Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant - The Perfect Daily Exfoliator!

I’ve always had a soft spot for Dermalogica products as when I’ve been for facials they have usually been Dermalogica facials and I’ve always been impressed with how my skin felt afterwards. So when I was sent their Daily Microfoliant to try, I was really looking forward to seeing how it performed.

When I first saw the product I assumed it would be some kind of gel or paste like a ‘normal’ exfoliator consistency, but when I lifted it I thought it was incredibly light, definitely too light to be a gel/paste etc.

Upon opening I found it was actually a powder, one that you mixed (about half a teaspoon’s worth) with the tiniest amount of water (either a couple of drops, or just onto very wet hands) to form a lovely creamy paste that you then apply to your face in circular motions for around 1 minute or so, avoiding the eye area. The rice-based powder is said to activate when it comes into contact with water to release Papain, Salicylic Acid and Rice enzymes that all have exfoliating properties and will leave skin smoother and brighter.

It took a few attempts to perfect getting the best consistency but I have it sussed now and it works perfectly every time; in fact I’d go as far as to say that this product is probably the best exfoliating product that I’ve ever used. It’s not harsh on my skin at all, it actually feels silky and gentle to use and not at all scratchy; but it does smooth my skin so incredibly well... more so than I thought possible because of it being so lovely to use.

In my past use of exfoliators, I’ve found that smooth exfoliating gels/creams (with no ‘bits’) didn’t seem to exfoliate enough, which was pretty much the same for those with tiny ‘beads’ as they were too sparse to do any real exfoliation on my skin. I’ve had more success with really gritty exfoliation methods such as Darphin Age Defying Dermabrasion, which I still love (a lot) as my skin is always left beautifully smooth with that, but there’s no denying that it is rougher to use on the skin and my skin does actually go red for about 10 minutes after use.

The RRP for 75g of product is £38 but you’ll probably pay around £28 online at places like Look Fantastic etc. I personally don’t think that the product is excessively priced, although it’s not cheap by any stretch of the imagination (unless you’re a millionaire) but I think it’s a fair price considering it works so well and lives up to its claims, and I don’t think you can put a price on that.

The Beauty Scoop Christmas Gift Guide 2010 - Part 1!

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself at a loss as to what to buy my loved ones for Christmas. Now I know it’s the thought that counts, but I like buying gifts that are loved and actually used by the person I buy them for; not just given a polite acknowledgement and then stuffed to the back of the cupboard, waiting to be recycled into a present for somebody else because they secretly hate it!

I’ve decided to give a little run down of items, to suit all budgets that I think anybody would love to receive over Christmas; from stocking fillers to main presents I hope to give you a little inspiration from both the products that I have been using and loving and those that I would still love to receive in my present pile this Christmas!

Aveda have some utterly fabulous gifts available, and if you (or your intended recipient) haven’t had chance to try Aveda products then now is a great time to do so! Their Ritual of Repair gift set (£49) comes complete with Damage Remedy Shampoo, Conditioner, Intensive Treatment, Daily Hair Repair and Tagua Hair Band – it also has a £28 saving on the individual retail prices of the products included.

Burts Bees – Get lovely lips for kissing under the mistletoe with this fantastic Burt’s Bees ‘Lip Balm Tin Ornament’ (£9.99) that has 3 of their fabulous lip balms (Beeswax Lip Balm, Replenishing Lip Balm in Pomegranate and Honey Lip Balm) packaged in a metal tin that can be reused – so it’s also great for the environment too.

Clinique have a selection of gifts available, from candles to skincare, they’ve got it all. Two gifts of note (ie that I would love to receive) are:

Laser Focus Repair Gift Set (£50, shown above), a silver travel bag containing Repairwear Laser Focus Wrinkle & UV Damage Corrector (30ml), Youth Surge SPF 15 Age Decelerating Moisturiser (in dry/combination) 15ml and Repairwear Intensive Eye Cream 7ml.

Pretty Day Into Night Looks Gift Set (£38), a gorgeous pink bag containing a Round Compact with 4 Eyeshadows & 2 Powder Blush Shades, High Impact Mascara 4g in Black, Double-Ended Lipstick in Different Grape 1.3g/Long Last Glosswear SPF15 in Bamboo Pink 4.5ml, Cream Shaper For Eyes in Starry Plum 1.1g and All About Eyes 15ml.

