Find it confusing identifying which chemicals to avoid in your cosmetics? Check this giveaway out!

I have always been fairly relaxed when it came to ingredients in my cosmetics. I do prefer natural skincare but that's more due to the fact that is smells better rather than fears over the ingredients in non-natural skincare. I guess I have always been naively optimistic that if a product is being sold in a shop, then it must be safe to use and I really hadn't put any more though than that into it.

That was until I had a certain encounter on the Beauty Heaven Forum. Someone was seeking advice on some good, cheap cleansing wipes and I replied that she should just use baby wipes - that you could get a pack of 80 for a couple of dollars and that I sometimes used them when I'd run out of my normal wipes. Another member then berated me, stating that baby wipes are one of the worst things that you could use on your skin, that they contained mineral oil which clogs your pores. It got me a bit worried - not so much that I was occasionally using them on myself but more the fact that I was using hundreds of these wipes on The Crazy Kid each week.

This then became my introduction into the confusing world of cosmetic chemicals, and trying to decided which ones to avoid. The more I researched, the more I found that the information out there tended to be incredibly emotive and very one-sided 'If you use this chemical you WILL get cancer'. A bit extreme, perhaps, but as soon as I come across a really strong and emotive opinion it almost becomes my mission to prove it wrong! As a scientist, we a trained never to just take one opinion - to read as many papers on a topic as possible to get a well rounded point of view. Often there will be conflicting information and opinions out there so it then becomes up to you to decide which side of the fence to sit on.

I found wading through all this conflicting information incredibly confusing and so gave up, sticking to my attitude that if a product is being sold then it must be safe. Then I discovered a brilliant book (thanks to an amazing review on the blog Moxie Reviews) that really helped me see through the conflicting views. It is called Can you get hooked on lip balm and is written by the authors of the beauty blog The Beauty Brains. These guys are a bunch of cosmetic scientists who answer questions people have in regards to cosmetics. This book is compiled from hundreds of these questions that they have answered. They will state why a beauty myth might exist then examine all research that has been conducted in the field and give a response based on this. Here is an example (that I have paraphrased) from book:

Parabens - the reason there is such fear about this ingredient is that a research paper on breast cancer analysed samples for parabens and every single sample contained parabens. However, the authors of the paper could not find out how the parabens got into the breast tissue. Parabens are used in cosmetics as a preservative. The Beauty Brains team examined all papers available and there is still no research available stating that parabens have any involvement in breast cancer. So they concluded, based on the research to date, that as there is no evidence that the parabens can cause cancer, the benefits they offer as a preservative means that as this stage they can still be regarded as safe.

This book literally answers any question that you have ever had about cosmetics plus questions you hadn't thought to ask yet! The information provided is straight foreword and easy to understand and, most importantly for me, it is well balanced and non-biased. If you have ever felt confused trying to navigate your way through which chemicals are safe and which ones to avoid, then this is the book for you.

Now, the bit you have all been waiting for. I am giving away a copy of this book to one lucky winner. To enter, all you have to do is follow me on GFC or by email. Let me know below how you are following me and also what beauty question you would most like answered? This competition will run for two weeks, from now until 8.00pm on Sunday November 27th and it is open worldwide. This seriously is a book that every beauty lover should own...so what are you waiting for?? Get cracking and enter!!

There will be plenty more giveaways in the lead up to Christmas so make sure that you are following me on Twitter and Facebook so that you don't miss out.

Finally, just a reminder, my 1st Christmas giveaway of a gorgeous handmade pack of Japanese skincare is open until 8.00pm on 20/11/2011 so if you haven't entered that one you might want to get onto it, quick sticks!!

I'm feeling fruity for this weekend's beauty blog hop!

