Review - REN T-Zone Balancing Day Fluid

REN is a more premium skincare brand which I have used before and loved.

They recently had an offer on their website where if you spent a certain amount you got a mini set of products free and some samples so I thought I would try out their T-Zone Balancing Day Fluid.

This was £26.00 for a 50ml pump bottle which is alot more than I normally spend on a moisturiser but I knew that it would be money well spent.

You need one pump of this for your face and it absorbs quickly and doesn't sit on your skin. It leaves my skin feeling matte and lasts all day. Since using this I haven't felt that my skin was slightly oily looking half way through the day which it has done when I've used other moisturisers.

If you have combination skin then try this out as I think you'll be as impressed as I am with it!

This is available from REN Online and you get 10% off your first order!

Hauling!

Ok I know I said that I wasn't going to do any hauling for a while but as I need some work clothes for my new job I have been shopping!

New Look

Skinny jeans - £12 (was £19.99)

Jeggings - £12.99

Black trousers - £13 (was £22.99)

Cardigan - £7 (was £9.99)

Bird print top - £7 (was £16.99)

White vest - £1 (was £4)

Bird print skirt - £7 (was £14.99)

Black vest top - £5 (was £8.99)

All this for £64.99 instead of £110.93! Bargain!

Boots

Botanics Organic Rosewater Toner Spritz - £3.33 (was £4.99)

Soap & Glory Fab Pore Mask - £8

Finger nail clippers - £1.75

Rimmel lasting finish foundation - £6.99 (2 for £10)

Rimmel wake me up concealer - £5.99 (2 for £10)

Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish nail polish - £2.49 (2 for £4)

Remington Pearl Wand - £24.99

L'Oreal Lumi Magique concealer - £8.49 (buy 1 get 1 half price)

L'Oreal Glam Shine lip gloss - £7.69 (was £3.84 half price)

Home Bargains

The Beauty Parlour mattifying moisturiser - 99p

The Beauty Parlour mattifying papers - 99p

These both should have been about £4 each and are also sold in Superdrug

Ren

T-Zone balancing day fluid - £23.40 (was £26, I got 10% my first order)

Six of the Best - free (was £20)

Four mini samples - free!

Primark

Peep toe shoes - £8

Cotton wool pads - £1 per pack

Baby wipes - £1 for two packs

I have another haul coming soon as I shopped the Next sale but I haven't received everything yet so will post it when everything arrives.

Like always link me to your haul posts :-)

REN Pore Minimising Detox Mask / Invisible Pores Detox Mask

I haven't tried many REN products but the ones I have tried I've liked.

A while ago I bought a little starter kit which had 4 mini products in and one of them was this pore minimising detox mask.

This product was thick. Really thick. It felt like I was plastering my face! This little 15ml tube was enough for one quite generous application. I left this on my face for about 15 minutes until it felt like it had adequately dried.

Once washed off my skin was left feeling soft but I wouldn't say my pores were minimised. I suppose with a few uses it might start to have an effect but there simply wasn't enough product in this tube for more than one application.

As I said I've had my sample for quite a while and I now think this has changed name to the invisible pores detox mask and a 50ml tube is priced at £18 and available from REN online.

A little USA haul! And a few magazine freebies!

This haul is quite exciting as it contains things that are either only available in the USA or that are hard to find here in the UK. 

Fellow blogger Annabella from Skin Scrubs was heading back to her native USA and kindly asked if I wanted anything picking up whilst she was there.

It was one of those occasions where everything you've made a mental note of wanting from there vanished from my mind but I did send her a list non the less. So what did I ask for?

Bath and Body Works mini shower gels - OK so these are described as mini's but they're not. Each bottle is 88ml which is quite sizeable. I chose fruity scents and surprisingly my favourite is the Pink Chiffon which contains some floral notes.

Organix hair macadamia oil - Some Organix products are available int he UK but over in the USA they have such a large selection of scents and products. The macadamia range, as far as I'm aware, isn't available in the UK so I asked for the styling oil.

Sally Hansen instant cuticle remover - I'd only ever seen a couple of reviews of these and both reviews were amazing. The fact it claimed to 'dissolve dry cuticles in 15 seconds' instantly made me NEED to try this.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail polish strips - these were a kind of impulse buy. They aren't available over here so I took advantage of being able to get hold of some.

EOS lip balm - everyone raves about EOS products so I thought I'd see what they were on about. The lip balms are available in the UK. 

Sally Hansen Gem Crush polish - These two colours are amazing. Pink and sparkly, what's not to like? I don't think these are available in the UK. Shades: Lady Luck and Razzle Dazzler.

Milani Jewel FX nail polish - This is a kind of dupe for Models Own Ibiza Mix and the reviews I'd seen for Milani polishes have been good so I added this to my list too! Shade: Gems.

Once again I'd like to say THANK YOU to Annabella for getting these for me and as I've already tried some of these next time she goes to the USA I might be sending her with another shopping list!

And a few more little bits are from the August magazine freebies:

Balance Me minis - Glamour

Avon mascara - Marie Clare

Ren - Red

As always link me to your haulage posts!

