Even though I am decidedly not a make-up girl I have two fixations in the cosmetics department...nail polish and lip gloss. And I probably love them both for the same reasons...they add a slight veneer of "effort" to my otherwise unkempt appearance and, most importantly, they require very little when it comes to upkeep.

I can continue to justify buying nail polish because I use all of the bottles that I buy (though there is one minty green number that I received as a gift and which is gathering dust as we speak)...but as I have pots and tubes of virtually untouched lip gloss sitting in my bathroom cupboard I think I need to restrain myself from buying any more. Which is tough as I'm currently drooling over Shu Uemura's latest offering from its spring collection, a tint and a gloss in one little tub. It's so useful and multi-purpose...like the things that boy scouts use for taking stones out of horses' hooves...