Summer fruits have finally hit the stores. Mangoes, peaches, cherries, nectarines, apricots and watermelon are back for another delicious season. I love this time of year - with fresh produce like around, it is so easy to be healthy. It doesn't feel 'healthy' having fruit for dessert when you have a nice juicy mango or a bowl full of cherries, it feels decadent. All this luscious fruit is my inspiration for the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop. So, this week, instead of listing your blog, I want you to post a link to one of you blog posts that has a fruity element to it - whether it be a fruity perfume review, a delicious juicy shower gel, or some fun fruity nail polish swatches. Don't make reference to your blog but simply leave the title of your post so that it is a surprise to readers as to which blog they will end up at. I will post a link to one of my articles below so that you can see what I mean. If it is too hard to pick just one article to link to, you are more than welcome post more than once. In fact, I would love it if you did - lets get a whole fruit bowl of articles going!

I would love suggestions for themes to use in the coming weeks as well, if you have any.

If you missed my original post on The Weekend Beauty Blog Hop, here's a quick explanation:


What is a blog hop?

A blog hop is a linky list that is SHARED ON MULTIPLE BLOGS.

When several blogs put the same linky list code on their blog, the exact same list appears on each blog.

Blog visitors can submit their entries on any blog that contains the list. The entries will appear on each blog where the list resides.

Blog readers see the same list on each blog, and can "HOP" from blog to blog seeing the same list of links to follow: BLOG HOP!

So basically, its an awesome way to discover new beauty blogs or have new readers discover yours. Or in the case of Pimp Your Favourite Post, its a great way to get new traffic to your favourite post.

The only rule is that your post must have some beauty content. That's it! Once you have joined, why don't you check out the other articles posted in the list - you may discover a brilliant post that you missed when it was originally published. Please Tweet or share a link to your Facebook account as the more posts we can get to on the list, the better the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop will be!

If you would like to do a post about this on your blog, by all means grab the code below. Feel free to lift any content from this post, all I ask is that you link where you got it from.

Hop away my friends, hop away! This link will be open from 5.00pm on Friday 11th November until 5.00am on Monday 14th October (Australian Eastern Standard time).

In addition to the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop I have also set up a Beauty Blog Directory. If you would like your blog added to the Beauty Blog Directory leave a comment on that post or here with the following info:

1. Blog title
2. Blog URL
3. A brief sentence summarising the purpose of your blog (it can be your blog tag line if you like)
4. What country you are from. If you would also like to add your city and state, I will include that with your listing - that way you may be able to discover the fellow bloggers in your local area .

Once you have added your blog to the Beauty Blog Directory feel free to grab a button for your blog from the bottom of my right sidebar.

Enjoy the Blog Hop this weekend, beauty lovers!

I entered BeautyHeaven's Blogstar competition and would love your vote!

Each year, BeautyHeaven run a BlogStar competition where everyone is invited to submit either a written or video (or both) blog entry on any beauty related topic that takes their fancy. It was actually entering this competition last year that, in part, inspired me to start this blog. Even though I didn't win, it was what made me realise how much that I loved writing, and especially how much I was missing it.

So, I have entered again this year. I really wanted to write a funny post, as I can be funny at times. However, I have now come to the realisation that I can only be spontaneously funny. As soon as I planned to be funny, I just become lame!

Instead, I wrote a post on blackheads. It is one that I have been meaning to write for this blog for a good few months but kept getting distracted. Here is the link to my post:

http://www.beautyheaven.com.au/skin-care/acne-blemish-prone/blogstar-entry-how-to-win-the-battle-with-blackheads-8496#article-review-form

If you have a spare second, I would love it if you voted for me. The voting form is just below each entry. The winner, along with receiving an iPad2 and some serious beauty booty, gets invited to be a guest blogger at BeautyHeaven for the year. I would love the opportunity to have a professional blog edit my writing and critique my voice so that I can improving my writing skills and also get an understanding of what is required to become a writer in the beauty industry. Since I became a mum I have been going through a bit of a quarter life crisis and I am not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I adored being a scientist but it was not a particularly family friendly career so now I am tossing up other options - one of which is becoming a beauty writer. This might jsut be the opportunity for me to find out whether that could ever be a reality.

Voting closes the end of November so don't leave it too late.

Thanks everyone!

