Friday Favourites – Christmas Gift Sets from Heathcote & Ivory

As regular reader may have gathered from our week of reviewing gift sets, at The Amazing Blog we’re now really getting into the Christmas spirit.  Since one gift doesn’t always work for everyone, we have gathered a selection for our gift set finale, with a trio from one of our favourite brand Heathcote & Ivory

Founded in 2000, this quintessentially British brand Heathcote & Ivory has successfully established itself as a lifestyle brand spread across over 35 countries, with its most unique and recognisable hallmark of bright and floral patterns on all its designs and collections. With an extensive variety of products from home fragrances to bath and body care, there is always something for everyone. If you’re new to The Amazing Blog then see here for some of our other #amazingfinds from this company.

The first item we’re going to talk about today is their Sweet Pea & Honeysuckle Floral Hands & Perfume Pair. This adorable Christmas-themed packaging contains a roll-on perfume gel and hand cream. The 10ml pink flacon of perfume gel is alcohol–free, and the smell is soft and floral with notes of fresh sweet peas and honeysuckle. The 30ml hand and nail cream has an identical scent and is enriched with shea butter, vitamin E, glycerin and pro-vitamin B5 to help keep hands soft, smooth and moisturised during this chilly season. Both products are small and will fit beautifully into a small clutch or travel bag, so if you know anyone who loves travelling this would be the ideal gift. It has a retail price of £8 here.

Next up is the gift set styled as a set of classic Christmas crackers. Young or old, everyone loves opening crackers to see what’s inside. We know that we do. Vintage & Co Grand Circus Let’s Go Cracker Set has themed carton crackers with all the fun of the circus,  each contains a three 30ml tube of hand cream. We love that it’s full of long-lasting festive fragrance notes of pomegranates, ripened red berries, eggnog, mulled wine, vanilla frostings and sweet orange swirls. Each tube contains shea butter, vitamin E and sweet orange essential oil as part of their key ingredients to help keep hands soft and smooth. The texture is thick and creamy, and a little goes a long way. We must quickly point out that the crackers contain three identical hand creams, so no swapsies here. Instead spread the love and make three people very happy with just one purchase here. All for the princely sum of £10!

Finally, we’ve saved the best till last. The Enchanted Forest Beauty Trilogy, with its majestic look, this elegant body care collection opens like a book and weights like a treasure chest. We took a peek and found 150g Bath Salts, 200ml Body Lotion and 100ml Hand Cream. The Bath Salts, have the enchanting scents of forest greens, with relaxing chamomile, bluebells, jasmine and rose; with subtle base notes of sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet vanilla. The Body Lotion quickly absorbs into skin, making it soft to the touch and locks in the shared fragrance. The Hand Cream is the same but enriched with shea butter and vitamin E. Its light non-oily texture leaves hands feeling soft and moisturised. Best of all we love that this Beauty Trilogy box can be reused to store papers, photos and memories – what a gift! If you wish to treat someone you love we recommend you buy this gift set here for only £18. We love the originality and affordability of the Heathcote & Ivory gift sets – they never fail to disappoint!

Mathmos Pod

With Christmas coming, at The Amazing Blog we love searching out all manner of interesting new gadgets and gizmos to bring to you, our loyal readers. We also can’t resist a spot of nostalgia either … and when we get to mix the two, it makes our day! So, for a minute step back in time to the 1960s and a symbol of Pop Culture at its best - the Lava Lamp, a staple requirement in any up to minute interior, with its dayglo colours of the rainbow playing a hypnotic symphony as it proudly sits centre stage.

The company behind the original lava lamps was called Crestworth, and the inventor who made it all happen went by the name of Edward Craven Walker who was actually working on his concept for a new kind of egg timer when he came up with the product that would change his life, and become synonymous with the Swinging 60s - and indeed the 70s. In the late 1980s however, interest fell, and so the next few years saw a period of rebranding when Edward and his wife Christine teamed up with a couple of young entrepreneurs, Cressida Granger and David Mulley. The came up with a new company name – Mathmos, which refers to the bubbling force in the sci-fi cult 60s movie Barberella, and the second wave of popularity for the lava lamp began, which continues today.

However, in the spirit of continuing to research and develop, as their founders did, Mathmos have come up with a new type of lava lamp for us the Mathmos Pod which sits proudly alongside their full range. Standing at 240mm tall, the Mathmos Pod exudes all the quality of Craven Walker’s original - the bright glowing colours of globulous intensity which rise phoenix-like in slo-mo up the illuminating tube, surrounded of course by the heavy cast iron metal keeping everything safely grounded.

However, the clincher here is that these fabulous new lamps are not powered by electricity, but by the humble tealight, which sits happily burning away in its burrowed tessellated hexagon-shaped base, heating up the Mathmos gel, and creating the effect we cannot ignore. NB: The pod will take up to 20 minutes to heat up before you see all the magical colours interspersing. It’s spellbinding, with a modern elegance that is undoubtedly going to see this beauty jump off the shelves at a phenomenal speed as we head towards Christmas. If you’re quick, the first 100 have a unique limited edition number making them even more of a prized collectors item. They cost £44.00 from here they also have a current promotion running whereby if you order more than one, you get a 20% discount.

