Twitter Giveaway! Spectrum Collection You Look Marbleous Brush Set!

Hi all!

Over the last few months we've received loads of support on various platforms and wanted to celebrate. We've been blogging for almost 6 years now and there are a few thousand of you who follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Bloglovin. We're not the biggest and we juggle a lot of things amongst work, travel etc to get the photos and the content completed but we love what we do and appreciate all of the support, so thank you!

We haven't done many giveaways at all over the time we've been blogging, but now we're both in full time employment we decided we want to start giving back.

!CLOSED! Happy 5th Birthday Giveaway!

Hello everyone!!

We have made it to our FIFTH BIRTHDAY!! We can't quite believe it but we have now been writing this blog for five years and looking back at some of the posts we have written.....some are so cringe but we wouldn't be where we are today without them, including the bad photography and cliche product reviews, ha!

This blog has given us so many opportunities and we've made some great friends over the last 5 years, if you've stuck with us from the beginning then this is a HUGE thank you! If you're new then thank you for joining us, I hope you like what you see! We're so grateful for everyhting and it has given us a place to share our thoughts on the latest lipstick, holiday snaps and generally everything we have been up to. It has been so much fun and we hope to continue getting better and embracing more!

Obviously we are very excited to celebrate and share with you some of our favourite products as a thank you for sticking with us over these crazy few years, so take a look and enter the giveaway below!

Image from Pinterest!

Sunday Sunbathing!

So me and M have been sunbathing, eating and drinking allllllllllllllllllllllllllll day today.

We meant to write a joint post but unfortunately.....or fortunately?....the sun has been out all day and we couldn't resist the loungers in the garden!

Of course we got our 5 a day in by drinking 3 jugs of fruit filled Pimms....YUM!

The weather was so nice and hopefully we have caught a little bit of colour!
We did both have SPF on though so fingers crossed we haven't burned.

M was in shock at how much the freckles on her face have come out today, the sun has brought out loads on my arms too!

Just in case you guys haven't yet entered, we have a giveaway that is ending TODAY!!!
If you want beautiful blemish free skin you should enter it for the chance to get this!

You can enter HERE if you'd like to, it's so easy!


Hope you've enjoyed your day/weekend as much as we have :)

L and M
xxx

Glycolic Acid Peel First Impressions

L and I are currently holding a giveaway where you can win The Skin Regime book and a Glycolic Acid Peel sample. (you can read about it here). The peel was something we were both really excited to try after reading the book and seeing so many positive results from it. The peel strength we tried was 30%. The skin regime site contains well trusted suppliers of peels. With things like this it's really important to only purchase from reputable suppliers.

It's fair to say we were both really nervous to put it on our skin, it is an acid peel after all. It is important to start with really clean skin. We both cleansed with dove soap and a muslin cloth then used alcohol wipes (we couldn't find rubbing alcohol as suggested in the book) the purpose of the alcohol is to remove the oil from the skin.

The solution is a clear liquid. I've dispensed mine into a pot so I can use it again. The solution is put onto a cotton wool pad and swept over the skin, starting on the cheeks and working your way round the rest of the face trying to avoid the corners of the neck and mouth. The cotton pad is then swept over the neck.

This is my skin before, as you can see it has a natural red tone to it anyway.

You only leave the solution on for a few minutes no more. We both interpreted this as 3.5 minutes. It definitely made my skin tingle at first. This is normal and expected. I did consider washing it off at this point but decided to stick it out. The stinging did stop after a while.

It's normal for the skin to appear red after and sometimes peel. Both of us round there was a touch of redness to the skin but no peeling and the redness didn't last. We both did it early evening, in case our skin went red so it would be cleared by the morning.

After the time is up, you rinse it off and then re-cleanse with the dove soap and apply moisturiser. I applied moisturiser again before I went to bed.

My skin after. The photo doesn't show much difference but I think it does look smoother and slightly shinier. As you can see it's not much redder and there wasn't any peeling.

Immediately after removing the peel I couldn't believe the difference. My skin on my forehead looked instantly smoother and my pores looked a lot better. Around my nose was smoother too. Almost similar to when you pull of a pore strip and it's smooth. L noticed her skin was a lot more plumped. We were both excited to see how it was in the morning. L noticed her skin was so soft in the morning and the slight lines on her forehead had almost disappeared  I was impressed with how soft my cheeks felt and how much better the pores on my nose looked.

