I’ve never been much of a make-up wearer, but this year I’ve been slowly getting into it. I got a couple of Dior eye products from my sister for Christmas, and I love the quality you get from those. Even if they’re more expensive, it’s a much better experience than say a £5 eye pencil from your local drugstore.

I stumbled on this Fall 2009 collection from Dior, called Jazz Club, inspired by the 1920’s/1930’s. The collection presents deep smokey colours, and I’m especially digging the eye palettes:

Dior - Fall09

Don’t you just love the casing? This palette is called Smokey Eye, and features six Dior eye products: 4 eyeshadows, a brow-shaping powder, and a cream-to-powder eyeliner. I love these colours; it’s similar to what I’m using now, but maybe different enough to justify getting it. Here’s a closer look at the colours:

Dior - Smokey Eye Jazz Club

There’s also an alternate version, exclusive to Nordstrom. I’m not sure about its availability in the UK; I haven’t seen anything mentioned about it. It features more purpley and greyer colours than the one above:

Dior - Smokey Eye Alternate

To see more of the collection (including the lipsticks and nail polishes), check out this blog post from Temptalia. If you’re based in the US, both of the above palettes are available on the Nordstrom site.

Via BritishBeautyBlogger

I’ve been lately addicted to trying out new lipsticks, lip glosses and lip balms, and I thought I’d share my experiences with a couple of them. I’ve got quite dark pink lips, so a lot of shades won’t work for me, with my natural lip colour shining through.

Bourjois has quite a large range of lip glosses, all under the name “Effet 3D”. There’s the standard Effet 3D, the Effet 3D Cosmic, and the Effet 3D Max. Basically I think they’re all the same, with the Cosmic being more glitterier and sparklier, and the Max being shinier.

bourjois-effet-3d

I tried out the standard Effet 3D and went with a nice dark red shade called Rouge Classic. The colour is great and gives the proper type of cover for my lips. The gloss is a little bit on the gooey side, and is slightly too sticky: strands of my hair keep getting stuck in it, which is a bit of an annoyance. It does however have the right amount of shininess in it. The application brush is a bit simple, and I found it difficult to apply the upper lip curves properly.

I always hate it when lip glosses smell and taste “chemical”, but the Effet 3D doesn’t suffer from either of those problems. It has a candy like smell, and a similar taste. Like other lip glosses, the longevity of this one isn’t that great, and you do have to re-apply it often during the day.

I really liked this lip gloss, and I think I’ll be wearing it often in the future. Colour-wise I think I went with exactly the perfect colour for my lips, although I would love to try out some of the other ones too.

Bourjois Effet 3D: £6.84 at your local drug store.