May favourites

This month has definitely been one of trying new products and getting to grips with older ones or testing new combinations.

T-B- NYX cream blush in "Natural", Beauty UK blush in Royal Rose.

My NYX cream blush has become an everyday staple for a dewy finish to an everyday face. It adds a healthy tint whilst remaining in place pretty much all day. I've been using one of the new baked blushes by Beauty UK which I'm a big fan of, it's very pigmented with some fine shimmer to it, and it complements the NYX blush well enough to use on top just to add a bit of extra kick to the colour or keep it on for longer.

Ooh la la Naked is a wonderfully creamy moisturising body wash with a heavenly scent that makes me want to eat it and produces mountains of creamy lather when used with a shower scrunchie (buff puff/ mesh-thingy... Everyone calls them a different thing!) 


Naked's Perfect Getaway cream cleanser is something I've been using everyday for the last week and a bit and so far it's pretty much perfect. I don't use it quite as the directions suggest (smoothing on and removing with a cotton pad) but use it like a hot cloth cleanser which seems to be working well. Full review on this to come once I've been using it for longer! 

Max Factor Experience Weightless Foundation - I'd seen Fee @ Makeup Savvy rave about this foundation and I love, love, love it! The coverage is amazing, for general blemishes I don't need anything extra but spots do require either a tiny bit extra foundation (which can be built up without looking at all cakey) or a dab of concealer. It visibly perks up my skin leaving it looking smooth and perfect whilst not looking like I'm wearing a heavy foundation or feeling as though I'm wearing anything on my skin at all! It lasts all day, doesn't need any powder on my normal-combination skin and is what I'd describe as a satin finish. This is definitely a must have and something I'll be sticking with. I actually got hold of this for £6 including postage on ebay instead of the Boots £10 price after swatching instore for a colour match.

elf Studio cream eyeliner- after quite a number of months of this being my only used eyeliner the top of this started to dry up and made application difficult and a bit messy. Having started to burrow down past the top layer of drier eyeliner it's got a new lease of life and I'm back to using it every single day without fail. Such an amazing product for the tiny £3.50 price tag. 

elf Studio stipple brush- perfect for cream blushes and for a quick swirl in pigmented powder blushes too. 

Bourjois Delice de Poudre bronzer- a tiny price for a lot of bronzer! This smells delicately of chocolate which in my books can only be a good thing, it's just about totally matte though there is the odd bit of shimmer thrown in. It's great for evening out my chest and neck if my fake tan is starting to fade or for a bit of all over colour on my face, this is a really buildable powder ideal for us paler girls (mine's number 51 which is the lighter colour I believe). 

Nivea Daily Essentials oil free moisturising day cream is another new product, I was running low on my Simple oil balancing moisturiser and this was on offer in Tesco for £1.50 (usually £3) so I thought it was worth a try. If anything I prefer it to my Simple moisturiser, it's scented, which I like, and it's possibly a little more moisturising too, the formula is more creamy and less gel-like. Does a great job of keeping my skin from getting oily through the day and moisturises too!

17 Wild Curls is definitely my favourite everyday mascara (and that's not to say it doesn't deliver fierce curled lashes!) but with No7's exquisite curl mascara layered over it I'm left with even bigger lashes that are both volumised and lengthened. 

A long favourites post this month! Anything outstanding that you've used this month? Let me know!

x

Naked Haul (!)

I recently took advantage of the amazing Groupon deal for Naked, £20 of Naked goodness for £8 (plus P&P of £3.99)... Overall costing me £13-something as I clearly couldn't stick to the £20 budget!

Naked have been a company I've admired for some time now, their products are interesting and very well priced for natural ingredients, paraben and SLS free goodies.

This is what I picked up...

Ooh la la naked Coco de mer body wash, Melt away naked starflower bath foam, bare faced cheek softening face wash, perfect getaway cream cleanser and up tone girl gentle toner! 

The body wash has become my new favourite, I already have the body butter and I've had the bubble bath too so I knew that the scent of this is just amazing, it's so rich and gorgeous and it stays on my skin afterwards too. It is really creamy and moisturising too which is so unusual for my skin to actually be moisturised by a body wash! (£3.99 from Naked)

The bath foam is also incredibly scented (again, I've had products in the starflower scent before, a long time ago!), the whole bathroom and upstairs area just smells gorgeous when I've used this, and the bubbles last for at least an hour in the bath. (£3.99 from Naked)

I'll be doing a separate review for the skincare, but so far I'm really enjoying it, particularly the two cleansers.