We both couldn't wait to do another peel but it's not recommended to do it again for another 7 days. I can't wait to do it again and hope the results continue to improve my skin.

Have you tried an at home acid peel? Enter our giveaway to try your own?

Love M

xxx

The Skin Regime and International Giveaway

Skincare is something L and I are both big on and both fully believe (and hope) prevention is better than cure. You're never to young to start taking care of your skin. An interesting fact I read the other day from a study by Escentual.com was that the average French lady starts their skincare at age 15 and the average Britain at 25. The survey found as the French aged they looked younger!!

I'm paranoid about getting bad skin and will do what I can now to start. Over the past year I've started to notice huge changes in my skin (I'm thinking this is partially due to stress from starting back at university!!) it's now sometimes drier than it used to be, something I'm really not used too, and I'm starting to see fine lines appear in my forehead!!

When Dana got in touch to see if we fancied reading her book The Skin Regime and trying a sample of a chemical peel it was something we were both very interested in! Dana takes things back to basics and uses a few simple products, and it's very obvious from the photos she has amazing skin. Fingers crossed I'll look like that. In this picture she is 49 and only wearing eye make up: her skin is clearly glowing!

You can read our peel review here

L and I wrote about how much we love the AHA/BHA exfoliating cleanser from Murad here and the components of this product are found in peels, but in higher concentrations. We love this exfoliating cleanser as it really works so a peel for us would be the next step.

Chemical peels are something I've been very interested in. Dana's book goes into detail about the correct types of peels you can do at home and how to ensure you take care of your skin.

Dana makes some excellent really interesting points throughout the book that really make you think about the money you are spending on skincare. The book is well written and made me laugh at some points. At the moment my skin (and body) in general is really playing up. I'm hoping once my exams are over it'll get better.  At the moment I'm going back to basics and starting to pick up the bits so I can start the peel programme properly once my exams are over. It's pretty simple over 6-8 weeks you use a peel between 7-14 days apart and simply moisturise in between. This process removes all the bad layers of skin. Anyone with scarring and dark spots this is also great for and on her website you can see some great before and after photos! 

I'm really excited to start this new regime. I'm willing to try anything to improve my skin and if the photos on the website are anything to go by I can't wait.

With the chemical peels it's important to do them early evening and not before a big event. As it's a chemical peel it's likely to leave the skin looking a bit read (it is removing a layer of skin after all) think of it like when you get your eyebrows waxed, they stay red for a while!!

I'll be doing a full post on the chemical peels once I've tried it properly. The book is really interesting and I'd recommend it to anyone to read. It's great to make you really think about skincare! You can see her website http://www.theskinregime.com/ for more information, photos and even features Tanning Mom!

M xxx

After reading this book and laughing a lot at Dana's straight forward attitude to skincare, I am reeeeeeeeally excited to try out the first peel and hopefully get skin as gorgeous and glowing as hers at my current age of 25, let alone 49!

Using acids is a great way to exfoliate your skin to a deeper level and I'm personally hoping the tiny lines that are appearing on my forehead (thanks uni stress!) and scars/red marks from the wonderful acne I've been dealing with the past year will hopefully fade away. 

Looking at the pictures on the website lots of people have had great results with improved tone to their skin and decreased lines and I cannot wait!

We'll be posting about our experience with the peels asap :)

L xxx

Dana has allowed us to host an international  giveaway where one of our lovely followers can also win her book and a sample of a low strength chemical peel! Woohoooo! 

We are so pleased we can share this with you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As always with giveaways there are mandatory and optional choices, but it should be explanatory which are which.

The prize is a copy of The Skin Regime book and a sample peel which will be sent straight to you from Dana herself.

We can't wait to start our boot camps, what do you think of doing your own glycolic peel?? This is an international giveaway.

L and M xxx

CLOSED Christmas Giveaway!

Both me and M have had a long and busy couple of weeks and so haven't been posting as regularly as we normally would have.

Firstly we'd like to apologise for that, we've had new jobs, break ups and family deaths to deal with which has meant little time for blogging and tweeting as much as normal.

