We all dream of an even, streak free, odour free, perfect golden tan but what lengths would you go to to get it? Lying on a sun lounger and burning, standing in a tanning booth and damaging your skin, or snorting an untested unapproved tanning product up your nose?

It may all sound ridiculous when you say it out loud but these are the steps some individuals take in order to obtain bronzed skin. When it comes to being tanned I am just as keen as the next women to look as though I have a ‘healthy glow’ but I prefer to get mine out of a bottle or a can and have decided the scent, hassle and streaks are worth it if it means my skin stays healthy.

However, there is one fake tan spray I definitely won’t be trying, and that is a new product known as Ubertan Sunless Tanning System. This spray is one with a difference, as it is actually intended to go up your nose and not on your body. The instructions on the box recommend spraying the product up your nostrils twice a day for 10 to 14 days.

Users of the product have already reported side effects such as dizziness and nausea, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are concerned that the product lists no ingredients on the box or bottle and are advising consumers against purchasing or using the product.

The MHRA believe the product may contain Forskolin, which is not licensed for sale in the UK. Another similar product under investigation by the MHRA is thought to contain Melanotan II, a type of hormone which increases levels of the pigment melanin in the body. Again, Melanotan II is also unlicensed in the UK and illegal to sell.

The MHRA have said that Ubertan Sunless Tanning System is not a licensed medicine and therefor it is illegal to sell, advertise or supply it in the UK.

Claire Tilstone, from the organisation has said she is worried that users will suffer serious side effects as nether Ubertan or other nasal tanning sprays have undergone testing to prove it is safe or that it works.

“At best it’s a waste of money, at worse it can seriously damage your health.

“Don’t use this product, throw it away if you have already bought it and don’t buy any more.” She said.

View the original BBC News article

Dust the cobwebs off the fake tan ladies because summer is upon us and we have just found what we know will be one of our favourite summer go to products of 2011.

Fake tan connoisseurs will know that St Tropez is up there with the crème de la crème of all things olive and lovely, but unfortunately it’s relatively high price point means that it is out of reach for many. However, St Tropez have recently released what we consider to be one of their most affordable and versatile products yet, a range of four skin illuminators to suit all skin tones.

The original illuminator (violet) created a flurry of excitement at London Fashion Week SS10 where it was used on the Marios Schwab catwalk to finish the skin with a beautiful iridescent blue sheen. Since its release onto the St Tropez website it has already become a bestseller and prompted the brains at St Tropez to extend the range to suit more skin tones.

So came the birth of two additional shades, gold and rose, the former which is aimed at yellow/gold skin tones and the latter which is aimed at blue/pink/violet undertones.

Again both shades proved huge hits at fashion weeks, with gold being used on the Zac Posen SS11 catwalks to create a sultry 70s look and rose being used on Erdems outdoor catwalk to give a delicate flush to the models faces.

With the brand being St Tropez obviously all of the illuminators are intended to compliment a tan, however with that said they also work well on paler skin tones on which they create a dewy glowing complexion.

The versatility of this product is its key selling point. Use alone on a no foundation day mixed in with moisturiser to brighten the skin, mix with foundation for an all over glow. Use on top of make-up as a highlight for cheeks, brows, nose or the cupids bow. Use on the arms, decolletage and legs for defined luminosity or mix in with your daily body lotion or instant tan for that extra glow!

All skin illuminator’s are available from the St Tropez website and are priced at £12.

If like us you would love to pick up a bargain but would rather be chilling on the couch as opposed to entering a death match over the last pair of size fives then behold…the internet sale.

Yup so online sale shopping is not without its down falls. If you’ve ever sat there for hours ‘adding to basket’ only to click ‘proceed to checkout’ where you are confronted with angry red, bold letters stating ‘one or more of your items are out of stock’, then we feel for you. But at least you didn’t travel all the way to town to find out there was nothing you liked (Silver lining and all that!).

So without further ado, here is a round up of our favourite online beauty sales and what they have to offer:

Feel Unique

The Feel Unique sale is offering up to 70% off some of our favourite beauty brands. We snapped up the cult Xen-Tan Dark Tanning Lotion (236ml) for £16.19 instead of £25.95! What’s more, worldwide postage and packaging is currently FREE!

Cheap Smells

Cheap Smells are offering various post Christmas seasonal offers. Our top pick has to be Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Eclat for only £14.95 as part of their ’3 Day Winter Mega Deal’. Thats 38% off the retail price and again, postage and packaging is currently free.

Gorgeous Shop

The Gorgeous Shop winter sale is currently offering hundreds of beauty items for up to half price.

We love Korres Rice Proteins Serum – For Split Ends (15ml) which is now £9.80 knocked down from £14 and will help dehydrated hair back to its former glory.

HQ Hair

Despite the name of the site, Hq Hair offers a fantastic range of high end beauty products. The online store is currently offering 30% of everything when you enter the code ‘saletime’ at the checkout.

