Germaine de Capuccini – Multi-Regenerating Rose Hip Oil

The weather in the UK has gone a bit crazy… don't you agree? The team at The Amazing Blog is wrapped up in winter coats, wearing sunglasses and carrying an umbrella around as you never know what to expect. And with these sudden changes in temperature it's really making our skin suffer. Our hands are extra dry – we have changed hand creams for balms - and our complexions do not look as bright and feel a bit tight… never a good sign. Our pals at Germaine de Capuccini recently treated us to one of their latest product launches, the Multi-Regenerating Rose Hip Oil. An oil rich in fatty acids that promises to rejuvenate and plump dehydrated skin? Oh yes please.

Rose Hip oil is known for its many amazing properties, it works wonders on mature and dry skins and it assists dehydrated skins. It also helps soothing and balancing blemish-prone skins, healing burns and it also lightens scaring and marks. Germaine de Capuccini’s offering is light in consistency but feels nourishing and rich on the skin. Best applied in the evening before your moisturiser of choice it will result in glowy, healthy and balanced skin the morning after. This Multi-Regenerating Rose Hip Oil can also be mixed with body lotions and butters for that extra boost of hydration; it’s especially good for areas prone to dryness such as elbows and knees.

The packaging on this oil is just perfect, it comes with a pump that dispenses the right amount of product, it’s travel-friendly and also clear; which allows you to see how much product you have left. Overall, Germaine de Capuccini’s Multi-Regenerating Rose Hip Oil is a winner, and although it’s a bit fragranced, it has worked wonders to rebalance our dull and dehydrated complexions.

You can purchase this small gem from Germaine de Capuccini’s website. 30 ml for £34.95.

Friday Favourites- New Years Eve Make Up

It’s not long until we will welcome in the New Year with either a wonderful party or celebrations with friends. We only have a few days between now and then to prepare, so we thought that we'd offer a few suggestions for you to have a splurge with your Christmas spending money. At The Amazing Blog we've picked a few of our very favourite make-up finds to help you create that perfect eye catching look to see in 2014! The Rouge Bunny Rouge make-up collection is just the place to head with that Christmas spending money. One of my personal favourite products is the Loose Glitter Pigment in all its girly, baby pink glory. It’s just what you need to add a little sparkle to your outfit and jazz things up a bit on this special evening. The pigment contains pearl, making it extraordinarily luminescent on the skin. It also has added Sodium PCA which is a natural moisturiser, this means that the pigment is not drying on your skin so it is extremely soft and creamy and can be applied to the skin with ease. The bottle contains a built in applicator wand to prevent any of the pigment from being spilled and the wand is tipped with a soft sponge for easy application of the pigment. It applies to the skin lightly and evenly giving a soft and delicate look with a gorgeous shimmer. This pigment is perfect to wear either alone or blended with other eye shadows. The Loose Glitter Pigments are available in six other colours and you can get your hands on your own from the Rouge Bunny Rouge Website for £19.34.

           

Cozmetic Lab has a great selection of loose powders for the face. They have created an 'Intro Pack' which comprises of a foundation, eye shadow, bronzer and blush so you can create your complete look. This Australian mineral make-up for women who want to be noticed. The powdered foundation is light weight and sets well, making it useful for concealing, coverage and setting. It’s also oil free which makes it much better for keeping your skin in tip top condition. I was surprised at how well the powder covered imperfections as usually I need to use a liquid foundation for more coverage. I particularly liked the fact that it has an SPF 25, no talc and has a fabulous illuminating effect on the skin - unlike may other mineral brands which have left my complexion rather dull and flat. This product was a big hit with The Amazing Blog team. The bronzer also blends seamlessly in, giving you a natural glowing tan. It has a subtle effect which means you look tanned, rather than looking like you’re wearing make-up. If you prefer to go with the rosy finish then the blush is just the thing for this. It sits well on the cheeks and has a slight shimmer but nothing too unnatural. When you’re out in the cold this New Years you’re bound to get some pink skin, so you may as well make it a more flattering cheek colour with this blush. The eye shadow creates an attention grabbing smoky eye to give you a seductive and mysterious edge for these celebrations. All the powders stay on the skin really well, there’s no slipping and sliding with this make-up. The ingredients also mean shine won’t be a problem so you can stay looking glam and fabulous all evening. The Intro Pack is £42 and can be found here.

