Gorse

Our Favourite Christmas Beauty Buys

With the holidays right around the corner, we at The Amazing Blog have found some great and unique products that can make the perfect gift ideas for yourself, family members, or even friends. This whole week we will be featuring different beauty, food, fashion, pet and home products that are great buys for this Christmas. Today, we'll show you our favourite beauty picks that we are sure you will love. From day creams to nail polishes, these gift ideas are great to complement any woman’s daily routine.

This Christmas, the fresh and handmade cosmetic brand LUSH, has launched limited edition products that would be the perfect grab bag gifts for any Christmas party. Due to the popularity of LUSH’s Snow Fairy shower gel they are releasing this giftbox where you can find products that smell sweet and girly, just like their signature Snow Fairy shower Gel. The gift includes Snow Fairy Shower Gel, Shimmy Shimmy Glitter Bar, and Angel’s Delight Soap bars. The Snow Fairy Shower Gel can be used in your hair or on your body. The pink colouring and sweet scent is a hit with women worldwide - a true classic. The Glitter Bar not only moisturizes, but also leaves a trace of sparkle wherever you run it over your body. The Angel’s Delight Soaps are bursting with colour and have a sweet, fruity smell. The box is wrapped in paper with silver ribbon and an angel ornament that can be reused on your Christmas tree. The giftboxes sell for £11.95 each or you can buy the products individually from LUSH’s website.

Why not recapture youth, with Lulu’s Time Bomb Glory Days Day Cream this Christmas. This day cream not only combats dull, dry skin, but unlike other day creams, it locks moisture in and transforms skin into a smooth, radiating surface. The blend is a combination of glucose, borage oils, and white flower oils that help re-energize cells and leave your skin looking plump and tight, making it the perfect day cream for the winter months. Skin will instantly look and feel younger. A 45ml container of the Time Bomb Glory Days Day Cream sells for £25.00 and can be purchased at QVC, Amazon, and select department stores including Fenwick and their website.

Whether you like jewelled tones, or darker shades of black, try STRANGEBEAUTIFUL’S array of nail polish colours for the Christmas and New Year. The selection of polishes is great for an elegant gift idea, particularly for someone who likes to display their make-up. After all, what could be better for a fashion concious friend than to have on show these stylish on-trend selection of A/W '12 colours. These colours are a blend of beauty, science, and design and have more pigment than an ordinary nail polish. Not only are the colours elegant, but the packaging is too. Ten polishes come in a pack so you can try every shade of any colour of your choice. The 220 strand brush helps guarantee an effortless and even application. Individually, the colours sell for £18.00, and can be found for purchase in Liberty.

Looking for a new signature scent this season? Amber Perfume from Laboratory Perfumes is one of two new fragrances with a pure and modern scent that is for both men and women. This fragrance is extremely complex and lingers on the skin long after application. The combination of this tree resin, Amber, mixed with other unique ingredients makes for a very special fragrance.  This strong scent was one of our favourites and is definitely distinguishable from all of the rest. The Amber scent consists of natural ingredients that remind us of the outdoors. The perfume can be purchased on Laboratory Perfumes’ website for £48. Laboratory Perfumes believes the home should smell as good as you, so they also have created an Amber 2 candle that sells for £35 on their website. The other fragrance included in this collection is their Gorse  Perfume (we wrote about this here). This perfume evokes a strange sense of place; from the English coast to the surrounding countryside it leaves a rich and warm finish to any surface.This perfume along with its candle can also be purchased on Laboratory Perfumes' website retailing at the same prices. These fragrances are truly exquisite. Their packaging even mocks the laboratory theme as they are packaged in simple brown cylindric tubes, while the candles are encased in beakers. This line of fragrances and candles would make perfect Christmas gifts this festive season.

 

Weleda has launched multiple Christmas Duo ‘Handbag’ Gift Sets. Containing a luxurious Creamy Body Wash, and a new natural Body Lotion, these gifts sets would make the perfect gifts! Each set offers two full (200ml) products that will renew and nourish your skin. They come in four different scents: Citrus, Sea Buckthorn, Wild Rose (our personal favourite!), and Pomegranate. The Citrus gift set retails for £20.90, the Sea Buckthorn set retails for £28.85, and the other two flavours retail for £28.90. Not only will this body wash/lotion make your skin feel amazing, but they are also packaged in adorable ‘handbag’ boxes.

 

Who can resist these choices?! Come back tomorrow to see our Food and Drinks picks...

 

Laboratory Perfumes

 

As regular readers of The Amazing Blog will know we love to patronise all things British. So what better find than a ‘Made in England’ perfume. Imagine our joy having searched far and wide to find a new and usual British fragrance only to find that this one was quite literally right under our noses (excuse the pun). Enter Laboratory Perfumes whose aim has been to create a range of perfumes which evoke a strong sense of place. They have produced two fragrances No001 Gorse and No 002 Amber both of which they say are “Inspired by the flora of the countryside, these are both two clean, pure and modern fragrances, evocative of nature”.

My favourite is No001 Gorse – it is a heady fragrance that is quite understated and a little hard to define; even its appearance is minimalist and clean. There’s certainly no generalisations or classification with this Gorse fragrance so forget trying to put it in a generic a box. It is a standalone fragrance – individual to the last, which is why I love it! Floral and fruity but not sweet, it's very mood enhancing and reminds me of a very fresh and breezy sunny day. As we all know every fragrance smells completely different on each person. When I spray it on me it has a complex combination with a hint of coconut, the tiniest trace of cardamom with a large dash of citrus. The elegant clear glass bottles and candle beakers echo the origins of the traditional perfumer’s laboratory together with the packaging in its understated brown cylindrical box.

So why not sit back and spray your Laboratory Perfume of choice and imagine a heathland walk, a stroll along a tidal estuary or summer’s day with friends on a quiet pebble beach. Because if these perfumes were a place, they’d probably be a heritage coast of East Anglia or Pembrokeshire. What better way to cheer yourself up in preparation for the grey skies and forthcoming inclement autumnal weather. Laboratory Perfume are priced at £48 are available online and from nationwide outlets including Liberty’s.