Offer Alert: 3 for 2 on Elemis

Feelunique have a rather nice 3 for 2 offer going for Elemis. How I wish I had seen this before I splashed out on the Pro Collagen range for my Mommy this Christmas ... I could have gotten a free Marine Cream darn it! Debenhams "VAT free" prices really pales in comparison >.< Sigh.
I just hope it's a reputable website, because I'm off to order the range for myself now! :)

Celine

p.s./ Check out their Advent Calendar offers - a different treat every day. Today's is £5 off orders over £40.

Updated 23.12.13
The 3 for 2 offer has now ended, BUT theres currently 20% off Elemis

*And* the Pro Collagen Jewel Collection is currently 20% off on Elemis' official website (RRP £199.00, now £159.20 and worth £347!). This massive set contains:
Pro-Collagen Marine Cream - 100ml special edition
Cellular Recovery Skin Bliss Capsules (contains 60)
Pro-Collagen Lifting Treatment for Neck and Bust (50ml)
Pro-Collagen Oxygenating Night Cream (30ml)
Pro-Collagen Cleansing Balm (30g) + cotton cloth
Pro-Collagen Advanced Eye Treatment (15ml)

It's a good time to stock up on Birthday presents :p

Happy holidays :)
Celine

Review : Lush Lip Scrubs : Mint Julips

We've been struck by a particularly biting cold (in grand Londinium) and my lips were looking chapped and gross as ever. (O ho punny) As if dry lips weren't bad enough, imagine having remnants of lipstick kind of stuck in the cracks and forming pink-coloured flakes. Yeap. That's how I was walking around.

On my way home, I caught the distinctive whiff of a Lush store. Olfactory bulb went ding!, the mind said "lip scrubs!" and in I went. There were four flavours to choose from: bubblegum, popcorn, mint julips (mint chocolate) and Santa (cola), which is a festive limited edition. If I could eat any of those things it would be mint chocolate so I bought mint julips. It tastes like After Eights! ;p

Un/fortunately, my camera couldn't capture my chapped lips in their full glory, so try to imagine that scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, when Tuco leaves Clinty in the desert and he looks a little worse for wear having nothing to drink in the scorching sun.

This scrub has fast become one of my favourite products. It's so nice to use and it actually works - smooth, flake free lips. Hurrah! I've been using it every couple of days, and so far, scraggly lips have not returned. Just remember to use a lip balm afterwards.

Ingredients:
Castor Sugar - the exfoliant
Jojoba Oil - softens the skin. Does anyone really pronounce this as "ho-ho-ba"?
Vanilla Extract - flavouring
Tagetes Oil - a preservative
Peppermint Oil - flavouring, I assume. Doesn't burn your lips.
Limonene - fragrance or flavour additive
Flavour

The Good:
It's like chocolate. Heck, I think it's better than chocolate! It works.
1. It's suitable for vegans
2. Lush does not test its products on animals, nor does it does not source its ingredients from suppliers who test on animals. They also didn't sell out to a large cosmetics company known for animal testing ... Just sayin'...

The Bad:
I thought this was quite expensive for the price. You're basically paying £5.50 for a pot of sugar. However, you only need a small amount each time so I imagine it'd last for ages - assuming you don't eat the pot.

The Ugly:
I'm really just going with the Clint Eastwood theme. Ain't nothing ugly about it. Except for lips beforehand. But there is that typeface...

All in all, I would recommend anyone who suffers from chapped lips to get this, if only for the pure pleasure of use :)
Oh and did I mention that you can lick off the excess? ;p Residue never tasted so good.

Cult Beauty "Best of 2013" Free Gift Offer

Cult Beauty has a rather nice offer going now - a “Best of 2013” goody bag, yours when you spend £75.

Enter the code “BEST13” at checkout to take advantage of the free gift offer.

I’ve tried to minimise boring copypasta by throwing in a few useless comments here and there and I’ve calculated the value of the gift, and lets face it, thats what we really want to know! ^-^ 

The Good Bag contains:

Jouer Matte Moisture Tints (2 x 2.3ml - in nude & hazel) - A matte tinted moisturiser for a dewy-matte finish.