Barber Pro - Foot Peel Treatment

With all the Christmas Shopping now well underway, we at The AmazingBlog are keen to look out for those special products which go to help us all in the pursuit of ticking the ‘Done’ boxes on those names on our presents lists. When we find something extra special, we end up shouting about it, and this week we have an absolute corker for you in the shape of a pair of magical booties from that inventive team over at Barber Pro, who have literally condensed the most wonderful pedicure into a handy pochette with clear instructions on how to make the most of their ingenious Foot Peel Treatment. So here we go with our festive bellow …

This is not a ‘foot mask’ but more of a peel - to be exact, with all the benefits of one of those blissfully indulgent appointments with a pedicurist who knows their stuff and take our worn-out hooves, and transform them into tingling tootsies ready for the party circuit. Now, this process is quite involved, so attention should be paid to getting it right, and then enjoying those well-earned benefits - even if that does mean another round of Christmas shopping … the beauty here is that the process works over several days and means whatever we are doing the results continue to generate.

The key ingredients in this award-winning Foot Peel Treatment, include salicylic and glycolic acids, along with the more pampering focused goodies of sage, lavender, honeysuckle, peach, rosemary, as well as lemon and lime, with a jolly good dose of vitamin E thrown in for good measure. The first candidates on that list may not immediately fill you with ideas of relaxation, but their presence is vital in the process of ridding the skin of all the detritus which can build up through lack of attention, and we all know the one area of our body which works hardest of all, and gets the least amount of attention is the feet. Having washed the feet with clean water, we literally slip them into these envelopes of heaven and allow the science to take over. Fear not, the process is a gentle one - there are no mineral oils, lanolin, petroleum or parabens here, and for 90 minutes we allow the magic to begin.

 It will take 7 days for the incredible results to bloom, and in that time do be prepared for any skin nasties to be discarded, but the wait will be worth it. Obviously there are aftercare pointers to observe - no foot creams for a minimum of 7 days also, and it is best to not be scrubbing the feet too harshly as that could undo all your preparation, but you will be left with a matching set of perfectly primed pinkies, ready to sheath in those Monster Munch socks which undoubtedly will be in our stockings ℅ Santa! Costing £7.95 from here - if you manage to find a pair, grab them as they are proving incredibly popular … and we can happily see why.

Friday Favourites - Luxury Skincare for December

It’s the party season! Demanding schedules, unpredictable weather, an overload of caffeine and often a deficit of sleep can leave your skin and your spirit feeling a little run down and exhausted this time of year. This is why here at The Amazing Blog we’ve decided to walk you through our Friday favourite skincare to rescue your hard-working self and return you back with a radiant glow. We have picked some of our favourite luxury skincare products from some of the trusted brands whose other products we previously featured: Albiva, Repechage and Tiiya.

Let’s begin with one of our early #amazingfinds, the luxury skincare Albiva who are also the recent winners of the Next British Beauty Brand. With the constant gravitation towards technological advancement in almost every industry, it’s no surprise that the beauty industry is setting foot in the same and delivering magically effective products. Albiva is a natural skincare brand where science and nature come together to showcase optimum results. It is vegan, cruelty-free and gender-neutral and this award-winning skincare brand uses effective technology, where the brand confidently maximises the therapeutic benefits of all their ingredients in each and every product. To quickly refresh your memory, we recently reviewed their ECM Advanced Repair Brightening Serum here

One of their many products that distinctly caught our eye is the ECM Advanced Repair Lift & Firm Moisturiser. Made with rubusiIdaeus fruit water, argania spinosa kernel oil and simmondsia chinensis seed oil amongst various others, the product is free from toxic chemicals, parabens, animal derivatives etc. The Moisturiser is enriched with intensive actives that work in synergy to support the skins self-healing properties at a cellular level. With the use of this product, even for a short while, we noticed our skin felt more hydrated and radiant with notable plumpness and reduction in fine lines.

Additionally, Albiva’s ECM Advanced Repair Eye Lift is a true game-changer. We all know the pains and struggles of puffy dark under eyes that often leave us overloading our faces with concealer. Albiva’s Eye Lift gives you fresh and bright under eyes that minimize the appearance of fine lines resulting in a fresher and better version of yourself. Made with 96% natural ingredients and 82% certified organic ingredients, this highly concentrated yet lightweight eye treatment is enriched with peptides and multiple antioxidants that provide intense hydration alongside protection against oxidative stress. This luxury skincare brand carries with itself a promise of radiant, glowing and youthful skin that they deliver with utmost precision. You can purchase these products starting at £145 for The ECM Advanced Repair Eye Lift and £165 for The ECM Advanced Repair Lift and Firm Moisturer here.

