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I spend too much time in Boots. I know the aisles off by heart. Sad, but true - it's my mecca and I worship there most days on the way home from work or at lunchtime. So when something new turns up there, I tend to notice right away.

I was curious to see a fixture full of a new brand of mascara, Belvada, sitting atop of one of the display shelves. Clocking the £20 price tag I decided it must be either a cult brand or something of exceptional quality. (Or it could be both, of course.) Sadly I lack the disposable income to pick one up to try out offhand, but I resolved to find out more about it.

Belvada is a brand with a unique selling point - their packaging, which exposes the product for use via a sliding mechanism on the handle. It's one-handed application. Great for people with disabilities, but is this strictly an improvement on the standard unscrew-pull out-apply mascara system? Well, the company seem to think so, since they have a patent pending for their design.

Belvada's website claims that "this unique one hand applicator will change the way you use mascara forever", citing the following as evidence:

• One Hand Application
• Mascara Loads Uniquely from Tip to Bottom
• Greater Stability and Control
• Optimum Volume
• No Pumping Necessary

Hmm. Without trying it myself I don't feel able to give a verdict, but on the strength of these claims I'm not wholly convinced. I'm interested in the tip-to-bottom loading though, and whether it makes a difference to have the brush pushed through the product rather than dipped into it.

I found some more information at Packaging Design, where I learned that the packaging has a "double-wiper system" to prevent overloading which can lead to clumps. It also seals air away from the product to keep it from drying out. That does sound good. But £20 worth of good? Bear in mind that we're advised to keep mascara for just 3 months anyway, so drying out shouldn't be that much of an issue if we follow that timeframe.

Belvada also make concealer and lipgloss with the same push-up mechanism, presumably with a similar pricetag. At the moment you can buy the mascara in the UK at Boots, priced at £20.

Has anyone else tried Belvada mascara? Please let us know your thoughts if you have.

When MAC did a Barbie collection, I was surprised. When Stila did a Barbie collection, I was mildly curious. Now, New Look have done a Barbie collection. New Look aren't even a makeup company! What gives?


The collection between a blonde pneumatic doll and cosmetic lines is not obvious to me at all. Perhaps it's some kind of branding link aimed at snaring young consumers into makeup purchasing? Maybe it's nostalgia marketing, designed to pique the interest of the young-at-heart? Perhaps Mattel are putting feelers out into a new industry and are using the Barbie brand as a kind of bridge?

Very odd. The New Look Barbie collection is released in stores this weekend and features lipgloss, blush, mascara, lashes, palettes, nail sets, a face mask, a bronzer kit, and even accessories like pyjamas, makeup bag and a watch, according to the press release we received (though not apparent on the website). The release coincides with Barbie's 50th anniversary. And, obviously, the Christmas shopping season.

The range looks cute, and would be a fun gift for anyone you know with a soft spot for the pocket-sized bombshell. It looks relatively upmarket too. One thing we do notice is that the branding on the products is the same as the MAC range - a logo of a head with a high ponytail in profile. The photography looks similar too. I wonder what went on between the three companies!

If you want to get "dolled up" (arf!) like the pink mannequin, check out the collection at www.newlook.co.uk. Pricing starts at £4.00 and ranges up to £30 for the larger items.

A quick lunchtime bit of speculation - having just popped out to Sainsbury's for a salad, I noticed that the Cargo display was looking rather sparsely stocked, and that a whopping 75% off was being offered on the remaining products.

I controlled myself and snapped up only one thing; one of their little lipglosses for a very cheap £2.20.

This, combined with the recent increase in Cargo products available in Boots stores and online, makes me wonder whether Cargo are heading out of Sainsburys and into Boots. Checking out the Cargo website seems to support this; their international stockists list shows lots of Boots locations, and no Sainsburys locations at all. Looks like Cargo is about to become much easier to find!