Have you discovered Naked products? What are your favourites? Let me know in the comments :)

x 

Soap and Glory's Girligo!

While Boots had their big huge 3 for 2 skincare event I was unable to resist getting a couple of bits from Soap and Glory. One of them was Clean Girls! which I love and which also lasts FOREVER and the other was Girligo, a wonderfully scented moisturising spray, perfect for spritzing on after a shower.

First off, my only niggle with this... I cannot hold the bottle and spray it with one hand, it's too big/unbalanced and it's just too difficult to do both without it falling with a thud to the ground, I have to spray it into my hands and then apply it to my arms/legs/wherever I'm moisturising which annoys me a little.

This is so perfect for summer, the light moisturising action is only going to be any good if you either have no issues with dry skin/ you're using it in the summer as a supplement to moisturiser. It'd be great for travelling as the beautiful girlie scent lingers as well, so it's multi-tasking!

As ever the packaging is gorgeous and despite being a teeny bit on the expensive side (£6.38 for 250ml in Boots) for a light moisturiser, it's a price I'm happy to pay for a multi-tasking, pretty product.

Are you a fan of moisturising sprays?

x

Review- Nellie's Patch

I don't like soap. Particularly bar soap. Up until now I've only been able to associate it with the horrible plain white soaps that you get in public places. It's either totally solid or nastily slimy and it leaves your hands dry and tight with a not particularly pleasant smell.... I've always avoided using solid soap at home in favour of the excitingly coloured, prettily scented, relatively moisturising pump soaps.

However, the beautifully scented Rose Geranium soap from Nellie's Patch is well on it's way to changing my mind. It's smooth and creamy and it leaves my hands feeling soft and supple instead of the dry and rough mess they've normally started turning into at this time of year.

Nellie's Patch makes hand made soaps here in Shropshire (a.k.a. The home of grass, cows and the Muller dairy!), they're free from nasties including Parabens, SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate), artificial colour and palm oil (which destroys the home of Orangutans). They're vegan and not tested on animals plus the flowers and herbs are grown on site without the use of artificial fertilisers or sprays! 

Unlike many products that don't contain SLS the soap lathers up really well, a soft creamy lather that reminds me of a smoothie(!) and feels really luxurious and it rinses off without feeling tight afterwards. 

The soaps are reasonably priced, especially for something handmade- £3.75-£4.00 for a 100g block- they last forever, I've had mine for what must be at least 6 weeks now (to be honest, it's probably much longer than that by my memory is not good!) and the stamp on top of the soap (a cat!) is still easily visible and the bottom is just rounded off, not really lost much of the soap at all, so they do last well. They also make lovely presents and do a really great job of making clothes smell nice if you keep them in a drawer (random testing there...!)

The only minor problem I've had with it is that if it's left in water it goes smooshy (technical term) because hand made soaps are more prone to going soft in water, so you do need to make sure that your soap dish drains, or that the soap's not left in any water. Once I'd (accidentally!) left the soap upside down for a day it dried out to it's non-smooshy state fast and I've not had any problems since. It's so worth it though for soap that's nice and is friendly to skin and orangutans alike! 

You can find out more about the ingredients used, the lack of palm oil, and purchase the soaps here!

Overall, loving the change from liquid soaps, my hands are definitely doing much better in how dry they are and I'm enjoying using soap that's free from nasty ingredients!

Nellie's Patch rose geranium soap is available on the website for £4. It's also available in guest size soaps and in a "Send a Soap" giftbox on their website.

x

The Body Shop Body Butter!

So sorry for the lack of posts, I feel like a rubbish blogger ;) Aforementioned (oooh) excuses still stand! 

I recently tried a friends' Body shop body butter, it was the gorgeous almond one that has recently been discontinued (I can't believe I missed this! It was down to £3!) and it tempted me to try out one of their body butters. It only got better when I received a 2 for £15 on body butters and scrubs email, plus free delivery! 

