The best Beauty Advent Calendars 2014 + A giveaway

I don't know about you but my inbox is fairly quiet on the whole 'Christmas' thing right now, there was a flurry of activity around the beginning of the month and now, well not so much.

One thing I am seeing more and more of however is the launching of Beauty a advent Calendars, remember last there when there was a stampede into Benefit for their calendar, only for them to run out and be found on eBay for almost quadruple the price? Well this year it seems there has been an explosion in Beauty Advent Calendars and having spent a few days reading about them through various means, I thought I would share them with you - one thing to note... Why is there nothing for the men folk?  

Tesco - Costing just £50 instead of the actual retail value of a whopping £125, Tesco have announced they are to launch an advent calendar this year. Contents include Nip + Fab, Korres, Tanya Burr, and Dr Lewinn's plus many more.

The Benefit advent calendar is back and it is packed with mini products from the brand's bestsellers as well as some beauty accessories which look too cute. Priced at £60, it becomes available at benefitcosmetics.co.uk and debenhams.com from 16th October

For £85 you might want to look at the Selfridges Enchanted Spells advent calendar which has a selection of fragrances, makeup and skincare from some amazing beauty brands such as Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, Kiehl's and Victor & Rolf to name but a few. To get your hands on it, go to the Selfridges website and sign up for notifications of its release.

The advent calendar that I am excited comes from the Liberty. Designed to look just like the actual London department store, inside each of the drawers you will find the most amazing luxury beauty treats such as NARS, Diptyque, Dermalogica, Kiehls, Eve Lom and Laura Mercier to name just a few! This calendar is Available in store and at liberty.co.uk from November and costs £125

No.7 comes next and again, I am liking the look of this purse friendly advent calendar. The items inside are said to be worth a massive £130, this calendar is packed with skincare and makeup must-haves which is said to include the iconic No7 Protect & Perfect Intense Day Cream. Available at Boots stores and online from 29th October and is priced at £35

Elemis is next. I am a huge Elemis fan and this calendar Priced at £59.50 and is Available now from timetospa.co.uk.  It differs slightly to the other calendars in that it is. 12 days of Christmas calendar which means, you only get 12 doors to open.  That said inside you will find products such as 

• Pro-Collagen Cleansing Balm 20g
• Pro-Collagen Marine Cream 15ml
• Pro-Collagen Oxygenating Night Cream 15ml
• Pro-Radiance Illuminating Flash Balm 7ml
• Papaya Enzyme Peel 15ml
• Cellular Recovery Skin Bliss Capsules 14 caps
• Revitalising Babassu Facial Wipes 4 sachets
• Frangipani Monoi Shower Cream 50ml
• Frangipani Monoi Body Oil 35ml
• Skin Nourishing Shower Cream 50ml
• Pro-Radiance Hand & Nail Cream 20ml
• Treat Your Feet Foot Cream 20ml

L'Occtaine is next and again there are not 25 or 24 doors to open but instead there are 13. Why? The holiday tradition in Provence is to have 13 deserts on the festival table, so with that in mind, this calendar has 13 treats waiting for you. From fragrance, body and skincare surprise are behind each door. Available at loccitane.co.uk from 3rd November this calendar is priced at £45

W7 advent Calendar - I have featured this already, but have to include because it is such good value for money costing just £19.99. Behind each of the doors you will find a sample sized treat from the W7 range such as nail polishes, mascara, lipstick and one or two other surprises. Date for release TBC.

At just £49 Ciaté's Mini Mani Manor is exceptionally cute. Behind each door you are likely to find this seasons must haves, some best-selling shades, texture polishes and even festive transfers. Nailed it. Available now at Selfridges, John Lewis, ASOS and www.ciate.co.uk and if you go to your local TK Maxx you can find them for just £19.99!

The latest release to reach my inbox, is the Jo Malone Calendar, just look at how pretty it all is/ Costing an eye-watering £250, it is sure to sell out quickly, so keep your eyes peeled if you want it! This calendar is filled with 24 fragrances and mini body lotions.  

