Best Beauty Crackers 2023

Beauty Advent Calendars, Beauty Edits, Beauty Chests and Boxes, everything you need for 2023 but there is one or two things missing that I am here to share the best of - starting with Beauty Crackers.  For the past 3-4 years, beauty crackers have really taken off and most brands have something to offer and here are some of the best ones.

ASOS (£12) - Featured in this post, ASOS has released three Beauty Crackers with three different themes and inside each one you will find Must-Have products for your skin, makeup and Self-care.

Bioderma Christmas Cracker 2023 (£15) - The ultimate gift this Christmas featuring three cleansing and body care Bioderma heroes - Sensibio Cleansing Micellar Water Sensitive Skin 100ml, Atoderm Intensive Balm Ultra-Soothing Emollient Cream 45ml and Atoderm Moisturising Stick 4g. On sale with Lookfantastic.

By Terry Opulent Star Stunning Eyes Cracker (£34) - The Stunning Eyes beauty cracker includes the best-selling cream eyeshadow Ombre Blackstar in 'Bronze Moon' and the mini-to-go version of the iconic Mascara Terrybly in 'Black Partis-Pris'. On sale with Lookfantastic.

Cult Beauty - This year Cult Beauty is offering three different beauty crackers - Hair Care, Self Care or Make-up.  There is currently a waiting list to join to get your hands on these crackers, but I suspect they won't be around for long.

John Lewis (£18) - Alongside their amazing Advent Calendar and Christmas boxes, John Lewis is offering two Christmas Crackers.  The first is the The Glam Cracker Makeup Gift Set which is worth £50 and is described as featuring an assortment of 3 deluxe glam icons, which include Ellie Saab, Benefit and Carolina Herrera. The second offering is The Shimmer Cracker Makeup Gift Set and it too features an assortment of 3 deluxe shimmer icons, which include Laura Mercier, Narciso Rodriguez and Bobbi Brown. You can find them both on sale with John Lewis.

Jo Malone (£36) - If the Jo Malone Advent Calendar is out of your budget range, then there is an offering of two crackers at very reasonable prices. The Cream Christmas Cracker featuring the Gingerbread design features three miniatures: a Poppy & Barley 9ml Cologne, English Pear & Freesia 30ml Body & Hand Wash and Wood Sage & Sea Salt 15ml Body Crème. Then the second option is the Christmas Cracker again in a gingerbread-inspired design and inside you will find a 9ml cologne in the fresh woody scent of Wood Sage & Sea Salt, a luscious 30ml English Pear & Freesia Body & Hand Wash and a 15ml hand cream scented with zesty Lime Basil & Mandarin. You can find both of these crackers on sale with Jo Malone.

L'Occitane Hand and Body Crackers (£22.50) - Overflowing with delightful in-shower oils and nourishing hand creams, surprise yourself (or your loved ones) with sweet-smelling skin and body care staples from the Almond, Verbena, Shea and Cherry Blossom Collections.  On sale with Cult Beauty.

Margaret Dabbs London Fabulous Christmas Cracker (£18.20) - Inside this beautifully Golden cracker you will find the Margaret Dabbs London’s Intensive Hydrating Foot Lotion, a perfect treat for your feet. On sale with Cult Beauty.

Molton Brown (£20) - Every Christmas table needs a Molton Brown Cracker and with a choice of two it is a tough decision as to which one. If Woody and Aromatic is your scent choice then this is set you need, but if you prefer Floral and Fruity it's this set.

Next Ready, Set, Party Cracker (£10.50) - Said to be worth over £42, the Next Ready, Set, Party Cracker is filled with all your makeup must-haves including YSL Rouge Pur Couture Lipstick Mini in shade 01 and Nars Orgasm X Blush. On sale with Next.

Nursem Caring Hand Cream Cracker Set (£29.99) - This is a set of 6 crackers and inside each one is a 30ml Caring Hand Cream. On sale with Boots.

