Estee Lauder Blue Dahlia

Impetuous, spontaneous, foolhardy.  Mrs Instant Gratification, that's me.  Decide at 7pm on a Wednesday evening that I am a Bright Spring who should only ever wear teal and by lunch time on Thursday I have spent £35 on blue eye shadow and had my hair colour darkened as I have decided, based on nothing at all, that it will look much better with my new colourful wardrobe.  For once my leaping in seems not to have back fired.  

Having decided that I needed colour I spent a considerable time online googling the various options, no point wanting anything from Guerlain or Laura Mercier as neither of those are available in Huddersfield.  Clarins is nice but safe, maybe? Lancome was a possibility but knowing that I love Estee Lauder DWL and having seen that the eye palettes were both beautiful and, comparatively, affordable I created a bit of a yearning for an Estee Lauder palette and given my new found love of colour the only one that was ever going to tick all the boxes was Blue Dahlia.

It wasn't until I got to Huddersfield I thought to consider that perhaps it was no longer available, given that it first appeared ages ago as part of a limited edition.  Luckily I needn't have worried, apparently it was limited ed but proved so popular its now part of the main collection.  Wanna see some pics?!

 

The familiar iconic EL gold case which feels nicely weighty.

I am sure everyone has seen this a million times so these photos are completely self-indulgent.  I fell in love with the teal and the shimmering navy but it's the taupe that pulls everything together and makes it all so wearable if you are a bit colour shy.

 The white isn't white, it is an opalescent shimmer, no frost, no whiteness, just the most beautiful opal glitter.  Not immensely wearable admittedly but to add a little something to an evening eye it's perfect.

The photo above best shows the glitter, especially if you click on it to see the larger photo. 

As you would imagine the colours are a dream to apply.  I very unusually have a morning where I haven't had to get up to do breakfast for guests so I had the chance to play.  Ordinarily for the day I suspect I'd go taupe all over the lid and then use either the teal or the navy on my upper lash line and I would always intend to go all out and use the colour properly on a night out and then would chicken out and never do it.  This morning I decided that if I was going to spend £35 on coloured eye shadow I wasn't going to shy away from using it.

A bit much for Co-op in Elland on a Saturday morning I'll grant you, but I do love it!  I had read that the Estee Lauder way to wear was the teal all over the mobile lid, taupe in the crease and the navy on the outer corner and top and bottom lash line, or something along those lines so that's what I did.  I still have slightly puffy eye lids as a result of a run in with corneal erosion on Thursday night, once they deflate fully things will look a lot better.  I really like how the taupe took away the scaryness of all that colour and of course once I put my glasses on it takes things down a notch as well.  For a night out I would definitely just put a little of the opal glitter in the inner corner just to lift that area and I might be tempted to pull more of the navy up into the outer V, I played it safe this morning so as not to frighten myself! I am surprised at how comfortable I feel in this much colour, I think the darker hair helps a lot and having agreed with Helen that scarves do me no favours I felt the need to wear this one just to pull things together until I stop spending money on teal eye shadow and start spending it on teal clothes!  Just in case anyone is wondering I am wearing ELDWL, Clinique colour correcting powder, Laura Mercier Second Skin Blush in Rose Petal, Dior Addict Extreme lipstick in Paparazzi, Benefit they're real mascara and Benefit Browzings in light on my brows, which are also much better with my darker hair.

And whilst I need no encouragement if anyone has any other eye shadows that they think I might love please let me know.  I did find the most gorgeous teal sweater in Monsoon that is now on my wish list, along with fuschia leather gloves from M&S, also on the list!  As a result of all of this I felt it only right that my much beloved UD Naked palette wasn't left to languish lonely and unloved so I have given it to Emily, needless to say I am currently her favourite mummy!
    

Colour me impressed!

You know how life has a funny way, thank you Alanis, of chucking more and more stuff at you and the more you absorb the more it seems to throw at you?  Until the point at which you can take no more and hit the gin?  That.

And that feeling that you have maybe lost your way and don't know how to get back to the person you were. That too.

Lots of reasons, most way too boring for a blog post frankly, but all told I was feeling grey, dull, old and boring.

I have been incredibly busy so much so that I had hardly read a blog, let alone written a post and then one day recently I was bored and decided to have a look at some of my favourite blogs and found a really interesting, very well written, guest post on the lovely Grace's blog.  The post is fascinating and it made me wonder if giving some thought to the colours I wear wouldn't be a bad idea.  Like many overweight women in their mid-forties my idea of a great outfit is something that enables me to blend into the background and hides the fact that I can't seem to shift my obsession with eating bagels for breakfast and think that salt on Dairy Milk is a sound snacking proposition. (it is, seriously, try it).  I loved the idea that Heather had filled her home and her life with the colours that instinctively she knew worked for her, but hadn't followed through and filled her wardrobe with those same colours.  I even jokingly suggested that maybe I had done something similar with my gorgeous turquoise/teal bath towels.

Yesterday evening I was at an all time low and tweeted that I needed "stuff" something to make me feel happy and maybe what I needed was "colour".  You know when you tweet and sort of hope that a couple of specific people will see your tweet and respond but don't want to be presumptious and tweet them direct and then they do and they reply and give you really incredibly good advice out of the goodness of their hearts?  Isn't that a joy and aren't those people just wonderful?  Queen of colour Helen responded to say she had some ideas and would be in touch and Grace also replied saying she had a feeling that I would be either a Bright or a Light Spring and sent me some useful links so that I could get some ideas what that actually means in real terms.  As soon as I looked at the links and the colour suggestions Bright Spring seemed to feel right to me.  The more I read the more I realised that much like Heather I had a lot of the colours I SHOULD have on me around me, but again hadn't made the leap of incorporating them into my wardrobe.  Helen sent me an incredibly helpful email referring to blog posts of mine over the last couple of years, pointing out what she felt worked for me and, very honestly, what she felt didn't do me as many favours - it was surprisingly obvious when I looked back through the posts Helen had highlighted that when I wore the right colours I looked completely different to when I wore the wrong ones!

I decided this morning that I'd go all out and implement some of the suggestions made, rather than easing into this transition I decided to go straight for purple eye shadow.  Weirdly I have never had a problem wearing the "right" colour lipstick, well apart from that brief moment when I decided that nude lips were fashionable and therefore I needed a nude lipstick.  So enough witter, pics.

 Purple eye shadow! And the bright beads that Helen had mentioned liking - trying to inject some life into a brand new grey top. Kicking myself about this as the same top was available in a lovely teal colour but I opted for nice "safe" grey!

 And then just because I can I draped myself in my bath towel and took photos. 

 Ignore the facial expression, I always look like a loon in pics. What do you think of the colour?  I have to say I'm rather loving it!

 I know the light and the camera position is different and both are more flattering in the towel draped pic but overall I think my skin looks more glowing in the 2nd pic and the colours of the lipstick and eye shadow are brighter.  I am off to the hairdressers tomorrow and I am going to have some low lights mixed in with my hightlights too, OH has agreed that I look younger with slightly darker hair.  

I have a real fancy now for a teal coat, cobalt blue handbag and a pair of fuschia leather gloves for the Winter and I am defnitely going to purchase some more eye and lip colours so watch this space!