Flow Cosmetics - True Expression Chakra Soap & Body Butter Bar

While make-up has the magical ability to brighten your eyes, contour your face and plump your lips. Enhancing your outer beauty, but feeling good on the inside can often be challenging. When you don’t feel at peace, refreshed and energised, it often reflects on your external appearance. Here at The Amazing Blog, we’d like to introduce you to Flow Cosmetics, a brand we recently discovered at a trade beauty show. They are made for your skin but with properties that impact your inner strength, peace and more specifically, your chakras.

Born in Finland, Flow uses active ingredients in its products which are native Finnish wild berries and herbs that are full of vitamins, antioxidants and northern robust energy. Nature has always been a strong and important part of Finnish identity. Finland has the world’s cleanest nature with blue lakes, free-flowing rivers, pristine forests and untouched wilderness. This unique northern energy is conveyed and Flow Cosmetics focuses on giving their customers bright and clear skin, a healthy body and a serene mind. All their products are activated with positive energy because the brand wants to help you empower and strengthen your own energy. Flow products contain therapeutic quality essential oils and the healing energy from crystals, hence making their products to be even more than just high-quality skincare. You can feel and sense the therapeutic effect throughout your body and being, providing care at all levels – body, mind and spirit – just like nature.

We tried out Flow’s new natural salt soaps and body butter bars that are inspired by the seven energy centres of the body. Each salt soap and butter bar represent one chakra with its aromatherapeutic fragrance and colour. Chakras are spinning wheels of energy/light and have the loving responsibility of taking in, incorporating and emanating energy to keep us functioning at optimal levels.

Let’s talk about the products we tried, the True Expression ‘I speak the truth’ Throat Chakra Aromatherapy Salt Soap which is twinned with the Body Butter Bar with clarifying Sage & Peppermint. When the throat chakra is in balance, it is easy to speak the truth and express your feelings clearly. This Chakra’s colour is azure blue and both products smell and feel amazing!

The gentle Salt Soap is suitable for daily use and for hair washing and is made from top-quality organic ingredients. It’s suitable for all skin types, especially for itchy and flaky skin. In addition to skin moisturising organic plant oils, the mineral-rich Himalayan rock salt and arctic wild blueberry seed oil to nurture the skin. Himalayan salt has skin cleansing, detoxing and moisturising properties whereas the blueberry seed oil offers antioxidant protection. The Butter Bar includes specific essential oils with peppermint, sage, roman chamomile and frankincense and is made with organic cocoa butter and organic coconut oil to nourish and soften dry skin.

Priced at €15 and €26 respectively, both the products will be sure to prove to be a worthwhile purchase. It’s a fun way to select from a range of Aromatherapy Soaps and Body Butter Bars is to choose the colour of the chakras that you’re drawn to,  see their official website here.

The Cookery School at Little Portland Street

Still on our mission to hone and enhance our culinary skills, at The Amazing Blog we have been searching around for baking lessons, to make all your dreams of baking that perfect soufflé come true, which is when we found  The Cookery School at Little Portland Street. It is one of London’s leading and most sustainable cooking schools.

Founded In 2003 Rosalind Rathouse, who even prior to the inception of Cookery School, she has been fervently passionate about sustainability. Cookery School has the highest possible rating for sustainability from the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and has been virtually plastic-free since the beginning. From sourcing top quality, seasonal, mostly organic ingredients, to running the kitchens on renewable energy, what we like is that the school does everything possible to minimise its impact on the planet.

With a focus on the sustainability and education, they endeavour to demystify cooking, removing jargon and celebrating good home cooking skills. Their kitchen is run with the environment in mind, so they only use high quality, sustainable, primarily organic ingredients and equipment that can be found in most home kitchens

Cue The Ultimate Baking Course this takes you through the key principles of cakes, pastry, breads, macarons and meringue making, plus cake decorating. Quite simply, they will teach you the skills required to bake well. They have three options i.e. either the weekly course which includes 8 sessions, the intensive course which is a 4 day course or the Sunday course which takes place on every Sunday of the month thus giving you the option to best suit your schedule.

Priced at £880, The Ultimate Baking Course runs throughout the months of February, March and April and is worth both the time and the money as you will leave with the skills and knowledge of a professional baker. Browse through their official website to find a course best suited for you here.

Morris & Co. - Gardening Gloves Kit

After spending so much time indoors over the winter – we’re happy to be welcoming in the spring here at The Amazing Blog and we have to confess to a small gardening habit. We think that there’s nothing better than reconnecting with the earth and getting ‘down and dirty’ ready to plant our spring vegetables and bulbs.  

