Today was the first day that my daughter has been up to leaving the house in over a week. The advice is to isolate those with swine flu for at least 7 days or until symptoms have disappeared. As she hasn’t had a temperature for a few days and is back to her usual energetic self (aside from a bit of a cough, this is asthma related and will probably linger for months as this is what generally happens whenever she has a virus unfortunately) I decided it was ok for us to venture back out into the real world.
Sadly, the British summer seems to have gone on vacation and we’ve been experiencing almost constant rain for the last week. I wasn’t going to let this deter us from getting some much needed fresh air so we headed out with rain coat, welly boots and umbrella. Well, at least my daughter did, I just got wet! We visited a local museum that has fantastic children’s exhibitions with loads of hands-on activities and exciting displays. My daughter was particularly interested in anything dinosaur related and made me read every single display card in the fossils cabinet!
We also made a brief stop at Boots where I used my Advantage Card points to purchase one of the new Estee Lauder Double Wear Lipsticks. Although I had my heart set on shade PlumBerry I swatched a couple of others and ended up with 05 Stay Mauve. It’s a stunning mauvey-pink, I *really* love this shade. The swatch below (yes, I finally figured out the macro setting on my camera!) was taken in natural light, but I’m not certain that it captures the true wonderfulness of this colour!
I don’t have anything similar to this colour in my collection and I think it’s a nice way to ease myself into more purple toned lipsticks (I really want to try MAC’s Up the Amp and Purple Rite from Style Warriors). First off, I really like the packaging of these lipsticks. They’re the Estee Lauder signature navy blue and gold and have a slightly vintage look about them. I certainly won’t mind reapplying this in public! My only complaint is that the lipstick is round as opposed to slightly tapered (like the YSL Rouge Volupte range) and I find these more tricky to apply without a lip brush. I can’t seem to avoid my cupid’s bow looking a teeny bit messy. That said, the lipstick is really creamy and has an almost velvety texture when you apply it. The finish is quite matte and the shades I swatched were incredibly pigmented. Long-wearing lipsticks can often be quite drying and while I wouldn’t say this product completely avoids this trait it is certainly less drying than other brands that I’ve tried. However, I’m not convinced in terms of its Double Wear capabilities. The lipstick didn’t even survive the tea and cake test (one cup of tea and two cherry bakewell tarts). All that remained on my lips was a very faint pinky stain. It certainly wasn’t transfer resistant either as my Audrey Hepburn mug was covered in lipstick marks! This doesn’t bother me too much, the long-lasting nature of the product was not the main selling point for me anyway. It’s more that I’m completely in love with the colour. I applied a slick of Chanel lipgloss in ‘Mica’ (which is like a more sophisticated older sister to MAC’s Dazzleglass)over it and I think I’ve found my new favourite lip combo. I still have the other shade, Stay PlumBerry, on my wishlist as this was also beautiful but I may look for a similar colour in a different formulation and/or brand. This item was £16 and I still have another £15 worth of advantage card points left to spend. I’m going to start thinking about what I can treat myself to next!
Loveaudrey xxx
