Tag: blindfold

16

Just Tease Me

What we used:  Tease Me Soft Satin Blackout Blindfold
From: Lovehoney
Price: £14.99
Material(s): Satin

Lizzie and Thomas have the opportunity to try out Lovehoney’s innovative satin Tease Me blindfold. Will they encounter the slippage issues they experienced during their last blindfold roadtest?

Lizzie
A few weeks ago, we reviewed Coco de Mer’s ‘Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be’ blindfold as part of the Christian Grey’s Playthings toy series. If you read our post, you’ll know that we loved the look and feel of this pretty and luxurious bit of kit but had some issues with it slipping off at inopportune moments.

Enter the very lovely Alice from Lovehoney who, after reading our review, kindly sent us Lovehoney’s very own Tease Me blindfold to try out. This innovative product has an ingenious flexible wire embedded inside the satin, so the wearer gets a much better fit across their nose and cheeks and, consequently, there’s less chance of it parting company with the face during use.

First impressions …

Lizzie
The Tease Me blindfold arrives in a slim white cardboard package featuring the Lovehoney’s branding in purple white and black and encased in a clear plastic sleeve. Very simple and understated (I wouldn’t have been offended if Thomas had bought this for me as a gift).

The blindfold itself is pretty; the outward-facing side is rich purple and the inward-facing panel a lovely glossy black. The section that’s designed to sit over the nose and eyes is delineated by a half-moon of leather-like piping and inside the curved section of this is a thin, flexible wire (which you can easily feel and manipulate with your fingers).

Thomas
This is a very nice blindfold. It looks high quality, the stitching is good and it feels soft to the touch. The packaging is nicely discrete as well. Continue reading →

17

Christian Grey’s playthings, part four: handcuffs

What we used: Luxury Suede Leather Handcuffs in red
From: Bondara
Price: £25.99
Material(s): Cuffs – suede and leather. Fastenings – nickel-plated steel

Read Fifty Shades of Grey and curious about bondage? If so, we hope you enjoy the fourth and final post in our Christian Grey’s playthings series, in which Thomas restrains Lizzie with some very comfortable leather handcuffs and she does a bit of … hanging about.

Important: If you haven’t already, please read the Behind the Chintz Curtain Disclaimer. (It’s not as dry and boring as you might think, so please do take the time to have a look.)

First impressions …

Lizzie
I have a bit of a thing for the colour red, so it was probably a given that I’d like the look of these cuffs. They arrive in generic brown packaging and, I have to say, my first thought when I extract them from their plastic sleeve is that they appear to be very well made; heavier and a lot more substantial than I imagined they would be. I can’t resist giving them a quick sniff – I adore the smell of leather – and am not disappointed by their aroma!

Each red suede cuff is lined with smooth black leather and has a metal buckle, a leather strap with punched holes, and a metal D-ring (to which the accompanying chain can be clipped to secure the cuffs together) on its outer surface. A close inspection reveals that the finishing is excellent: the stitching on the cuff edges is neat and the rivets that attach the D-rings and buckle sections are firmly set. The leather is wonderfully supple and bends easily when I manipulate the cuffs with my hands – a very good sign since having something stiff or hard around the wrists isn’t a great idea if you’re going to get physical. (You don’t want restraints chaffing, cutting into your skin or affecting circulation.) Continue reading →

04

Christian Grey’s playthings, part one: the blindfold

What we used: ’Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be’ blindfold
From: Coco de Mer U.K.
Price: £25.50
Material(s): Silk

The first in our series of posts on Christian Grey’s playthings, in which we discover that silk blindfolds feel lovely but are very, very hard to keep in place …

First impressions …

Lizzie
This blindfold is beautiful. It’s gorgeously soft, feels wonderfully silky to the touch, and the words ‘Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be’ are stitched in a pretty scripted font in the middle of the outward-facing panel. The Coco de Mer logo is embroidered at the right-hand end. All-in-all, very seductive and a million miles from sleazy and cheap. I’m impressed – and a bit surprised! – that Thomas has chosen this for me; it’s far sexier than a hanky or one of my pashminas, but being an average bloke, they’re exactly what I’d expect him to be wrapping around my head in place of this!

Thomas
The blindfold came in quality packaging from Coco de Mer along with several other items, none of which looked cheap or tacky, which is to be avoided at all costs if you are shopping for toys. The blindfold is of decent silk and is well made with black embroidery on one side. It has a nice look and feel and you won’t be embarrassed to whip it out (so to speak) on your partner. Continue reading →

03

Curious about Christian Grey’s playthings?

Okay. You’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey and you’re curious. What exactly happens when people play with all those things in the bedroom in real life? You know, those, er, ‘toys’?

Before Fifty came on the scene, the items that Christian Grey uses during his sexual encounters with Anastasia Steele were probably a bit outside the standard sexual behaviour box for a good many people. But if this book has done one thing by going mainstream, regardless of what you think of its origins, the writing, and the way it portrays the BDSM lifestyle, it has opened the door for candid conversations between partners and – hopefully – allowed them to communicate more openly about things they’d like to try in (or out of) the bedroom.

That said, it’s one thing to read about these sorts of things in a book and quite another to go out, buy up the hardware aisle at Homebase, and experiment with your significant other. So, to quench your curiosity, we’re going to roadtest (well, our reviewers Lizzie and Thomas are) four of the items from E.L. James’s record-breaking novel – the blindfold, the crop, ‘the beads’ and the handcuffs – to help you decide whether you’d like to try them out yourself.

We’ll be posting the reviews in instalments, so make sure you visit Chintz later this week for the first in the series.

Fifty Shades of Grey is available from: Amazon.co.uk (Kindle ; paperback), Amazon.com (Kindle ; paperback), Barnes & Noble (Nook ; paperback), Kobo (eBook).