Heathcote & Ivory - Vintage & Co: Braids & Blooms

It's 'Bon voyage' with Heathcote & Ivory’s new and bestselling Vintage & Co Braids & Blooms collection. This Inflight Essentials pack comes well-equipped with a travel sized hand cream, a sanitiser and calming gel, a set of designer playing cards and earplugs. You can find all of your travelling necessities inside this 'Braids & Booms' vintage-inspired package. The Amazing Blog has tried many of their charmingly designed products, see here for their drawer liners. We were therefore excited to try their new travel kit, a product now at the top of our packing list.

We are always itching to get away on our travels, but with that, we are faced with dreaded travel days. From a restless night’s sleep, hoping that we don’t snooze through our alarms, to praying that the weather will cooperate to avoid any delays - we are ready to depart both looking, and feeling exhausted! 

However, with this handy Inflight Essentials kit, you are offered a much needed and calming in-flight routine. First, sanitise your hands, a welcome ritual after fiddling around with luggage. Then, apply the calming gel, which is infused with lavender, to relieve anxieties and aid sleep. Slip in your earplugs, massage your hands with the shea butter and vitamin E enriched hand cream, and close your eyes. If you do have trouble sleeping, take out the playing cards to keep yourself occupied with a solo game of patience, or perhaps persuade your neighbour to a quick game of poker! You can purchase your travel pack here for £12.00.

Christmas Stockings Fillers

For the last post of our Special Christmas Week, we are going to talk about stocking fillers. No matter our age, we're always so excited to find out what Father Christmas put in our beautiful stockings. While we love those little, fun and cute gifts, it can sometimes be difficult to find great stockings ideas for less than £15. We at The Amazing Blog have racked our brains and looked for the best stockings fillers at a reasonable price.

Let’s start with Heathcote and Ivory Gardeners Tree Tidings; this little gift set contains two hand creams and a Relax bath tablet. The shea butter hand cream as its name suggests made with shea butter(obviously) but also with other essential oils including lemon, orange and peppermint. This beautiful mix makes a highly nourishing hand cream. While the shea butter cream has a zesty and fresh scent, the Hedgerow hand cream has more of a fruity smell thanks to the blend of rhubarb, blackberry and elderflower extracts included in the formula. Together these ingredients intensely hydrate hands leaving them softer and smoother. Enriched with chamomile, lavender, eucalyptus and rosemary the bath tablets is the ideal product to help you relax while bathing. All made without Parabens and Sulphates. You can purchase the Gardeners Tree Tidings here for £6.00.

The festive period is the opportunity for us all to look at our best. With Christmas dinners and New Year events, we all like to shine bright and to have our party looks on point. And what better way to complement a look than a beautiful nail polish. A lovely and shiny nail polish is the little detail that instantly completes a look. Le Mini Macaron’s Mini Petit Bouquets nail polish set with their pretty pastel shades might just be the perfect trio for nail polishes lovers. The set contains three nail polishes including lavender; a pale purple, Rose pale; a pastel pink and wildflower a grey nail lacquer with blue hues. These nude and pastel shades will bring a modern and elegant touch to your look. Le Mini Bouquets nail polish set is available here for £24.99.

Christmas is the time to be merry, eat great food and drink delicious tipples. However, as years pass by, we start getting bored of the usual tastes and flavours. For those who like us want to add a little twist to their tipples, Popaball has created the Popaball Bursting Juice bubbles for Gin, Prosecco and Vodka. The Blueberry and Lemon Bursting Juice Bubbles for Gin, with its sweet and zesty taste instantly add a burst of sweetness and juiciness to your drink. The Apple & Cherry Bubbles for Vodka, (our favourite) taste delightfully good; the sensation of the Popaballs bursting in the mouth is just incredible; it brings drinking Vodka to a whole new level. The Shimmer Blueberry Bubbles for Prosecco is ideal to add a little touch of glam in your prosecco. Just add the blueberry bubbles and the shimmering liquid, watch the sparkle forms and enjoy the fruity taste.  The bubbles are suitable for vegetarians. You can purchase all the Popaballs from Cotswold Trading. See here for the bubbles for Gin £3.79, the bubbles for Vodka here for £3.79 and the shimmer bubbles for prosecco here for £4.49. Guaranteed to add a bit of an extra 'fizz' to your Christmas tipple!

We at The Amazing Blog appreciate a warm and relaxing bath once in a while. And when we do so, we love using the most calming and beautifully scented bath products. Sloane Home excel in the art of making stunning bath salts. Our preferred ones remain the Lady Grey, bath salts with a zesty and fresh perfume, the Topiary Garden, is a more floral and classic scent and the Rose Garden has a sensual and luxurious fragrance. All bath salts are made with Dead Sea salts well known for its therapeutic properties. The bath salts help you relax by easing muscles and uplifting the spirit. There are nothing more agreeable than soaking in a warm and welcoming bath after a long day and these fantastic bath salts from Sloane home are just what you need. Purchase the bath salts here for £16.50 each.

