Herbal Dynamics Beauty - Acai & Mango Sugar Lip Scrub with Volumizing & Smoothing Rapid Lip Mask

Wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year! Let’s kick 2020 off with looking at lip products as we know that the key to any fabulous full-on red lips or just a healthy-looking pout is a quality lip scrub and mask. So imagine finding products that smell good enough to eat! Enter Herbal Dynamics Beauty ’s. Their Acai & Mango Sugar Lip Scrub contains only natural oils and extracts. Yummy as this might sound, we at The Amazing Blog do not advocate eating it! Instead, it’s best to use for exfoliating dead skin, paired with their Volumizing & Smoothing Rapid Lip Mask to help achieve plumper and healthier looking lips.

Herbal Dynamics Beauty is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was founded just a few years ago with the core belief that ‘what you put on your body is of the utmost importance’. Natural ingredients, like acai extract and pistachio oil, are combined with botanicals, such as xylitol and vitamin E, to create the Acai Lip Scrub and Volumizing Lip Mask Duo. Cocoa butter and pistachio oil add an extra layer of hydration and reduce inflammation with the scrub while peptides in the mask increase hyaluronic acid for plumper lips. This 'science-meets-nature' approach results in useful products that are gentle for sensitive skin and as we mentioned, smell amazing. Both products also are free from sulphates, parabens, phthalates, and are also cruelty-free.

The duo is perfect to use when you have time at night or when you want to pamper yourself. The sugary texture of the lip scrub allows it to work with just the slightest pressure from your fingers and creates a base for the lip mask to be most effective. A small coat of the lip mask should stay on your lips for about 3-5 minutes before removing and revealing more full lips ready for the next day or some lipstick. The company prides itself on making products for ‘consumers seeking affordable options’. It’s £24 for the Sugar Lip Scrub here and £21 for the Rapid Lip Mask here. This price point may appear high, but a little goes a long way and they’re something you will only use 2-3 times a week.

Sofia Latif - Face Oil

As busy people working and living in London, we’re constantly looking for ways to make our lives a little less complicated. We want to pamper both ourselves and our skin but are often too tired to conduct a daily extensive skincare routine. Therefore, simple is always best and that’s why we were excited at The Amazing Blog to experience the great multitasking Sofia Latif Face Oil.

Created with a holistic approach to skincare in mind, Sofia Latif believes in the importance of using our me-time to reconnect mind to senses, soothing the mind and skin at the same time. Now that’s a philosophy we can get behind. The founder, Sofia Latif created the signature face oil to combat her personal skincare issues with pigmentation and sensitivity. Fearing her skin would be further damaged if she used prescription creams or steroids, she spent 15 years perfecting the blend of her face oil. The Sofia Latif signature Face Oil was shortlisted for the Beauty Awards in 2018 .

We love how many amazing ingredients are contained in this signature Face Oil . With the powerful anti-oxidant properties of moringa seed oil, the elasticity improving marula seed oil mixed with rosehip oil with natural retinol action and pomegranate seed oil for skin regeneration; this is truly an all-in-one product. The organic sweet almond oil seals in moisture while jasmine flower works to balance and Bulgarian rose flower refines. We’re also happy to report that this Face Oil is vegan and doesn’t contain any synthetic ingredients, palm oil, mineral oils, phthalates, SLS / SLES, and silicones.

The Face Oil is made in small batches in London, so it’s always fresh. We suggest applying it at night on cleansed skin or adding a drop or two to your moisturiser or primer to give skin an extra radiant glow. Wanting to give back, Sofia Latif provides microfinance loans linking with non profit Lend with Care to female entrepreneurs who are working their way out of poverty by starting their own small business, to date they have give over 20 loans since 2017. An amount of the sale from each product goes towards the investment in these women’s future. The Sofia Latif Signature Face Oil 10ml can be purchased here for £20.00 or for 30ml for £45.

