterday, feels like I've been waiting forever, but really it's been like 8/9 ish days with the cheaper postage option, so heads up to people in Australia wanting to order from Lush UK, the cheaper postage doesn't take that much longer than the way more expensive one, I usually get my products within a week with the expensive one, so it's really only a couple of days with like $20 difference.

I ordered several(5) lip tints: Double Choc, Celebrate, Latte, Chilli Tingle and Snow Fairy.

Now check out my collection! I much prefer lip tints over lip sticks or lip glosses, I think they look for natural, last longer without moving and are funner to use because they're generally multi use. Other than Lush tints/balms, I also really like the benefit liquid ones, eg. Benetint, Posietint and the new Chachatint, which I am excited to try.

These are the new ones from the Christmas line closer up.

Chilli Tingle
A very orange coral colour, applies quite vibrantly, similar to It Started With A Kiss in pigmentation, if you've tried it. Like most of Lush's lip tints, it's not quite as opaque as a lipstick, though they are always very surprisingly bright and can be layered to a fairly full lipstick effect, but if you're applying it in the car, which I often do, then it's a very easy application and not too full on, which I like.

Pretty sure that sentence made no sense and was very run-on-y, but hopefully you get the picture
- They're very pigmented
- Have a different affect to lipstick
- Can be as opaque as lipstick, but also very sheer, if you want

Latte
Copper, bronze, maybe a little milky coffee coloured lip tint, it goes on quite pearly, it's kind of like an orange oxidey colour. Looks good with dark eyeshadows as it's also a bit nude and less bright than the more red/pink toned ones. Also, it smells like a mochachino. Yum.

Celebrate
Light pink with goldish pearly shimmery-ness. It smells like champagne! Goes on quite opaque, but because it's a balm, rather than a stain, it can slip around, and also because it's a light colour it can quite easily move from the sides and just be in the middle of the lips, which isn't a good look. Ao this just needs to be touched up sometimes, or you can smack your lips to keep it even and have a mirror handy.
Also when you first open it, it has popping candy on top, because of the champagne smell, which can be a little annoying to get it all off because some stay embedded and then you get popping candy on your lips, but then you can lick them off, so it's all good.

Here are swatches of all of mine (not Honey Trap because it's clear). One swipe of each, not layered.

Left to right of the first line: It Started With a Kiss, Double Choc
Left to right of the second line: Snow Fairy (Snow Fairy is a lot less pigmented this year...weird), Latte, Celebrate, Chilli Tingle

And this is my dog, he's sad because I don't have any more toast for him to eat.