We've Moved

Wicked Beautiful is now on OnSugar, a new beauty blog platform. If you've been accessing Wicked Beautiful by its blogger.com URL, beautyhub.blogspot.com, please update the address. The new address is bostonredlox.onsugar.com, but, like the old address, the new address is mapped to Wicked Beautiful's own dot-com domain name, www.wickedbeautiful.com, which is the easiest way to find us.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 6

Continuing the snow theme, Day 6 of the 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas spotlights the Snow Wonder High Intensity Hand Cream ($8 for 1 oz.) from Bliss. It's part of their limited edition Snow Wonder line of creams and body butters. The High Intensity Hand Cream is rich but not greasy, and its frosty fragrance reminds you of a crisp winter day after a snowfall.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 5

About 10 or 12 years ago, Origins introduced their Ginger Float cream bubble bath as a limited-edition product for the holidays. Adding a handful of the cream to your bathwater infused it with the spicy but sweet fragrance of ginger infused with citrus. This ginger fragrance proved to be so popular that Origins made it a permanent staple, and expanded their Ginger Essence line with other bath and body products, as well as perfumes and a candle. While other Origins bath lines have come and gone, Ginger Essence has remained one of their most enduringly popular fragrances. This year, Origins is offering a variety of Ginger Essence Gift Sets. My favorite is simple yet sweet: The Gingerfest Gift Set ($35). It includes the original Ginger Float cream bubble bath in an 8-ounce jar, as well as 4-ounce jars each of Ginger Souffle Whipped Body Cream and Incredible Spreadable Scrub ginger body smoother. The products come stacked in a festive red-and-white holiday tube.

The smell of the Origins ginger products still takes me back to that magical first Christmas when the Ginger Float was introduced.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 4

On10 Cosmetics specializes in lip balms that taste like favorite flavors from a bygone era. Their Vintage Classic Lip Balms recreate old soda and candy flavors, and are packaged in tins that recreate the vintage packaging of the original product. The flavors are based on Schweppes sodas or Hershey's candies, many of which were discontinued decades ago. With many flavors to choose from, I opted for the Hershey's Velvet Sweet Chocolate ($9). It comes in a red and white tin with Santa Claus on it, so it's perfect for Christmas. The flavor is more hot chocolate than chocolate candy. It's smooth and subtle, with a little tingle to it (maybe it's the rosemary extract). It also has an SPF of 15 to protect your lips while you're outside sking, snowboarding, or just making snow angels. The Velvet Sweet Chocolate Lip Balm makes a great stocking stuffer, or Secret Santa present.

On10 Vintage Classic Lip Balms are available exclusively at Sephora.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 3

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas continue with Philosophy's Eggnog Latte 3-in-1 High Foaming Shampoo, Shower Gel and Bubble Bath, a holiday edition of Philosophy's popular line of food-scented 3-in-1s. It smells delicious, and satisfies that craving when I'm jonesing for a Starbucks eggnog latte. It leaves your skin clean and soft, and best of all, it has no calories. Like all of Philosophy's 3-in-1s, you get a large 16-ounce bottle for a mere $16. At one dollar an ounce, it's one of the best bargains of the holiday season. And it comes in an adorable faux-burlap bag with a festive holiday ribbon, sure to put a smile on the face of its lucky recipient.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 2

Lush's Snowcake Soap ($6.95 for 3 oz.) has become as much a holiday tradition as mistletoe, eggnog, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It's only available for a limited time during the holiday season. Snowcake has many, many fans of its creamy almond marzipan fragrance. People have been known to stockpile it when it comes out.



This year, Lush has introduced a companion Snowcake Shower Gel ($16.95.). It's only available online and it's extremely limited, so make sure to get yours now.

The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas - Day 1

"It's the most wonderful time of the year," legendary crooner Andy Williams will tell you. And he's right. Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, especially for beauty fanatics. This is the time of year that cosmetic and skincare companies come out with special holiday-themed products, perfect for gift-giving. Or, if you're like me, you buy one to give as a gift and one to keep for yourself.

