KIERIN NYC – Santal Sky

Although The Amazing Blog loves London and we will likely never leave, New York City is one of our favourite cities in the world. Walking through the streets of Manhattan amidst the American hustle and bustle make you feel alive and young. Yet within the city that never sleeps, there are moments of ultimate peace and serenity. Flights to New York are expensive, but the next best option is to bring the atmosphere of the city to you with KIERIN NYC’s Santal Sky fragrance.

Inspired by the vibrant and metropolitan lifestyle of New Yorkers, KIERIN NYC has also embodied New York’s inclusive nature by creating perfumes that can appeal to all ages, genders, ethnicities, and nationalities. The company invites people ‘to be inspired, not defined or confined, by fragrance’. This ethos produced Santal Sky’s clean and unique scent designed for the modern urban individual. For this perfume, French perfumer Mathieu Nardin combined sandalwood, vetiver plant, and cardamom and saffron spices. The scent has a very strong earth and woodsy aroma from the sandalwood. However, what makes you think twice about Santal Sky are its spicy after notes. This fragrance is completely its own in this regard, and the spiciness leaves you mesmerised by the smell long after you’ve sprayed it. The overall ambience of Santal Sky is a sexy and mature scent that lasts all night while you’re getting fancy cocktails at a bar with the city lights behind you.

Despite this, it doesn’t smell too old to use in your 20’s and comes in a sturdy, stylish matte white bottle that is recyclable. KIERIN NYC has a ‘clean & conscious’ model for its brand, so all of its products are made with sustainable packaging and ethically sourced ingredients to help other communities as well as our own. Santal Sky is also cruelty-free, vegan, paraben and phthalate free, and hypoallergenic. This perfume not only has an eco-friendly mindset but smells exceptional and will bring some of the ‘New York State of Mind’ to London.

You can purchase Santal Sky (50ml) here for £65

By Sarah London- Bath Salts

With the weather getting warmer, taking baths shouldn’t just be reserved for the colder months. Certainly a more cooling soak in the summer months never hurt. There is nothing more we like at The Amazing Blog than to have a relaxing soak after a session in the gym or an evening run. While we all love a good bath bomb or a therapeutic essential oil, some of us with more sensitive skin prefer something a little less harsh for our skin to completely relax. UK based skincare brand BY SARAH LONDON has developed their Bath Salts with completely natural and hypoallergenic ingredients, which is a winner for us! We recently reviewed their Organic Hair Oil here which we loved.

The multi-award winning BY SARAH LONDON was launched in 2017 by two sisters Sarah and Lauren after the latter was suffering from dry, sensitive skin during her recovery from leukaemia. After searching for skincare that was both effective yet non-irritating, Sarah then sought out to start her brand that was transparent, authentic and empowering. The sisters wanted to push this transparency and authenticity by pushing for the use of ethically-sourced, plant-based ingredients  in their products.  To take this one step beyond, BY SARAH LONDON is the only UK skincare brand that lists all ingredients on the front label of all their products including their Bath Salts. While BY SARAH London products are great for people with sensitive skin and eczema, they also recommend their products to people with all skin types especially those who are conscious about what they put on their skin.

Besides having no essential oils or fragrances, BY SARAH LONDON’s Bath Salts contains only three ingredients, making sure that sensitive skin is not irritated.  The hand-blended Himalayan Pink Salts, Dead Sea Salts and French Pink Clay all combine in an eco-friendly glass jar to calm and cleanse the body. To start soaking in the minerals, add a handful of the bath salt to your warm bath and enjoy for a minimum of 15 minutes. A 280-gram jar (£20) of the Bath Salts or a 50-gram pouch (£5) of the Bath Salts are currently available to purchase on the BY SARAH LONDON website here.

Naturalmente

Here at The Amazing Blog , we are very passionate about beauty products that are natural and are made sustainably. Naturalmente is high end salon haircare brand with an extensive range of natural shampoos, conditioners and styling products, and the good news is they are now available for consumer purchase, so you can get salon quality hair at home. Not only are these luxurious haircare products natural, but they are also environmentally friendly and the whole range is biodynamic. Biodynamic agriculture was first developed in the 1920’s, and essentially means that everything in the production process has been done ethically and ecologically, preventing harm to the environment. All the sourcing of the ingredients in the shampoos, conditioners, and stlying range has been done sustainably, limiting Naturalmente's environmental impact.

The Naturalmente range is based on natural ingredients, using mainly botanics to create their wide range of products. The shampoos contain ingredients such as Aloe, Sandlewood and Fennel Geranium, and conditioners use Yogurt and Millet, which are much better for your hair as there is no nasty chemicals such as parabens, alcohol and fragrance. As the products are naturally based, they cover all hair and scalp types, so there is a product to keep everyone happy. Each product contains specific natural ingredients blended to target various hair issues, so there is a shampoo for every need that you might have.

