Batiste Wild, Lace and Graffiti

My love affair with Batiste is no secret. It's become as much of a staple to me as deodorant. I use dry shampoo on the days in between washes to absorb any excess oil and giving your hair a bit more life. It's also useful for when you've washed your hair but want to give it a bit of a volume boost at the roots. It feels completely like cheating and that's the appeal. There are a lot of dry shampoos on the market, but I never tend to look twice at them with Batiste being a brand I trust to deliver. The bottles are attractively decorated, the scents are gorgeous and now there's even more to choose from.  The bottles that don't state they are for a particular hair colour are the standard dry shampoos that don't deposit any colour but instead a white-ish powder which you then need to give a ruffle with your fingers to blend it in. The only difference in the bottles above is the fragrance. 

Blush was my favourite scent but the release of the new range has given me a new favourite. Lace - "seductive and elegant"...I would have to agree! It reminds me greatly of a perfume I have used in the past but since I never repurchase perfumes (bar Jo Malone Blue Agava and Cacao) I can't remember the name. But it's good enough to be compared to a perfume, who knew a dry shampoo could smell so good?! I might have to stock up on this one in case they discontinue it. The picture below shows 3 of the most recent releases. I'm missing the Paisley one which is a Superdrug exclusive. Graffiti is the Boots exclusive which if I'm correct is either very similar to, or exactly the same as the scent of the Brit Batiste from a while ago. Wild is a more original scent which I can't really compare to anything, it's probably the least girly scent out of the bunch.

So I feel that's enough waffling about dry shampoo. I thought I'd fill you in on my current reads as I always enjoy reading what other people are reading...if that makes sense. I joined my local library because I rarely read books twice. I'm also a bit anti-kindle, I like the feel of a book, I don't really know why. I'm also a huge lover of shopping in second hand book stores and love discovering new ones so if anyone knows of any in London please send your suggestions for new ones for me to check out!

Right now I'm reading Two Little Boys by Duncan Sarkies, which has nothing to do with Rolf Harris. I chose it primarily because it was endorsed by one of the actors from Flight of the Conchords which I love so didn't feel the need to find out much more about the book. I'm glad I picked it up though, it's a bit of a dark comedy which I enjoy and is an easy read, there's a few great one liners in there. I do have quite a short attention span so I often have two books on the go. I'm about to start 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami which sounds quite promising and was in the top 10 a few months back so I'm hoping it lives up to the hype. It's a beast of a book which is another reason I tend to read two books at once - one for the tube commute, the other for home. I just need to not get the plots and characters confused.

My plans for the weekend include crossing off another thing on my to-do list for the year. That is, going on a Boris bike ride (for those of you outside of the UK, they're the bikes available for public use around London with docking stations at various locations). I'm doing quite well on my list so far so I hope I commit to this. It is very cold though, so I might just read my books instead.

Batiste Dry Shampoo with a hint of colour

I've recently tried out Batiste's latest offering which is a dry shampoo with a hint of colour. It is available in three shades: blonde, brunette, and black. The idea is that is does the same job as the normal Batiste dry shampoos but deposits a hint of colour. For those of you familiar with using Batiste, you will also be used to that white deposit usually left behind. Personally, I've never really had an issue with this because a bit of a swish of my hair and it blends in quite nicely. I am however a blonde and I can imagine if I had darker hair this would be a bit of a problem for me. Here is what a generous spray of normal Batiste looks like on my hair.

And here it is after a shake and a brush through.

In hindsight, I can see a little whiteness still, but it's not glaringly obvious to me in person. I just look a little more bleach blonde than honey blonde.

This is an equally generous spray of the tonal Batiste spray in blonde. As you can see, much more of a blonde tint to it.

And after a brush through, voila. There is no white residue at all. It's blended in completely. Whilst I can see the advantage of using this over regular Batiste, as a blonde, I will continue to use the regular version, if for no other reason than it smells nicer! But this is a great alternative for when I'm in even more of a rush than usual, as I noticed I don't have to brush it through as much to blend in with my hair colour. The obvious advantage lies with darker haired ladies where I can imagine the contrast between a white shampoo and dark hair would be slightly more obvious, and a dry shampoo with a darker tone in would solve this issue. Whatever your hair colour, it works a treat and there's no disadvantage of using this over any other dry shampoo.

I was kindly sent this product to sample, but I believe it's available from Superdrug at £2.