Image from Pinterest

Secondly with all the negative stuff going on, we decided to do our Christmas giveaway early!

This is to spread a little Christmas cheer a bit early, and also so you have the prize before Christmas in case there's a particular lipstick or eye shadow you were wanting for the party season!

So without further ado....

The prize is a giftcard to the value of £20.

This will be for either John Lewis, Boots or Debenhams - it's your choice!

We tried to pick one but only Debenhams has MAC, only JL has Liz Earle and Boots is a general all round winner.

The mandatory entries are the usual following via GFC and twitter, leaving your email so we can contact you and also leaving a comment to tell us what you'd buy with it (as we're obviously very nosy and want to know what everyone else wants!)

All other entries are optional but will increase your chance of winning, as will tweeting every day over the three weeks.

The winner will be chosen using Rafflecopter so enter using the widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Image from Pinterest

It's about time there was some happiness and festive fun!

Good luck to all who enter!

L and M xxx

Selfridge's Beauty Box winner!

After 2 weeks of entries we can finally announce the winner of the Selfridge's Beauty Box giveaway was Lola from Lola in the Lounge!

Congratulations Lola, I hope you enjoy the skincare products they're such a treat!

We'll be contacting you on twitter today (if we haven't already!) to get your details.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you to everyone who entered.

We'll be having another giveaway soon featuring some products hard to get your hands on in the UK, so look out for it soon!

L and M xxx

Selfridge's Beauty Box Part 2

As I'm sure you know by now as we've mentioned a lot (we are both just excited to give this away to someone as we were excited when we received ours) we are giving away one of the much spoke about Selfridge's beauty boxes. (here)

As we decided to split them I ended up with four of the products. Today I'll be talking about 3 of them as I haven't used the fourth as I had two serums and wanted to use one for as long as possible so I could give a better review on it.

First up is the BioEffect EGF Serum. This is a cellular activating serum. That is meant to restore, rehydrate and rejuvenate skin. This was the product I was most excited about trying. I'm like L and my spots have been leaving nasty red marks on my face that take ages to fade. I've also been keen to add a serum to my skin care system for a while.

BioEffect serum is great it only includes 9 ingredients which I love. It's great to see such a sort list of ingredients. One thing I'm confused about is on the box it says apply to clean cleansed skin at night yet on the boots website it says apply morning and night. I've been using it only at night.

So far I've really enjoyed it. I've used it every night for the past 9 days. I cleanse my face and apply four drops of it. It's a clear bottle with a cute dropper pipette. I prefer this style of bottle for serums as I think it's easier. It's quite a liquid serum so a little goes a long way. So far I've had no breakouts my skin is well conditioned and it hasn't made my skin feel over oily. I tend to apply this an hour before bed then apply a night cream and eye cream just before bed.

The 5ml sample size costs a huge £49.00 in boots so isn't something I'll be buying anytime soon but I do love it and was glad to get it in my box.

Next up is the Estelle and Thild organic lipbalm. This came in the flavour raspberry.

First up how cute is the packaging. I love all the pretty flowers on it. Secondly I love that it's in a tube. I hate lip balms you dip your finger in. Hence why I don't use Vaseline. Thirdly raspberry is a flavour I love. Finally it's a certified organic product containing great moisturising ingredients such as beeswax , jojoba oil, shea butter and olive oil. This is another product that only contains a total of 8 ingredients!

This is a very thick moisturising lipbalm that I love. The fragrance is subtle and not at all over powering. I love that I put it on at night and can still feel the after effects when I wake up in the morning.

It's colourless so great for putting over lipstick during the day. The lip balm costs £16 from here. This site offers free shipping and they have it in different colours. I really like this product and would pay the extra for it those months that I could afford to splurge.

Lastly for me is the Omorovicza mask. I was so excited to try this product but to be honest was a little disappointed with it.

In my opinion 5ml isn't a big enough sample of mask to try. To get a decent layer on your skin you need to use the whole pot and before commiting to spending £57 on the 50ml pot (available from House of Fraser) I'd like to have been able to try it more than once.

It does feel really soft on the skin and left my skin feeling very smooth and soft and there was no tightness or stinging which you can sometimes feel with a face mask.