Sarah Chapman Festive Glow Duo (£25) - This set includes the Sarah Chapman’s best-selling Ultimate Cleanse, as well as Overnight Facial. On sale with Space NK.

There will be many more Crackers, Baubles and Tree Decorations released over the coming weeks and as and when I get the information I will update this post, but this does give an insight as to what is currently on offer, if you want something a little bit different to give as a gift.

*this post contains PR samples and/or Affiliate Links unless indicated otherwise - you can learn more on my Disclaimer page.

Why I Use Pinterest for my Blog

I have been blogging for what feels like forever, in actual fact it is just shy of 8 years and during that time I have managed to maintain some sort of routine which see's at least one blog post go live every week day and if I have found the time, they might also appear at weekends too.  I am no blogging expert by any means, I tend to blog how I want, when I want and everything I use is pretty much self-taught, except SEO - does anyone even understand it anyway?

Image Credit

One thing I wish I had understood sooner is Pinterest, if you use it right, it is one of the most valuable tools your blog can have and right now, I don't understand any blogger who does not use it. Pinterest is an easy way to promote your blog articles to a much wider audience than you might find on Facebook or Twitter. 

There are two questions I am asked quite a lot is "Why do you use Pinterest" as a blogger and "How do you use Pinterest". 

Why I use Pinterest 

In answer to the first question on why I use Pinterest, the reason I use it is because in a world full of bloggers, of which there is a lot of us, I need and want to find new and interesting ways to share my content and of course bring traffic to my site – For me, Pinterest does this and as I have mentioned, it does so to a much wider audience than I am likely to find on both Facebook and Twitter, even Instagram to a degree. 

Pinterest is very much a visual social media platform where people, like you and I can find inspiration and ideas for all kinds of interests and hobbies. I have boards dedicated to quotes, renovations of household rooms, food and drink and even seasonal content that might, at some stage, give me inspiration for a blog post. Each and every idea on Pinterest is represented by a Pin, that pin is an image that people search for and save to their own board, for bloggers, that pin can link back to your blog/website and as well as driving traffic, it can also help drive affiliate sales too. 

How I use Pinterest 

In answer to the second question, it is quite a complex. With most of the posts I share on my blog, there is often an accompanying Pinterest Pin. I don't tend to do this for every blog post, just the ones that I feel will gain some traction and bring traffic to my blog. 

However, before I make any pins, I always check what people are pinning from my boards to their own as well as what topics are popular right now. It could also be the case that I make a pin for a post and don't share it for a few months, but not everyone uses Pinterest the way I do. 

Importance of Fonts and Templates 

What I love about making pins is that I have the freedom to use a fancy font that I don't get to use on my blog. As my platform is Blogger, I am quite limited as to what fonts I can use, though in the past 18 months it has got much better, but let us not mention those latest additions to Instagram Stories. Once I have chosen my font and my template, I am free to create as many pins as I can. 

I use Canva and Picmonkey to make my pins, something I have referenced in previous blog posts, they allow me a wide scope when it comes to creating a pin with easy to follow set-ups and templates already in place. However, there is an occasion when I want to add a little something extra, usually when I am creating a Pinterest College, such as the one I have just done to promote my Christmas Beauty Advent Post, for that, I wanted a Christmas themed font and nothing I saw on other of the two mentioned sites had something I liked, so instead I downloaded a few font bundles and use those. 

There are plenty of sites who allow you to use their font bundles free of change, some ask you to pay towards the upkeep of the site they are from and others ask a whole load of money to use their products. 

I tend to make a lot of my pins using my iphone 11 as it is so quick and easy to do. So, when I am downloading fonts, I want to use something that you can read easily enough on a phone screen as well as a laptop screen. Font Bundles gives me the ability to do just that without too much difficulty and as a website, it is really easy to use, regardless of how you make your pins.  However, now with the introduction of AI, it seems businesses are employing and encouraging the use if artificial intelligence (AI) in a variety of ways to help them to improve efficiencies, save time and decrease costs, in the same way, it is now possible to do exactly the same when generating captions for your pins. Industrial Vision Systems give an insight as to how AI can help spot patterns to help you to optimise your work, in this case, finding your niche and making it work best for you.  For years now we have been able to use analytical data to find the best time ti post, but with the inclusion of AI, we can now find the sentences and tags to help further that work.