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a candle or five would it? Well this years Yankee Candle advent Calendar is one on my short list of calendars I'd like, I mean how cute. Priced at around £23 (prices differ on a few sites) and available now, this 3D shaped calendar is packed full of Yankee a Candles, some of those scents include Candy Cane Lane, Christmas Memories, Christmas Garland, Spiced Orange and Snowflake Cookie to name just a few and....there is an added surprise behind one of the doors, but you will find no spoiler here telling you what it is!

The Body Shop which will retail for £55, with total contents are valued at £80

I am sure over the next free weeks other beauty calendars will be announced... Over the last few years there has been Liz Earle, Boots and even Lancôme and L'Oreal which I've managed to find mentioned online.

With all of that in mind and in celebration of the fact Beautyqueenuk has just hit 500,000 page views, yes that is Half a Million... Woah! I thought it would be a good idea to create my own Beauty Advent Calendar for someone to open...it will be filled with things that I love and use. All you need to do is complete the Rafflecopter form below to take part - Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So which a Advent Calendar are you hoping to get your hands on this year if any?

W7 Christmas Product Launch Event!

A few weeks ago I attended a W7 event with the lovely Kimberley from Kimberleys beauty blog and as soon as we arrived the lovely PR girls were on hand to show us around, introduce us to new products, answer all our questions and let us swatch as much as we wanted too.  The range of products we got to see was huge, there was every kind of make-up product you could think of, nail polishes, hair dye and some new products in the skincare range.

I am quite a fan of W7 especially their In The Buff palette which you can see HERE, it is quite a good dupe of a well known brand!  The products from W7 are high street based making them affordable and the quality is really good, I am lucky that in my local shopping centre there is a W7 cart, so I can get my hands on quite a few products.

The first items we looked at was the new skin care range first which includes six products at some really amazing prices, so we have:

• Dream Clean Cleanser which has an RRP of £3.95 -  If you like a hint of Lavender in your products, then you will like this, it is quite a subtle hint and not too over the top.
• Wakey Wakey Day Dream Cream with an RRP of £3.95 - This is like a balm rather than a cream and it absorbs itself really quickly into the skin leaving no trace it was ever there behind. Instead you have soft, smooth skin.
• Nighty Night Dream Cream with an RRP £3.95- The night cream isn't as thick as your usual eye creams, I often find that some high street brands have quite a thick formula which are quite heavy on the skin, this one doesn't and again it absorbs quickly.
• Love Your Hands with an RRP of £3.95 - This is a citrus scented hand cream that leaves your hands feeling soft and smooth.
• Eye Love It with an RRP of £3.95 - This eye cream has a very light texture so it absorbs quickly and doesn't feel as though it is clinging to your skin.

What I loved about all of these products was the firstly their names, quite quirky and fun and for me they stand out because of the bright pink packaging, put alongside other products in stores like Boots.

One of the best products of the night for me, which I featured on my Instagram, was the Christmas Advent Calendar! Oh yes, it is a good one and it is only £12!! Having had the chance to have a look at it, see the products inside it, I can only tell you that it is brilliant value for money, not to mention a little bit of fun and much cheaper than some of the alternatives which are about to hit all of our inboxes I am sure!

For those of you who have never comes across W7 products before, if you look closely enough you will see a slight resemblance to some other brands which I mentioned on the night and what I like about this is that they are giving said brands a real run for their money, would you pay £20+ for a mascara if a £4.99 does a better job? No, I thought not.  W7 have a huge range of products such as eyelashes, mascaras, blushers, bronzers, foundations, lip crayons, chubby sticks, lip and cheek sticks and a chubby bronzer which I was quite taken with, quite a novel concept which works really well and is on my list of products to try.

After swatching everything to death, always the fun part, it was time to relax with some bubbles and play with an enormous number of nail polishes.  I found it quite relaxing sitting there, choosing which colours I liked the look of, apply them to my nail wheel and if it took my fancy add a bit or glitter or some other polishes to it.