But only being able to try it once means I won't be splashing out for this product as I feel the lush face masks do the same job at the moment. If I'd had enough to try it a little more maybe I'd have been convinced.

Are you hoping to win the giveaway to try any of these items? Do you already own any of them?

Love M

xxx

Selfridge's Box Part 1

I'm sure you're probably sick to death of hearing about the Selfridge's Beauty Box, especially if you didn't get one so apologies for that.

But we are doing a giveaway for one (woohoo!) and so we decided to do a more in depth post on our halves with mine being up today and M's being put up next Sunday.

I was super excited to try out the Stila One Step Correct Serum, the Philip B Katira hair mask and the Antipodes Avocado and Rosehip Divine Face Oil so that's what i chose from the box and M will be covering the other three items next week.

(We split a box between us, you can find more details on the giveaway page here)

First up is the Antipodes Organic Avocado and Rosehip Divine Face Oil all the way from New Zealand.

Antipodes are a brand that I'm really interested in because their skin care range uses only bioactive botanical ingredients, many of which are organic, and also have a strong ethical value.

Also I love that they have loads of scientific information on their website, I've fallen in love with a brand again!

The website states:

Scientifically shown to stimulate Type I collagen in human skin fibroblast cells by up to 51%*.

Give a lift to tired, stressed and sun-damaged skin with this nutrient-rich, certified organic face oil that helps to deliver essential nourishment for fresh, healthy skin. The superior collagen boosting action of avocado oil helps reduce the appearance of lines and age spots, while added rosehip helps avocado oil target scars and wrinkles.

Interesting!

Also how much do you love the bottle??

I love old style medicine bottles including these dropper style ones.

I mean obviously you'd have to use this for a few weeks to notice a big change and to give it time to work its magic....but I've been struggling big time with my skin recently.

I've been breaking out left right and centre and every spot seems to leave a really bright red scar that doesn't heal. Initially I was worried about using an oil on my face as my skin has always had issues with oil.

It's early days as I've only been using it since Wednesday but I am 100% sure that the scars have started fading which was not happening at all before.

I'm hoping over the next few weeks it will improve even more and hopefully will turn into the wonder product I've been waiting for!

I've tried every other product you can think of so here's hoping.

Next up is the Philip B Katira Hair Mask which I used this morning.

I've also been having a few issues with my hair being very dry considering I don't heat style it and have been taking good care of it.

First off I love the packaging as I love simple and anything talking about 'Magic' sounds good to me!

The website states:

PRODUCT DETAILS

A gentle yet surprisingly versatile rejuvenator for all hair types.

The unique, clear-gel formula sinks right in to plump up fine, limp strands or calm and smooth coarse, hard-to-manage hair.

HOW IT WORKS:

Pure Katira Extract – the "it" conditioner of the Middle East – fills in weak, damaged spots in the hair cuticle for added smoothness and strength. It also gives your hair a slight electrical charge – you’ll feel it during your blowout – that leaves it fantastically light and bouncy.

A high-tech L-Amino Acid Complex infuses your hair with a perfect dose of weightless, oil-free moisture and nourishing proteins for enhanced control and elasticity. Just one application will instantly revitalize your hair color, speed up blow-drying time, and lock in shine for a sexy, touchable, red-carpet finish.

It's also paraben and pthalate free (woo!)

I quite liked the consistency of this but it was quite thick and I can imagine needing a lot of it.

It says on the back about mixing it in with their conditioner, so I mixed it in with my current conditioner and applied it, leaving it for as long as I could (probably around 5/10 minutes).

My hair definitely feels in better condition though I can't agree that it took less drying time as I didn't feel there was any difference.

I was impressed to see that my hair doesn't feel heavy at all however so I will definitely be using this a few times this week with the hope of improving the condition over time but so far it's doing the job!

Last but definitely not least is the Stila One Step Color Correct Serum.

I didn't own any Stila products until a few conveniently found there way into poundland!

But I have ALWAYS lusted after this product.

Everyone can see how cool it looks but for me, being obsessed with science as I'm a complete geek this is the ultimate in make up.

It looks like a beautiful DNA helix or something which is just amazing (I'm going to stop waffling on don't worry!)