The US MAC site had an overhaul a few months back, and it seems that the UK site has finally followed suit. There's a new Colour Play feature, which takes all of MAC's products and arranges swatches by colour, so you can find products by shade. The collection graphics are much, much bigger and bolder than they were on the old site, making the new site more difficult to sneakily browse whilst at work. Not that we do that sort of thing. Ahem.

In other notable MAC website news, Style Black is available online, with the most in-demand product, the black Greasepaint Stick, in stock at the time of writing. Dazzleglass Creme, a new collection of Dazzleglasses, is also available online now.

If the temptation proves to be too much for you, as it might be for me, you can find all these lovely things at maccosmetics.co.uk.

A few years ago, the internet exploded with mineral makeup companies. Their product was natural, inexpensive, easy to wear and came in a huge range of shades. To me it seemed like the perfect solution for acquiring lots of amazing shades on a budget, without putting my skin in danger from iffy cheap ingredients, and my drawers swiftly filled with lots of little hand-labelled sample pots. It's very cheap and it's a fun way to try out colour. Plus, mineral shadows are easy to blend and hold tight in place over a layer of UDPP.

Anastasia of Lipsticks and Lightsabers has a newsflash for me however - it seems many mineral makeup companies frequently just repackage wholesale micas at a hugely inflated price. And those wholesale pigments come from just one of two suppliers, whose prices are absolutely tiny in comparison. Claims of uniqueness, hand-blended-ness, exceptional quality or in fact any USP seem pretty flimsy in the light of this revelation. It's the same stuff, in a different jar, and it's five times the price..?

Is it money for nothing? Widespread outrage at LimeCrime Cosmetics' prices and suggestive website copy suggests so. After testing the prettily packaged vibrant shades sold by Doe Deere, Anastasia is pretty sure she's been duped.

Since these products are all sold online in any case, it does seem to make a lot more sense to go straight to the source for your mineral colours if you're going to be cranking up the ol' Paypal account. And maybe have a go at mixing your own shades into the bargain. After all if so many small internet "companies" are doing it, it can't exactly be rocket science, can it?

TBK Trading's kits (see pic above) provide everything you need to get started. Their EZ Eyeshadow Kit costs around the same as a single high-end eyeshadow ($19) and allows you to mix over 25 of your own custom shades.

Bit of a gloomy topic for my first post on the blog, but nonetheless important news. Lush's sister company B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful will close its doors at the end of this year. They will stick around for Christmas but thereafter will be bowing out of the beauty game.

B (for short) have been in business for 6 years now, and specialise in unusual fragrance, vegan colour cosmetics, skincare and some bath and body products. Like Lush, they put a premium on sustainable packaging. Theirs is sourced from developing countries and features a lot of sequins and glitter. It's pretty (though sometimes impractical).

The closure has been officially announced on the B homepage this week, as well as on the company's facebook page. Apparently the concern just "isn't making any money" and so its assets will pass over to Lush. Whether this means Lush will sell some B items, I'm not sure. Perhaps the bathing products may reappear in Lush's "Retro" series at some point?

To cheer yourself up, and to reminisce about the glory days of B, why not check out their rather silly but quite fun B Heroes video?

Earlier this year, everyone who knew anything about beauty was desperate to get hold of Urban Decay's limited edition Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows eye palette. Just a handful were released to the UK, and many a beauty junkie was glued to their computer screen with a finger poised to press "Add to Basket" on the Debenhams website the day it was released. Much jubilation followed as palettes arrived in the post and swatches and pictures sprouted mushroom-like across the internet.

With the initial fever calmed, however, we heard several folks finding themselves at a loss for ways to make use of the palette, which is packed with bright, shimmering shades. The coveted items were starting to gather dust in drawers and on dressing tables in favour of more workaday colours. It seemed like people who wouldn't normally choose brights had gotten caught up in the excitement and wound up with a lovely collector's item that just wasn't seeing much use.