If you are a loyal reader of our blog then you will already know how much we love Eye of Horus because of our post here.They popped into our heads as soon as we started thinking about getting striking eyes for New Year. Two colours that we suggest for this occasion are the Teal Malachite Goddess Pencil and the Smokey Eye Goddess Pencil, either alone or blended together. The Smokey Eye Goddess Pencil is a classic black with extreme definition. The exotic pencil glides effortlessly with no smudge because of the ingredients and creamy formula. They are waterproof too which is ideal because the weather is very unpredictable. If smouldering is the look you intend to create then smouldering you will get with these pencils.  The teal is a little more creative and adventurous, we love this bright colour which can be applied either as a subtle line around the eye or smudged to create more of an eyeshadow effect. It will certainly enhance and illuminate your eyes with its hypnotic shimmer. The smudger tip gives you a lot of leeway when deciding on the style you want to create. They are only £13 and will last all night long and more. These currently can be found on their UK website Eye of Horus , in store at John Bell & Croyden or online at cocktail cosmetics

For a more simple make-up looks this New Year, try the pressed  Miners Fresh Faced Powder. You can read our post on the Miners liquid foundation here, but this powder is something a little lighter and understated with a matting effect. These form a brand new collection of powder shades designed to even out skin tone and conceal imperfections, to create that all important flawless finish. The powder comes in Translucent Ivory, Soft Sand, and Warm Honey. They are only £3.99 and found on the Miners website here.

As well as making yourself look glam, it’s always important to smell the part too. Lush have just released a new collection of limited edition scents. Our favourite is the Rose Jam; a fruity but strong scent guaranteed to get you noticed. The scent is made from real Turkish rose oil and rose absolute, blended with a hint of zingy lemon and a dash of geranium oil. This mixture helps to create this gorgeous sweet and floral scent. Unlike other rose scented perfumes, that may remind you a bit of your granny, this one from Lush is rich, powerful and modern, and a spray or two will last you all night. They are at a very affordable £30 for 30ml, and only available online from here, and are also in limited quantities, so get them while you can!

Pamper Festive Finds

Day three of our Festive Finds and its time for the all important beauty choices. When it comes to Christmas presents, beauty products  are always welcomed with the The Amazing Blog girls. However, sometimes it can be hard to find the perfect present for a loved one, so we have been doing the hard work for you and want to share with you some of our favourite beauty and grooming gift sets to help you out with your Christmas shopping.

After trying out Pevonia’s Lumafirm Eye Contour Lift and Glow back in September we couldn’t wait to see what their Christmas Gift Sets had to offer us. We settled on the Essential Salvation Gift Set, designed to provide your loved one (or you!) with the Pevonia’s essential care range. The Essential Salvation set includes Face Cream, Cleanser, Lotion and Aromatherapy Face Oil. The kits can be specialised for dry, sensitive or combination skin types. These natural products are designed to revitalise, desensitise and normalise the skin by nourishing and energising it to help it look healthier and fresher. All the products smell lovely and really work to replenish your skin, which I have needed recently in this cold weather. You can get your hands on the Essential Salvation Gift Set from the Pevonia website for £66.

We all know that the winter weather is harmful to our skin, and the Christmas party season does not do our skin any favours either. This means, that at this time of year we should make an extra effort with our skin and use products to rectify any damage done. Thankfully, Aurelia Probiotic Skincare have a wonderful skincare Christmas gift set: The Relax and Repair Night Time Kit. The gift set includes Aurelia’s Cell Repair Night Oil to intensively repair the skin cells overnight which works in conjunction with the body’s nightly repair function. The oil works by hydrating and soothing dehydrated skin and by morning your skin will be left radiant and healthier looking. This gift set also includes a gorgeous vintage looking pink and gold teacup and saucer along with a signature blend of night time tea to drink with your nightly oil ritual. You can get the Relax and Repair Night Time Kit from The Aurelia Probiotic Skincare website for £65.

Here at The Amazing Blog, we love Lush products as they all seem to smell good enough to eat. This Christmassy Lush gift set, Fab Christmas, has become one of our favourite beauty sets this year, and for good reason too! We love everything about this gift set, from the beautiful pink and purple hat box style packaging, to the wide array of products waiting inside. Some of our favourite products inside have to be the Snow Fairy Shower Gel and Sparkle Bar. The fragrance is a rich candy floss scent infused with pear drops, it is very girly and sweet but there is just something about it that reminds us so much of Christmas, so it is no wonder that it is always a Christmas bestseller. The set also includes a mixture of bath bombs, soaps, shower gel and lotions that is sure to thrill this gift’s recipient. You can get hold of the Fab Christmas set from Lush stores or online from their website for £49.95.

