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Posts tagged Glamour
BeTrousse Glitz & Glamour Beauty Kit
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4 years
by Naomi in Beauty Boxes
2013 has been a quiet year for BeTrousse so far, with only a sale to their name since December, but towards the end of March I received their first beauty kit of the year, the Glitz & Glamour box. I was beginning to worry that they had run out of ideas so I was pleased to receive another kit unexpectedly, especially as it’s a good one!
The Glitz & Glamour beauty kit contains five full-size products to help you ‘get gorgeous’, and so far they haven’t disappointed. Every item in the box is different this time, with no repeats from past boxes, and no similar products within the box!
From Left to Right:
Jason Rosewater & Chamomile Normalising Shampoo
Benta Berry G-1 Exfoliating Facial Cleanser
Fair Naturally Mango & Safflower Body Moisturiser
Make Believe Enhance Shimmer Lip Gloss
Tulecos Tonifying Oil
As usual, BeTrousse provide full-size products so you can get a real feel for each one before deciding whether to repurchase, so for now I will give my first thoughts on each product and review a few, if not all of them, at a later date.
Jason Rosewater & Chamomile Normalising Shampoo – 255ml – RRP £7.29
This is the first shampoo to appear in a BeTrousse box and I absolutely love it. It is delicately scented with rosewater and chamomile (no parabens!), which help to soothe and balance the scalp, as the natural ingredients remove dirt without stripping away moisture. As such, it leaves hair feeling incredibly soft and clean, and also adds volume. A definite winner!
Benta Berry G-1 Exfoliating Facial Cleanser – 30ml – RRP £14.00
I haven’t yet tried this G-1 Exfoliating Facial Cleanser, but it is 100% natural and claims to remove impurities from the skin. I’ve used a Benta Berry moisturiser in the past and it was quite pleasant, so if this is anything like its cousin I expect it will do its job well!
Fair Naturally Mango & Safflower Body Moisturiser – 200ml – RRP £3.99
Fair Naturally’s Mango & Safflower Body Lotion is the cheapest product in the box, but also my favourite. It smells absolutely delicious, like peach yoghurt, and has a rich, creamy texture which massages in well, leaving skin feeling soft but not greasy. It’s organic, fair trade and made in the UK too – three things I always look for in products. I will be repurchasing this one!
Make Believe Enhance Shimmer Lip Gloss – 15ml – RRP £10.00
Make Believe are known best for their tanning products, and this lip gloss is supposed to enhance your tan. It is very sheer, but has a slight pink colour to it and a beautiful shimmer. It smells a bit like watermelon, but the scent soon turns a bit plasticky which isn’t great. I’m not usually a fan of tube glosses as they tend to be quite sticky, but this one feels lovely on the lips – almost like a lip balm.
Tulecos Tonifying Oil – 50ml – £33.00
I wasn’t familiar with Tulecos before receiving this box, but I have since learnt that they are an organic French brand who use essential oils to create luxury products. This tonifying oil contains peppermint oil, and is for use on the feet. It feels silky soft on the skin, has a relaxing, cooling effect, and softens any rough bits almost instantly. A fab little addition!
BeTrousse’s Glitz & Glamour beauty kit is available online and costs £10, which is well worth it considering you get five full-size products with a total RRP of £70, especially as with most beauty boxes you’re lucky if you get one full-size product for the same price! The box is full of unfamiliar brands and everything in it is great quality, so if you want to try something new for less then this is the box for you.
Naomi x
*This BeTrousse Glitz & Glamour Beauty Kit was sent to me by BeTrousse for review purposes. All opinions expressed are honest and my own.*
Glamour Freebie: Balance Me Rose Otto Intensive Lip Salve
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Last Thursday was the day that the August issues of the women’s glossies hit the shops. After a fantastic month of magazine freebies last month (Benefit AND Ciaté – wow) I wasn’t expecting to find anything too thrilling this time, but was pleased to see that Glamour were giving away products from the natural skincare brand, Balance Me. I had heard of Balance Me before and had been keen to try their lip salve for a while, so of course this was the freebie that I went for! Balance Me Rose Otto Intensive Lip Salve.
I really like Balance Me’s packaging – I think the simple white tube and basic font with a swirl of colour is really classy and pretty. I’m also pleased the salve is accented with purple as that’s my favourite colour haha.
The salve comes in a lip gloss style squeezy tube, but unlike gloss it isn’t sticky. In fact, it’s probably the creamiest lip salve I have EVER used. You only need a tiny amount to cover both of your lips, say, a 2mm blob, and it smoothes your lips as soon as you apply it. I tend to use my finger to put it on instead of the tube applicator as too much comes out of the tube if you do it that way. As you can see below, the salve has a yellow tinge to it. This is the only thing I don’t like about this product as I think it looks a bit like earwax – not good!
The best thing about this salve, for me, is the smell, as well as the fact that it is 100% natural in origin! It is scented with various essential oils, including several different Rose oils, Ylang Ylang, Mango, Lavender, Red Mandarin and Patchouli, amongst others, and they combine to give a strong scent which is really quite fantastic. I put this on whilst in the car the other day and everybody else in the car could smell it and commented on how lovely it was. I can even smell it on myself when I’m wearing it which is quite pleasant! Some of the ingredients used to make the salve so moisturising are Virgin Coconut, Beeswax, Sweet Almond, Shea, Jojoba and Cocoa Butter.
The tube claims that the lip salve ‘plumps, smoothes and hydrates’. Though the latter two are true, I haven’t yet felt or seen any plumping effects from it, but that’s fine by me as plumping products tend to irritate my skin! I’ve definitely noticed a difference to the texture of my lips though… They’re quite obviously softer and they feel protected when I have it on.
