Musings of a Muse

I don’t really like florals all that much. When it comes to fragrances I prefer sweet, fruity, or foody blends. I love, love smelling sweet. I just associate sweet smells with being girly for some reason.

However, some products that are floral smelling occasionally make there way onto my radar one of which is Lush Limited Edition Shower Gel Ghost. A few months ago I brought some Ghost and promptly fell in love with the interesting, refreshing lily blend of it.

No doubt that Lily Savon smells like Lily of the Valley but I get more from it than that. It’s a bit lemony, a bit floral, and all fresh! I adore washing my hair with Ghost and pairing it up with this soap! The scent seems to linger with me all day and I just smell so fresh and gorgeous!

The soap is pure perfection, as all Lush soaps are, and lathers up like a dream! It’s quite like a slice of butter…..so soft, melty, and moisturizing! And that heavenly scent of lilies! The subtlety of this blend is both girly and gorgeous!

This one is on my must have list! Definitely try it out your next trip to Lush! The Muse loves it!

I was recently given a few L’oreal hair care products for review so I thought I’d slap them in my Beauty on a Budget section and give you the low down on these two new products from L’Oreal.

I got both the L’Oreal Studio Perfect Fix Ultra-Fine Spray and the Studio Smoothness Smoothing Cream. Since they are both for hair management I figured I’d review them together!

The good news is I actually like both.

It deserves to be mentioned that my hair has been silicon free for a few years now. I use all Lush hair care which contains no silicons which in turn equals perfect hair everyday of my life. The only silicons that take up residence in my hair were a bit of smoothing gel I used to use a year ago but I had since switched my gel over to Lush’s King of Mods and that was the end of silicons from my life completely!

Aside from that I will say that I’ve been using the L’Oreal Studio Smoothness Smoothing Cream for a week now and I actually do like it. I know hair care posts are probably a snore but since I have the products here anyway I figure I might as well review them!

The texture is simply wonderful. I may be out of touch with the drugstore brand of hair care and there may very well be a product out there like this already but I’ve personally never seen such an interesting formula. The texture is just like a moisturizing lotion that you’d apply to your body! I take a little more than a pea size amount and apply it to my wet hair and smooth it in. It tames my any frizz I have and keeps my hair safely in place all day long. My hair is very long, very wavy, and very out of control thus slicking it back into a bun and slapping a hair band in place is my normal order of the day when I’m heading out to work. It happens to smell really fresh as well kinda like the way most salons smell when you walk in! You know what I mean I’m sure!

Now I also received the matching L’Oreal Perfect Fix Ultra Fine Spray Finishing Hairspray! Holy cow that was a big mouth full! This too I will give a raving review too. Again, I feel a bit out of touch with hair care from drugstores and have no idea of options available out there but I felt like this was very different from my past drugstore purchases. It’s been ages since I’ve touched drugstore styling products and I always think back to my teen years when hair spray and gel bulletproof’ed my head for me. This was great because if someone shot at me I could carry on without worry since the bullet would literally bounce off my head. Can’t say I get the same sort of protection with this hairspray! It’s very light, smells lovely, and doesn’t leave behind a hard, crusty layer! It actually makes my hair very soft and bouncy! The Muse likey!

As I said I’m shocked as I really do associate major build up with styling products but both of these did work well and gave a very natural finish and hold that I liked! I’m still using both after a week now which could count for something, obviously I’m impressed.

If you’re looking for something to give your hair great management and minimal buildup with a cheap price tag I’d definately see about picking up both of these. These are pretty darn good.

What do you use to manage your hair?

Tried these?

Love ‘em?

Want to try ‘em?

Tell the Muse!

Sometimes a girl has to broaden her horizons and look towards a new style of makeup that she may never have noticed before!

And so it goes for Clinique’s New Fall Collection for 2008 entitled Modern Matte. This isn’t the Muse’s normal style of makeup as she’s not one for matte, nudes, naturals, etc…but I’ve decided that I should bring you a different point of review since I get e-mailed so much about including nude, natural, mature colors in my posts!

If you’ve said YES YES YES to any one of the above this is the collection for you!

Stay tuned for the Muse’s review on Clinique Modern Matte!

Want it?

Love matte?

Like it nude and natural?

Tell the Muse!

Last week I was picking up a few items at CVS for a swap I was doing when I noticed that L’Oreal Infallible Lip Gloss was on sale. The first thing that caught my eye about these is the awesome applicator and I was intrigued if they’d be any good. Since the price was right at Buy 1 Get 1 Free I decided why not! I’ll give it a shot.

Total cost for both, $9.99 USD plus taxes. Not bad right? I felt for sure I’d get them home and they’d be absolute rubbish but at least I didn’t shell out a whole lot of cash for them. Guess what? Turns out they aren’t too bad and possibly, with a little tweak here and there, could have potential awesomeness written all over them!

As I mentioned I was originally attracted to these due to the very nice sponge applicator that I prefer in lipglosses. Aube Gloss Frutina is famous for sporting a similiar sponge and Lancome’s better known, Color Fever Gloss. I will say that the sponge applicator on the L’Oreal Infalliable Lipgloss is actually better than both of those. It’s a generous size sponge, wider in size, and bent at a nice angle to make applying a generous amount of gloss to your lips easy with a flawless finish. I’d kill to have MAC adapt to these fantastic sponges! I find they pick up color so much better and offer almost a plumping effect when on. They also happen to apply a super generous amount of gloss to your lips which most regular sponge applicators fail at.