Hang on a minute you really thought that we would give you some stockings fillers tips without including one treat? Come on you should know better, we here at The Amazing Blog can’t resist the temptation of delicious and savoury candies. Our addiction of this season is The Fudge Kitchen award-winning sliders; the brand specialised in making gourmet handmade fudges, its sliders include six fudges with three different flavours. The Gin Selection pack include two Bitter Orange and Cubeb Gin, two Juniper and Kaffir Lime Dry Gin and two Sloe Gin fudge. This box with its popping and rich flavours will ravish your delicate palate. The Salted Selection include Isle of Sky Salted caramel fudges, Cornish Smoked salted Maple fudges, and Maldon Sea Salted Chocolate fudges. These fudges are at the same time creamy, sweet and smooth. The sea salts included in the recipes add a little touch of zest and crunch that balances perfectly well with the sweetness of the other ingredients. You can purchase Fudge Kitchen's Salted fudges and Gin fudges here for £8.00 each.

Christmas Gift Ideas for Her

Every year during the festive season, we all face the same struggle asking ourselves the same question; what on earth do we give to our mothers, sisters and best girlfriends (yes girlfriends, we're expecting gifts from you too!) So this year at The Amazing Blog we've come up with a great collection of gifts ideas that we think will suit even your fussiest of friends.

The first gift idea we would like to share with you is from one of our favourite brands Heathcote & Ivory, we'd like to suggest their Heathcote and Ivory Sakura Silks Exquisite Spa Set. This set comes in a stunning and colourful hexagonal tin box - which we think will make a glamorous storage box afterwards. When lifting the lid a gorgeous floral and zesty aroma gently pervaded the office - we were in love! This gift set contains three products; a hand cream, bath salts and a body butter.  The hand cream is formulated with shea butter, vitamin E and panthenol, green tea, jasmine and cedarwood. Together these ingredients intensely nourish hands and cuticles leaving them velvety soft and delicously scented. The Sakura Silks bath salts are the perfect way to indulge and pamper your body at home and help create a luxurious and relaxing at home spa experience.  Finally, the body butter is a rich moisturising cream made with a unique blend of essential oils including lemon, lime and sweet orange. Shea butter and vitamin E are known for their hydrating and protecting properties smooth, soften and provide the extra-hydration skin needs during winter.  All of these products are paraben free. You can purchase the Heathcote & Ivory set here for £15.

We think that a fragrance or perfume is a nice treat when it comes to a Christmas gift. With this in mind, we'd like to suggest the newly launched Change perfume created by the actress Lisa Riley.  Inspired by celebrating a new chapter in her life, the Change perfume is a versatile and memorable fragrance which will suit almost everyone with its floral and oriental notes. The top notes are mandarin leaves and mulberry flowers while the middle notes are tuberose, orange flower and jasmine; and the base notes include sandalwood, Tonka bean and patchouli. These luxurious ingredients work to create and rich and sensual perfume that is timeless and transcends all seasons. You can purchase the perfume here for £14.99 + p&p.

We think that owning a beautiful silk scarf is an investment as well as  a classic item for every woman's wardrobe. So we've chosen one from Libby by Design, these are all limited edition handmade silk scarves. Each of these designer scarves are made in England, 100% silk, and hand finished with rolled borders. Every piece is unique, some even have themes from Rudyard Kipling, but all take their inspiration from in the style of Indonesian batiks. We have featured our favourite “How the leopard got his spots” which is a versatile 98cm silk square that can be worn in numerous ways. These scarves are the perfect accessory for brightening up either a heavy winter coat or worn as a sarong on a sandy Caribbean beach. Purchase your scarf here for £174 with SPECIAL OFFER of 15% off if you order before Christmas!

For another Christmas gift idea, we were rather taken with this Morris and Co design inspired lavish body gift set. One of our favourites of this year, is their Pure Morris The Collection, this includes a travel size shower cream and a body lotion, together with a full size hand cream. The shower cream is a gentle body wash that is formulated with vitamin A and E, kelp, silver birch and thistle extracts. These ingredients deeply cleanse the body while keeping skin balanced and hydrated. The body lotion is also infused with the same extracts, but in addition there is also almond oil and cocoa butter which help to soften and smooth the skin leaving it velvety soft. The hand cream is formulated with natural ingredients including shea butter, jojoba oil and macadamia oil making it a deeply nourishing cream to protect hands during the winter season. The products come in an intricately embossed tin. The Morris and Co Pure Morris gift set can be purchased here for £22.

For the glamourpuss in your life, we think that the Rouge Bunny Rouge Surprise Eye Shadow Palette will be an excellent choice. Rouge Bunny Rouge is a favourite here at TheAmazingBlog; this international make up brand always keep us up to speed with their new launches. So we were happy to learn about the Surprise Eye Shadow Palette which contains five long-lasting shimmery shadows including a highlighting shade, three smoky neutral tones and one frosted iridescent shimmer eye shadow. NB: This quintet of colours are a 'surprise' so we cannot show you the exact selection of colours (the image above is just the palette casing).  Lightweight, creamy touch offering an extended 8-hour wear, the eye shadow formula is made to stay put and to look freshly applied all day long. All refill shades are made to fit perfectly into this Limited Edition. The palette also comes with a free decorated presentation box which makes it an even more impressive present. Purchase here for €50.00.

