Our weekly Q&A from the Beauty Bible experts Sarah Stacey and Josephine Fairley, whose latest book is The Ultimate Natural Beauty Bible. Their series of Beauty Bible books are now bestsellers worldwide – and this column solves your beauty dilemmas. Visit their website, beautybible.com,
for lots more information, tips and exclusive offers. If you have any
beauty dilemma you would like them to answer, you can e-mail them there
too.
Q I am currently unemployed and
looking for skincare that is affordable and effective, specifically for
anti-ageing products, day and night cream and serums/facial oils. Do
you have any experience with the B. range from Superdrug? PS your Beauty
Steals app is great, too.
A We sympathise with your situation and the good news is that there are now some very affordable ranges, which really deliver.
We
suggest you start by looking at the B. range from Superdrug, which we
like ourselves and are currently trialling for Beauty Bible.
B.Replenished Facial Oil comes
in at £13.99 for £30ml (athough it's on sale now at £6.97). The
anti-oxidant rich formula contains rosehip, argan and crambe seed oils,
which, they tell us, combine to boost moisture without blocking pores.
They promise ‘12 hour intense hydration’.
Like
most facial oils, B. Replenished Facial Oil will suit all skin types.
Surprisingly, even shiny, acne-prone skins are balanced, provided you
don't use too much. Just a few drops are plenty, or add a couple of
drops to a day or night moisturiser. (So oils last for ages.)
A newcomer to the B. range is B.Rescued Energising Balm,
£10.99 for 30ml, designed to prep your skin for the day. The Balm
contains Persian Silk Tree Extract, which works to help reduce toxins
caused by sun exposure and lack of sleep. It’s been clinically proven to
hydrate skin for 12 hours and provides the perfect base for makeup,
they say. Again, we are trialling this for Beauty Bible.
There are several other tempting products in the B. range, and some great offers if you go online at superdrug.com.
Another
range to consider is Lacura, which is sold at Aldi stores. As you might
expect from this store, the prices are very good, for instance Q10 Anti-Wrinkle Day and Night Creams come in at £1.99 for 50ml, and a Multi Intensive Serum
- Restorative at £3.49 for 50ml. One Beauty Bible reader tells us she
couldn't believe anything that price could be good but she was
immediately impressed by the Serum.
Thirdly, do have a look at the Nivea Anti-Age range at boots.com, which has consistently impressed us. The Nivea Q10plus Anti-Wrinkle CC Tinted Day Cream SPF15 is currently £5.49 for 50ml on offer, and the range covers all the skincare you could need.
Beauty Bible ♥ Lancôme Grandiose Mascara
Our eyes have been known to glaze over when the word 'game-changer' is bandied about in beauty circles. BUT THIS IS A GAME-CHANGER. Do not glaze over. Do not yawn. Simply get yourself to the nearest Lancôme counter, and try it for yourself.
What
makes Grandiôse so different is the swan-necked wand. If you're
anything like us, you have to swap hands to apply your mascara
successfully (or end up swiping a smudge from the bridge of your nose).
And somehow the two eyes never look quite 'even'.
So
the genius of this is the patent-pending cutting-edge swan-necked wand,
which goes round the bridge of the nose - so you can apply the
lash-lengthening formulation to both eyes, perfectly and evenly. Don't
ask us how, but it avoids the cheekbones, nose and eyebrow arch almost
magically.(We like the wand
for another, purely aesthetic reason: it's see-thru at one end, becoming
gradually smoky towards the brush - with the silhouette of the Lancôme
rose.)
The ultra-black
pigments also make for a terrifically dense shade of black - and lashes
feel supple, without flaking or speck-ing (if that's a word) or feeling
dry, by the end of the day. (The formula contains a rose cell extract
for softer and more 'resistant' lashes.)
DID YOU HEAR US? This is the mascara equivalent of a moon landing, the combustion engine or the iPhone.
And no, we're not being grandiose when we say that. £24.50, from Selfridges and stores nationwide
