Epara-Cleansing Lotion and Brightening Night Balm

At The Amazing Blog, beauty is our common passion. We love discovering new beauty products made for different skin types and age. We were delighted when we received EPARA’s Cleansing Lotion and Brightening Night Balm.

EPARA is an organic and natural skincare brand specialising in Afro-Carribean beauty. After years of suffering from dry and uneven complexion, the founder Ozohu Adoh struggled to find any effective and natural skincare products. So as the story goes, she took a chance and decided to create a brand that would answer the needs of women of colour. In the Nigerian dialect, Ebira, EPARA means “to cocoon oneself” which is the core aim of this brand.

EPARA combined the best of natural African ingredients to create unique and highly nourishing skincare range. The Cleansing Lotion cleanses and gently moisturises and is very efficient in removing all traces of make up and impurities. The lotion is enriched with moringa seed extracts, marula oil, plankton extract, Cananga flower oil and frankincense oil. Together these ingredients work as natural skin brighteners, helping to reduce the imperfections and give a more even skin tone. The oils infused in this formula make the cleanser highly hydrating and perfect for dry or sensitive skin types.

The Brightening Night Balm has won a particular place in our hearts. This balm is infused with the finest ingredients including plankton extracts, allantoin, and hyaluronic acid. Combined, these ingredients replenish the skin with goodness at night, and help reduce age spots and hyperpigmentation. Allantoin and Hyaluronic Acid with their anti-ageing and cell regenerating properties contribute to a softer, clearer and healthier skin tone. The complexion looks instantly rejuvenated and moisturised with the cream absorbing quickly leaving the skin velvety soft. Purchase the Cleansing Lotion here for £40 and the Brightening Night balm here for £100.

Christmas Stockings Fillers

For the last post of our Special Christmas Week, we are going to talk about stocking fillers. No matter our age, we're always so excited to find out what Father Christmas put in our beautiful stockings. While we love those little, fun and cute gifts, it can sometimes be difficult to find great stockings ideas for less than £15. We at The Amazing Blog have racked our brains and looked for the best stockings fillers at a reasonable price.

Let’s start with Heathcote and Ivory Gardeners Tree Tidings; this little gift set contains two hand creams and a Relax bath tablet. The shea butter hand cream as its name suggests made with shea butter(obviously) but also with other essential oils including lemon, orange and peppermint. This beautiful mix makes a highly nourishing hand cream. While the shea butter cream has a zesty and fresh scent, the Hedgerow hand cream has more of a fruity smell thanks to the blend of rhubarb, blackberry and elderflower extracts included in the formula. Together these ingredients intensely hydrate hands leaving them softer and smoother. Enriched with chamomile, lavender, eucalyptus and rosemary the bath tablets is the ideal product to help you relax while bathing. All made without Parabens and Sulphates. You can purchase the Gardeners Tree Tidings here for £6.00.

The festive period is the opportunity for us all to look at our best. With Christmas dinners and New Year events, we all like to shine bright and to have our party looks on point. And what better way to complement a look than a beautiful nail polish. A lovely and shiny nail polish is the little detail that instantly completes a look. Le Mini Macaron’s Mini Petit Bouquets nail polish set with their pretty pastel shades might just be the perfect trio for nail polishes lovers. The set contains three nail polishes including lavender; a pale purple, Rose pale; a pastel pink and wildflower a grey nail lacquer with blue hues. These nude and pastel shades will bring a modern and elegant touch to your look. Le Mini Bouquets nail polish set is available here for £24.99.

Christmas is the time to be merry, eat great food and drink delicious tipples. However, as years pass by, we start getting bored of the usual tastes and flavours. For those who like us want to add a little twist to their tipples, Popaball has created the Popaball Bursting Juice bubbles for Gin, Prosecco and Vodka. The Blueberry and Lemon Bursting Juice Bubbles for Gin, with its sweet and zesty taste instantly add a burst of sweetness and juiciness to your drink. The Apple & Cherry Bubbles for Vodka, (our favourite) taste delightfully good; the sensation of the Popaballs bursting in the mouth is just incredible; it brings drinking Vodka to a whole new level. The Shimmer Blueberry Bubbles for Prosecco is ideal to add a little touch of glam in your prosecco. Just add the blueberry bubbles and the shimmering liquid, watch the sparkle forms and enjoy the fruity taste.  The bubbles are suitable for vegetarians. You can purchase all the Popaballs from Cotswold Trading. See here for the bubbles for Gin £3.79, the bubbles for Vodka here for £3.79 and the shimmer bubbles for prosecco here for £4.49. Guaranteed to add a bit of an extra 'fizz' to your Christmas tipple!