KIERIN NYC – Santal Sky

Although The Amazing Blog loves London and we will likely never leave, New York City is one of our favourite cities in the world. Walking through the streets of Manhattan amidst the American hustle and bustle make you feel alive and young. Yet within the city that never sleeps, there are moments of ultimate peace and serenity. Flights to New York are expensive, but the next best option is to bring the atmosphere of the city to you with KIERIN NYC’s Santal Sky fragrance.

Inspired by the vibrant and metropolitan lifestyle of New Yorkers, KIERIN NYC has also embodied New York’s inclusive nature by creating perfumes that can appeal to all ages, genders, ethnicities, and nationalities. The company invites people ‘to be inspired, not defined or confined, by fragrance’. This ethos produced Santal Sky’s clean and unique scent designed for the modern urban individual. For this perfume, French perfumer Mathieu Nardin combined sandalwood, vetiver plant, and cardamom and saffron spices. The scent has a very strong earth and woodsy aroma from the sandalwood. However, what makes you think twice about Santal Sky are its spicy after notes. This fragrance is completely its own in this regard, and the spiciness leaves you mesmerised by the smell long after you’ve sprayed it. The overall ambience of Santal Sky is a sexy and mature scent that lasts all night while you’re getting fancy cocktails at a bar with the city lights behind you.

Despite this, it doesn’t smell too old to use in your 20’s and comes in a sturdy, stylish matte white bottle that is recyclable. KIERIN NYC has a ‘clean & conscious’ model for its brand, so all of its products are made with sustainable packaging and ethically sourced ingredients to help other communities as well as our own. Santal Sky is also cruelty-free, vegan, paraben and phthalate free, and hypoallergenic. This perfume not only has an eco-friendly mindset but smells exceptional and will bring some of the ‘New York State of Mind’ to London.

You can purchase Santal Sky (50ml) here for £65

Spoolies – Hair Curlers and Beach Waves & Curls Leave-In Curl Enhancer

When you think of hair curling, three options usually come to mind: an expensive appointment at the hair salon, a hot and hard-to-use curling iron, or ugly round hair rollers our grandmothers once used. These options have many disadvantages, but most of us settled for at least one! Many of us at The Amazing Blog use a curling iron and usually need a friend’s help to curl the back of our hair. We’re happy to say that these problems are long in the past with Spoolies, which offers a fun, no heat, and inexpensive solution.

Most of us have seen hair rollers before, whether in real life or in movies from the 50s and 60s, where women wearing nightgowns spend hours carefully putting up their hair before bed. Spoolies founder Jeanne C. James decided to ‘create classic curls with a modern twist’ for women of today with Spoolies Hair Curlers. The curlers are easy to use and effective for even the finest or straightest hair. Instead of plastic, they’re made with durable and high-quality hypoallergenic silicon, but still light and portable for easy travelling. They are also heat proof to hair dryers if you want to speed up the curling process.

For enhanced waves, Spoolies offers the Beach Waves & Curls Leave-In Curl Enhancer, which you should spray into hair before using the curlers. It is infused with Crambe abyssinica seed oil to nourish, hydrate, and volumise hair while improving the look of curls and not weighing your hair down. It can be used on wet or dry hair and is sulfate, paraben, and phthalate free. The hair curlers work very well with the spray for tighter curls, but we found we got more natural-looking waves without water.

The hair curlers come in two sizes (medium and jumbo) to create a variety of hairstyles from loose waves to ringlets. Spoolies also has a variety of colours including blue, pink, black, and silver. The price of the hair curlers varies depending on how many you want, but we found the best deal was the ‘15 pc – Jumbo Spoolies in Mesh Bag, Beachy Blue’ kit. The kit gives you more than enough hair curlers to share with friends and a quality bag to store them in. You can purchase the kit here on Amazon for £35.95 and the Leave-In Curl Enhancer on the Spoolies US website here for $17.99.