Selfridges Haul - Exclusives and Limited Editions

So I've been a bit naughty.  I may have stumbled across some limited edition items on Selfridges.com and then some wonderful yellow boxes may have appeared at my house.  Tut tut.

Such beautiful packages.  Warning: everything I bought is limited edition and exclusive to Selfridges so credit cards at the ready if you want to get your beauty obsessed hands on these gems.

Here they are...

First of all I got the limited edition candle for Bourjois' 150th anniversary.  I remember being obsessed with the round pot eye shadows during my teens, I thought they were the height of sophistication.  

This little candle comes in a ceramic/glass holder and has a picture of the iconic Babette (The original Bourjois muse from the 20's).  This thing smells amazing just like their blushes and also exactly like parma violets.  I have spent a strange amount of time sniffing it, though I have yet to light it.  I plan on using the holder a way of storage cotton buds or some such beauty item.  If I''m honest I bought it more for that than for its candle properties.  This was £9.99 and can be found here.  

The next item I bought was the Kissing Make-up bag designed by Charlotte Tilbury.  I love all of the famous lips that adorn one side and the phrase on the other side makes me giggle every time I read it.  

If I'm honest I have no need for another make-up bag but I fell in love with it.  Plus it was designed for the charity Kids Company, so really I didn't have a choice.  Right?   It has a zip that comes a long way around so it can be opened up really wide which is so handy when sods law strikes and the thing you want is waaaayyyyyy at the bottom of your bag.  This cost just £15.00 (for a good cause) and can be found here. 

The last item I ordered was the Selfridges Festival Beauty Box.  This little baby is full of lots of goodies to see you through the collision of music and mud that is the festival season.  The retail price of all the beauty items in this box is £110 but Selfridges is treating us to the whole lot for only £25 and you can find it here.  After weighing up what I was and wasn't interested in I decided the numbers were on my side and that this was a bit of a bargain.  In this lovely yellow box there is: Topshop lip crayon in Powder Room, Sol de Janeiro Coconut Water Cooling Mist, Eyeko Skinny Liquid Eyeliner in Navy, Coloursmash Hair Shadow, Violent Lips Lip Appliques in Warm Rainbow, Illamasqua Liquid Metal metallic cream, Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Moxie lip gloss, Azature nail polish in Champagne, Cowshed anti-bacterial hand gel, NPW mini scented hand & face wet wipes and a NPW chubby glitter stick.  I will be doing a full post on this box soon and will be give you my first opinions on each product.

So that's my little haul.  I can honestly say I love everything I bought.  It came to about £55 with postage and packing and came ridiculously quickly.  I couldn't be more impressed by my first online Selfridges shopping experience.

Have you bought any of these things?  What do you think of them?

Magazine Freebies - October 2012

This month we are very lucky in the 'freebie' department.  I do love a good freebie, and not one of those cheat ones where you have to go to a counter or send away.  A good old fashioned on-the-front-of-the-magazine freebie.  Today I picked up two magazines, In Style and Marie Claire (which I don't usually buy), purely because of the free gifts.  Naughty I know, but it gives me something to read on the train and I get a little beauty treat as well.  Win win.

First up we have In Style and their Benefit goodies.  I was extra chuffed with this one because it was on offer in Tesco, £2.50  instead of £3.80, bargain. I picked up Bene tint as it was the only thing left but I am quite glad as I know I like the product and this is a nice travel size or good for having in my handbag.  The other things available (if you can find them) are Sun Beam and Cha Cha tint.  I am tempted to keep my eyes open, especially for Cha Cha tint as I would really like to try that one.

 

I have never bought In Style before but I have to say I rather enjoyed it.  My favourite bits were the interview with Chloe Moretz (is it strange to be in awe of a 15 year old?), their profile on the new gothic beauty trend and their A-Z of beauty.  The A-Z of beauty included many of my personal favourites and has made me think about doing my own version as a blog series.

The other magazine that I bought was Marie Claire.  The free gift with this one was a 30ml tube of L'occitane's hand cream.  It was available in various scents; shea butter, date bouquet, rose petals and mango flower.  I decided on mango flower as I thought it sounded a bit different (plus I am a sucker for all things mango).  I'll tell you right now it smells amazing.  Personally I think it smells like mango not mango flower but it is lovely either way.  I think this would be a perfect handbag hand cream except for the fact that it is rather luxurious (and expensive, were you to replace it) so I think I would save it for special occasions.  I am tempted to pick up the shea butter version as well but I'm not sure I can justify it.

The magazine itself is fatter than In Style but this could be down to extra adverts.  Either way I liked that it felt more substantial in my hands.  My favourite parts of this magazine were the interviews with women in love with the styles of different eras, an article about the quest for finding the perfect perfume and a page of 'Good Princess' vs 'Evil Queen' makeup looks.

Controlled Naughtiness

It has been almost 3 weeks since I started my Spending ban (see my reasons for doing so here). When I started I gave myself 5 (seemingly) simple rules.   One of which was "If I see something from my wishlist heavily discounted I can buy it as long as I don't use it until Project Pan is over."  

Well, whilst browsing my beloved ASOS I spotted that they had #3 on my wishlist - Benefit 'Hello Flawless' powder foundation in Shell in the sale for only £17.50.  So I caved in a bought it along with a couple of other, non-beauty, items.

Indeed as I was writing this post the doorbell rung to tell me that my lovely postman (who is probably relieved to be lugging less parcels to my house) had brought my ASOS package.  I was pleasantly surprised as I only ordered a couple of days ago.  Well done ASOS.