We at The Amazing Blog appreciate a warm and relaxing bath once in a while. And when we do so, we love using the most calming and beautifully scented bath products. Sloane Home excel in the art of making stunning bath salts. Our preferred ones remain the Lady Grey, bath salts with a zesty and fresh perfume, the Topiary Garden, is a more floral and classic scent and the Rose Garden has a sensual and luxurious fragrance. All bath salts are made with Dead Sea salts well known for its therapeutic properties. The bath salts help you relax by easing muscles and uplifting the spirit. There are nothing more agreeable than soaking in a warm and welcoming bath after a long day and these fantastic bath salts from Sloane home are just what you need. Purchase the bath salts here for £16.50 each.

Hang on a minute you really thought that we would give you some stockings fillers tips without including one treat? Come on you should know better, we here at The Amazing Blog can’t resist the temptation of delicious and savoury candies. Our addiction of this season is The Fudge Kitchen award-winning sliders; the brand specialised in making gourmet handmade fudges, its sliders include six fudges with three different flavours. The Gin Selection pack include two Bitter Orange and Cubeb Gin, two Juniper and Kaffir Lime Dry Gin and two Sloe Gin fudge. This box with its popping and rich flavours will ravish your delicate palate. The Salted Selection include Isle of Sky Salted caramel fudges, Cornish Smoked salted Maple fudges, and Maldon Sea Salted Chocolate fudges. These fudges are at the same time creamy, sweet and smooth. The sea salts included in the recipes add a little touch of zest and crunch that balances perfectly well with the sweetness of the other ingredients. You can purchase Fudge Kitchen's Salted fudges and Gin fudges here for £8.00 each.

Christmas Gift Ideas for Her

Every year during the festive season, we all face the same struggle asking ourselves the same question; what on earth do we give to our mothers, sisters and best girlfriends (yes girlfriends, we're expecting gifts from you too!) So this year at The Amazing Blog we've come up with a great collection of gifts ideas that we think will suit even your fussiest of friends.

The first gift idea we would like to share with you is from one of our favourite brands Heathcote & Ivory, we'd like to suggest their Heathcote and Ivory Sakura Silks Exquisite Spa Set. This set comes in a stunning and colourful hexagonal tin box - which we think will make a glamorous storage box afterwards. When lifting the lid a gorgeous floral and zesty aroma gently pervaded the office - we were in love! This gift set contains three products; a hand cream, bath salts and a body butter.  The hand cream is formulated with shea butter, vitamin E and panthenol, green tea, jasmine and cedarwood. Together these ingredients intensely nourish hands and cuticles leaving them velvety soft and delicously scented. The Sakura Silks bath salts are the perfect way to indulge and pamper your body at home and help create a luxurious and relaxing at home spa experience.  Finally, the body butter is a rich moisturising cream made with a unique blend of essential oils including lemon, lime and sweet orange. Shea butter and vitamin E are known for their hydrating and protecting properties smooth, soften and provide the extra-hydration skin needs during winter.  All of these products are paraben free. You can purchase the Heathcote & Ivory set here for £15.

We think that a fragrance or perfume is a nice treat when it comes to a Christmas gift. With this in mind, we'd like to suggest the newly launched Change perfume created by the actress Lisa Riley.  Inspired by celebrating a new chapter in her life, the Change perfume is a versatile and memorable fragrance which will suit almost everyone with its floral and oriental notes. The top notes are mandarin leaves and mulberry flowers while the middle notes are tuberose, orange flower and jasmine; and the base notes include sandalwood, Tonka bean and patchouli. These luxurious ingredients work to create and rich and sensual perfume that is timeless and transcends all seasons. You can purchase the perfume here for £14.99 + p&p.

We think that owning a beautiful silk scarf is an investment as well as  a classic item for every woman's wardrobe. So we've chosen one from Libby by Design, these are all limited edition handmade silk scarves. Each of these designer scarves are made in England, 100% silk, and hand finished with rolled borders. Every piece is unique, some even have themes from Rudyard Kipling, but all take their inspiration from in the style of Indonesian batiks. We have featured our favourite “How the leopard got his spots” which is a versatile 98cm silk square that can be worn in numerous ways. These scarves are the perfect accessory for brightening up either a heavy winter coat or worn as a sarong on a sandy Caribbean beach. Purchase your scarf here for £174 with SPECIAL OFFER of 15% off if you order before Christmas!