We hope we're provided some good inspiration for gifting your loved ones, as well as yourself of course! 

Sweet Pea & Honeysuckle Eau de Toilette and Fragranced Drawer Liner Sachets - Heathcote & Ivory

The beautiful floral aromas that fill up every space is one the best and most delightful aspects about the Summer. Here at The Amazing Blog, we love the light, delicate and sweet floral scents that drift past us and help firmly secure our experiences in hazy summer memories. Heathcote and Ivory have released a classic Sweet Pea and Honeysuckle range that we think captures the scent of the season. They have a variety of products within this range, but we thought we would try the Eau de Toilette and the Fragranced Drawer Liner Sachets.

Unlike other floral perfumes, which can be sickly or oppressing, the Sweet Pea and Honeysuckle Eau de Toilette offers a light, refreshing and lasting fragrance. With a leafy and aquatic top note of magnolia, the aroma is complemented by its musk, cedar wood and amber base notes. Romantic white jasmine and gardenia flowers entwine with the gentle and clean scent of crushed green leaves, to make you feel like you're surrounded by a blooming and fresh garden.

The Fragranced Drawer Liner Sachets are a lovely way to maintain your clothing’s freshness, and imbue their delightful scent into your clothing, mischievously clinging to the bottom of your favourite summer skirt. The lasting smell is more delicate than the perfume but still very present, and has a more grounded scent which balances beautifully with the lightness of the Eau de Toilette.

You can purchase these refreshing summer scents from Heathcote and Ivory’s website, the Eau de Toilette from here for £10.00 and the Fragrance Sachet Draw Liner Sachet’s from here for £6.50

Christmas Special - Alternative gifts for Her

At the Amazing Blog, the atmosphere in the office over Christmas is amazing we are all counting down for the Christmas celebrations and looking forward to spending it with our loved ones, plus we are excited to see what everyone got given for Christmas presents. Leading up to Christmas we have been doing a Christmas gift guide leading up to the big day, and this is guide is for all the last minute people who need to get alternative presents. 

Winter nights at home lounging on the sofa in your comfy pyjamas are the perfect setting when you have candles lit around the living room; a delightful candle that smells gorgeous when lit is the Violet & Sweetpea by the brand Etta French. Etta French is known for being a luxury that are full of surprises that hides a special item of jewellery in each candle which is exclusively created by their UK designers, we thought this is a lovely idea as each jewel has a special touch of beauty and style that we think would make a lovely gift to someone for Christmas. Plus it is the element of surprise as they will unwrap and find two presents in one product.  The candle it’s self has an gorgeous scent to it, that makes you want to have it lit straight away also each candle is hand poured in the UK and uses 100% natural plant wax.

The candle is available to grab here for £38.50.

The brand Fressko kindly sent us two of their flasks, which is appropriate considering it is winter these are the perfect gifts to give someone to keep them hydrated and warm over this season especially if they live in the UK, and we all know how unpredictable and cold our weather is. The first flask we received was the Tour flask this is suitable for tea and fruit water, perfect if you know someone who is an adventurous day-tripper, we really liked the packaging of this design it has a wooden top but the actual flask is clear so you can see all the goodness from the fruit within the flask. The second flask which we all really loved in the office was part of their colour collection; the Colour Flask is the colour blush it is a beautiful tone of pink it’s very appealing, feminine and would make the perfect gift for a female. The colour flask is slightly smaller has its 360ml compared to the tour mask which is 400ml, however the colour collection has 6 hour insulation and is suitable for hot and cold beverages, and it is colour coated with a variety of colours you can choose from and it is a stainless steel flask.

You grab the tour flask here for £36.85, and the blush flask is available here also for £36.85. 

The third product we recommend is a beautifully scented diffuser by Heathcote & Ivory, called Atlas Silks  it smells gorgeous and will fill your room with an inviting scent of atlas silks, mountain rose, ylang ylang, sandalwood plus it is blended with essential oils such as coriander.

We chose this particular brand to feature in our gift guide because the artistic packaging is really pretty and would make a perfect alternative present for a loved one or family friend, especially if they love bringing colour, scent and sophistication to their home interior this product would be make a really nice gift.

This product is available to purchase here for £22.00.

Another alternative we recently got sent to our office and as a team we loved how convenient and useful the product is by Tweexy. We have find a new product that will help make your life easier, any girls who regularly paint their nails at home know how painful it can be when your knock a nail polish over. Tweexy is a comfortable polish holder that fits for all, and will make painting your nails become less of an annoying task. What we love about Tweexy is it comes in a variety of different colours, it is very comfortable and light on the finger and it doesn’t get in the way of painting and makes your life less complicated. This product is perfect for a female who loves try new things, it is small and perfect to travel with and also small enough to make a good stocking present or a secret Santa gift. 

Whether this product is for you or to help a best friend out, this will make life easier. You can grab this product here for £9.95.