What's in that box: November Lust Have It

I was quite surprised to receive my Lust Have it Box today - I usually expect it around the middle of the month. The good thing was that for once, I hadn't sneaked a peep at what other people had received so it was well and truly a surprise!

So, what was in it?

Yet another jam packed full box of beauty samples, with a couple of full sized products this month as well. One such full sized item was the Nude by Nature Chique Natural Mineral Lip Liner which you can see in the pic above. Unfortunately, The Crazy Kid nicked off with it so I wasn't able to reclaim it until tonight. I swatched it on my hand but for the life of me can't take a decent pic in this lighting so you will just have to trust me that it is a natural looking pinky brown. The RRP of this is $14.95, so you already have the value of your box back in one item!

Three x 5ml RoC Complete Lift NEW Technology Daily Moisturiser. I wouldn't have been disappointed to receive only one of these so to get three was incredibly generous. I suppose Lust Have It market themselves as providing deluxe sized samples so this well and truly ensured that it was deluxe. I have head many good things about the RoC brand but as yet have not tried any of their products so really looking forward to playing with this one!

Five x 10ml sachets of Kerastase Nectar Thermique. Again, super generous, although this time around if we did only receive one of these sachets I would have been a tad disappointed, but five is huge! A full sized bottle of this is 150ml so you pretty much get 1/3 of a bottle. I have this already and it is amazing. I am pretty unco at straightening my own hair, so this Nectar ensure I don't wreck my hair and it leaves it so shiny and soft. Gorgeous stuff!

Two x 1.5ml samples of Lancome Tresor Midnight Rose. I have stuck one of these straight in my handbag - it makes an excellent little purse spray (especially as I am a bit prone to getting stinky!). I was hoping the fragrance would be more rosy but, to me, it is incredibly fruity. In fact, it smells exactly like black current to me. If you are a fruity fan I think that you will love it 

Finally, a full sized Hawley International Miracle Nail Shiner. I love these things. They seriously leave your nails looking like they have clear polish on them.

This was probably the Lust Have It box with the most varied contents, so far, literally covering you from head to toe (well, if you decide to buff your toenails then your covered!). Personally, I am a bit of a skincare junkie so they are the items I most look forward to but if you are after a good range of products to play with I think that you will be quite happy with the November box. It was excellent value, as usual, with the contents coming in at around $50.

I now can't wait to see what will be in the December box. I wonder whether there will be any Christmasy items. I kind of hope so...I LOVE Christmas!

Were you happy with the November box? What are you hoping will be in the December box?

This box was provided for consideration.

My loss is your gain: a Japanese style giveaway

Someone very important to me is embarking on the journey of a lifetime. My house cleaner/ The Crazy Kid's babysitter/ my baby sister and my best friend is moving to Japan on 29th November (yes, I pay my sister to clean my house for me - it is nearly impossible to keep on top of Cyclone Crazy's mess!).

Where I have always been a bit of a homebody, my sister is the free spirit. This is the second time she has made the move overseas and it would be easier to count the countries that she hasn't visited rather than the ones she has. It is her aim to become fluent in Japanese so that she can pursue a furture career using the language and she decided that what better way to learn a language than to move to the country that speaks it.

I am going to really miss my little sis, life isn't going to be the same without our daily phonecalls (or if we keep up our daily phonecalls then its going to be bloody expensive!). But I am also hugely proud of her. I doubt that I would ever have the courage to move to a non-English speaking country. So, to celebrate her courage I thought that I would throw a Japanese themed giveaway.

Over the last week I have reviewed some amazing hand made products from Okoii and now you have the opportunity to try some of these gorgeous products for yourself. There will be two prizes, with Okoii kindly agreeing to sponsor second prize. The prizes are:

First Prize

Cherry Blossom Starter Set: Your ideal introduction to Okoii skincare. The pack includes:
Organic Azuki Bean Scrub with Organic Green Tea 10gm
Luxury Rice Bran Face Soap 13gm
Authentic Green Tea Purifying Toner 30ml
Green Tea Beauty Moisturiser 15gm
Camellia Night Beauty Oil 5ml





Second Prize

Luxury Rice Bran Face Soap: This was my favourite product that I tried from the Okoii range and it is honestly one of the most creamy, luxurious and gentle cleansers that I have had the pleasure of using. Warning, you too will get hooked on this cleanser!