For another Christmas gift idea, we were rather taken with this Morris and Co design inspired lavish body gift set. One of our favourites of this year, is their Pure Morris The Collection, this includes a travel size shower cream and a body lotion, together with a full size hand cream. The shower cream is a gentle body wash that is formulated with vitamin A and E, kelp, silver birch and thistle extracts. These ingredients deeply cleanse the body while keeping skin balanced and hydrated. The body lotion is also infused with the same extracts, but in addition there is also almond oil and cocoa butter which help to soften and smooth the skin leaving it velvety soft. The hand cream is formulated with natural ingredients including shea butter, jojoba oil and macadamia oil making it a deeply nourishing cream to protect hands during the winter season. The products come in an intricately embossed tin. The Morris and Co Pure Morris gift set can be purchased here for £22.

For the glamourpuss in your life, we think that the Rouge Bunny Rouge Surprise Eye Shadow Palette will be an excellent choice. Rouge Bunny Rouge is a favourite here at TheAmazingBlog; this international make up brand always keep us up to speed with their new launches. So we were happy to learn about the Surprise Eye Shadow Palette which contains five long-lasting shimmery shadows including a highlighting shade, three smoky neutral tones and one frosted iridescent shimmer eye shadow. NB: This quintet of colours are a 'surprise' so we cannot show you the exact selection of colours (the image above is just the palette casing).  Lightweight, creamy touch offering an extended 8-hour wear, the eye shadow formula is made to stay put and to look freshly applied all day long. All refill shades are made to fit perfectly into this Limited Edition. The palette also comes with a free decorated presentation box which makes it an even more impressive present. Purchase here for €50.00.

We hope we're provided some good inspiration for gifting your loved ones, as well as yourself of course! 

APEX High Performance Bio-Serum by Lamiderm Skincare

Apex High Performance Bio-Serum By Lamiderm Skincare

The Amazing Blog is here to bring you an exciting new skincare product that has arrived in the UK with an unsual and unique hero ingredient. The US brand LifePharm Global Network has launched Lamiderm APEX High Performance Bio-Serum an innovative product which help us tackle the ever-foreboding issue of ageing skin. Distributed here in the UK by Discover 9 whose mission is to help individuals attain optimum health and wellness. 

So a little bit of background first. The production of lysyl oxidase decreases (LOX) as we age, and it is this LOX that naturally activates collagen, elastin and fibronectin. It is these skin fibres that keep us looking young and our skin firm and lifted. The APEX High Performance Bio-Serum actually helps to supplement the body's LOX production for improved collagen, elastin and fibronectin at the cellular level which in turn helps to promote the body’s production of LOX. The unique key ingredients for APEX High Performance Bio-Serum is harvested from LifePharm fertilised Avian egg extract and is the first known skincare product to utilise this revolutionary ingredient and the science is explained here .

Additional to the fertilised Avian egg extract, the APEX Bio-Serum formula also includes a 'radiance complex' for brightens the skin which is comprised of seven Swiss alpine plants and have been scientifically proven to improve cellar health. Vitamins C, E and CoQ10 are included too for protection against photo-ageing, whilst a blend of five fruit extracts support cells shield the complexion from pollution and UV radiation. What we particularly like is that the serum's carrier is a nutritious concoction of Aloe Vera juice, sunflower seed and coconut oils.  

As they say, the proof is in the pudding: 87% of users reported smoother skin, 88% more supple and healthy skin and 86% tighter and firmer skin after twice daily use. We certainly could detect a subtle change in skin texture; however, we think it needs more long term use for more significant results as we only used it for a couple weeks. What we also like about this serum is that it is not tested on animals, it is hypoallergenic and is free from all sulphates. You can see for yourself by purchasing the serum through their website here for £64.97

The Scottish Fine Soap Company- Au Lait Hand & Nail Cream

Hands are probably one of the most exposed, over-worked and forgotten about parts of the body; but here at The Amazing Blog we like to take great care of them! Hand creams are always visible on our desks and as a team we're all in agreement that it's our office essential. We like to ensure that our hard working hands have the hydration they need throughout our busy day. The Scottish Fine Soaps Au Lait Hand and Nail Cream, we discovered recently and think it's a must-try product for our fellow beauty enthusiasts.

Scottish Fine Soaps is a family business company that was created over 40 years ago. They specialise in producing bath and body products with the highest-quality ingredients. Their Au Lait collection has a key ingredient of organic milk is to date their best-selling range. The Au Lait Hand & Nail Cream's unique formula contains water, cocoa seed butter and non-fat dry milk. Cocoa seed butter is well known for its deep nourishing and healing properties which provides the hands with deep hydration whilst improving their appearance.

This Hand & Nail Cream did everything it promised, it kept our hands feeling smoother, healthier and softer. Despite its rich consistency this Hand & Nail Cream is not at all sticky, it is easily applied and quickly absorbed. The product is long-lasting, smells good and leaves hands delicately fragranced. In our view, this is the ideal cream for rewarding any hard-working hands. Purchase the Au Lait Hand & Nail  Cream here for £8.99.