In fact, it couldn’t be better timing for us to receive Morris & Co Gardening Gloves Kit sent to us by Heathcote & Ivory from their new range here. Our regular readers may remember that we’re big fans of Heathcote & Ivory products, or if you are new to us, you can find all our posts about them here.

Morris & Co. Gardening Gloves Kit is a perfect gift set for any gardener. It features a pair of lightweight fabric adjustable gloves and Shea Butter Hand Cream. We found the gloves extremely practical for gardening either in or outdoors. They certainly take their gardener’s handcare to the next level, the cream has a dreamy combination for fragrances with honeysuckle, rose and jasmine. All enriched with shea butter, pink clay, vitamin E, jojoba, evening primrose and macadamia oils. This product has a thick and creamy texture and is sure to turn the roughest skin into the soft, smooth and velvety hands. If you or anyone you know would like this Gardening Gloves Kit for only £25.00, see here.

Elm Rd - Amira Studio Reed Diffuser

This week’s post comes to you hotfoot from the striking opulence and intricate palatial architecture of the Middle East, and the arid desert landscapes … at The Amazing Blog are immersing ourselves in the sultry, smoky enclaves of heat, perhaps with some billowing linen providing a breath of air in the background, amidst all the grandeur, both faded and vibrant, but always intoxicating. Are we going overboard with the visuals here, or are we simply buying into the founding ethos behind Elm Rd.’s   fragrance range of candles and reed diffusers wholeheartedly? 

Elm Road is a company with their manufacturing base in Kent, and is the brainchild of Miguel Ángel, who had been living the corporate life of imbalance whilst working as a shoe designer when he had a moment of clarity in a San Franciscan park. Exhausted from the rigours of his busy schedule, the aromas of the eucalyptus, pine and cypress trees enveloped him and transported him to another time and place - one where memories and reminiscences helped to restore and heal, ultimately enabling him to make the huge decision to overhaul his life completely. Happily for Miguel - and indeed for us all - this turning point marked the beginning of Elm Rd, and his new venture of creating extraordinarily effective triggers to help us all slowdown and indulge a slower pace for however long we can all allow ourselves to escape.

We are focusing on Elm Rd.’s Amira Studio Reed Diffuser here, but there are a whole host of similarly indulgent concoctions to check out too. Amira Studio though is a heady blend of pure essential oils of mandarin, oud and geranium, conjuring up the ambiance of Arabian Night-like tales of romance and intrigue; combining the sumptuous aromas of frankincense with citrus and floral undertones. Whilst this fragrance has a strength to it from those base notes, it is not overpowering, but the ensuing subtle botanical aroma is just enough to sustain our journey of recollection back.

This stylish Amira Studio reed diffuser comes in 100ml, which is priced at £38 from here. All the ingredients are plant-based, paraben-free, and vegan-friendly with an eco-friendly diffuser base. The 100ml option should last between 3 and 4 months depending on the season and of course room temperature. Go on spoil yourself and be transported to more exotic climes with this intoxicating aroma.

Dermasynergy Professional Skincare - Synergy Balm

With the seasonal changes, our skin can be dry or even flaky, that’s why we at The Amazing Blog like to keep an emergency multi-balm always to hand, especially for these chilly months! So we were very happy to discover Derma Synergy Professional Skincare who has their Synergy Balm a professional healing balm that has a multitude of uses.

Ideal for dry and sensitive skin, it’s 100% natural, this Balm targets tired prematurely ageing skin in need of repair, restoration and rehydration.  One of its key ingredients is blackcurrant seed extract, a powerful natural antioxidant tool that regenerates damaged skin cells. A little-known fact for you, in the Second World War, parents would make their children drink blackcurrant juice due to its high concentration in vitamin C and its ability to prevent scurvy. The other ingredients also serve useful purpose including vitamin E contributing to neutralising free radicals (which lead to premature skin ageing) and marula extract which works on increasing skin hydration and elasticity.  The frankincense oil stimulates the growth of new cells and can reduce inflammation and acne scarring. We also like that this Balm has mango butter which is a natural vitamin A source and is effective in treating trickier skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

It’s a waxy consistency that warms up in the fingertips making application easy, leaving no excess; we’ve been using it on lips and hands (nails in particular). It comes in two sizes and we were lucky enough to receive both. The 15ml tin is £9.99 here which fits neatly in a pocket or handbag, making it great for hydration on the go. The 100ml tin is £35 here which we’ve also been using it intermittently a night balm, as well as a skin neutraliser to let our skin ‘rest’ from using other products as it’s brilliant for skin repair.