Balance Me are a UK based company which pleases me as I am a huge advocate of supporting British business. This is honestly the best lip salve I have used, and I will be buying another tube once this one runs out. It’s just beautiful!
Which Glamour freebie did you choose this month?
Naomi xx
Glamour Freebie: Benefit BADgal Lash Mascara
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After much deliberation I caved and ended up buying two copies of Glamour this month, just for the freebies! The first copy I bought contained this, the BADgal Lash Mascara, and the copy I bought today contained a little tube of Porefessional which I’ve been dying to try, but I’ll be reviewing that another day.
The mascara you get with the magazine is not full-size, but you do get a generous 4g, which is about half the size of the £16.50 big tube. Not bad for £2, the price of the magazine!
Magazine freebies rarely come packaged in boxes, and neither do samples, so that and the slick black and silver tube immediately make this product look classy and high end.
When I first opened the tube I was really surprised to see such a big, bristly brush. I don’t usually like chunky brushes as they tend to hold too much product which can make application a bit gloopy and thick, but this one looked promising as it wasn’t too loaded with mascara.
When I initially applied the mascara I didn’t think it had made much difference, but I was wrong. The first thing my mum said to me after I’d put it on was something along the lines of “wow, your eyes look nice”. I looked in the mirror again and I realised that, actually, this is a very good mascara!
BADgal Lash is a very, very deep black so it makes your eyelashes really stand out. It doesn’t clump either which means that your lashes stay separate, giving the false lash look that this mascara boasts. The best thing about it for me though is that your eyelashes stay soft. I’ve tried countless mascaras in my life and most of them have made my eyelashes feel stiff, which can make your eyes a bit sore, but BADgal is so light that you can hardly tell you’re wearing it, so your lashes feel supple and natural.
My mum has always struggled with mascara as her lashes aren’t the longest, so it never makes much difference on her, or it blobs all over her eyelids and makes a mess. I let her try this one out and we were both amazed – her lashes looked longer and darker, but still natural, and there was no mess whatsoever. It didn’t smudge either when she rubbed her eyes, which is fantastic! And contrary to what other reviews have said about BADgal, it has lasted all day on both of us.
My overall thoughts on this? A truly impressive product and very high quality! If only I could afford to spend £16.50 on one mascara haha.
Naomi x
Glamour Freebie: Percy & Reed Splendidly Silky Moisturising Conditioner
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Yesterday afternoon I mentioned that I had bought the April issue of Glamour Magazine for £2, and received this 100ml tube of Percy & Reed’s Splendidly Silky Moisturising Conditioner free with it. The magazine states that this simple and funky looking hair treat is worth £11, and is described as being ‘A luscious, yet light blend of grape seed oil, sweet almond oil and aloe vera, which will help to restore natural softness’.
I used the conditioner this morning during my morning hair washing routine, after shampooing with my usual shampoo. My hair gets quite greasy at the roots but drier towards the ends, so I rubbed a 10p sized amount of the conditioner into my hair from a few inches below the roots, downwards. After leaving the conditioner in for one minute for, as the tube says, ‘extra conditioning’, I washed the it out thoroughly. I then blow dried and straightened my hair as usual.
The first thing I noticed about the conditioner was the smell. Having read that it contains grape seed, almond and aloe vera, I was expecting it to have a lovely sweet, fresh scent, but it actually smells quite chemically. I made my mum have a sniff of it and she said it reminded her of public toilets after they’ve been cleaned – not nice at all!
Bad smell aside, the conditioner actually worked wonders on my hair. I noticed immediately that my hair felt slightly smoother after being blow dried, which meant that straightening it was easier. I asked my other half to feel my hair earlier today and he said that it felt softer than usual, and I have to say it really does feel ‘splendidly silky’! Not only that, my hair has looked fuller all day, and has kept its bounce without going lank.
I’m not sure if I’d be willing to pay full price for this product, but as a freebie with a £2 magazine you are getting a fantastic deal. No other conditioner has had such a quick effect on my hair before and I will definitely continue using this Percy & Reed Moisturising Conditioner!
Which Percy & Reed freebie did you get with your copy of Glamour mag?
Naomi x
This Week’s Beauty Haul
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This week I’ve treated myself to a few nice new things, all of them bargain buys as well which makes them all that little bit more awesome!
Today, from Superdrug, I bought a copy of Glamour magazine for £2 and MUA Pressed Powder in Shade 1 for £1. I don’t usually buy Glamour magazine, but the April issue comes with a free 100ml tube of a Percy & Reed hair product! There’s four to collect and in total they’re worth £43, making them £10.75 each – well worth the £2 I paid for the magazine! I went for the Moisturising Conditioner.
The Myleene Klass Nail Wraps were a snip at £2 (I bought them from someone on a forum who was selling them for her mum). I’ve been wanting to try nail wraps for a while so I couldn’t pass up the chance to get these!
I also bought three Rimmel Colour Rush Mono Eye Shadows in (from top to bottom) Tempted, Siren and Envy, which I’m really looking forward to trying out.
Yesterday, on eBay, I won a batch of 15 nail varnishes for just £6.10! They’re all new, swatched once or only used a couple of times, and there’s a mix of different brands including Models Own, Ruby & Millie, 17 Magnetic polish, Andrea Fullerton, Orly, Revlon and others. So excited about receiving them!
I’m going to review each of these products over the next few weeks so please check back soon to see what I have to say! What have you been buying lately?
Thanks for reading,
Naomi x