Last Thursday evening the Beauty Resource team finished work early, donned our heels and lippie and journeyed into le’capital for the Coty bloggers preview. Upon arrival we were greeted by the gorgeous press team who made us feel right at home in the quirky ‘Home Sweet Home’ venue and were very quick to make sure we all had a glass of champagne in hand!

Coty look after some fantastic and prestigious brands, ranging from Calvin Klein, Chloe and Marc Jacobs right through to Rimmel and Sally Hanson. We were lucky enough to be invited along to preview and try out some new upcoming lines and are extremely excited about what we saw (we are predicting some best sellers).

We came away with an incredible goodie bag full with wonderful treats for us to try out and review and here is a sneak peak of reviews which will be coming over the next week or so:

Calvin Klein – Beauty (Nationwide release 25th August) (read review here)
Marc Jacobs – Bang (Available from Harvey Nichols from 1st August & nationwide from 25th August)(read review here)
Rimmel – Lash Accelerator Mascara (Released 1st September) (read review here)
Guess – Seductive (Released September 2010) (read review here)
Chloe – Love (Available from Harrods from 22nd August and nationwide from 22nd September)
Adidas - New & improved shower gels (Relaunch October 2010)

First up is their Charlotte Island Tanning Lotion (£9.99 per 240g), a subtle bronzing body tint which gives a sun kissed glow minus the harm caused by excessive sunlight. The lotion is made with an organic lemon infusion, organic oils and cocoa butter, all of which brighten and hydrate the skin without the smell of stale biscuits and roast chicken crisps.

A little really does go a long way with this product and though the colour seems a little daunting in the bottle it leaves a beautiful, even streak free colour and a wonderful almost chocolate like aroma, finally a fake tan which is a pleasure and not a chore to apply!

Next up are their body glow massage bars. If you need a glow but your on the go then the new solid body tints could be the perfect option for you. Available for lighter and darker skin tones Silk Stockings (£7.50 per 30g) and Black Stockings (£7.50 per 30g) are solid bars which are to be massaged into the skin to leave a subtle looking colour and can be washed off easily making dirty sheets a thing of the past.

Silk Stockings (for paler skin) is formulated with shea butter for its moisturising properties and jasmine for a sultry fragrance and application is virtually faff free in comparison to cream wash-on-wash-off tanners, which end up virtually everywhere but where you want it!

Black Stockings is intended as a body tint for tanned or black skin. The combination of darker colours makes for a realistic tan and evens out the skin tones. It is formulated with Pimento berry oil which is known to treat muscular aches and pains and cinnamon leaf oil which has a rich and spicy aroma leaving the skin tingling. Again the solid formula means that application is relatively mess free, it takes a little working to massage into the legs but in our opinion this much better than having tan dripping all over our nice cream carpets!

Models Own Lip Cheek & Face Paint £5.99

Whats a festival without a few ridiculous costumes and neon face paints here and there? These pots won’t take up too much room in your rucksack and will provide you with hours of entertainment. Available in neon blue, neon orange, neon pink and neon yellow.

Piz Buin One Day Long Lotion SPF15 with heliplex £18.99

It may sound boring and expensive but this weekend is set to be the hottest of the year so far and unless you want to come back looking like a mixed grill you need to slap on the sun cream. This lotion smells fantastic and with almost a week without showers you are going to want to do everything within your power to smell mildly acceptable. Whats more this lotion lasts six hours without reapplication so in the event the beers are flowing and you become absent minded or if your tent is a 3 mile walk away from the arena then no worries, because once its on you’re off!

Ow! Day Tripper – Day Out First Aid Kit £5.99

All day alcohol consumption, tents, intense heat, music and excitement all rolled into one will probably lead to the odd bump and bruise. Here is a handy little first aid kit which will keep you smiling. The kit contains the following:

First Aid Leaflet
Insect Repellant Wipes
Wound Pad with Bandage
Safety Pins
Mini Grip Pill Bag
15ml Eye Wash
Blister Plasters
Assorted Washproof Plasters
Antiseptic Wipes

Batiste Dry Shampoo Blush 150ML £2.09

It is difficult to comprehend a life without dry shampoo and often women look back and wonder how we ever lived without it. This is an absolute must at a festival. Were certainly not saying its going to make your hair look perfectly styled and coiffed but it will tackle the grease at the very least and has the added bonus of a summery coconut fragrance.

Iridescent Glitterbug £3.65 per 30g

Not only will this massage bar leave your skin smooth, soft and flexible with its moisturising shea butters and cocoa, it will also leave you beautifully scented with rose, citrus and sweet vanilla and it will leave you looking like you’ve just been sprinkled with fairy dust.