You can view the entire W7 range of products on their website here and purchase them online via other sites, all of which you can see listed on their website.

Have you ever tried any of the products from W7? Do you like any of the ones ive shown here?

Real Techniques and W7 In The Buff Giveaway!

Just a few weeks ago this happened:

Literally was so happy because to me that is ALOT of people... add to that 2500 of you follow me on Twitter, my instragram numbers are growing as is everything else my blog is linked to.  So, I decided to run a competition to thank everyone who reads it and in doing so, have bought with my own money, two products that I am absolutely loving right now

Real Techniques are a brand bloggers love and I have until recently always sat on the fence about them until I got this actual kit.  It is the on location travel essentials and comprises of an Essential Foundation Brush, a Multi-task Brush and a Domes Shadow Brush - all of which are totally fantastic and I have a review coming of them soon.

Then we have the W7 In The Buff Natural Nudes Eye Colour Palette which again is superb and is mentioned on my blog as a bargain purchase I got somewhere.  Since I bought it, I have used it alot, obviously I am not giving you my Palette, I have bought two and it looks something like this:

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is complete the rafflecopter.

Terms and Conditions

If you are under 18, please ensure you have parental permission to enter as you'll have to provide me with your address details should you win. 

This competition is worldwide. The winner will be chosen at random by Rafflecopter and emailed, with the winners name printed on the Rafflecopter widget once announced, all of this will happen withing 24 hours of the competition closing. All entries will be verified, with any false, incomplete or duplicate entries being removed from the giveaway entirely.

Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Shopping my Haul...

I have just taken part in a beauty blogger swap and all of the details will appear in a new post in due course.  

One of the best things about taking part in the swap is shopping for bits and pieces that your swappee will hopefully really like.  When I went to buy the bits for my box there was quite a lot of bargains to be had I found and well erm yes I did do a little bit of a mini haul and this is what I bought.

You might have guessed by now that I am a bit if a lip balm addict and can never have too many of them.  So when I saw this eos lip balm on offer in a 99p store for you guessed it 99p there was no way I was going to leave it behind and as I am yet to try these out for myself, I am looking forward to opening it.  

I also picked up this Papaya Gold Paw Paw Balm in Boots which was on offer and I got with a voucher I had lurking in my purse (winning) so instead of being £5.99 I got it for just £1.99. Described as Being a Moisturising Balm enriched with Bio Active Manuka Honey 20+, is a topical balm that soothes, relieves and moisturises dry, sensitive, chaffed and irritated skin and dry chapped lips. Can be used by people who are prone to eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis. Also suitable for children.

Also in the 99p I came across this Ohyo collapsable water bottle which I have reviewed before on this blog HERE and they are just so handy to have in your handbag, especially if like me you drink a lot of water but don't want to have to keep big bottles in your bag.

The next item I managed to get my hands on was this W7 In The Buff palette which has made its way into many blog posts that I have read and in the local shopping centre that I went too there is a W7 stall and they had a sale on, this palette cost me just £2.99 when it usually retails for around £6, so I think I have got myself a bit of a bargain here.

 Next on my list was this set of four reed diffusers from Marks and Spencer and again I had a voucher that needed to be used up, so I ordered them online and went to collect in store, they retail for £25 and cost me nothing essentially.  I love have reed diffusers around the house and these scents appealed to me more than anything else and I can't wait to open them and give them a try.

The final item from my haul comes from TK Maxx, it is always dangerous going in there because I never seem to leave empty handed, admittedly I did not go in there for the item below which is a hard case keyboard for my iPad, but when I saw it had been reduced from £79.99 to just £9.99 I was not going to leave it behind and having opened it and used it already, I am not quite sure how I have managed without it before now.

So there you have my little mini haul which cost all of £17 instead of £126.96 and therefore I think I have got myself quite a few bargains!  What do you think?

Have you shared a haul recently? Link me below in a comment so I can come along and read.