This is all written on the box but straight from their website:

The revolutionary new product contains 3 colour-correcting brighteners: 

• Green tone instantly neutralizes redness and conceals blemishes 
• Lavender tone counteracts sallow undertones for a vibrant, energised look 
• Peach tone brightens, illuminates and helps diminish the appearance of sun spots

Sooooo pretty!

Here's a few hand shots, not the most convenient but I don't have a working tripod or someone to take photos of my face where I don't look a bit silly! Plus my skin is awful!

The left is before, and on the right you can see how all three colours come out in each pump (the peach is slightly hidden underneath)

Then on the left the colour blend together SO easily and pretty much melt into your skin leaving a really nice finish, not shiny at all but the area looks really moisturised and even.

I can't wait until my skin is better and I can just apply this to my skin as I can imagine it looking great and makes everything so much easier in the mornings!

What do you think of the products? My current favourite has to be the Antipodes face oil, as it's a god send if it continues to get rid of my scars as nothing else I've tried has worked.

However I can imagine the Stila taking over if my skin clears up :)

If you would like to win these products and the other 3 also in the box, you can enter the giveaway here.

It's always worth a try and you can tweet each day for more entries!

L xxx

*CLOSED* Selfridge's Beauty Box....Giveaway!!

Good morning ladies!

I hope you've had a lovely week and are looking forward to the weekend as much as me!

As most of you will know, Selfridge's are opening up a new beauty hall which is in fact THREE times bigger than it was previously.

This is the kind of news dreams are made of!

When they announced that to celebrate this, they were creating their own version of the infamous beauty boxes making the rounds of the blogosphere this was quite frankly the highlight of my year!

Having seen a few bloggers post about the contents I drooled for a little while and then hastily signed up, and text M to hurry up and do it too!

When the time came we obviously missed the original 50/100 boxes that were snapped up before 7am because we completely forgot (i.e. I was asleep!)

However we were both ON FIRE when the second lot (around 125 more) of them came out and managed to snap up one each and were massively excited.

We'd been thinking about doing a giveaway for a while having hit another milestone in our views and generally just to thank anyone who reads our blog and interacts with us on twitter as we have really enjoyed writing it over the past few months.

We met up one evening in the past few days and were discussing the contents to find that actually we could split a box between us as there were certain products we wanted more than others.....and being conscious of the massive back log of products we both have to get through we decided to share. (see Beauty Rehab here!)

Which basically leads me to say that against all of our beauty hoarding tendencies (it almost breaks me into a sweat thinking about it!) we now have a brand new, fully stocked Selfridge's box TO GIVE AWAY.

Yes.

To. Give. Away. (!!!)

So, if you missed out when furiously refreshing your page or didn't get your details online in time then this is your chance to get your hands on one of the 200(ish) boxes.

Firstly, here's a reminder of the box and the products that you could win:

A little slice of heaven!

Omorovicza Deep Cleansing Mask and Aesop Parsley Seed Anti-oxidant Serum

Estelle and Thild Lip Balm and Bioeffect EGF Serum (EGF-Epidermal Growth Factor)

Philip B Katira Hair Mask and the booklet that explains all of the brands and products, as well as details on the new beauty hall

Stila One Step Correct serum and Antipodes Avocado and Rosehip Divine Face Oil

Drool worthy aren't they???

What we love most is that they're from all over the world (incl. New Zealand, Budapest, Hungary and Sweden) and many contain natural and organic products, something that we are both very conscious of, and so this is the perfect give away for us.

So, onto the small print:

The winner will be drawn by rafflecopter so it is randomised.

The giveaway is open only to people in the UK. 

The winner will be contacted within 48 hours of the end of the giveaway, if there is no response after 1 week another winner will be generated. (remember to leave all your details!)

Following via GFC and on twitter, as well as leaving a comment and supplying your email address are mandatory but all others are optional. 

If you do enter, all options will be checked so be warned ;)

Good luck!

L and M xxx

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(please note that the time for the giveaway is in EST as I couldn't change it, meaning it is set to 5 hours behind UK time)

Giveaway Winner!!!

So the giveaway ended yesterday. Thanks to all who entered!!!

And The winner of these goodies is .......

Congratulations Maddy, hope you enjoy these goodies!!

Love L and M

xxx