Anatomicals Snoozers Are Losers Boost Patch £3.00

It’s no secret that at a festival you are likely to get very little sleep. If you feel your stamina is lagging and you are on the verge of creeping back to the tent for a little snooze then why not try one of these energy patches from Anatomicals. There are six individual patches in this kit to be applied to the upper arm for a boost. Within minutes they relieve tiredness and increase sharpness to get you back in the party spirit.

This heavenly scented tanning cream has been championed by the likes of Rachel Stevens and Lisa Snowden, both of whom have utterly covetable tans. If you have been searching for a natural looking, good value, nice smelling, streak-free fake tan with ease of application the Sienna X should be at the top of your list.

If your wondering why you haven’t heard of it then it’s because it is a relatively new product to hit the market. It initially started as a spray tan cubicle company back in 2004 but has developed over the last 2 years to become a major force within the industry, with a high media profile and huge fan base.

This tan is really easy to apply. It does have a colour guide which shows you where you’ve been but unlike other high end products with this feature, it doesn’t leave your sheets looking like you’ve dragged them through a muddy puddle. Once you’ve applied your tan (with a mitt) just wait 8 hours for the natural looking gorgeousness to develop and then jump in the shower, give yourself a rub down and pat dry.

Even more impressively this tan has an anti-cellulite formula which will help to tone and smooth your skin with its extensive list of natural ingredients including green tea, kiwi fruit extract and sweet almond oil among many more. The whole Sienna X range is also completely paraben free and the company try to source products locally where possible.

Extremely natural self tan from Sienna X is available directly from their website for £19.95

This facial self tan treatment is so fabulous that it even won the European cosmetics innovation prize for active ingredients. If you had doubts that this didn’t work then that should surely make them scarper!

The breakthrough treatment includes the latest anti-ageing ingredient – PhytoCellTecTM Malus Domestica, which is a bit of a mouthful but prevents chronological ageing by protecting the longevity of skin stem cells.

With age, the number of skin cells in a human’s decreases and their ability to maintain and repair the skin becomes less efficient. The active ingredients in the new formula mean that each cell will now have the ability to regenerate new organs. In lamens terms it will help to prevent your skin from ageing.

As if thats not enough, the gentle formula will also give you a long lasting, natural looking tan all at the reasonable price of £30.00 from ASOS.

With Autumn here and Winter soon setting in it is difficult to contemplate bearing your pale sun starved legs to the world. As soon as it gets a bit chilly the 80 denier tights are flying off the shelves and we find ourselves co-ordinating our outfits with coloured, lace, sheer, patterned or woolly tights in an effort to trap in some much needed heat.

Winter is a beautiful season and there is nothing nicer than snuggling up in a handsome winter coat and getting out the rest of your winter wardrobe, but let’s face facts. Some outfits look better without tights. It is frustrating when you find the most perfect Christmas party dress, only to realise it definitely can’t be worn with tights and there is no possible way you can get your pasty legs out after they have been in hibernation for so long.

This is where the gloriously wonderful fake tan comes into play. For those of us who don’t want the weekly commitment and rigmarole of keeping your fake tan up on a weekly basis then Fake Bake’s Faux Glow is perfect. This is a one-day only quick drying spray tan. It is non streak, glides on perfectly because of its ingenious 360 degree nozzle, it doesn’t make you smell like roast chicken crisps and you don’t have to stand naked for 20 minutes before you can sit down. It’s fantastic for those with uneven irregular looking skin tones, so for those who have had patchy fake tan disasters this will be great for you. It is also great for those who haven’t experimented with tanning products before as they have the security of knowing that if it goes wrong then they can wash it off.

Rimmel have a similar version (sunshimmer £5.99), which is again a wash on wash of formula. The trouble with the Rimmel version is that if the skin came into contact with even small amounts of liquid, it would start to rinse off. A nightmare in the rain or if you are in a hot sweaty club where drinks get spilled. Faux Glow has much better staying power, similar to really good strong waterproof mascara that you have to spend a bit of time removing. There isn’t even that much of a price difference between the two, with Faux Glow coming in at £10.99 you won’t begrudge the extra few pounds for a huge difference in quality.

However, there is one thing that Fake Bake can’t do and that is to get rid of your goose bumps. So man up ladies! The cold will do you good.

All the experts will be there, including Myleene Klass, hairdresser Andrew Barton, hair colourist Lisa Shepherd, cosmetic dentist Dr Uchenna Okoye and cosmetic surgeon Jan Stanek. It’ll be your one-stop-shop for all things beauty related, and there’s a chance to try out products, have a makeover, find your most flattering hairstyle and find out about all the new trends first.

And the best part is that we’ve got 3 pairs of tickets to give away – so you and a friend could be seeing it all this for free this weekend!

If you want to enter then email us at info@beautyresource.org.uk with your full name and contact details, and we’ll pick 3 winners at random. 10 Years Younger Live is this weekend, 3rd-5th July, and you need to be able to make your own way to and from Earls Court. Entries must be recieved by 1pm tomorrow (3rd July).

Check out the website for more information, and good luck!