Viva Nivea

I have friends that swear by Nivea.

I swear if I can't find one of the little silver Nivea Glam boxes I spied in Feb's Vogue Italia, I'll turn on someone.

Any ideas?

Mother pucker

We're a lip gloss sharing kinda office. Last week's new find was Darphin's pigmented lip balm which went down a treat. This week, a pink tube of goop inscribed Sexy Mother Pucker gets passed to me.
"Here! Try this!" pouts J, an assistant on a glossy mag's site.
"You have to try it, put on lots!" she grinned as I daubed the wand over my pout, layering on the sticky stuff.
"It's really weird, it makes your lips tingle."
Hmm. It did as well. And not just tingle - as the sensation set in my lips felt like they were being eaten alive by hot maggots. To put it mildly.
Sexy Mother Pucker, by Soap and Glory, is one of those bee sting lip plumping glosses that claim to give you an Angelina Jolie mouth in moments. I didn't think I could wait that long and fled to the toilets grabbing a handful of paper towels to scrub the gloss off (in absence of gentle cleanser perfect for said job, of course). I paused in front of the mirror and the most horrifying thing of all became apparent. It had worked a treat. Now, I don't have thin lips. They're full and shapely and lip plumping has never been a priority, but the little lift of the Soap and Glory number - well, it was sexy.
But the maggots - they weren't so hot. Off it came. De-Angelina'd I skip back to Darphin. 'Til next week.

On the double

I'm loving double cleansing. It just feels so ritualistic, so right. The problem that strikes me is once you start doubling up over the sink, where do you stop? Am I meant to lather up in the shower twice too? Shampoo: traditionally two applications, does that now mean four? Should I run my dishwasher twice? Wash my muslin cloths, clothes, knickers, two times in total? Can my skin - can anything - ever REALLY be clean enough?

This isn't cleansing, this is OCD.

Five beauty confessions

1. I love my new cleanser so much I used it the minute I got home from work, just so that I would feel radiant while I made pesto pasta.

2. Oh, and I'd quite like to take it to the office and wash my face at lunchtime, but I fear that may be overkill.

3. I check Jessica Matlin's Allure.com blog several times daily and begin to feel slightly harrassed and very deprived if she hasn't posted.

4. I just googled skin care diet and would be quite pleased if weight loss came as a side effect of gaining perfect skin through eating purely almonds.

5. I can't remember the last time my fingernails were naked. Is polish like hair straighteners? Am I supposed to have a polish-free week? Am I bad?

Feeling quiffy

Now that I sport impeccably threaded eyebrows it seems rude to hide them underneath a fat blonde slice of fringe. Bang, and the brows are gone (geddit?). It seems to suggest a lack of gratitude toward my glowingly pregnant and masterful eyebrow creator.

But how to coiff instead? At last week's BRIT awards quiffs were everywhere but as we know just because Gemma Atkinson does it, doesn't mean that we should. In fact - judging by that 'Hollyoaks - the St Tropez years' look she's working - it means quite the opposite. But where quiffs have in the past made me feel a teensy bit like a wannabe Girls Aloud-er, not to mention revealing my forehead like an almost holographic beacon, I am now beginning to wonder if they can't be pulled off with a more sophisticated slant.

Denise van Outen was almost there, with her fallen quiff that was more forties than eighties and delicately wilted to one side with a pin curled kink. This panel of hair I call a fringe has neither the length nor thickness for such a look, but with a few pretty clips, a spritz of product and an undone look at the back, in the morning I'll be feeling quiffy - and, everything crossed, looking nothing at all like Sarah Harding.

See handbag.com's beauty round-up of this year's BRIT awards.