Dainty Doll Blushers

Happy Saturday everyone! And today is also the 1st of June - *insert generic statement about how fast time passes here*...

Dainty Doll may be my new obsession. So far I've reviewed the lipsticks (HERE) and the cream blushers (HERE) but today it's time for my favourite product of all - powder blushers. The Dainty Doll blushers have quite literally transformed my face and the way I feel about blush. It was never a product I liked or took any interest in. Until now.

 Dainty Doll blushers are absolutely spot on and perfect for pale skin, as you'd expect. The range of colours is quite diverse, as shown above, but each one is perfectly pigmented whilst still subtle enough to make porcelain skin look stunning. I can't say enough positive things about these products, they're blimmin amazing!

L>R I bought:

001 Hippy Shade, 002 My Girl, 003 Money Talks and 004 You Are My Sunshine.

This is 001 Hippy Shake - which is (now) my all time favourite face product. As you can see, its a very pale lilac blush which is something I never knew existed before, nevermind tried! When it arrived I was terribly skeptical about how I would use it and the way it would look on my face. I use it almost as a highlighter really, over the top of another blusher (usually Money Talks) on the cheekbone to brighten up the look and add a extra little je ne sais pas... and it looks fabulous. It's absolutely perfect for my skin tone, makes my face look almost doll-like (heh, Dainty Doll) and just perfect. Here's a photo of Hippy Shake worn over Money Talks:

I hope this shows the subtle brightness it can bring to your face. I wear this on a daily basis to work as it's understated enough to be work-appropriate and it's really nice with a pink toned lip colour too. Definitely a winner!

Here is shade 002 My Girl - a gorgeous baby pink with a tiny bit of shimmer in it. This is actually very similar to the Dainty Doll Cream Blusher Paper Roses, except in powder form. Again, it's not a colour I wear every day but it is a nice tone to have in my collection, especially for Spring and Summer.

Now for the first blusher I bought from Dainty Doll, and the product that started my obsession! Here is 003 Money Talks, a nice pale taupe/beige shade. I originally thought I would use this as a contour colour because it's not a typical blush colour, however as a test I applied it to my cheeks as a blush and it actually looks much more like a deep rose pink once it's on my face. I can't explain it, nor can I photograph it to show it to you. As I said above, my staple products for work tend to be this blusher with Hippy Shake over the top - it just gives a gorgeous effect. All the sane, Money Talks alone looks very subtle, sophisticated and beautiful.

Last but by all means not least is You Are My Sunshine. As soon as I opened this up I thought a mistake had been made because it is so similar to the Dainty Doll Orange County Girl cream blusher, which is a dupe for Nars Orgasm. You Are My Sunshine is a teensy bit darker in colour and the gold shimmer is more obvious than it is in Orange County Girl, which makes this one a bit more appropriate for a night out or winter wear. It's a really stunning blusher though, and the gold shimmer means you don't have to wear a highlight so it's a one stop shop for cheeks!

As you can probably tell already, I am a total fangirl when it comes to these Dainty Doll blushers! They are hands down the best blushers I have ever used, make me so excited to apply my make up each day and have changed the way I see my face and the way my make up looks each day. I am so grateful to Nicola Roberts for creating blushers for pale skin, only now do I realise how wrong every other product has been for my skin tone!

If you're a porcelain princess like me and haven't tried these yet, you just have to! They're priced at only £1.99 each (RRP £13.50) from Fragrance Direct HERE and you at the very least have to experience Money Talks and Hippy Shake. I am so obsessive about these that I want to buy at least one more of my two favourites in case they get discontinued! I would even repurchase at full price to be honest.

Have you tried anything from Dainty Doll before? Do you like the look of any of the blushers I've featured today?

xx

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Dainty Doll Cream Blushers

This post has been a long time coming! If you're a follower of Bee's Knees you'll know that I went a little crazy over the past couple of months with purchases of Dainty Doll products from Fragrance Direct. I've already reviewed the lipsticks HERE, but today I'm reviewing the cream blushes I bought. 

Dainty Doll is a brand that caters specifically for pale skinned girls, like me, and I find their blushers across the board are well pigmented but are the perfect shades for pale skin because even heavily applied they aren't too bold. The cream blushers are best applied either with your fingers or with a stippling brush as opposed to a traditional blush brush - I use the Real Techniques Stippling Brush before blending in with the Buffing Brush.

Left > Right: 001 Paper Roses,002 Orange County Girl, 003 Billion Dollar Babies

I have found every shade of these cream blushers to be incredibly good quality, they last all day and are easily blended into the skin to give a nice subtle but made up look. The packaging is gorgeous with a handy mirror for on the go application. Please note that my swatches show the products blended in to the skin because this is how I wear them on my face.

This is Paper Roses, a gorgeous pretty pale pink that is ideal for Spring! I find wearing this adds that 'just pinched' look to my cheeks without making me look too made up. This isn't my favourite of the cream blushes but it's a nice colour to have in my collection. 