Image credit: The Body Shop

I have really really dry skin, apparently it's something that comes along with my health issues, but it's flipping annoying to spend entire life moisturising to get my skin to resemble other people's non moisturised skin! I seem to spend my life buying the stuff and trying to find the perfect one. In general I like a nicely scented body moisturiser, for example, I love my skin so soft from Avon, but I'm not keen on their scent (non descript.. floral) on the other hand my FCUK body lotion (which was a gift, would never have thought to buy it myself) smells amazing, moisturises really well, but the scent is too strong and can make me sneeze! 

Anyway, TBS's Shea Butter body butter is near perfect, the scent is gorgeous but not too strong, and as it's a dry/very dry one it does a really, really good job of moisturising my poor dehydrated skin, especially when used straight after having a shower/bath. The down side to it being formulated for very dry skin is that it does leave an "I've used body butter" feel to your skin, but this doesn't bother me hugely, especially when I'm in bed/wearing long sleeves! The body butter itself is easy to use, not too thick, easy to smooth over your skin and generally a nice consistency, none of this block of rock hard uselessness! It leaves my skin soft and smooth for more than a day (practically unheard of!), it doesn't roll off, and I love it!

Yes, it's expensive, but with the current body shop offer it's well worth a look! 

Are you a body butter fan?

Rachel x

Soap and Glory's Flake Away, Love at first... use!

Image credit: Soap and Glory

I picked this up the other day on a whim as Soap and Glory have a third off. It's only the mini size as I'd never tried it before and I'd already spent too much that day ;)

I love body scrubby things, especially when they feel "natural" (in that they're not plastic!) and this is just amazing. It's really wonderfully scrubby and it smells divine, sweet but not too sweet, and just... yum!

Soap and Glory say:

Transforms your scaly legs from reptilian to radiant. Nothing eliminates dry surface flakes as fast as Flake Away™. For superhero-strength skin smoothing spa body polish with Shea Butter, sweet almond oil, peach seed powder, sea salt and sugar.

Apply a handful of Flake Away™ onto damp skin and massage in circular motions until most of the grains are gone. Rinse well, pat dry and apply body glossing oil such as Easy Glistening™ or moisture butter such as The Righteous Butter™.

One round in the shower with this scrub and no-one will ever have to know that all this time you’ve been flaking it.

 After using this and enjoying the beautiful scent that it filled the bathroom with I was amazed by the results, smooooth smoooth legs! Not only did they feel scrubbed to within an inch of their lives (in a good way!) they also felt moisturised too, which is a great bonus to have! My legs are normally quite bumpy and the skin in general doesn't do that well, so this is definitely a new must have for me! 

I'm off to buy the full sized version now! 

Soap and Glory's Flake Away is available at most Boots stores, or online, the travel size normally retails at £2.25, or £1.50 with a third off, and the normal size £6.50 or £4.34(ish!) with a third off!

Rachel xx

Treaclemoon, Those Lemonade Days review

The first thing I have to say about Treaclemoon is that they don't test on animals, which I love!
Secondly, their prices are pretty amazing. I paid £2.97 for this body scrub and as I got it from Tesco with mum's online order I paid no postage ;)

What Treaclemoon say:

"We like to create products that you will love to use... scrumptious smells, fabulous textures and a 'look' that will sit with pride in your bathroom....."

The packaging is really lovely, it's simple yet it doesn't look like you've paid under £3 for it, so they'd make ideal gifts!

When I bought this I was expecting far more of an artificial sweet lemon-y smell, which is the complete opposite of what you get, to me it smells pretty natural, not overly sweet, but yet not so sharp it reminds you of bathroom cleaner! Texture wise it's a teeny bit on the jelly side and not too thick, which makes it ideal as a body scrub, it's quite cooling too.

My main problem is this... I feel the beads are a little harsh. The scrubby beads in this are hard and feel like plastic, so they don't dissolve like a lot of them do to avoid over scrubbing your skin, something that I feel it's quite easy to do with this! The other problem with that is they stick in the bath so you have to spend time making sure they're all rinsed out.

Overall though, for the price these are a pretty good buy! Treaclemoon also do other products such as bath and body wash and hand washes, all for £2.97!

Have you tried anything from the Treaclemoon range? Would you buy again?

Rach xx