How to enter

Entry is easy! All you have to do is follow my blog either by GFC or email and then leave a comment stating how you follow or your GFC name plus a peice of advice for my sister. This could be anything from places she must visit in Japan, how to cope in a non-English speaking country, what beauty products she should send back to me to review or simply just wish her luck. That's all you have to do to enter.

I would love for you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, and to also follow Okoii on Twitter and to tweet about the giveaway though it won't earn you bonus points for this comp. I'm building up the courage to run a bonus point giveaway, but dread the thought of collating all the entries!

The giveaway will run until 8.00pm Sunday November 20th and will be drawn using random.org within a couple of days. The winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to get back to me with their address. This comp is open to Australian residents only (international followers, i'll have a comp for you guys shortly).

Thank and good luck!

Pimp your favourite summer post on the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop was starting to get a bit boring and that I had changed things up. With the weather getting warmer (in the Southern Hemisphere anyway!) this week, instead of listing your blog, I want you to post a link to one of you blog posts that reminds you msot of summer - whether it be a perfume review, a beach hair look, or some bright coral nail polish swatches. Don't make reference to your blog but simply leave the title of your post so that it is a surprise to readers as to which blog they will end up at. I will post a link to one of my articles below so that you can see what I mean. If it is too hard to pick just one article to link to, you are more than welcome post more than once. In fact, I would love it if you did - lets get the feelings of summer going, peeps!

I would love suggestions for themes to use in the coming weeks as well, if you have any.

If you missed my original post on The Weekend Beauty Blog Hop, here's a quick explanation:

What is a blog hop?

A blog hop is a linky list that is SHARED ON MULTIPLE BLOGS.

When several blogs put the same linky list code on their blog, the exact same list appears on each blog.

Blog visitors can submit their entries on any blog that contains the list. The entries will appear on each blog where the list resides.

Blog readers see the same list on each blog, and can "HOP" from blog to blog seeing the same list of links to follow: BLOG HOP!

So basically, its an awesome way to discover new beauty blogs or have new readers discover yours. Or in the case of Pimp Your Favourite Post, its a great way to get new traffic to your favourite post.

The only rule is that your post must have some beauty content. That's it! Once you have joined, why don't you check out the other articles posted in the list - you may discover a brilliant post that you missed when it was originally published. Please Tweet or share a link to your Facebook account as the more posts we can get to on the list, the better the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop will be!

If you would like to do a post about this on your blog, by all means grab the code below. Feel free to lift any content from this post, all I ask is that you link where you got it from.

Hop away my friends, hop away! This link will be open from 5.00pm on Friday 4th November until 5.00am on Monday 7th October (Australian Eastern Standard time).

In addition to the Weekend Beauty Blog Hop I have also set up a Beauty Blog Directory. If you would like your blog added to the Beauty Blog Directory leave a comment on that post or here with the following info:

1. Blog title
2. Blog URL
3. A brief sentence summarising the purpose of your blog (it can be your blog tag line if you like)
4. What country you are from. If you would also like to add your city and state, I will include that with your listing - that way you may be able to discover the fellow bloggers in your local area .

Once you have added your blog to the Beauty Blog Directory feel free to grab a button for your blog from the bottom of my right sidebar.

Enjoy the Blog Hop this weekend, beauty lovers!

How to beat the stink this summer

I am a bit of a smelly person, unfortunately. I am not so stinky that you assume I am on a personal quest to replenish Sydney's dwindling water supplies by going on a shower ban, more like if you get a whiff of you think 'oh, poor woman. She mustn't have had time to shower today'. My slight stinkiness, however, is made more noticeable by the fact that my husband has absolutely no body odor - that's right - he has a 0% stink factor rating. His feet don't smell, he never gets BO and, even after a super sesh at the gym he comes back smelling salty and manly but still not stinky. It's actually quite annoying because it then makes him hyper-aware of any stinkiness in his vicinity. We will be in the car and he will suddenly, not so subtly exclaim 'I smell BO'. We both know who he is referring to...