Here is Orange County Girl, my favourite of the cream blushers. As you can see, this has some gold shimmer running through it as well as the peachy pink colour. I've read a lot of bloggers comparing this to Nars Orgasm and although I haven't tried Nars myself, from the photos I've seen online it does seem incredibly similar but a more subtle shade suitable for porcelain skins. This is a really easy blush to wear - because it's also a highlighter you just need to brush it across your cheekbones to add some dimension to your face and brighten your cheeks up.

Finally this is Billion Dollar Babies. I have been using this as a contour colour because it's a matte pale taupe so ideal for this purpose! It's absolutely brilliant to contour with - because it's a cream it's a dream to blend into the skin and not so dark to be obvious. As a pale girl I have struggled to find suitable shades to contour with but this is spot on and I would recommend it to anyone else who's stuck for a contour colour!

I am really happy I bought these cream blushers, they're all very good and beautiful in their own way. Orange County Girl is my favourite but Billion Dollar Babies is also a winner for contouring, and Paper Roses is a nice one to have in my collection. For £1.99 each from Fragrance Direct buying all three will only set you back £5.97, which isn't even the price you'd pay for a blush from most brands! With an RRP of £13.50 I'd still think they were good products even full price!

I highly recommend these for other pale faced beauties but there is the potential for them to work for more neutral and darker skins tones too because of the high pigmentation. Click HERE to buy from Fragrance Direct.

What do you think of Dainty Doll? Have you tried any of these cream blushers?

xx

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Dainty Doll Lipsticks - Couture, Saucy Sailor & It's My Party

After my numerous haul posts featuring Dainty Doll products, I am finally getting around to reviewing them! Today's post is reviewing three shades of the lipstick.

As I have commented before, I am a big fan of the Dainty Doll packaging. I think real effort was made to create something new and distinctive, and it's also a little retro which I like.

The lipstick tubes are made from a matte black metal which looks fantastic - very high end. The lids clip on securely, the lipstick feels safe in the tube and they feel nice in your hand. The three shades I went for were 001 Couture, 002 Saucy Sailor and 003 It's My Party.

Top > bottom 001 Couture, 002 Saucy Sailor, 003 It's My Party.

As you can see, these lipsticks are highly pigmented - the colour just jumps out at you! I was so pleased with these when I swatched them on my hand for the first time. Couture is a deep vampy vintage red shade which I'm not sure I will get all that much wear from to be honest. Saucy Sailor is an in-your-face blue toned red that I think will suit most skin tones (and most importantly for Dainty Doll, looks awesome on a pale skinned gal like me!). It's My Party is much pinker in real life than it's showing in the photo - a really bright, neon pink. I don't think I would wear any of these shades during the day but they would be real show-stoppers on a night.

Here is Saucy Sailor on my lips. Here comes my first criticism! When I tried to apply this lipstick on the lips I found it really really dragged. The formula is so waxy that when putting it on the lips directly it's tricky to get an even coverage and not leave any gaps. I would definitely recommend applying this with a lip brush for this reason, and in general it's a good idea to use a brush for bright colours anyway. Once on the lip I really liked the look, however (second criticism imminent!) after only about 45 minutes of wear the product started to seriously dry my lips out. I have dry lips generally, and so I always apply a thin layer of balm under any lipstick but even with that protection in place, after 2 hours of wear my lips were so dry they were almost painful! I had to wipe this off and apply an emergency layer of Nuxe Reve de Miel to try and fix them! The It's My Party formula is marginally less drying, but it's still not very moisturising and I can't wear it for very long without needing to apply a heavy coat of lip balm.

The third and final criticism is the longevity. Even if your lips can stand the dryness, the lipstick does transfer onto cups and glasses, and starts to partly fade after about an hour. The outside of the lip doesn't fade and the lipstick there does stay put, doesn't smudge and lasts well, but the middle fades really fast. The high impact shades I've tried means I have to touch up every 45 minutes or so, perhaps even more often if eating and drinking lots over that period.

So overall I'm sadly disappointed by these lipsticks. I had high hopes for them given the high price - these retail for £12.50 ordinarily, and there are a number of rave reviews in the blogosphere. I bought mine from Fragrance Direct for £1.99 each (link) so I'm not as annoyed as I would be had I spent over 6 times that amount on each one.

Have you tried these lipsticks? How did they work out for you?

xx

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Fragrance Direct Haul #2 - feat. Dainty Doll

Hi guys! Well, I have been a busy girl.. Since my first purchase of Dainty Doll from TK Maxx (post HERE), and my second encounter with the brand ordering from Fragrance Direct (post HERE) I have now placed two more orders with Fragrance Direct! TWO! I have completely fallen for Dainty Doll, and I've been using some of their products on a daily basis. Reviews will be coming soon!

Anyway, this is the first of the two orders I placed. I placed two orders because Fragrance Direct keep restocking Dainty Doll products, so I've snapped up items that were out of stock for me before.