Dermalogica products would be a lovely gift for anybody who likes to look after their skin as Dermalogica, in my opinion are still one of the best skin care brands around (I thoroughly recommend that you try their PreCleanse if nothing else as it's suitable for all skin types, review coming soon to the blog). You may not be able to keep this one a secret as a skin mapping session is always recommended to find out the best products for your skin but you could actually make that part of the present if you were to pay for a facial too.

A Denman Brush (approximately £7) – If you want to give a gift that will just keep on giving then one of these bad boys would be great, they look fab and are built to last. There’s an assortment of great designs available (I’ve shown just a few of them here) and you just know they’ll be used as everybody brushes their hair, right?!

Elemis have a fabulous range of gift sets available, many of them offering a saving off the RRP of the individual products which is a winner to me. I especially like the Exotic Spa Secrets gift box (£49.50), which contains 3 full sized products including: Skin Nourishing Milk Bath, Exotic Frangipani Monoi Bath & Shower Cream and Exotic Frangipani Monoi Moisture Melt and offers a £38 saving from the usual retail price of each item. Other Elemis gift sets that are worth considering are: Elemis Skin Brilliance, Elemis Perfect Pro-Collagen and Elemis Timeless Radiance.

Front Cover Cosmetics have a selection of gift sets available but the one that stands right out for me is their Moonlit Metals set (£16, swatched here), as I think that the colours contained in it would suit most people -plus it also offers such fantastic value, is on trend and generally just looks like a nice present to give/receive (and is easy to wrap too)!

Molton Browns’ gifts are to die for. Their Treasure Island (£65) and Colour Purple (£42, shown above) gifts immediately caught my eye. The Treasure Island gift includes Heavenly Gingerlily Moisture Bath & Shower Gel, Body Cream, Shimmer Fragrance and Airlight. I haven’t had the pleasure of smelling this set but it sounds beautiful. The Colour Purple set contains Relaxing Yuan Zhi Bath & Shower Gel, Body Cream and Airlight - and might I add, smells divine.

No7 have some beautiful gifts and palettes available right now, I've recently swatched their Precious Metals Mini Nail Polish set (£8) here, and their Limited Edition MirrorBall Eye Palette (£12.50) here but there are so many other gorgeous gifts and fantastic products available (to suit all budgets) that I really do think that it's worth looking to the brand for both stocking fillers and main presents alike.

OPI's Burlesque range is causing quite a stir because it includes a great range of polishes, that all have a Christmassy feel (in my opinion) and I feel would be well received by most people as a gift for Christmas. If you didn’t want to buy them individually, there are gift sets available such as their Little Teasers Mini Lacquers Gift Set (available for around £12.15 online).

Better still QVC have a brilliant set available (shown above). For just £34.10 plus postage (this is an introductory price and could end anytime and go back to the usual price of £37.50) you can get a super gift box which includes: Original Nail Envy (15ml), Avoplex High Intensity Hand & Nail Cream (50ml), OPI Crystal Nail File, Bring on the Bling Lacquer (15ml), Tease-y Does It Lacquer (15ml), Let Me Entertain You Lacquer (15ml) and a mini cuticle stick. Bear in mind that the polishes alone usually retail for £9.95 each and you can see what good value this gift set is – and the person you’re buying for will think you’ve spent even more on them!

Perfumes or perfume gift sets are a safe bet for most people, I’m currently loving Paco Rabanne; in particular their ‘Lady Million’ and ‘Black XS’ fragrances. Other perfumes worth checking out are Viktor & Rolf’s ‘Flowerbomb’, Armani ‘Code’, Marc Jacobs ‘Daisy’ and/or ‘Lola’ and Nina Ricci’s ‘Nina’.

Talking of perfume, Penhaligon's have some beautiful gifts available (as well as some stunning standalone perfumes) a few gifts of note are: the Crystal ‘Bullet’ Atomiser (in Amethyst £120), the Ladies Fragrance collection (£32) which includes 5 miniature 5ml bottles in a lovely bow-topped gift box, and their Votive Candle Collection (£45) which includes 4 miniature (70g) scented glass candles.

Sisley has a fantastic new autumn/winter makeup collection that may just hold a few potential gifts within it. Shown above, the collection contains 10 pieces – all of which I’d be happy to own. If the makeup collection doesn’t grab you then maybe a piece of their award winning skincare range may be more to your taste? After all, who doesn’t want to take care of their skin?!

Sleek palettes (£5.99 each) are cheap in price but fantastic in quality, there’s also a decent amount of palettes for you to choose from so you can be sure there’ll be something there to suit anybody you’re buying for. They’re currently on 3 for 2 at Superdrug, making them even cheaper – in fact if you have a secret santa present to buy then this could be a perfect purchase – much better than socks anyway!