The Bluebeard’s Revenge Aftershave was a big hit with Jose, our resident male here at The Amazing Blog, so when we discovered the huge range of gift sets on offer from The Bluebeard’s Revenge, we just knew that they would be a fantastic gift for a man. We love the Deluxe Kit as it contains all the essential shaving products that the modern man could possibly need, including Pre-shave Oil, Beard Reducing Shaving Cream, Post Shave Balm, the “Doubloon” Shaving Brush and Silver Technology Anti-perspirant Deodorant. These premium products are the ultimate products in luxury shaving and are formulated to help men get the best out of their shaving experience. We think that this set would be an ideal gift for men who are very interested in grooming or teenagers who are just starting to shave and would benefit from an all-inclusive kit. The Deluxe Kit is available on The Bluebeard’s Revenge website and costs £35.

The Bulldog Expert Skincare Set is the perfect Christmas gift for the man in your life who takes an interest in personal grooming and skincare. The wonderful set is packaged in a metal tin featuring a bulldog on the front which is great to store these Bulldog goodies inside. The set includes a range of Bulldog products, including the Original Face Wash, Original Moisturiser, Original Aftershave Balm and the Original Face Scrub, so is full of all the essentials to build up a good skincare routine. We love that Bulldog’s products do not contain artificial colours, synthetic ingredients or animal products. They do however contain a range of eight essential oils that work to cleanse and moisturise the skin. The Bulldog Expert Skincare Set is available exclusively in Boots stores and online where it is retailing at £20.

Our final hamper is by A Beautiful World. It’s a limited edition hamper priced at £100, and filled with every fabulous natural beauty product you could want. A Beautiful World stocks a variety of beauty products that many people don’t know about but need to. This hamper would be ideal to give to your mum or someone else very special this Christmas to spoil them a little. Nothing wrong with dropping a few hints to your partner if you want it yourself… Inside you will find the Dahliana Overnight Fruit Lift, Lumiere d'Opale, 5 x Collagen Face Mask, MuLondon White Chocolate Elbow, Knee & Heel Cream, Yarok Feed Your Youth, S.W Basics Shea Butter Cream, Know-it-oil, Marble & Milkweed Body Oil and Konjac Sponge. All these organic products are incredibly beneficial for the skin and perfect for all seasons and the different effects the weather will have on your face and body. The MuLondon White Chocolate Elbow smells incredible, obviously it would, it’s chocolate! This hand whipped moisturiser replenishes the skin well without leaving a heavy layer to clog your pores. There are also great oils in the set, which we all love to use during the winter because they are quite calming as well as giving you balanced skin.  The Marble & Milkweed body oil is packaged beautifully and would sit perfectly amongst some girly skincare products in the bathroom. Everything in the hamper is unique and has individuality which sets it aside from other products on the market. This may be the ingredients or the way the products are produced but you can be sure to get a selection of lovely, organic products to treat your skin to.  £100 is a great deal for the amount you receive in the hamper and the quality they all are. You can buy the hamper here.

Tomorrow we have some Festive Finds for your home this Christmas and New Year.

Friday Favourites - Perfumes

According to some psychologists, the way we smell can alter how attractive we are to the opposite sex, so obviously upon learning this, The Amazing Blog girls decided to test a bunch of perfumes and create a list of some our favourites. A few of our top picks come from Yves Rocher, L’Artisan, Rouge Bunny Rouge, Grasse, Penhaligon, and VZ Hair and Glamour (a slimming perfume!).

The Yves Rocher Neroli Secrets D’Essences is simply gorgeous. It’s filled with botanical-based ingredients and oozes an orange scent. This fruity fragrance has a lot of personality and is a fun perfume to wear during the day to attract some attention. It’s a good choice if you’re stuck for present ideas this Christmas as it's very aesthetically pleasing. We love long lasting fragrances here at The Amazing Blog and that’s exactly what we get from Yves Rocher. The bottle base is glass and paired with a thick plastic lid, both of which are clear, giving an overall elegant design which looks lovely no matter where it sits in your house. We are drawn to the shape, it’s comfortable to hold and the lid is easy to remove. The bottle also has an added size benefit, perfect for both handbag use and bathroom. Brilliant! It’s only £20 on offer at the moment and can be found on their website.