Value: £2.76 

Sunday Riley Good Genes (10ml) - Cult Beauty describes this as "skin utopia in a bottle". Nice. Good Genes is a serum which smooths, refines, clarifies and brightens whilst improving skin's thickness & elasticity.

I’ve heard good things about Sunday Riley serums and this is a great opportunity to try it out. Don’t let the small size put you off - I’ve had tiny 1ml serums from Decleor last a month!

Value: £28.30 (Holy smokes batman!) 

Anastasia Beverly Hills Clear Brow Gel (2.5ml) - An industry favourite for neat brows. Quite a decent size too (compared to the full size of 8ml).

Value: £5.15 

Alpha H Liquid Gold (5ml) - A serum designed to tackle hyper-pigmentation, acne, fine lines and large pores, reversing some of the symptoms of ageing and sun damage. That's a lot of claims! Just how does one go about “tackling large pores”? Don't buy into that, you can't. That aside, from what I’ve read great things about this serum.

Value: £1.58 

Glamglow Youthmud (5ml) - a mud mask.

Value: £2.50 

DJV Fibrewig (full size) - Fibre mascaras are super popular in Japan for giving you a false lash effect. Fairy Drops and Fibrewig are some of the top names - I didn't even know Fibrewig was available in the UK until I saw it listed here! Woo hoo!

Value: £18 (Full size product. Another high five batman!) 

Omorovicza Deep Cleansing Mask (5ml) - a cleansing mask.

Sidenote: this cleansing mask is currently £39 (usually £57) on Omorovicza’s website.

Value: £5.70 

Eve Lom Cleanser (5ml) & muslin cloth - Very, very popular cleanser. If the mineral oil content doesn’t put you off (as it does me), you’ll like it.

Value: £2.75 

Tammy Fender Antioxidant Crème Neroli & Orange (2ml) - a nourishing anti-oxidant cream.

Value: £1.29 

Tata Harper Replenishing Nutrient Complex (3ml) - from reading the ingredients, this sounds lovely - rosehip, jojoba, carrot seed oil … Anti-oxidants galore. Yummy.

Value: £10.80 

Total value of the gift: £80 

I was initially put off when I saw what looked like a bunch of tiny sized samples thrown together as a gift (some of which you can get for free), but the serums and full sized mascara make this pretty decent!

Happy shopping!
Celine

Why you shouldn't take your beauty advice from a newspaper

That’s a clipping from last week's Daily Mail. DAFUQ. On so many levels. Clinique’s “cleanse-tone-moisturise” routine may have had its day, but that’s because skincare routines have evolved into cleanse-tone-serum-lotion-moisturise-eat breakfast-suncream…  Companies are longer content to sell us three things - no - we need at least ten to achieve flawless skin. But it is true that toners have come a long way. The alcohol laden crap is less popular nowadays, and they don’t just remove excess impurities. If you're left with a yellowy residue after cleansing you need to return to step one (the sink) because it means you haven't cleansed properly. There are brightening/exfoliating toners, hydrating toners, clarifying toners (though typically full of alcohol and leave you feeling like a plucked chicken)... Toners restore the skin's balance and prepare your skin for the next step.

You could say they're not really necessary, just as anything beyond a basic cream to prevent your face drying and shrivelling up is not necessary. So sure you can skip the toner. BUT MAKE-UP WIPES? REAL PROS USE MAKE-UP WIPES? Please. Now I'm no expert, but of the make-up artists' blogs I follow, all of them prep models’ skin very thoroughly and are surprisingly knowledgeable when it comes skincare. I say surprisingly, because I took them as two totally different fields and used to think think they went in with their brushes and 500 eyeshadows and got to it. Not a face wipe in sight. The day I see one is the day I stop reading. I feckin hate the things. They do a crap job of removing make-up so I can't understand why anyone would think they'd do as a substitute for moisturiser and toner on top of that. Newsflash: you are not a make-up artist. You have a sink at home, use it. You wouldn't use a femfresh in place of showering would you.

Phew.

p.s/ Hello and welcome to my new blog.