Afterwards

Once my pins have been made, I always install them into my blog post before uploading them to Pinterest. I want to make sure that it is clear they are mine and belong to me. There have been cases when other people have stolen my pins and claimed them as their own and it is a whole lot of hassle to report them and prove they are yours. So as long as the pin is on my blog post and has been for some time, then I am safe in the knowledge I can prove it is mine. 

As it stands, Pinterest is my biggest source of organic blog traffic, much more than Google, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Since using Pinterest, my blog traffic has almost trebled and on posts where I use a pin to promote it, I can often see much higher results than if I don’t use a pin. 

Pinterest is a free to use tool for your blog. If you don’t use it you should. I learnt how to get the most of out of by trial and error. No amount of reading what other people do will teach you everything you need to know, but it is a good place to start. For me, it is the most valuable tool I have and it is one I will use whilst it is still an option for me to do so.

*this post contains PR samples and/or Affiliate Links unless indicated otherwise - you can learn more on my Disclaimer page.

The Perfect Picture Gift with My-Picture

Now Halloween has been and gone, I can start to think about Christmas, songs are already playing in Supermarkets and the decorations are out. But deciding what to purchase for who can be an absolute minefield, so I have a brilliant idea for you and it is with My-Picture.co.uk. 

My-Picture is a website that is dedicated to turning all of your photographs into an amazing gifting option. Like most people, I take a lot of photos, mainly of my three cats but when I've taken them, it is knowing what to do with them, often they just end up being saved to my Cloud and occasionally I will sit and scroll to relive the memories, but what if you could do more with them? The obvious answer is to create a Photo Book, something I have done in the past as gifts for parents and grandparents, but what is there was something much more fun.

It all started with a passion for pictures and art and a want to combine the two. With the realisation that many people placed beautiful art on their walls while putting their own photographic creations into a box in their bedroom. They knew there had to way to change this and make it easier to display those beautiful images we have all captured.

So, I have given the task to create some gifts and I first looked at creating a City Map Poster which could have been used to create a unique gift for our wall, maybe of a memory or a special place, but other items caught my attention.

The first item was a Snow Globe Photo Frame in which I chose a photograph of my two kittens when I managed to get them to pose together, as shown above. What drew me to this product was being able to choose not only the photo but the choice of 4 glitter types.

Made using an Acrylic glass frame which is 25mm thick, it is sturdy enough to stand on its own anywhere on a flat surface and doesn't need to go on a wall and it is just stunning. Priced at just £11, it won't break the bank and is the perfect way to share a special moment with a loved one.

The second item I chose was a set of 5 MixMag Magnets (there is also an option to choose 10 magnets) and again, you can use them to create a really special gift.  Again, there is a choice of 4 different designs for your magnets:

• Square,
• Circle,
• Heart, or
• Vintage

I chose the Vintage option which shows the magnets designed to look like a Polaroid photo with the stylish white border.  They are each measured at 6 x 8 cm in dimension, so they are definitely noticeable and again, I chose special photographs of my cats, both past and present and every day I get to look at them as they are placed on my fridge.  Priced at just £8, they are brilliant and again, the quality is exceptional.

The final item is really personal and also a bit of fun. I chose to create a Personalised Blanket.  With the weather now truly cold, wet and miserable, what more coud you want than to be wrapped up in a blanket that features your loved one?

This time, the Blanket features a photo of my husband and it is a great gift for myself, maybe him or my Mother-in-Law.  Described as being a luxuriously downy and super-soft blanket, it is made from polar fleece with an extra layer of premium plush. Available in three different sizes, I chose the 150 x 100 cm version for just £42 and it is worth every single penny, machine washable, super snuggly and the print quality surpassed my expectations.

