theNotice: a beauty blog

Have you ever tried epilating? Well, now Rae has — and she just loves her new Emjoi Emagine!

Vote NOW on what Makeup Series you’d like to see next on Betty Girl Makeup. Poll closes Friday, August 6th @ 11:59pm.

Jellyminx shows a summery golden pink look and features a surprise guest!

Kim Porter swatches products from the MAC In The Groove Collection to show you what it looks like on NC50 skin.

Krasey Beauty has exclusive swatches of the new Make Up For Ever Lab Shine Collection.

Rachel’s been trying out new mineral makeup from Lily Lolo over at Queen of Turquoise.

Hot Beauty Health shares a list of the top 10 virtual hairstyle and makeover sites to try out a new look!

Musicalhouses makes Illamasqua’s Beg blush wearable in her latest FOTD.

Find out everything about Summer 2010 makeup trends in the Makeup4All on-line beauty magazine.

Joeybunny over at the PinkSith blog tells us what worked and what didn’t during her testing of Raw Minerals Makeup and Brushes. Did you know she’s a Team Jacob and not a Team Cullen?

Jolie Laide Girl gets all hot and bothered playing with the Urban Decay Naked Palette.

Check out what makes Guerlain’s Meteorites Perles primer so special on Beauty Addict.

Fed up of struggling to access your new makeup? Yeah… Lipglossiping is, too!

Christelle from Beauty Crazed learns that multiple X’s are not always inappropriate… sometimes they mean mascara!

I Heart Cosmetics has become totally obsessed with the Clarisonic.

Retrodiva is giving away the brand new Sampar’s Good Weekend Kit, a new travel-friendly kit for urban skin survival.

Win an Infiniti by Conair You Curl curling iron from Audrey Dao.

There’s still time to enter the Summer Smooth Skin Giveaway at The Gloss Menagerie!

Got troublesome skin? Enter Hellcandy’s skincare giveaway for the chance to win some B-Liv products!

Do you want a new traincase? CSN stores is giving one Spiced Beauty reader a $40 gift card!

There are very few fragrances that have truly changed the way I view fragrance.

(You’re one of them, of course.)

Your dark brown liquid is housed in simple, rectangular glass, and it doesn’t seem like it would be fascinating. Slightly intriguing, perhaps, but certainly nothing spectacular. To be honest, at first glance, you’re quite unassuming — so when I breathed in, I was caught completely off guard.

You are incense, amber, tobacco leaf and musk, but the blend is divine. (Other scents, like your sibling Ambre Sultan, are too violent with their incense and send me running toward the hills.) Of course, these notes are sweetened just enough with tiny bits of smooth honey, and lightened with rose and iris. Don’t get me wrong, though; I am by no means insinuating in the least that there is anything floral or syrupy about you.

It must be difficult to produce a scent that is entirely unisex, but… you are. Fit for a man in a suit with a bit of stubble, smoking a cigar in a ritzy hotel bar; fit for a woman in a slinky dress with just a flick of eyeliner, out for dinner with a lover. Honey and hay sugar in perfect harmony with tobacco and musk.

I thought that I didn’t like warm scents, because warm scents are always so sweet. But I kept looking; I kept ignoring each and every saleswoman and salesman who told me that sweet and warm must go hand in hand. (And trust me, there were many.) The hours and hours of searching paid off when I found you, Chergui — warmth without the syrup of cheap vanilla, cozy without being cloying, dry and a little dirty without being animalic.

Of course, there are many categories of fragrance, and you can’t fulfill my cravings for a light floral or a salty chypre. But when I need something warm, something sexless — no, something above the lines of gender, — something perfectly crafted and rich and beautiful and incredible…

Well, that would be where you come in.

More Serge Lutens…

Availability: Chergui can be purchased online at shops like the ones above, or through BeautyEncounter and FragranceNet. Alternately, it can be sampled through The Perfumed Court. For my fellow Canadians, you may be able to find it in your local Sephora!

What it is: Hard Candy Hot Smudge in Rebel

The shades: Rebel features two cream shades, to be used as liner or shadow. One is a bright blue; the other is simply glitter suspended in a clear base. The blue side is a fairly dry cream with just a touch of fine shimmer, and while I do thin kit’s lovely, bright, and fun, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the colour — it’s just not really my thing. The “white” side, on the other hand, has a tendency to sweat, posesses a texture reminiscent of Vaseline, and is more than a little bit hard to work with. I have to go over the same patch of skin three or four times to get the right glitter dispersal!

The ingredients:

The wear: Okay, so it smudges, just as promised — but the problem is it just keeps smudging! I do like a creme that smudges, but it should set after a few minutes. Hot Smudge? Not so much. I flicked some of the blue on, gave it five minutes, cleaned up the line with oil-free makeup remover, gave it another ten minutes, and… yep, it was already creeping along. 


(I did try it with primer underneath and powder overtop as well, with the same results.)

The verdict? I just… didn’t like this product. I don’t have to say that often, thank goodness, but I simply did not like this one! It didn’t wear well on my lids, the packaging felt flimsy, and I could have sworn the blue side was more creamy and less dry when I first opened this a few weeks ago. The only thing it does have going for itself is its vivid hue, but even that fades quickly!

Don’t let this put you off the whole Hard Candy line, though. Sure, I kind of hated this wasn’t a fan of this one, but I still adore Honeymoon ;)

I’m just loving the clean feel of the ShopStyle boxes — plus, we can now keep these posts to a reasonable length! My goodness, did they ever get long before.

I personally can’t wait to see the Stila cheek colour in real life. I know items like this one (ahem, Smashbox?) are (excuse my French) a load of total bullshit 95% of the time, but I still want to check it out! Can’t blame a gal for being curious, right?

More Givenchy…

It’s a rare day when I have absolutely nothing to say, but I’m drawing a blank today. So instead, here are a few recent posts that may have slipped under your radar!

• The Low-Buy because some of us have budgets!
• Adventures in Epilating, complete with a video, because some of us…  have hair?
• Bright coral cheeks. Sometimes, you can’t find exactly what you want — so you have to blend it yourself! 
• Violet and Pink, for double lids. A little love for you non-mono-lidded ladies. Lucky girls ;)
• Re-review: an ode to Ellis Red. Summer is the season of love, right? So now was a pretty good time to fall in love with a new red lipstick.
• Dramatic, defined, and… quadruple winged? A fun EOTD with more than a few wings!