L'Oréal Beauty and the Beast lipstick collection

I heard about this collection by L'Oréal before it came out via social media and was really interested straight away. I, (probably like many of you reading this) have a weakness for lipsticks. My initial excitement was short lived as I soon found out that they were going to be exclusive to Amazon Italy. 

Then they were released and all of a sudden people in the UK somehow had got hold of them. Apparently, although challenging, it is not impossible to shop on Amazon.it.

Armed with my knowledge of navigating Amazon.co.uk and Google translate in another tab of my browser; I was able to make a purchase. They didn't have them all in stock at the time. In fact, they had already sold out once and then restocked. There were a couple of other colours available (there are seven in the collection) but these were the ones I thought I'd be most likely to wear.

They are part of the colour riche collection and are actually shades that already exist, they have just been repackaged for the release of Beauty and the Beast. It cost me just under £30 to get these 3 including delivery. The regular colour riche's are £6.99 in Boots, so you are paying a bit extra for the packaging and the fact they have been shipped from Italy.

Lumiere is the shade 231 "Silk" and is the perfect nude for me. A subtle hint of sheer colour and a lovely sheen, perfect for every day wear.

La Bestia (or "the Beast" in English) is 703 "Oud Obsession". This is a deep chocolate brown, which unfortunately looks quite patchy because of the sheerness of the formula. I hope that can be avoided with a decent lip liner as a base.

Spolverina or Fifi the feather duster is a rich deep plum colour which seems to have a much more even formula than la bestia. It is the colour riche shade 374 "Intense Plum" which describes it perfectly. You definitely need a lip liner with this one though to stop it bleeding.

I would quite like to have bought the rose too as that looks like it would be a good staple red to add to my collection. I'll just have to wait and see if it comes back in stock.

Konjac sponge review

I read about the Konjac sponge on another blog and the review was so positive I ordered one straight away.

Picture from Amazon.co.uk

This is the one I got from Amazon. They do a number of different ones, but I went for the bamboo charcoal as it is for oily and spot prone skin (me!). After rushing into the purchase and spending about £7 on it, I later took to eBay to have a browse and found them much cheaper there. Although they were unbranded, they were only about £1. Still, I told myself you can't beat branded products for skincare.

When it arrived I really did enjoy using it. It makes your skin feel really soft, much more so than your average face wash or scrub. I didn't want to cut out my face wash products all together although I think you can with these, so I tend to use this after my face wash to clean off any dead skin cells. It doesn't banish my oily skin or spots, but it does seem to help any blemishes reduce that little bit quicker and not get so severe in the first place.

I left this hanging in my shower between uses and I think that is where it went wrong. After a couple of weeks it started to crumble and once it got too bad I had to throw it away. Looking back, when it arrived and I unpackaged it, it was wet. So I probably should have put it back in the packaging after using to keep in the moisture. 

Since then, I ordered one of the cheap unbranded ones from eBay (in case the crumbling happened again). This time, I've kept it in the bag it came in, not letting it dry out and it is still going strong. Also, there is little different between the branded and unbranded, certainly not something I can justify spending £7 on, when the £1 does the same job. 

The konjac sponge is definitely an addition to my skincare routine that I will be keeping. Also the branded ones make up a nice part of a gift or stocking filler. 

Nail Polish Stand

Greetings from my new house! It's been a very busy and stressful couple of weeks, but I'm absolutely loving having a house. (Lots of home decor posts to follow).

The first thing that I decided to buy for myself in the new house is a nail polish stand. I've been looking at a few on eBay for a while but didn't want to buy before the move. I ended up ordering one from Amazon for £7.99.

I've got the muji acrylic draws already so wanted to go with the clear acrylic look to match. It fits approximately 30 bottles on it and is nice and sturdy. I would definitely recommend.