While the products do not contain any added fragrances or parfum, they boast wonderful natural fragrances from the ingredients used, particularly from the essential oils. We really love that the natural fragrances are very unisex, so with that in mind, we think that these products are bathroom essentials, and the  perfect space saver in your bathroom. The packaging reflects all things natural, with its simple and earthy colours and soft bottles. This is all rather fitting, seeing as the packaging is all  100% biodegradable as well, fitting in with the brands environmental ethos.

I myself have coloured hair so I have been using the Anti-oxidant shampoo and conditioner and the smell is amazing, as it’s so unlike any other shampoo or conditioner I’ve used before. As the range is very natural I think it really helps the condition of my hair after I have it coloured, due to the natural oils which nourish and revitalise the hair.

If you want to get your hands on any of the Naturalmente collection, then you can find out more information about their product range and environmental ethos on the Naturalmente website, and you can purchase the haircare products from Gentle Bodycare where all 250ml shampoo and conditioners are £9 each, another reason why we love them!

Waliwa Amazonian Natural Skincare

You will already know that here at The Amazing Blog, we are passionate about beauty products that are made from natural ingredients, as they are kinder to our skin and have wonderful benefits without any nasty chemicals. So when we heard about Waliwa, a brand whose products are made using natural ingredients straight from the Amazon Rainforest, we needed to know more, and we just had to get our hands on their products.

Waliwa was founded by Martha and Myriam who met when they travelled to the Amazon as students. They were stunned by the abundance of wonderful natural ingredients, so after they graduated, they knew they wanted to go back. They established a relationship with the Uitoto tribe, who are indigenous to the region they visited, and they partnered with a Professor of Indigenous Pharmacy, to help them to create a range of natural skincare products, and thus Waliwa was formed. We are also happy to tell you that not only are the products natural, but due to this relationship with the Uitoto tribe, the ingredients are ethically sourced and fairly traded too.

The Waliwa products contain extracts of fruit from the Amazon like Guava, Mango, Peach Palm fruit juice, and Cupuacu Butter. Their facial scrub is absolutely lovely and is made with passion fruit, tea tree oil, and Jojoba Esters. It feels wonderful on the skin, and is great to use as a weekly treatment to rid of one's dead skin cells. The range includes a number of face and body products that will easily fit into anyone’s daily skincare routine. Not only are Waliwa’s products wonderful, but their social commitment to people in the Uitoto community is highly commendable. They have arranged a fair trade agreement with them that will help the community as a whole, but will not interfere with their way of life. They took note that the Uitoto people exchange goods as payment not money and so for a harvest of their fruits; Waliwa supplied the wood that the community needed to build their communal houses. They also work in a sustainable manner to ensure that they are not doing any environmental harm to this area which is so rich with natural resources that many companies have chosen to exploit it and destroy large parts of the rainforest.

With a company whose practices are so ethical, socially responsible and with products so lovely, you will be sure to want to give their skincare range a try. To learn more about Waliwa skincare and the company’s ethical efforts, visit their website. You can also purchase their products there where they retail between £12 and £40.50.

Steam Cream

As any on-the-go girl can tell you, products that work and  are small enough to fit in our permanently cluttered handbags are essential. There’s nothing worse than finding a must have product that comes in bulky packaging, and here at The Amazing Blog we’ve found a great product in a perfectly sized package: Steam Cream. Not only will this tiny tin of cream fit in the smallest of clutches, but it’s a really lovely cream to have on hand.

Unlike most moisturisers out there, Steam Cream uses a unique method of steaming through the ingredients, in order to create the smoothest, most effective cream, and it smells amazing too. Together, the natural ingredients and steam mix together remaining totally pure and effective. The second you use it, the light cream sinks into your skin, making your skin feel softer for longer. Ingredients like orange flower, oatmeal, almond oil, and cocoa butter, leave your skin non-irritated and perfectly moisturised. All products are handmade, using fresh and sustainable ingredients, making them beautiful, effective, affordable and ethical. Their website has tons of different tins of this brilliant cream to choose from, whether its style or substance you’re after, Steam Cream has a tin for you. You can use this cream on your hands, body and face, our only problem with it is that there just isn’t enough – there’s no pleasing us girls! And for all your travelling beauty junkies, the 75g tin is hand-luggage appropriate!

Perfect for your skin and your jam-packed bag, pick up a tin (or two) of Steam Cream for yourself as a gift, you’ll definitely be back for more!