So I decided to document my opening of said parcel and turn this into a mini haul post .  Enjoy :)

All my goodies :)

Here is the  Benefit 'Hello Flawless' My Holy Grail powder foundation.  I cannot wait until project pan is over so that I can use this lovely new one.  I will do a full review soon.   As you can see below it comes with both a brush (that I'm not super keen on) and a little sponge so that you can vary how much product you apply.  This was £17.50 (down from £25)

Next up because of the fickle weather we are currently suffering in England I bought this beautiful umbrella from Ella Doran for Fulton.  I have a huge love of all things butterfly particularly when they remind me of old natural history prints.  It folds up lovely and small, perfect for my bag and doesn't weigh too much either.  I am looking forward to seeing how it holds up in the next lot of showers.  This was also in the ASOS sale for £12 (down from £20)

Another sale item that I just couldn't resist at £3.50  (down from £9) was this beautiful Pieces Noam Scarf.  It is a really peculiar shape, almost a kite rather than a square.  I bought it to tie onto the handle of one of my bags to make it look a little more summery and more 'me'.  I am really glad I picked this up as I reckon it was a bit of a bargain.

Lastly, and probably my favourite, is this amazing bird print satchel from the amazing Kate Sheridan.  It was £36.50 (down from £155)  It is just wonderful, the fabric is really sturdy and the straps are made from leather so it will last really well.  This is my third Kate Sheridan bag and I wear my other ones all the time.  She is fast becoming one of my favourite British designers.  I love that it is subtle but still quirky.  The colours mean it will go with pretty much anything and the size means that I may have found my new day bag :)

 Have any of you purchased any of these things...or anything else good from the ASOS sale?

I wish, I wish, I wish

As promised this is a wishlist of the products that I will want to buy after Project Pan.  I realize it seems counter-intuitive to think about buying whilst on a spending ban but it has made me focus on which products I really want and why I want them.  It also means that hopefully when I have finished Project Pan I won't go on a mad spending spree and end up in the exact same position.  If I do purchase these during my project pan they will, out of embarrassment and shame, turn purple.

Therefore I have made a list of the 10 products that I am currently lusting after.

1) Real Techniques Brushes (from the amazing Samantha Chapman of Pixiwoo fame).  I already have the  Core Collection and use them nearly everyday so I would love to get a few more.  In particular the Travel Essentials.  You can find a list of stockists here.

2) UNII Palettes so that I can organize my, hopefully smaller, makeup collection.  These have been getting really good reviews.  Plus another selling point for me, because I am shallow, is the fact that they are beautifully designed and come in various pastel colours.  Perfect for colour coordinating.  You can see all the beautiful shades here.

3) Benefit 'Hello Flawless' powder foundation in Shell.  This is my favourite foundation of all time.  I am a powder or tinted moisturizer girl at heart and I am sad to say that I am very nearly out of this.  It pains me because I won't be allowed to buy another one due to the fact that I do own other powder foundations (usually either slightly to light or too dark for me - so I may be slightly odd coloured for a while).  You can see it on the Benefit website here .  (Update:  I caved in and bought this -read my attempts at justifying it here)

4) Nyx Blush in Taupe.  I have read on countless blogs that this blush is a wonderful contour colour for paler skin so I am anxious to try it out, especially since it is such a reasonable price.  There a few other of their blushes which catch my eye but Taupe is the one that I will start with, you can see it here.  Let me know which Nyx Blushes are your favourites.

5) Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti.  I already have several of these in other colours and I think I could write an entire post on my love for them.  I have barely been wearing anything else on my lips in over a month.  They are perfection.  There are millions of blog and youtube reviews of these so I won't add to the numbers but take my word for it - if you haven't tried these you really should.  You can see all the available colours here

6) Max Factor Max Effect Mini Nail Polish in Fantasy Fire.  This nail varnish is beautiful, and rumoured to be a dupe of the impossible to find Clarins 230.  I would only ever use it as a top coat as it is said to be fairly sheer but the effect it gives is gorgeous.  You can see a swatch and wonderful review here and see all the Max Factor nail colours here.

7) Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish.  This has been all over the blogs this year and I would love to try it once I have used up all of my other various skin care items.  The adorable Zoella did a review on her blog of this and a couple of other Liz Earle goodies which also sound incredible.  You can see the, surprisingly reasonably priced, cleaner here.

8) Alpha H Liquid Gold is supposedly a skin miracle worker.  I am quite lucky in that I do have good skin, but I do suffer from redness and this has been reported by some as helping this.  It is quite pricey but my curiosity has gotten the better of me so it made the wish list.  You can see a review here and buy it from here and various other places.

9) Moroccan Oil is, I'm hoping, going to be the thing that saves my hair.  I have recently had a slight dye mishap (I'll explain later) and my hair, which is uncontrollable at the best of times, is telling me exactly how angry it is with me.  This has had fabulous reviews from so many people that I can't help but think it would help at least a little.  I just can't decide whether, when I take the plunge, if I should go for the 25ml or the 100ml.

10) And now for something completely different...JolieBox.  I would love to get myself a subscription to this beauty box.  From what I have seen online it is the one that appeals most to me.  I also think that receiving a few luxury samples each month could help me fight my desire to go out and buy more products.  Plus I really do love getting post, especially when it is beauty products in a cute as a button box type of post.  Plus if you sign up for longer periods of time you save a little bit of money as you can see here.


Wow, that was a long post.  Well done if you made it this far.  As Project Pan proceeds I may swap things off and onto this list so that I have to remain strict even after my spending ban.  What is on your wish list at the moment?