December 2018 Favourites
This has been such a fabulous month for favourites!
Starting with the Black Friday sales, my birthday, a couple of giveaway wins, Christmas and the sales - it's been a bumper month of goodies for me and lots of instant favourites.
Nudge Boutique
The beginning of the month saw me meeting up with the incredibly talented Jo Klassen of local (Norfolk) luxury, vegan handmade skincare brand Nudge Boutique. I had a great time chatting with Jo and she very kindly gave me her entire range of products to try out. Her range currently consists of the Saffron Glow Facial Oil Serum, the Saffron Glow Cleansing Clay Mask and the Kokum Body Boost Butter. Every product contains the superstar ingredient Norfolk Saffron. Saffron (the stigma) has amazing anti-oxidant properties and has long been used in traditional Ayurvedic medicine and skincare but Nudge Boutique are the first UK brand to use the Saffron petals (usually discarded) in their products too. The dried petals turn a beautiful blue colour and this is evident in the Saffron Glow Cleansing Clay Mask, which turns a stunning icy blue colour when mixed with water.
A full review on all these products will follow in the new year - but here's a spoiler - they are all BLOODY AMAZING!
Bravura London
Revitalising Ginseng Toner
Lactic Acid 10% Peel
During the Black Friday sales the email offers kept flooding in, but I managed to hold myself in check and thought of the brands that I really wanted to try - when my chosen brands revealed their discounts then I carefully made a short list of items I'd like, and stuck rigidly to it. Which was incredibly restrained for me, but it did mean that I didn't end up spending too much and was happy with what I chose.
Bravura London were one of the brands on my list. I'd previously tried (and loved) the Glycolic Ginseng Toner but also decided to try out the Lactic Acid 10% chemical peel. Lactic acid is one of the more gentle acid exfoliators and I've found that it really suits my skin better than some of the stronger Glycolic acid peels.
Also from the Black Friday sales I bought a taster kit from Evolve Beauty, some Hydration Booster and Intense Repair Night Oil from A. Florence Skincare and the new Time C.O.D.E moisturiser from Ishtar Skinlights.
I also was extremely lucky and won two fabulous giveaways (on Twitter and Instagram).
It was incredibly fortuitous and timely that I won the Evolve Beauty giveaway on Twitter which comprised of three of their fantastic Christmas gift sets!
The sets won were 'Calm and Bright' which contained minis of Hyaluronic Serum 200, Daily Renew Facial Cream and Daily Defence Moisture Mist. The 'Let it Glow' Christmas cracker gift set included minis of the Radiant Glow Face Mask and a Lip Shine. And the adorable star-shaped Christmas Star Lip Shine ornament gift.
The second giveaway I won was from a brand that I'd not heard of before but very glad that I've now had the chance to try them. I won an Orange Passion Nourishing Hair Oil, a Wild Lemon Hair Growth Oil and some Magnesium Mint Foot Scrub. Just look at that beautiful packaging!
One December purchase that I can't pin on Black Friday/Birthday or Christmas was some products from Annabelle Minerals!
Annabelle Minerals is a Polish brand who make mineral makeup which contains just four ingredients - Mica, Zinc Dioxide, Titanium Dioxide providing UVA/UVB protection with SPF value of 15 and Iron Oxide. They had previously sent out some testers of their matte powder foundation and, to be honest, I wasn't expecting much from them. How wrong could I be?! I was absolutely blown away with this foundation and it's performance. It's a lovely, natural-looking, matte powder foundation which has a good (but natural-looking) coverage and doesn't cake or clog up pores. It's long-lasting and very comfortable and light to wear. I immediately went and ordered a full size of the matte powder foundation and also the 'Get Set' kit which contains 16 samples of their best-sellers including eye shadow, glow powder, primer, concealer and blushers.
I'll be writing a post about all of these shortly, after I've played around with them for a bit longer.
Lucky Cloud Hydrating Super Balm
Another pre-Christmas buy was this Lucky Cloud Hydrating Super Balm. During the winter months I've gone a bit doo-lally with my love of balms and I really wanted to try something from Lucky Cloud. They were offering free shipping, so it would have been rude not to! This is a beautiful happy yellow balm, scented with vanilla and sweet orange and it has such a multitude of uses - it can even be used as an intense under eye night time treatment.
Onto the actual Christmas gifts!
NK Naturals
Winter Season Oil
Honey Clay Face Mask
I really, really wanted to try the NK Naturals Winter Seasonoil so it went onto my Christmas list. But Nicola very kindly added in a pot of her special edition Honey Clay Mask so it was super exciting to unwrap both of these on Christmas morning!
Natural Wisdom Spa - Blue Tranquility Balm
As mentioned in a previous post about Objects of Desire from British Indie Natural Skincare brands, Natural Wisdom Spa have been on my wish-list for ages. I've pretty much 'favourited' every single one of their products but the Blue Tranquility Balm was at the top of my list. Featuring Blue Tansy as its star ingredient, this balm is suitable for skin prone to redness, puffiness and dryness. I absolutely LOVE Blue Tansy for it's calming and soothing qualities and the Blue Tansy is also blended with blended with Blue Chamomile essential oil (another favourite of mine) and Pomegranate and Amaranth seed oil.
And finally - the sales!
I actually only had one aim as far as the sales were concerned and that was to stock up on the E.L.F Under Eye Primer. I tried this earlier in the year (when on sale) and it's quickly become an everyday essential. I've had problems with under eye concealers actually making my fine lines around my eyes look worse when the concealer cakes and settles into the lines, actually managing to exaggerate them. I've found that this primer makes most under eye concealers wear so much better so that I'm not left with caked concealer. I also picked up an under eye concealer/highlighter to try out too.
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