We have tried L’Artisan perfumes before and you can read about it here. We have been impressed before and still are as they have fallen into our perfume favourites again with the La Chasse aux Papillons Giftset. The beautiful packaging is enough to make you want it anyway, you might not even need to look at the perfume. The smell reminds us of a flower garden as you are bombarded with an infusion of wonderful, exotic smells to consume. It is strong so would make a great evening perfume if you are heading out. With a sweet name like ‘Chase the butterflies’ it’s hard not to adore this fragrance. You can purchase this set for £65 on here.We also had a little experiment with three perfumes by Rouge Bunny Rouge. These have a unique smell which may be not be of interest to everyone as they do not follow traditional flowery smelling perfume guidelines. Each has a spicy aroma infused in it. The Embers scent smelt to me like cinnamon, which is an interesting one to have on the skin, making them exciting presents this Christmas if you have friends and family who like more quirky items. Being unisex sets them aside from lots of other perfumes and just brings out a little individuality and edginess.  There is also Cynefin and Silvan which are herbier, with a blend of lavender. The three scents make up the Provenance Tales collection and are each £110.09, and found on their personal webpage.

The Grasse Au Parfum ‘Sexy Party’ is another popular one with us, apart from the name which we were a little unsure about. The bottle itself is really lovely and ideally sized to have for travelling if you want. The clear bottle and black pump work well together and give the fragrance a simple yet classy feel. The smell is very fresh and youthful and offers a French countryside ambience with with its unfamiliar but charming array of smells. It’s a great daytime perfume as it lasts and isn’t too overbearing. They ship to the UK so have a browse here.

The Penhaligon Iris Prima perfume is possibly one to appeal more to an adult population. Although we don’t think this scent would be popular with teens, it’s definitely one for audiences with a more sophisticated taste in perfumes. Created by master perfumer, Alberto Morillas, you’d expect a brilliantly elegant perfume like this. The blend is inspired by ballet and you feel this through the pretty and simple charm the scent gives off. It does come with quite a heavy price tag, which again suggests it’s probably more appealing to adults but will be one that lasts as stronger perfumes don’t need as much application. Its £85 for 50ml and £120 for 100ml and you can purchase this on their website.

VZ Hair and Glamour has an interesting perfume especially designed to reduce and eventually prevent snacking and ultimately lose weight! We were instructed to apply the perfume on our wrists and inhale the scent for 5 minutes before every meal and whenever we got the urge to snack. This application can be repeated up to 5 times a day. It smells very strongly of citrus scents and if anything made us think of eating oranges rather than junk food. The jury is still out on whether or not this product will really work in the long run, but for its modest price, it is certainly worth a try if you are desperate to quit snacking. To get your hands on your own bottle of Diet Slimming Perfume then visit the VZ Hair and Glamour website where you can purchase the perfume for £22.99 for an 8ml bottle.

If you are on the move a lot, then get hold of a Travalo to make them easy to travel with. You can dispense some perfume into these little containers and keep them with you without having to lug anything heavy around. They are comfy to hold and spray easily, just what you need in your handbag.

Samphire Perfume - Laboratory Perfumes

 

As Christmas approaches, we are constantly on the look out for great presents to spoil our friends and family. One thing that never fails to go down a treat with all  of us at  The Amazing Blog is perfume. And this new unisex Eau de Toilette Samphire by Laboratory Perfumes has all the qualities needed to make it the ideal hit present.

This fragrance is beautifully simple  with a cologne-like lift making it versatile enough for an early morning spritz to set you up for the day, or for a reviving the senses after a long day. This classic scent we think will suit both the tastes of men and women. Samphire itself is a wild plant grown on the British coastline and  used as an ingredient in edible produce and beauty. In fact, many other flora and fauna have been collected from around the British isles are also blended into this magical bottle  - including the unique combination of  Samphire, fresh Juniper berries, Citrus Oil and Rosemary. We think that it stimulates the senses almost as  if you close your eyes and imagine yourself being surrounded by a rugged shoreline with the sound of gently rolling waves on an ever so slightly blustery day...

Christoper Perry is the genius perfumer behind this and his other creations at Laboratory Perfumes. He has an inspirational passion for fragrance and has developed this as well as two other beautiful and highly original fragrances Gorse and Amber all of which take the wearer on an evolutionary journey. If you haven't already guessed, we have 'ever so slightly' fallen in love with the whole Laboratory Perfume range. Samphire  is their third fragrance whichlaunched earlier in 2013  and has since become one of  The Amazing Blog favorites. Like its big siblings, it's also available in either as Eau de Toilette or as a candle so you can get the same beautiful Samphire fragrance for you or to share in the home.

The chic, minimal packaging hints at its chemistry-set roots while the scent is clean, natural and highly addictive. It's very English, smart and sophisticated. The unisex qualities make it a great asset to the bathroom shelf and it sits in a distinguished, clear glass bottle to add a touch of class to any room. If you want to add one of these to your present collection, or just fancy treating yourself, then have a look at the collection on the website, this particular scent is £48 for 100Ml.