Giveaway at Pearls and Poodles

I have to say I'm mahoosively impressed that Milly over at Pearls and Poodles got to such a massive amount of followers in such a short amount of time!

She's having a give away to celebrate, which you can find here!

New Lush Products reviews

So I have to say that for the first time in a long time, Lush have released some non-Christmas products that I want to buy. I got £20 worth of gift vouchers for my birthday and I also had a bit of money kicking around so I treated myself to some nice new (and some nice but not new) Lush treats. Apologies for using the Lush website pictures instead of my own - my camera lead has gone walk-about.

The Ex-Factor

Ok so this is basically a blue, gingerbread man shaped Butterball without the butter, but for some reason I really really like it. In my head, it has a depth about it that Butterball often misses. A slightly sexy muskyness and the vanilla isn't too cloyingly overpowering. The water turns a very satisfying bright blue and it's a nice quick, even fizzer.
Price: £1.95
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ out of 5.
Would I buy this product again? Yes

Happy Blooming Bath Melt

So you might have picked up that I'm generally not a fan of sickly or sweet smells. If it's meant to smell like honey or chocolate, I'll probably stay away. However, anything with a sparkling top note or a hint of fresh and zestyness and I'm there. Saying that, I think this falls somewhere between the two. It's a proper cherry sort of scent - fresh and juicy instead of sickly sweet. The idea with this new melt is that you snap off a triangle and chuck it in your bath whilst it's running to scent your water and moisturise your body. Whilst I didn't find the scent to be the strongest, I did find it to be reasonably strong and the melt itself provided a good level of moisturising without leaving you feeling like you just bathed in an oil slick.

Price: £3.60

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ out of 5

Would I buy this product again? Yes

 Geophyzz (compact)

First things first, I am so glad that I went for the compact version of this. I think that the full sized one would have just given me a migrane. On first sniff this has one very specific scent - toilet cleaner. However, as a long time Lushie and an ex-employee of my local store, I trusted the managers advice and gave it a try. I was actually quite surprised. Once you get this in the bath, the pine smell goes and is replaced with a zingy, spicy scent. I added a smidge of No Name Bubble bar from Christmas just to mellow it out a bit but generally, it was quite enjoyable! The only downside is that you're meant to be left with salt to scrub with but I didn't really have any :( Also, even though it's a compact ballistic, it still comes in at £2.45, which is quite expensive to my mind.
Price: £2.45
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ out of 5
Would I buy it again: Possibly, but I can't see it becoming a regular favourite.

Mint Julips Lip Scrub

I'll be honest, if I didn't have a gift voucher, I wouldn't have bought this. But with a gift voucher, I always think you should splash out on somethings you've never tried before and would never think of spending your own money on. Hence I went with this. The smell is gorgeous - like scrubbing your lips with After Eights. I actually find the result quite nice too - my lips feel softer and look a little more plumped. My issue is how you get rid of the sugar - do you lick your lips, wipe with your hand, sweep across with a tissue? There seems to be no good way of getting rid of the residue without ended up with sugar halfway across your face. Also, £4.50 for a tiny pot of sugar and oil? Pennies for old rope really.
Price: £4.50
♥ ♥ ♥ out of 5
Would I buy this again: Probably not to be honest unless the price came down considerably.

Daddyo Shampoo, Jungle Conditioner, Retread Conditioner

                         

Confession time - I've spent the last 5 or 6 months using naughty L'oreal shampoo and conditioner. I am a bad bad lady. Having realised this, I decided to switch to Faith in Nature, a company I've seen recommended in various places. Love the product but it hates me. It hates my hair, it hates my scalp ... it hates me. Loves The Husband thought, so I'm leaving him happily using it up. Anyway, I want into Lush and was chatting to an SA and asked for a sample of retread to see if that could fix my broken hair. One thing lead to another and I walked out with huge samples of retread, daddyo and jungle. Wow. That's all I can say. My hair was instantly transformed back into its old soft, shiny bouncy self. 

Daddyo gives amazing shine, smells utterly divine and is purple (which gives it instant extra brownie points). Jungle is my everyday conditioner, packed full of nummy tropical fruits. I have to say, I used this once before and hated it, but the SA in the store taught me how she uses it and it works. Take an empty big black lush pot, put your piece of Jungle inside and fill the tub with hot water as you start your shower/bath. When you condition, pour away the water (it doesn't matter if there's some left in the tub) and rub the bar between your hands - you should end up with a creamy goo on your hands. Smooth this over your hair (you don't need loads and remember that because this is solid conditioner, you won't see the difference until it's dry) leave on for about 30 seconds and then rinse. I've been doing this for the past week and have had no end of comments asking me if I've had my hair cut. It's given it back a bit of oomph again!