When the opportunity to trial Rexona Clinical Protection anti-perspirant deodorant came up I jumped at the chance. I had to know whether it would work as well as they claimed. Well, it did. It is amazing...but I will get to that in a minute!

Image courtesy of Beauty Directory

 

The official blurb on the Rexona Clinical Protection, from BeautyDirectory is;

Rexona Clinical Protection Anti-Perspirant deodorant prevents heavy sweating everyday. Formulated with trisolid body response technology this deodorant protects against wetness and tries to encapsulate odour. Dimethicone is a skin moisturising ingredient in the formula that works to help reduce skin irritation

 

To use, you twist the ring at the bottom two clicks and then enough product squirts out the holes in the top of the stick. Apply it as you would any other deodorant. For some reason I always used 3-4 clicks. This was way too much product but I just couldn't help myself - my fear of being stinky was too strong! It doesn't take long to dry at all. I would apply it before brushing my teeth and moisturising and it was always dry by the time I was ready to get dressed.

They recommend that you apply the product before bed. The reason for this is that it sort of water proofs the arm pits so you want it well and truly dry and sunk in by the time you have your shower in the morning. I did try doing it this way - and it worked perfectly, no stinkiness at all, but I only shower in the mornings so I felt a bit weird never washing my arm pits. I ended up switching to using it after my morning shower. My arm pits always felt funny when I would first try to wash them as they were genuinely water proofed - they would repel the water. I had to use soap or shower gel to remove the deodorant and this left them feeling normal again.

Rexona also recommend that you can go 48 hours without reapplying deodorant. I took this for a test drive and they weren't far off the mark. By the end of day two - probably around the 45 hour mark, I started noticing the first whiffs of BO. It was very faint, and others probably wouldn't have noticed (well my husband might have, but normal non-hyper-sensitive-to-any-odor people wouldn't have noticed). I tended to use it daily as I loved the protection that it offered, plus I am in the habit of applying deodorant daily and that's a hard habit to break! But it is relieving to know that if you ever did forget to apply this for one day you won't suddenly become a stink bug again.

As well as not being at all stinky, I was absolutely bone dry all day. There was never any wet patches under my arms. In fact, it never even felt humid under there, only completely dry. The was seriously amazing for me!

The was one tiny issue that stopped this from being perfection in a bottle and that was white marks on black clothing. Unfortunately, it left them. This was perhaps because I was applying too much product and I suspect that if you applied it in the evening like the instructions recommended then this wouldn't be an issue for you at all. The white marks were easy enough to remove, though, so it really wasn't much of a hassle at all. Quite frankly, the most important thing to me in a deodorant is to banish the stinkies and wetness - if it can deliver on that then I can deal with any other issues that arise. So, the white marks would not be enough to stop me from buying the deodorant.

The RRP is $13.99 for 45ml which is not cheap for a deodorant. However, if you are sensitive about your stinkies then it is money well spent as you can guarantee you will be BO-free all day. The deodorant lasted me about 6 weeks, though I was over using it. It said to apply 2 clicks worth of product but I always used 3-4 so you probably should get at least two months out of it. So, a tube doesn't last overly long, especially for the price paid (I think I was getting at least 4+ months out of my $5 Mitchum); however, no deodorant I have ever used has performed as well as this one so it honestly is money very well spent (if you are somewhat sensitive about your stinkiness). Would I repurchase it? Absolutely! I will not use anything else this summer and it seems quite unlikely that I will ever go back to standard deodorants after having just experiencing 6 weeks of having a 0% stink factor rating!

Are you a bit on the stinky side or do you have a 0% stink factor rating?

If you are on team stinky, what have you discovered that actually works to banish your BO?

All opinions stated in this blog are my own. I have no affiliation with Rexona and received no remuneration for my comments. This product was provided to me to review by Beauty Directory.