Urban Decay must have come to the same conclusion as us - they've produced a series of "how to" videos to help Alice BOS owners create wearable Wonderland-themed looks with their palettes. The rest of us aren't excluded either - as all of the colours in the Alice palette are available elsewhere in the UD line, we can all enjoy making ourselves up as the Red Queen, Alice herself, or even the Caterpillar using our existing UD collections (or dare I say it - other brands).

Check out the videos here. (The page title says "Win our Alice palette", but sadly we think this must be a mistake as there's no reference to any competition on the page.)

I was quite excited when I visited Urban Decay's US website and saw that the Face Case has been reincarnated in a new purple guise.

The Urban Decay Face Case is a product close to my heart. The Pin Up/First Date Face Case circa 2001 was my first ever Urban Decay purchase, and I went on to collect several more of the old-version silver compacts. I was a student then and had minimal disposable income, so spending £20 on a palette felt wildly extravagant and as a result, very exciting.

The old Face Cases were wonderful palettes, with 4 eyeshadows, 4 lip products and a blush all packed neatly into a robust grey embossed compact. There was a large sturdy mirror, along with a handy well for tools. (They did come with foam applicators, but I guess nobody is perfect.) Here are a couple of examples from my collection.




Time passed, and the old Face Cases stopped being sold in around 2004. There was a brief re-appearance for the Face Case in the mid '00s, when it was resurrected as a rather girly cardboard packaged effort, in just one neutral-ish colourway. It was an OK palette but it didn't even come close to the original. I bought it, but I can't lie to you - I never loved it like I shoulda.

The new one looks more promising. It's plastic rather than cardboard, with the same hinged, clasped lid as its predecessors and decent looking mirror covering the whole inside of the lid. The colours aren't totally blowing me away at first glance, and the eyeshadows (always my first point of reference) aren't especially strong. There's Grifter, a nice enough lilac that's tragically infested with a ton of glitter, Twice Baked, a nice deep brown shimmer, and that darned infuriating glittery Midnight bloody Cowboy (Rides Again version this time), which apparently we're to be plagued with forever more if we want to buy UD palettes.

 Looking up though, there's a brand new limited edition blush in "Hookup", which appears as a very generous sized pan with embossed surface. There are also three good-sized wells containing XXX-shine lipglosses in Naked, Love Junkie and the beautiful Carney. There's also a double-ended brush that looks like it's made with actual proper fibres - definitely an improvement on the sponge-tips of yore.

No idea when or if we'll see this in the UK, but it's one to look out for on eBay. The US RRP is a very reasonable $14.00, and it can be purchased here.

MAC's latest collection, entitled Art Supplies, is actually providing a bit of temptation for me.  I've not felt particularly tempted by any new MAC products for quite some time, mostly because so many of the collections are just a few shade or packaging variations on existing products.  This collection, however, contains some things I have never tried before - and having been through a bit of a MAC obsession when I first got into makeup, that's a rarity for me nowadays.

The Greasepaint stick, as introduced with the Style Black collection, is back in 8 shades - I'm lusting after Zinc Zone, as I love anything gunmetal silver, and Charred Mauve, because anything purple brings out the green in my eyes.  Described as a creamy, pigmented crayon, this is designed to be easily smoked out and apparently is long wearing.  If it's long wearing on my oily lids, I'll be quite frankly amazed; I've not found many of MAC's cream products to be half as long wearing as they claim.  £13.50 for 1g.

The other interesting product for me is the new Pro Longwear Lipstain Marker.  These look suspiciously similar to the OutLast lipstains that CoverGirl make, which are sadly not available in the UK.  The difference looks to be the inclusion of some fairly neutral shades in the 9 available colours - my only gripe with the CoverGirl product was that all the shades available were seriously bright.  I'm curious to try Modern Mocha, a neutral brown, and Runway Ripened, described as a berry plum red.  £14.50 for 2.5g.