Up next is a salon brand Repechage, Beauty from the Sea. Their new Vita Cura Mask brings the luxury of a spa to your very own home. We tried out the B3 Lifting Mask for smoother, younger-looking skin and noticed it had an instant effect. This resulted in the skin that looking plump with visibly improved texture, diminished signs of ageing and a restored look of skin firmness for a complexion that glows. The face mask is not only dermatologically tested but also in fact plastic surgeon recommended as it features ingredients like extract of kappaphycus alvarezii and caesalpinia spinosa fruit,  plus an exclusive, nutrient-rich and sustainably harvested lamaria digitata seaweed filtrate; all of which help to deeply replenish and hydrate the surface of your skin. Again, those of you who are regular readers will know that we’ve fans of this particular brand and may remember The Triple Actin Peptide Serum that we reviewed here.

Research has shown that this mask has so far delivered a 58% reduction in the appearance of wrinkles and a 41% reduction in the appearance of enlarged pores. This sheet mask is unique in its composition as well as its results. It combines both the benefits as well as the luxury of a day spent at the spa all from the ease and comfort of your very own home. A set of 5 Vita Cura B3 Lifting Masks can be purchased together with a free Ionto Massager for only £75 here

Last, in our line-up are two skincare products from Tiiya Alanoud Alattiya – perhaps better known as a leading couturier and for her fragrance Rose Oud Epiphany Eau de Parfum, which we reviewed here.  Let’s start with the Epiphany Regenerative Day Cream, Rigorously tested in laboratories in Paris, the Regenerative Day Cream is the perfect foundation for healthier glowing skin. Like a shield of armour. The Regenerative Day Cream protects the skin against the effects of environmental factors like the sun and wind, not only does it protect it also nourishes the skin on a cellular level and promotes cell growth. One of the key ingredients is organic Bulgarian rose oil, which has anti-inflammatory properties as well as regenerative effects on the skin, hence the name Regenerative Day Cream. The cream also contains their special ingredient of Phytocelltec™ Alp Rose, a Swiss flower that grows at high altitudes, forcing the plant to adapt to extreme conditions and thus develop unique botanical properties. When used in skincare, it helps to maintain the characteristics of skin stem cells and protects the cells against UV-stress.

Then there is the Epiphany Renewing Night Cream. It works overnight while you’re sleeping to improve the vitality, youthful glow and natural beauty of your skin. We like how fast it is to absorb into the skin, giving the complexion a moisturised feel without being heavy or weighed down. All of Tiiya Alanoud Alattiya’s products are paraben, silicone, preservative, mineral oil and colourant free. The creams come beautiful packaged with the push-down dispenser with low waste as it dispenses the perfect amount every time. You can purchase the Epiphany Regenerative Day Cream here for $130 per 50ml or the Renewing Night Cream for $135 per 50ml here.

Tracie Cant - S.C.D. Oil

As Albert Einstein once said “Energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed from one form to another.” Here at the Amazing Blog we know that is true for Tracie Cant’s S.C.D oil. 

Tracie Cant is an alchemist, reiki practitioner, holistic nutritionist and quoted by Jo Foley in The Luxury Spa Edit as an inspiration. However, she is probably best known as a top celebrity and editorial hairstylist and would gift little bottles of her S.C.D oil to actresses, models and musicians on set. After getting glowing reviews from everyone she gifted it to, Tracie decided to make S.C.D oil for a larger market. In ancient times, the ritual of 'anointing' was reserved for saints and kings, to inspire a divine presence or purpose, and S.C.D oil was designed to bring that practice to more people. It takes its names S.C.D taking the three keys letters from the word SaCreD.

Tracie used her 20 years of experience as a Master Energy Healer to create S.C.D oil, a unique blend of pure ancient sacred oils, chosen for their innate high vibratory frequency and healing potential. She works with energy centres and uses her S.C.D oil to balance, unblock and elevate physical, emotional and spiritual energies for clients in her Harley Street clinic. The ancient oils that she has combined in her S.C.D oils have a measurable electromagnetic frequency. When high-frequency oils are used, they assist in the elevation of our frequency, which promotes health and well-being. Our energy fields can be lowered by many factors including stress, processed foods and illness. The leading plant geneticist Bruce Tainio discovered that the lower our energy systems, the more likely we are to have illnesses. So it makes sense to keep the system vibrating at a higher frequency. Raising the frequency of our energy system, not only has a greater capacity and potential for self-healing but also helps to create a space for encouraging inspiration.

Tracie believes that ‘Energy Healing’ is not a substitute for conventional medicine, but can be used alongside it to ‘kick start’ the body's innate healing mechanisms. We loved using the S.C.D oil during meditation or for everyday general well-being. It is beautifully perfumed and the luxurious faceted crystal bottle is a perfect addition to any dressing table or armoire. Made with a unique blend of natural high-grade ancient anointing oils, it has a carrier of sweet organic almond oil, no additives, preservatives or alcohol. We think that the S.C.D oil is the perfect addition to a meditation routine.  Apply a small drop on the back of the neck at the base where the shoulders meet and cross, it can also be placed on the chakra points of the chest, wrists and feet. Want to anoint yourself with ancient oils? The S.C.D oil can be purchased here for £85 for 30ml.