Urban Decay’s Naked Palette (around £27) is bound to be a hit, you can’t really go wrong with neutrals as they suit everybody and this palette is currently one of the best to be had.

Anyway, this rounds up my first gift guide - I hope you've found it useful and maybe solved a few gift dilemmas too!

Harvey Nichols Elle Beauty Event

"Come and celebrate beauty's big event and preview the hot new-season trends.

Elle Readers are invited to experience the newest trends of the season at Harvey Nichols exclusive beauty party, taking place in stores across the country. Don't miss your chance to try the hottest new beauty products for Autumn / Winter 2010


Enjoy mini-makeovers, massages and make-up and skincare tutorials from the experts while you sip Skyy Vodka cocktails. There will be demonstrations of the new Autumn / Winter beauty looks, and Elle staff will be there alongside international make up artists and skincare professionals to offer tips and advice.


You'll also get the chance to try out new, cutting edge beauty products (some of them exclusive to Harvey Nichols), including Lanvin, Tom Ford, Laura Mercier, YSL and Shu Uemura. To top it all, you'll receive an exclusive goodie bag to take home with you."

So I visited the Manchester Elle Event at Harvey Nichols last night and below are some of my thoughts on the event as a whole.

Rocked it:

Limited Edition YSL Highlighter -This looked like a fantastic highlighter, seems to do the job without being glittery or cakey (I think because it's a very fine powder) which makes it more wearable for less fancy occasions.

Metallic YSL nail polish in bronze, silver and gold - perfect for party season!

Fabulously glitzy lipglosses - again, perfect for party season!


Thanks to Tempalia for the pics that I've now been able to add so you have more of an idea about the collection.

Dermalogica skin mapping and presentation. I loved that they were so interactive throughout the presentation, allowing you to try the products briefly as they went along and explained what each one did, and why. The skin mapping was very insightful, and they recommended some products that I should think about using to benefit my skin based on what they saw. I love that they don't just blindly recommend products to you without a clear understanding of your skin and what (if any) problems you have. I came away feeling very positive about the brand and I thoroughly recommend that you go and visit a counter if you have one close by.

Elemis – I was really very impressed with the girl on the counter, she was really very helpful and got me to test a lot of products on my hands whilst explaining their uses and benefits. I especially loved that a lot of the products she showed me could be used in different ways and in different areas. Also love that Elemis believe in using a lot of natural ingredients in their products.

CoverFX  -  I was made to feel completely at ease by the girl here as she talked me through some of their products and took time to use a couple of them on my fingers, as I have dry red patches on them, to show me how it covered them up. The stand was very busy so I didn’t get full coverage but just a little taste of what it was about but the way in which it was done is what stood out for me, it was like talking to a friend more than talking to a store assistant that I had never met before.

Penhaligon's – The lady here was lovely and spent a lot of time talking to me about fragrances they had and how unisex some of them could be. She also spoke of memories and how they influence our choice of fragrances. I found it all to be very interesting.

Vodka cocktails (with flowers in) – Yummy, need I say more?

Goody bag – This was a huge bonus, I couldn’t wait to have a look what was in there. I received a beautifully scented Dermalogica Stress Relief Candle, mini samples from Elemis, Ole Henriksen, Mitchell and Peach, REN and ESPA. I also received perfume imps from Penhaligon's, Marc Jacobs (Bang), Viktor & Rolf (Flowerbomb), Elemis Exotic and John Richmond. Oh and some isklar sparkling water.

Lost it::

Rather disappointingly I was told that I would not be allowed to take any photographs whilst at the event.I can understand if things are top secret, but these are items in store that everybody can view. Personally I think that a few photographs of the products could have done them more good than harm, in that it may have inspired people who could have seen them on here to go and buy them. Oh well.

The presentations weren’t announced - or if they were, it wasn’t so that everybody could hear, meaning I missed quite a lot of them. The presentations that I did manage to see were very good though.

Unfortunately this post hasn't been everything I intended it to be because of the photography issue I mentioned above. I had hoped to show you some of their new season’s looks and products (plus a good helping of swatches) but alas it was not to be.Edit: I have now been able to add 3 pictures of the YSL Holiday Collection, above.

Overall the event was a success and I’m very glad I went. If you’re in Dublin you can still get tickets for their event tonight between 6.30 and 9.30pm by calling + 353 (0)1291 0488 – they’re only £15 and also redeemable against any purchase you make whilst there.

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