Finally Retread, the uber conditioner which is packed with just about everything your hair could ever want. This is my go to for a once a week treat (just be careful if you have oily roots as it's quite heavy going!) I slap this on, leave it for a couple of minutes and come away with gorgeously smooth and silky hair. It just gives it that extra boost and nourishment that you need to have truly gorgeous hair and I always think that it helps to bring out a few of my natural highlights as well (but then again, I might just be talking utter rubbish!)

Price: Daddyo - £4.30-£13.85, Jungle - £4.10/100g, Retread - £8.60

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ out of 5 for Daddyo and Retread ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ for Jungle for being a bit faffy

Would I buy again: Most definately. I went in and bought Daddyo and Retread straight away after using my samples and my when my huuuuuge Jungle sample is done, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying more of that too.

Daily Skin Care Routine

Everyone knows that if you want your make up to look anything better than ok, you need to be underpinning it with a fairly decent skincare routine. Back in the day, I used to use Lush and Lush only on my skin, but when I left Lush I felt like taking a break so I did nothing much for quite a while, then went back to a really simple routine of Breath of Fresh Air toner with Afterlife moisturiser. Sadly, Afterlife got disconned and in all honesty, my skin wasn't really looking fantastic. All I knew was that I was getting married, my skin looked dull and dry and I wanted something reasonably ethical... one thing led to another and I found myself at the Origins counter in Boots.  It was pretty much love at first sight (or maybe first touch as it was when I started using things that I really fell in love with it). I've been using this skin care routine for over a year now (with the odd patches of lazyness where I do literally nothing) and my skin is looking so much better! Anyway, on with the products themselves.

Cleanser:
Pure Cream

One of my biggest problems with cleansers is that they often require washing off or at least for water to touch your skin at some point. My skin is never going to look good with a water based cleanser - why? When I have a shower/bath, I come up with huge red marks all over my body that make it look like I've been hit and my skin goes completely and utterly dry. It's not as bad as it used to be, and I can tolerate it every now and again , but if I use water on my face daily, it ends up screaming out for mercy. Hence my love of Pure Cream. It's quite a thick cream cleanser, which you can wash or tissue off. I generally find that I only need a pea sized amount of this to do my whole face, so a little goes a long way! It's completely soap-free and enriched with lovely things like carrot oil and coconut oil and glycerine to keep you skin lovely and soft. I use this to cleanse morning and night and it does a brilliant job at getting rid of even the most glittery and complex of eyeshadows, although it does have slightly more problems with my waterproof mascara (but then again, even eye make up remover seems to have a tough job with that one - Lancome really do know how to make them stick!). All in all, a great all rounder!

Toner:
A Perfect World

Wow. Just wow. I actually love this. I used to be impressed with the Breath of Fresh Air by Lush for its moisturising and gentle nature, but this is divine. There's no alcohol and no oil so it doesn't leave you feeling tight or greasy, but it does leave you feeling soft, clean, refreshed and smelling yummy. It has many nice sounding ingredients which I'm sure do great things, and apparently it's good for providing your skin with a healthy boost of hydration and also helps to stop deterioration and oxidation, which is never a bad thing. I find a bottle of this lasts ages and is great for those times when you're in a hurry - I find that if I skip cleansing, this still picks up a fair amount of grim, leaves my skin looking perkier and gives a good base for moisturising.

Moisturisers:
Have a Nice Day

Who doesn't want a moisturiser that encourages them to have a nice day?! This is available in two consistencies and I've used them both at different times. I currently use the cream, which is the thicker of the two and more suited towards dry/combination skin. I started off with the lotion, which is a little lighter and aimed more at combination/normal skin. I'd probably recommend that if you're oily, you steer well clear of both of them. The main thing that drew me towards Have a Nice Day over anything else is that it has an SPF 15, which none of their other moisturisers have. As my skin chooses to skitz out at the slightest thing, I can't really use suncream on my face, so I use these instead. I actually prefer the way my skin feels with another of their moisturisers (which I'll maybe talk about in another post), but on the whole, this does quite nicely. It's got a nice, fresh smell (as does pretty much all of the origins range... they seem to stay away from sweet, sickly and synthetic smells, which for me is only ever going to be a good thing!) and is packed with lovely ingredients like birch extract to firm, soybean oil to nourish and a healthy dose of vitamin E, amongst other lovelies. It's SPF comes, in  part, from titanium dioxide, but fortunately you don't get left with any noticeable big, white streaks. My skin is really silky and gorgeous after using this. I spent the first week or so constantly telling people to touch my face. *ahem*