For the next 12 days, I will be counting down the 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas. You won't find any geese a-laying or drummers drumming, but you might just find fun or useful products to pamper, primp and please the ones you love.



The 12 Wicked Beautiful Days of Christmas begin with this adorable marshmallow snowman. He's actually scented goatsmilk soap, but he's so cute, you won't want to use him. Instead, you'll probably put him out on the coffee table every year as a Christmas decoration, just like Grandma did with those figural holiday candles from the Fifties.

This smores snowman is just one of many fun holiday soaps from Crazy K Bath and Body. Crazy K's etsy shop features several figural holiday soaps, many available in your choice of 300 fragrances. If you don't like snowmen (but who doesn't?), you can choose from snowball soaps, a santa soap, or a candy cane ice cream bar. And if you have anybody on your Naughty List, you can get them a lump of coal for their stocking. It's actually scented olive oil soap, so even if they've been naughty, they'll still be getting something nice. But you'd better hurry. Crazy K's last day of accepting holiday orders is tomorrow, so that she can get all holiday orders out on Monday.

We Wish Uemura Christmas and a Happy Shu Year

Shu Uemura has partnered with Japanese photographer and film director Mika Ninagawa to create a holiday collection of makeup that evokes the rich palette of nature as captured by Ninagawa's photographs. The Mika Loves Shu Holiday Collection 2008 consists of three eyeshadow palettes ($65 each), two nail polishes ($16 each), three mini eyeliner pencils ($35 for the set), two sets of three Gloss Unlimited lip glosses in a cosmetic pouch ($40), three Rouge Unlimited cheek colors ($23 each), a cosmetic bag ($29), and a portable brush set ($85). The colors run the gamut of deep earth tones of black, brown, and green, to rich jewel tones of sapphire, amethyst and garnet, to bright tones of chartreuse, pink, yellow and orange, and everything in between. The eyeshadow cases feature Ninagawa's photography, as do the Chrysanthemum cosmetic pouch and the case for the portable brush set. The Holiday Collection also features four sets of false eyelashes.




The Mika Loves Shu Holiday Collection 2008 can be purchased online as well as at the three Shu Uemura boutiques, in San Francisco and Costa Mesa, California; and the one right here in Boston on Newbury Street.

Face It, I'm Not Getting Any Younger

LORAC is a brand of cosmetics that has a huge following among celebrities and mere mortals alike. Founder and makeup artist Carol Shaw has been readying stars such as Nicole Kidman and Debra Messing for the red carpet for many years. Thus it's hard to believe that, in all my years of beauty addiction, I've never tried any of her products before now.

My skin has been acting up lately, with severe breakouts due to stress. Because of this, I've been treating my skin like it's oily and teenaged, and not like it's dry and aging. The sudden realization that I should be treating my skin with more age-appropriate products sent me running to my nearest Sephora for a foundation that not only masks my skin problems, but treats my skincare concerns as well. After trying several foundations, all of which were too yellow or too dark for my fair, pink-undertoned complexion, the Sephora makeup artist came over to assist me. She recommended Lorac's Breakthrough Performance Foundation ($38) in Porcelain, the lightest shade. She chose the Lorac line because Nicole Kidman uses it, and she's about as pale as I am. Lorac's Breakthrough Performance Foundation is an oil-free anti-aging foundation. It contains SMS Complex which, according to the Lorac website, "combines pre-aging, anti-aging, hydrating, and smoothing ingredients along with antioxidants to help skin appear youthful, rejuvenated, and radiant. It helps to counteract the signs of aging by increasing cell turnover, and promoting skin’s natural ability to produce collagen; which has been shown to strengthen the skin’s structure." Sounds impressive, but I'm hooked because it's oil-free and contains an SPF of 14.

I am very pleased with this foundation. Although I do have to use a concealer on my most problematic areas, the coverage looks very natural so it doesn't look like I'm plastering on makeup to hide my skin flaws. I can't attest to its anti-aging claims, but it's a very good foundation that I can wear with confidence every day. Now I'm hooked on Lorac, and I look forward to trying some of her other products. Will they make me as beautiful as Nicole Kidman? No, but I'd be happy just to look as good as I possibly can.