New Batiste Brit and Une Skin Glow Foundation repurchase

I'm about to go out, but thought I'd do a quick post before I do. I didn't feel like washing my hair tonight so I've just sprayed this all over the roots. It's Batiste's newest dry shampoo, and this one is called Brit. I'm not overly patriotic or anything but I do like the design of the British flag so thought this looked quite cool. The smell is supposedly quintessentially British, which I'm not sure entirely what that means, but when I smelt it, I can kind of see what they mean. It reminds me of walking into a trendy bar or something, if they smelt nice that is. It's quite a unique, fresh scent, which is very different from the other dry shampoo fragrances, I think Blush is still my favourite though. It does the same job as the others, just as well, but it makes a change having a different scent to it, it turns an otherwise dull, practical product into a more interesting one.

I very rarely repurchase foundations, or many things cosmetic for that matter since starting my beauty blog. I, like many other beauty bloggers and make-up lovers, find the need to always be on the hunt for something better, that holy grail product, that really you don't even want to find because you want to keep trying new things! This foundation though has thoroughly impressed me. I know I blogged about it before so you can check out that review if you wish to find out more about it. If anything, I've grown even more of an appreciation for this foundation after using it religiously every day. I rarely have break-outs and feel generally more happy about my skin. The coverage is now pretty much perfect for me since I don't have many blemishes I need to be covering up. I like the way it applies, it rubs in really well and only a little blob is needed. When I went back to by a new one since my first is nearly empty, I was a bit annoyed they didn't have my shade, G06, but luckily I bought G05 which when I got them home, realised there was virtually no difference in colour. I also have the reassurance that if I don't wash my make-up off properly at night, (which obviously I NEVER ever, ever do.......) it's not going to clog up my skin since it has a high organic content. It's worth a try in my opinion.

Enjoy your evening everyone.

xXx

Make-up Product of the Month - July: More Barry M Nail Paints

Because I loved the first two I bought, yesterday I went back for more! I bought Grey and Cyan Blue (293&294) and compared to all the other drugstore colours, these are very unique, I wish more brands would sell more adventurous colours like these. The blues especially by Barry M are very striking. This post is cheating slightly because the idea behind Product of the Month posts is that I’ve had chance to try out the product a few times during the month. To be quite honest I haven’t purchased much this month (times are hard), and nothing really standout enough to call product of the month. I know I bought this only yesterday, but I love it and think it deserves a mention. Blue can be quite a dodgy colour to wear on your nails, you really want to avoid looking like you’ve been out in the cold too long. Because these colours are so vibrant and glossy it’s very unlikely to look like that, and I love how much coverage is achieved from just one coat. The other colour I got was Grey, again I like this for being so unusual, I get really bored of the same safe pinks, peaches and reds and I really feel like your nails are the one place you can try outlandish colours, literally every colour of the rainbow! Also in this picture is yet another Batiste shampoo because I am obsessed with this stuff. Lately I’ve been washing my hair every day so I’ve not really been using it, but when it’s not this warm, I tend to wash every other day, and this is nice to just freshen up on those days I don’t wash. This one’s in Diva which I kind of feel is packaged wrongly because it looks like it should have glitter in it. Then the fragrance of it is “heady oriental” which I don’t really think goes with the Diva theme, but it smells good all the same. I tried it out and I think they’ve actually improved on their original formula because this left my head a lot less chalky than the other cans. Not that it was much of a problem before, just a quick brush, et voila, nice fresh hair.

Beauty Product of the Month - May

I remember when I first discovered dry shampoo I thought I’d been let in to a secret. For those of you who have never tried dry shampoo and are wondering what it is and how it works, basically it’s a powder that you spray on to your roots and it absorbs any excess oil, giving you that just washed feel. The first dry shampoo I tried was by Lee Stafford, a mid range available from Boots. I did like this brand, I thought it did the job it was supposed to, but I found I really had to rub my scalp well afterwards to make sure there was no white powder left, otherwise I’d look like I was going grey! I decided to try another brand, and came across Batiste. I’ve never heard of them before I got this so I don’t know what other products they sell, but I can say they make the best dry shampoo! I don’t have to rub this very much to get rid of that white powder that’s left behind. Ok, so it’s not quite the same as washing your hair, and it does seem quite lazy, but I don’t use this in place of my shampoo, more for in between washes, just to freshen up. Another tip with Batiste is that you can apply it on clean hair too, spray the roots and push up the hair near your parting. I do this before going out sometimes and it just gives my hair a little bit of volume at the roots, instead of being poker straight and flat! I like it so much I’ve bought all 3 variations. My favourite is Blush, which I think is like perfume for the hair! It really does smell gorgeous, a very floral scent. I don’t really like the Original one as the aftersmell reminds me of flyspray! Not really a good smell for your hair. I’d recommend trying this if you’ve never used dry shampoo before or weren’t happy with the ones you tried. I use this all year round, and see it as a must have item, even more so this time of year when my hair seems to need washing that little bit more often.