ANTIPODES | Joyful hand & body cream

Ok, let me set the scene.  I'm at home, it's a sunny day and I have the conservatory doors open.  Birds are tweeting and singing their song, all is quiet.  The baby is asleep and I've just sat down with a cup of earl grey and a magazine.  Sounds perfect right?  Well, that was me a couple of weeks ago.  And what does this have anything to do with hand cream?  Well, while I was sat down leafing through my magazine I realised just how dry my hands were.  They were cracking around the knuckles and crazy dry.  This is an occupational hazard when you have a baby, constantly washing things up like bottles, and keeping my hands clean.

Well, while I was sat there, on the end table next to me was my Antipodes Joyful hand & body cream which I hadn't cracked open yet - I was just getting over a touch of eczema on my hands but they'd recovered enough to move on from E45.  The first thing I noticed was just how gorgeous this smelled (kinda like the colour), like summer berries, really gorgeous - it's not only packed with wild blackcurrant berry goodness, but also hibiscus flower and avocado oil.  I squeezed a bit out onto the back of my hand and rubbed it in - instantly my hands felt soft and nourished.  The cream absorbed really quickly, not leaving any oily residue.

Over the next couple of weeks I found myself reaching for it several times a day, even putting it in the little man's change bag so I could use (enjoy!) it when I was out and about.  What I really like about this cream is the fact it's a generous sized tube, 120ml to be precise, so I think you really get your money's worth because lets face it, this isn't a cheap hand & body cream with an RRP of £29.99.

However, this is (at the time of writing this) currently on offer with nutritioncentre.co.uk for £23.19 so if this is something you've been intrigued by, now might be the time to pick it up :)

Have you tried Antipodes before?

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*Post contains a PR sample

Valentines gift ideas from Cosme-de

The good people over at Cosme-de are having a themed Valentines promotion at the moment, with products both for couples, and singletons!

They've included a range of products in their promotion which have up to 60% off (mostly perfumes/aftershaves, and a couple of skincare gift sets).  They also have free shipping on every order, so there's no hidden costs :)

For all you lovely single peeps out there, they've also created a page on their site called 'My Bloody Valentine' lol - you basically click the playing card for a discount code - however it only applies to orders of over $150, so for it to be of use you'd have to order yourself a few treats - but that is on top of the 60% discount , so if you shop smartly you could get some real bargains :)

Honey - Marc Jacobs - £39 for 50ml (22% off)

This is my first Marc Jacobs perfume - I wanted to try something which was different from the usual scents that I go for (sweet or spicy) - this is just lovely.  It's a mixture of the sweetness of honey, with the signature floral scent of the Daisy range, keeping it smelling quite fresh, but with a sweet edge. I also love the bottle, with the cute little accents on the side, very cute!

Crabtree & Evelyn Ultra Nourishing Hand-Therapy Set - £20 (36% off)

I'm a big fab of Crabtree & Evelyn hand creams, they're fantastic quality, very hydrating and smell really good (the pomegranate one is my favourite!).  This set includes 6 of their hand creams in 25g tubes.  It's a lovely giftset, especially for C&E fans :) 

They also have a game you can play where you can find discount codes (make sure you do this first, before placing an order) :)

Which of these would you love to receive for Valentines?

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*Post contains PR samples

Human+Kind Hand, Elbow and Foot cream

Human+Kind is a new brand to me, I was kindly sent this bottle by the lovely people over at Beauty Chamber to try out.  I wasn't sure what to expect (I'll get to that later) but when it turned up and I opened the parcel, I loved the packaging of the tube, very cute and hippy happy.

Designed for dry hands, elbows and feet I've managed to give this a whirl on all of those areas!  Lets see how it faired on each of them!

Hands

Since working at the hospital (a few years ago) I've suffered from dry skin on my hands (typically knuckles and fingers).  When I noticed my hands were getting dry again, I reached into my bag and applied some.  It's not a very thick consistency but a little does go a long way.  There's a slight oily finish, but that soon absorbs into your skin and doesn't leave them feeling greasy.  The dryness instantly went and the cream left my hands feeling soft and supple.