As always, lush packaging and nice branding.. here's what I picked up:

I already have some blushers from the range which I have loved and been using a lot so I was keen to try some different ones! After my disappointing experience with the Soap & Glory concealer (it was way too dark - review HERE) I decided to try the Dainty Doll concealer to see if it would work for my under eye circles.

I got the concealer in the lightest shade - Abracadabra 001 (link), and two powder blushers; 004 You Are My Sunshine (adore this name!) and 002 My Girl (link):

I grabbed the concealer pen, again in the lightest shade 001 It's a Kind of Magic - one of my favourite songs! (link):

& finally a random eyeshadow - there are quite a few eyeshadow shades available but I use palettes mostly so only picked up shade 002 Treat Her Like A Lady (a sort of taupe/grey) (link):

All the items were £1.99 - yes you read that right. Less than £2 for products that I will probably love and use a lot if my experiences so far are anything to go by. The links I've posted were all accurate at the time I typed this up but if anything's out of stock it's worth looking again in a day or so's time to see if they have restocked.

I will be reviewing everything in due course - I know I've been haulin' a lot recently (I wish there was a song for that, sort of like the "everyday I'm shufflin'" but for beauty bloggers...) and I haven't yet reviewed a lot of my purchases but I am reigning myself in with the excessive spending and will make sure I get some reviews up pronto!

Have you tried Dainty Doll yet?

xx

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Fragrance Direct haul

So a couple of weeks ago I placed an order with Fragrance Direct for the first time - this was prompted by two things! First, the 10% off voucher code I found when I was putting together a weekly Spendthrift Saturday post, and second the excellent quality of the Dainty Doll products I picked up from TK Maxx (post HERE) - I knew there were some more items on FD and placed an order pronto!

Here's what I got:

Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Cuticle Pen - an oldie but a goodie (which I've never reviewed, so review coming soon!) I usually buy this from Boots but it was £1.50 from FD! Click!

I had been lusting after Revlon Top Speed in Cloud for a long, long time - before Christmas I think! I spotted this Matte Suede colour at the same time and because they were only 99p each I couldn't resist picking up both. I haven't worn either yet but Cloud was featured in my Spring Pastels post HERE. FD link for Ruby Ribbon HERE and Cloud HERE.

The two Dainty Doll blushes I picked up were Orange County Girl and Hippy Shake. Since they arrived I've been using both religiously and love them, I'm hoping to get a review up soon! Click HERE to purchase for a crazy £1.99 (while you still can as they keep selling out!)

I picked up Saucy Sailor and It's My Party lipsticks - I've not worn these out yet but swatched they're beautiful, and again only £1.99. Click!

Finally I picked up a black eyeliner pencil (Proud Mary) for 99p!- I've used this and it's not earth shattering but good quality so far. Click.

Have you made any purchases from Fragrance Direct recently? What did you buy?

xx

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Collective Beauty Haul - TK Maxx & Superdrug

Well I'm going to have to say it. I am officially off my spending ban. Not in a 'yay I managed not to spend anything for 100 days!' way, but in a 'I am a total failure and couldn't do it' way. Woe is me. I have been spending little bits here and there for a few weeks now and have decided I have to stop kidding myself I'm still on my spending ban. Instead I'm hoping to do a month's spending ban in April.. we'll see how that goes. Anyway, a week or so ago I popped into TK Maxx and Superdrug   & picked up some bargain beauty buys...

First up, Superdrug. As a huge Barry M fan I had been itching to try out the new textured nail polishes since they first made an appearance on the blogosphere a couple of weeks ago. I picked up Atlantic Road.

I also picked up the Gelly Hi Shine polish from Barry M in shade Green Berry, which looks perfect for Spring!

And my final purchase was a GOSH lipstick in shade Exotic. I have never tried anything from GOSH before and this was a total impulse purchase, made primarily because they had £2 off these lipsticks in Superdrug!

The Barry M polishes are two for £6 (Gelly HERE and textured HERE) and the GOSH lipstick is £4.49 down from £6.49 HERE.

Next - TK Maxx. I don't have much luck when I usually call into my local TK Maxx, so when I was in Putney a couple of weeks ago I headed into their branch to see if I could find any beauty bargains. The first thing that caught my eye was this Andrea Fullerton glitter nail set.

At only £3.99 and with such gorgeous colours I thought it was worth picking up to try. I think these glitters will look beautiful as an accent nail look.

I then spotted this pack of 3 items from the Dainty Doll range for a ridiculous £4.99! I have always wanted to try this range as I have very pale skin and find it intriguing that another fair skinned girlie (Nicola Roberts of Girls Aloud fame) decided to make her own brand specifically to cater for people like me!

These items are usually quite expensive when sold at full RRP in places like Boots, so I was chuffed to bits to get an eyeshadow base, a blush and a lipstick for £4.99!

The packaging is beautiful and makes me really excited to try out the products themselves. I got a lipstick in shade 001 Couture, an eyeshadow base in Frankie's Girl and a blush in 003 Money Talks.

Stay tuned for full reviews of all products!

Have you snapped up any beauty bargains recently? What did you get?

xx

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