High Potency Night-a-mins

So funny story... I actually bought this by accident. I didn't really see the point of a night cream, but this was when I was using the Have a Nice Day lotion and I needed something a bit thicker for the drier parts of my skin. I'd been given a sample of another Origins moisturiser (I think Make a Difference - also, I should point out that origins have always been really great at giving me little samples of things, especially their Peace of Mind on-the-spot stress reliever when I was engaged... I think the ladies at Origins basically kept me sane in the run up to my marriage) and I was planning on buying said moisturiser. Somehow whilst I was chatting to the counter assistant, I ended up buying this instead. As in as far as we both knew, I was buying the other cream. She hadn't even tried to talk to me about night cream. We'd picked up what we though was the other one and put it through but when I got it home, it was this instead. Weird. But, being typically English, I didn't want to take it back so I decided to use it anyway. I flipping love it. How did I survive without a luxurious night cream like this? It's like dipping my finger into a really thick tub of creme brulee (but it smells better) and the feeling on my skin is just nummy. Again, definately not for oily people. I find this quite rich and heavy, but it sinks in really well, never leaves me feeling greasy and leaves my skin really soft. Here's what Origins say about it:

Let the hypnotic aromas of nature's nightcaps summon the sandman. Newly-formulated with extra Vitamins (including B-complex, C, E and A), extra minerals and exfoliating extracts, this mega moisture cream fortifies skin's own nocturnal nature to help it repair the appearance of damage done by day and rebuild itself to face tomorrow. Worn out surface cells are gently released to reveal brighter, more youthful texture and tone. Skin awakens rested, renewed and richly replenished.

It's amazing, and I actually think I've been sleeping better since using this! It's full of nice sleep inducing essential oils as well, so it's a multi-purpose product. Huzzah!

I think I'll stop there. There are a whole host of other products I use at various points in the week, but I'll save them for another time. Just to finish though, a little from the Origins website about their ethical stance and all that jazz:

Origins products are powered by nature and proven by science using:• Natural & Certified organic ingredients
• 100% natural essential oils
And formulated without:
• Parabens
• Phthalates
• Propylene Glycol
• Mineral Oil
• PABA
• Petrolatum
• Paraffin
• DEA
• Animal Ingredients (except cruelty-free honey and beeswax)
At Origins, our conscience has always been our guide. Since day one, our commitment has been: Preservation of earth, animal and environment. Origins was the first major cosmetic brand to choose not to do animal testing on our products and not to use animal ingredients (except cruelty-free honey and beeswax).
In addition, we ask our suppliers not to test on animals on our behalf, except when required by law. We evaluate our finished products in clinical tests on volunteer panels.
Origins Natural Resources fully supports the development and global acceptance of non-animal testing alternatives. To this end, the Company works extensively with the industry at large and the global scientific community to research and fund these alternatives.

*all pictures taken from the Origins website.

Restarting the journey

So many moons ago, I used to love make up. I'd get creative and really enjoy the whole process. I loved bold bright colours adorning my lids and creative patterns making their way across my temples. I worked at Lush and I was very much a free spirit. Fast-forward five years and you find me having a mini identity crisis, brought on in part by not being able to afford my own clothes for years and therefore wearing hand-me-down for which I was grateful but which didn't really fit my style. There were other contributing factors as well - leaving Lush to work at Starbucks (no more nose piercing for me), a teaching degree (hello boring make up) and, many moons ago, a boyfriend who hated make up (or anything vaguely feminine and pretty).

Come forward a little more, and you find me here. I have slowly been rediscovering my love of fun and pretty things, and I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who loves to see me experimenting with make up and who positively encourages me to start changing my wardrobe back into something that reflects who I actually am. I've been spending some time looking around the interwebs at beautiful youtube tutorials (Pixiwoo, Oxford Jasmine and Sirvinya are beautiful and very inspiring), I've been reading some more beauty orientated blogs and I've been buying beautiful make-up once again (I've recently discovered Fyrinnae and Urban Decay and I'm getting far too excited about a variety of other brands too). The culmination of all this is that I've felt prompted to keep a blog - partially so that I have an outlet other than my Husband to tell of my exciting discoveries. Technically, this is my secondary blog. My blog about life and other brain aching type things is here). Enough rambling, on with something real!