Elbow

For years (since secondary school) I've had trouble with dry skin on my left elbow (basically, eczema) so thought this was the perfect test for this!  As much as it hasn't gotten rid of it, the dry skin on my elbow has decreased dramatically.  The size of the dry patch has gotten smaller and the patch that's left isn't as dry as it was, whoop!

Feet

Well, here's the gross bit that I've been dreading writing about!  So, I had a little bit of dry skin on the tops of my little toes, I guess that's where the rub more on shoes etc.  Anyway, after just two applications the dry skin had disappeared!  Don't get me wrong, they weren't super dry, but they were dry to touch and you could kinda see the dryness.  I was chuffed it fixed it so quickly and it hasn't returned :)

All in all really happy with this, and what's more, it smells great and it's only £5.95*, bargain!

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balance Me rose otto hand cream

 balance Me rose otto hand cream £10* for 50ml

Take yourself back to February, more specifically valentines day.  I'm there at home, chilling out and there's a knock at the door.

I rush over and my postman is there with a little box for me, once it's signed for an in my greedy mitts I rush in and open it.  I'm not expecting anything so I was quite curious!  To my delight and surprise, it was a valentines gift from balance Me, how lovely!  Of course, the first thing I did was open it up and use it, I tend not to keep my hand cream in the house for some bizarre reason, but I keep it all in work as I'm forever using it there.  

This little beauty has earned it's place next to my laptop at my desk.  I'll go into all the technical stuff in a bit about all the lovely ingredients, but lets talk about what it actually feels like to use it.

This is a more oily hand cream than I'm used to, and that's by no means a bad thing.  The oil in it keeps my hands softer and hydrated for longer, and of course because it's filled with lovely rose, my hands smell great too!  It's a very thick cream, you won't need much of it as a little goes quite a long way. When I say it's oily, I don't get left with horrible greasy skin, more like a soft sheen (see pic above! I tried to capture the lovely sheen left!).

Now onto the technical stuff, the goodness that's inside it :)  What I love most, it's totally paraben free, and when I say paraben free, there's not phenoxyethanol in it either (a faux paraben which is pretty much as bad).  Ingredients-wise it has arctic cloudberry, rose otto, palma rosa and rose geranium essential oils, shea butter, lavender, ylang ylang and many other lovely natural ingredients.

This is a lovely hand cream, very hydrating so that you don't have to re-apply all the time and it smells lovely.  I love the fact it's paraben and sulphate free, I know I'm not putting loads of nasty chemicals onto my skin and that my skin is getting lots of goodness instead, which is what it deserves :)

This months Biggest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Jaina from Which Beauty Box UK

 

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Aveeno hand cream

One thing I go through a lot of is hand cream.  I keep a tube of it on my desk at work and moisturise my hands around 5-10 times a day.  About a year ago I noticed that my hands were really starting to show signs of ageing, mostly down to the time I worked in operating theatres a year or so before that where I was washing my hands an incredible amount of times a day, it really dried them out.

Since then, I've been moisturising like crazy and on the hunt for the perfect moisturiser.  Well, this may not be the perfect moisturiser, but it's pretty good :)

Here's what I like about it;

• It's really quick drying and quick to absorb
• It dries matte so doesn't leave a sheen on your skin
• Even after washing your hands, it doesn't wash the moisturiser off
• It's cheap - I picked up this one on sale for about £3

So that's all the good.  I would do a bullet list for the bad too, but there's only one thing on it, how it smells.  I normally love the oatmeal scent body moisturisers have, but there's something about this one that just makes it smell like... like it's regurgitated oatmeal :/  But that's just how it smells to me, you might smell it completely differently, but it's that scent that would stop me from picking it up again.  Which is a bit silly really considering how good it is, but I guess that's what you get with me, I'm really into scents and how things smell.

What I will say though, I'm not sure if it's this hand cream, or just the fact I've been moisturising my hands a lot over the last year or so, but I feel that the ageing my hands were having has been wound back a bit, they're definitely not showing as many signs as they were, the skin on the back of my hands looks and feels stronger with less fine lines (yay!).  So even if you smell it and don't like this moisturiser yourself, make sure you keep your hands hydrated, you'll thank yourself for it when you're my age :)

This months Bigest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Stacie from Life is worth the fight

 

Written by Georgina Kent