The color selection available is vast and I’d say there are about 15 to 20 shades to choose from, possibly more. I only selected two because at the time I didn’t realize how good these would truly be but the good news is I was clever enough to score a rain check when I was checking out so I can go back for a few more since I am enjoying them so much! The colors I selected were 305 Fiery and 125 Bloom. Fiery is a brownish copper shade that looks great with warmer shades where as Bloom is more of a fun bubble gum pink shade.

Fiery

Bloom

They deserve a rave for the pigmentation which is wonderful so staining your lips or applying lipstick beneath is entirely optional on your part. You can easily swipe on bare lips and have a killer, glossy shade of color minus a ton of layering! However, the taste is simply disgusting. I can’t put my finger on quite what the flavor is…it’s some sort of weird cross between fruity, vanilla, incense, patchouli flavor. Very strange! But luckily it goes away after a bit so you aren’t subjected to the horrible flavor for hours.

Staying power is promised at 6 hours and I’d say the gloss holds just enough stickiness to hold it on for about 2-3 hours maybe a bit more if you press it. However, I felt like the formula was slightly flawed. It goes on very nicely and has a minimal amount of tacky, sticky feel but I’ve made my peace with glosses that sport that particular problem however after about 10 or so minutes of having the gloss on it dries down to a rather weird, waxy feel. First application is comfortable and great but the dry down does irritate a bit. The strange waxy feel does not go away for the remainder of the time you have the gloss on and I can only assume that this is their solution to six hours of contentious wear. It’s rather strange when I wet my lips or lick my tongue over it but I guess I can get over that.

This is a tad bit off topic but it did rather peeve me so it’s worth a mention. When I got home I decided to look these up online and see what the review on the street was. I noticed both in reviews and adverts from various sites they mention a mirror being attached to the gloss. I later realized they meant the cap. The cap is mirrored however, for some odd reason, it peeved me that they choose to pimp this out as a feature when in fact it’s not even worth mentioning. The mirrored cap, in my humble opinion, is completely useless. You can’t use the cap for application considering the sponge applicator is attached to the cap. How the hell can you use the cap as a mirror? So strange they even bothered putting this in descriptions for the product! I even read a review where one girl said how convenient it was that the cap was mirrored. She could have possibly been drinking at the time, I’m not entirely sure. To give reviewers and retailers the benefit of the doubt I firgure that once applied I can just check my lips in the mirror after screwing the cap back into place but again useless. The mirrored cap distorts your image so it’s not exactly clear if your lips are looking great or not. That was a rather long rant but the Muse has to get her fifty cents in about the stupidity of the entire situation!

All in all for a drugstore beauty find these are actually pretty good. They do have some minor rants attached but I felt like it was one of the better products I’ve come across in my wanderings into the drugstore beauty world here in the US.

Even though it needs some work to be perfection it is affordable and it’s worth picking up if it’s on sale. I wouldn’t pay $9.99 USD per a gloss but I wouldn’t mind picking up a few more of these at the Buy 1 Get 1 price! $5 USD each for a pigmented gloss that has decent wear time plus looks very nice on isn’t too bad a splurge!

Tried these?

Love ‘em?

Hate ‘em?

What’s are your Beauty on a Budget lip gloss finds?

Tell the Muse!

Before I fell in love with Bobbi Brown there was a limited edition shimmer brick released called Peony.

Now I’ve lemmed Peony for a while in particular the lemming got strong when my good friend Iris was staying in New York and had gone to Woodbury and scored Peony for herself. I remember soon after her trip I headed up to the CCO but I think Iris might have purchased all the Peony for herself, you never know she’s as obssessed with makeup as I am and it’s a logical conclusion. I only ever seen the one compact she got but what’s she not telling us right? I bet she has a few of ‘em stocked in a makeup cabinet just waiting to be used! Dontcha Iris? Tell us!

Anyway. I had seen some pics of Peony and it was honestly the darkest most vibrant shade I’ve seen released in a shimmer brick. It was a deep pink rosy color that looked simply divine and the Muse had to have it for her very self.

Sadly, after much begging and pleading on MUA I was unable to get anyone to swap it away (damn people are always so hard to convince on MUA aren’t they? Why put it up for swap if you don’t want to part with the bloody thing!).

I soon after turned to E-bay but I suddenly grew a consious when it comes to cosmetics and I was counting my pennies and realized hells I don’t want to pay that much when I know the CCO had it for heaps and heaps less!

Noooooooooo!

I pushed Peony to the furtherest corner of my mind and I tried hard not to begurdge my friend her lucky purchase (I’d never begrudge her anything as she’s a true darling but for the sake of my story I’ll add that in for drama purposes only hehe!).

About two weeks or more ago I wandered up to Woodbury and low and behold what I came across:

HA! Say it with me people…SCOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I ended up snatching up one of many Bobbi Brown Shimmer Bricks in Peony for the sweet price of $26.75 USD! w00t!

It’s all that I hoped for! It’s one of the better Shimmer Bricks I’ve come across and I’m very eager to try it out with a bronzing powder as I think it’ll give my bronzing powder an extra pop and sizzle of both shimmer and a beautiful flush of color!

It’s probably one of the few shimmer bricks you can wear on bare skin and still look fabulous. Very pigmented and with just the right amount of shimmer this is a solid gold find for the Muse!

I also picked up a Bobbi Brown blush in Apricot while I was there for $14 USD and it’s simply a stunning shade. I have a funny feeling this will be making a guest starring appearance on my next Beauty Addictions list!

Dontcha love scoring an awesome steal?

Count the Muse a happy girl on these purchases!

What was your latest haul that made you do a little jig?

What are your lemmings that you’re having a hard time finding?

Tell the Muse!