What do you think?  Tempted by anything in this collection, or are you still waiting for MAC to release something entirely new and exciting?

SpaceNK are currently offering a couple of good deals:

• Free deluxe sampe of Nude Advanced Eye Complex (5ml) worth £20 with all online orders (while stocks last) - no code required
• £10 off a £60 spend (not including delivery) - use the code SPRING10 until 30th April

They also have a couple of exclusives at the moment, including REN's latest serum, Keep Young and Beautiful, priced at £45, and 3 More Inches, a new haircare range from Michael Van Clarke (brother of Nicky Clarke, wonder where the Van came from?!), which is aimed at people who have (or want to have) long hair.  I don't know many girls who would turn down three more inches.  Snarf snarf.

Also of note is the news that Love and Toast will be landing at SpaceNK next week. BritishBeautyBlogger has posted about them before; the range has gorgeous, eco-friendly packaging and interesting scents including the intriguing sounding Gin Blossom. 

Note that the links used in this post are affiliate links; if you click and then buy, we get a small commission.

Disclosure: This product was provided for review by No.7 PR

In the last week, No.7 have released a new batch of Speed Dry nail polish shades. They're all rather lovely (see after the cut for pics), but there's one that has grabbed alllllll the attention - Beanie.

The reason being, of course, that it's a dead ringer for prestige cult favourite Particulere by Chanel. The cool-toned mushroom brown has even earned its own generic shade-name, greige (grey-beige).

Personally, I don't own Particulere, but from the images I've seen and the way this No.7 polish looks on my own nails, I'm satisfied that I don't need to. Purists are likely to continue hankering after the "real thing", but for me this £6.25 greige will do nicely, especially as it's widely available in branches of Boots and online.

This picture was taken after 3 days of wear, and shows 3 coats of Beanie over Urban Retreat's basecoat and topped with Seche Vite (to which I'm a new and devoted convert, but that's another story).
Here's Beanie with its sisters Violetta (the darker blue - looks a bit like Bourjois Bleu-Violet - thumbs up!) Beautifully Black, Fucshia Daze, Queenie, Poolside Blue and Grey Skies.

I photoshopped these. Please don't laugh.

I'm planning to bag Poolside Blue, Violetta and Grey Skies next time there's a £5 voucher doing the rounds.

OCC have finally released more details about the new Spring 2010 shades of Lip Tar, after premiering them at the LA Makeup Show this weekend.

From left to right:  Complex, Demure, Hoochie and Vapid.

These are available from OCC's website, or on pre-order from the lovely Makeup Artist Boutique,where they will be shipped in mid March - if you order there, don't forget you get a 10% discount with the code OCCLBR.

Pursebuzz has some swatches, and I'm already waiting with baited breath for Demure.  Any of these tickle your fancy?

Walking down Oxford Street yesterday, I noticed that the B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful store has turned into a Sunglasses Hut. The website still lists the Oxford Street store in it's stockists list, and the original announcement hasn't been updated in a while.

The closure has been on the cards for some time now, but it's starting to look imminent - if there's anything you're after from B, now is probably a good time to get it!

Just in case you needed another reason to go to IMATS... The latest addition to the already impressive speaker list is Alex Box, of Illamasqua. She'll be speaking on the Saturday (30th January).

If you've not got your tickets yet, you can get them through the IMATS website, and they'll cost you between £33 and £60.

Urban Decay have released a promo page for the new Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows. Sixteen shadows, two 24/7 eyeliner pencils, and a mini Primer Potion nestle inside the palette, which has a popup scene in the lid.

The product blurb, however, says that the sixteen eyeshadows included are "best-selling shades given topsy-turvy names", so looks like there's nothing new shade-wise there.

Like most Urban Decay limited edition palettes, this one will probably sell out fast. If you're interested, sign up for their newsletter to get more info as it's released.

This will apparently hit our shores in March, presumably to coincide with the release of the film, in very limited quantities.