Hopefully this post has given you some ideas when it comes to creating a personalised gift and if you scroll down, there is a discount code especially for you to use.

Get a 15% Discount with My Code.

If you are thinking of heading over to My-Picture.co.uk to created your own gift, then I have a discount code for all orders above £40 you can get 20% off by using the code BEAUTYQUEEN15 just click here to start shopping now!

*this post contains PR samples and/or Affiliate Links unless indicated otherwise - you can learn more on my Disclaimer page.

L’Oréal Paris Elvive Bond Repair Collection

The latest hair care launch from L’Oréal Paris Elvive has been likened to the cult brand that is the Olaplex hair care range. Meet Bond Repair, a collection of four products - pre-shampoo treatment, shampoo, conditioner and leave-in serum.

Described as being their deepest set of repair products to instantly transform your hair, the key ingredient here is a citric acid complex, which recreates bonds deep within the hair’s cortex and the four-step routine helps to rebuild broken bonds from the inside out.

The four products should ideally be used together to create a hair care range which lets the ingredients work as they are designed too.  I find Olaplex a bit of a nightmare for my hair, it feels too heavy and my scalp isn't really a fan. The last time I ventured into a hair salon, over a year ago, my stylist used only Olaplex from 0 right through to the oil and I just didn't like how my hair felt afterwards, but this collection my hair love.

The first product is the L’Oréal Bond Repair Pre-Shampoo Treatment - the first step of your routine and it is an intensive rinse-off treatment, enriched with 12% Citric Acid Complex and should be used before shampooing. The guidance is to apply generous amounts to damp hair right from the scalp to the ends and leave it to work its magic for five minutes and then rinse thoroughly. 

After rinsing out the Pre-Shampoo Treatment, the second product within this routine is the L’Oréal Bond Repair Shampoo.  The shampoo is enriched with 5% Citric Acid Complex and it is designed to gently cleanse and reinforce inner broken hair bonds, plus, it is also sulphate-free. When applied and massaged into the hair, it cleanses as the lather is created and as it is rinsed from your hair, already there is a softness.  Depending on how my hair feels, I do double shampoo, but not always.

After shampooing, the next product is the  L’Oréal Bond  Repair Conditioner and this is the third step of the Bond Repair haircare routine. Enriched with 10% Citric Acid Complex and it is designed to seal the cuticle for maximum care and rebuilds inner broken hair bonds. For this product, you need a very small amount of this creamy conditioner to work it through the ends of your hair. Again, the advice is to leave on for three minutes to work its magic and then rinse out making sure the water runs clean, this helps to ensure you have no product left in your hair.

At this stage, my hair feels soft and smooth and definitely not tangled, so since using this trio of products, ive never had the dread of having to de-tangle my hair. But the magic comes with the fourth and final product.

The L’Oréal Bond Repair Leave-In Serum is enriched with 20% Citric Acid Complex designed to shield hair bonds and enhance softness and shine. To use, you need to just rub two drops of the serum between the palm of your hands and then apply evenly through the lengths and ends of your hair, either when it is wet or when it is dry hair. Designed to be the product that gives the finishing touch in your routine for maximum shine and heat protection, I use this serum before blow drying my hair as I find it works better for me in doing this because it not only tames my fly-aways and doesn't add static, my hair is silky smooth, de-tangled and a breeze to style.

Overall, I think this is a brilliant collection of products and I love using them on my hair. For clarity, I don't use them every time I wash my hair, usually when I am going on a night out or just feel my hair needs something extra.  Each product within this collection is priced from £11.99 but right now at Boots, you can buy the full routine bundle for just £27 or buy the products you really like the sound of for half price.

*this post contains PR samples and/or Affiliate Links unless indicated otherwise - you can learn more on my Disclaimer page.