Haul, GWP & Swatches: YSL Beauty Look Noel 2011

I'm so excited to show you this little haul. Last week I took a trip to Debenhams because I'd managed to rack up £25 on my Beauty Card and £15 of that was due to expire, so needed spent. A hard life eh? I had intended to spend it on some more Lancome (even although I'd bought some the week before at the Boots Christmas night), as Lancome had a rather cute GWP on. I decided to browse the fragrance department first and passed by the Yves Saint Laurent counter on the way and got completely sucked in (in a good way).
They also had a gift with purchase, when you spent £40 and although I'm not as familiar with YSL products as I am with say Lancome or MAC, I thought I'd take a peek. The main stand that appealed was the Look Noel 2011 collection. It is the most gorgeous Christmas range, I was totally enthralled with every single product. I would actually go so far as to say it's the prettiest Christmas collection out there just now. You know the sight of any sort of shimmer or glitter and I'm in heaven, but this is like grown-up glitter glam gorgeousness!

First up is the Golden Gloss of which there were three on this particular counter. One was a silvery shade (44?), there was also an extremely festive looking red (although on the YSL site it's a purpley shade in this collection?) and although I don't do reds, it's seriously stunning. I can't seem to find information on it anywhere though, so I'm wondering if they switched it because the purple is out of stock or I just invented the entire thing! The final gloss was an opal white with a bright lilac flash and ahhh-mazing glitter. All the shades were glittery, but this one was incredibly so. I tried it over all the lipsticks in this range and it completely changed the look of the gloss every time-it was brilliant and I knew I would be taking it home with me! The shade number is 45 called 'Sparkling Snow White' on the YSL site but 'White Gold Opal' on my box. I found it difficult to capture the pink and lilac flashes on my camera, but take my word for it, it's beautiful!
There were 6 lipsticks on the stand, of which three were limited edition shades I believe-although don't quote me on that, as I said I'm not familiar enough with YSL to know all the regular shade names as well as the limited ones. Three lipsticks stood out most to me anyway and they were a deep true purple that looked really buildable (it wasn't too scary dark in one swipe, although pigmented)-this looked outstanding with my gloss over the top, it really brought out the purple flash. There was also an unusual goldy beige, like an antique, dirty golden beige. It was very sheer and again buildable, I'm not too sure if it would've been too goldy for me though. As I've already said I tried the gloss over this too and again it completely transformed it and made it really interesting and much more wearable. The lipstick I bought though was 37 Rose Deesse a Rouge Pur Couture shade. It's a soft, subtle peach, very little colour and very light so it possibly would look too pale on darker skins. I was torn between this or the purple one, but decided I'd get most wear out of this and I do already have a few deep purples anyway (not that I don't own any nudes, haha)!
It's come across as very pink in the images above, it's not really like that at all. The image YSL use of this lipstick in their promo for this collection is spot-on (bottom of page), it's definitely a soft, light peach rather than pink. You can see some lovely micro-shimmer in the swatch below. My gloss looks amazing over this one too, plus it means my brush won't get mucky (had I bought the purple l/s) and it saves me having to apply with my finger etc.
Next to that is of course my Golden Gloss and then next to that is the GWP lipstick. How cute is that? A tiny little mini YSL, exactly like it's big sister! It's shade 9 Rose Stiletto, also a Rouge Pur Couture.
The lipstick came in this lovely black patent makeup bag (or clutch I'm thinking!) with satin 'Y' and navy lining. There's also a monogrammed mirror with it.
then a little mini of the Shocking Volume mascara.
a rather generous sized waterproof eye pencil in black with a sharpener.
and finally some eye makeup remover. To me, this gift is the best you can get, I'll use absolutely everything in it. Remember I had my £25 to spend too, so ended up paying around £18 in real money for this lot, plus the free gift, plus beauty card bonus points-which means I practically stole this lot and got paid for doing so!
I said I liked the entire collection, so I just wanted to run through the other items. There was an eyeshadow duo with a black (which I wasn't too bothered about) and a lovely gold-now I'm not a gold or earthy tone eye wearer in the slightest, it always looks terrible on me, like I've been in a fight. This swatched beautifully though, the sparkles looked as if they were suspended in a gold tinted base, it had such luminosity, I really liked it! It wasn't in any way harsh, just pretty grown-up glam like I said. It also comes in a silver version (ooooooh). The other item was a highlighter 'Le Smoking Tuxedo Palette', which has three strips in white shades-one is slightly minty, one is more pinky and the other more blue-it was really beautiful too.
There's also an eyeshadow palette which I can't recall seeing on the stand and *drumroll" a very intriguing nail varnish duo. You get two polishes in black, one matte, one shiny, so you can do a black on black manicure. I decided I could get the look at home (and did so immediately) and for this I used Models Own Red 'n' Black (possibly could have used a more black-black but it was the only black I could find in a hurry!) 'Matt Black' also by Models Own would save you having to do the next step. I used No7 Stay Perfect Matte Top Coat (which was a limited edition) to mattify my base, then I used a black nail pen from Andrea Fulerton to give me my shiny tips. It's really easy to do when you're using a small brush like this.
This lasted all week without chipping, my only issue was that matte doesn't stay matte. If you're washing your hair, using lotions, hand-cream, washing dishes, soap etc it does start to have a bit more of a sheen as the days go on and obviously it would be very difficult to top up (you'd have to do the matte top coat then the tips all over again unless you can manage to use the matte without touching the tips-which seems impossible to me). You could also do it the other way with matte tips and shiny nails, either looks ultra chic-I loved my YSL inspired nails.

So yes, I'd highly recommend browsing the new YSL collection and I did stop by the Lancome counter too on my way out....but that's for another post!