Wednesday Wishlist - 15 Skincare

Lush Duck

1. Lavera Organic Calendula Balancing Cream - £11.50

2. Lavera Organic Calendula Cleansing Gel - £6.90

3. Madara Deep Purifying Foam Cleanser - £16.00

Look Fantastic

4. REN Pore Minimising Detox Mask 50ml - £18.00

5. Weleda Almond Cleansing Lotion 75ml - £7.15 

Feel Unique

6. Cowshed Skincare Starter Kit - £19.50

ASOS

7. Steamcream 3 in 1 Moisturiser London Tin - £13.00

8. Korres Pomegranate Skincare Set - £25.00

Freebie galore!

Recently I've been very lucky and have won quite a few giveaways and competitions so here's a round up of what I've won!

Floral Jumpsuit (£20) from Matalan. I won this after taking part in a competition on their Twitter page. My own photo of this was awful so I've borrow this one off the Matalan website.

Every month Glamour magazine run a competition where you can win a different prize everyday, you just have to enter on that day in order to win that days prize. In May I entered most days and won an Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Intensive Moisturising Body Treatment and a Montague Jennesse face mask.

London Beauty Queen ran a competition in conjunction with Jergens and I won 5 full sized bottles of their moisturiser! I haven't tried theirs before so am looking forward to trying it out. With the risk of sounding slightly ungrateful, which I'm completely not, I'm quite disappointed I didn't get the cocoa butter one as I love products with it in but I feel very lucky to have won what I have! 

Cat from Reaching for the Stars ran a competition where you could win a bottle of Batistes Nude dry shampoo, you just had to say why you wanted to win. I said that it's the only one I hadn't tried in the Batiste collection so wanted to have tried the full set! And I also won a competition on Jergens Facebook page and I won another bottle of their moisturiser! That's a lot of moisturiser I have to get through!

Good Things has just launched in Superdrug and on their Facebook page you had the chance to win a pack of their cleansing wipes if you took a photo of their products in a Superdrug store and uploaded it so these landed on my door step a week ago. And a while ago I won a sample of one of Ren's new products and as a thank you for sending my feedback they kindly sent me a sample of their Glycolactic Skin Renewal Peel Mask.


Phew! So that's all my wins, oh I also made an impulse buy at the newsagents whilst with my mum and got a £1 scratch card and won a tenner! Have you won anything lately? Let me know in the comments below!

Review - Ren Micro Polish Cleanser

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to win a sample of Ren's new Micro Polish Cleanser before it was released for sale.

I got a mini 15ml sample but boy did it go a long way.

This is a 2-in-1 cleanser and exfoliator which is recommended for use 2-3 times a week to reveal purified, smoothed and softer skin, a brighter, more radiant complexion and reduces the look of pores and fine lines.

As I have finished this I have no photo of the actual product, Im rubbish I know! But it was a light orange colour with very fine exfoliating granules and it had a gorgeous orange fragrance.

So what did I think? Basically I loved it! I loved that it's a 2-in-1 product, anything that saves time, and it really did leave my skin feeling clean, smoother and brighter. I love a product that does what it says one the.....tube!

The full sized 150ml product is £20 and I am planning on buying one! For use 2-3 times a week it should last a long time so I'm not too bothered about paying a little more than usual for it.

This is available from Ren online.

I was in it and won it!

The last few weeks I've been lucky enough to win a number of competitions and giveaways so here's a round up of what I've won.

Tigi Your Highness Catwalk

I won this from Escentual on one of their online competitions. The set includes a small paddle brush, root boosting mousse and thickening gel creme.

Mac

I won Sherries competition on her blog (if you don't follow her already then do so now her blog is fab!) where the prize was a MAC lipstick and eyeshadow of your choice. 

As I have never used MAC before (yes I can hear you all gasp in horror at that fact) I wasn't sure about which colours to choose.

I chose Retrospeck eyeshadow and gave Sherrie the choice of two lipsticks to choose from to give me a surprise and she chose Midi Mauve which I LOVE!

ASOS

Ms Red was offering a voucher code for £5 off a £20 spend at ASOS and I won! Yey! I have my eye on some jeans so am going to put this towards them. There are still 2 codes left to be won so check out her blog for a chance to win them.

And finally....

Ren

On their Facebook page they were offering samples of their new Micro Polish Cleanser to the first 500 people who emailed them and I was one of them! All I have to do is try the product, email them back with my feedback and I could win 1 of 10 full sized products! Review of this to come.

Have you been lucky lately and won something? Let me know in the comments below!

Haul - York & more

Just a quick post to show my recent purchases and what I got from York when I went on Tuesday.

Savers and Home Bargains

From Savers I bought 2 dental flossers, yes I admit this is boring, but they are really good! I normally buy Wisdom ones but these were only 59p or something so I thought I'd give them a go. The floss is on the end of the handle and it makes it really easy to get to the back teeth or if your teeth are close together and normal flossing is hard. Oh and the floss is on replaceable heads incase you were thinking that it sounds unhygienic!

And from Home Bargains I picked up 3 Montagne Jeuness face masks which were on offer at 3 for £2! I got 2 chocolate and 1 white chocolate. You can win a chocolate one as well as other goodies if you enter my 100 followers giveaway which can be found here!

Beauty Expert

I had £10 in Tesco clubcard vouchers to use and in their clubcard rewards scheme you can now exchange them for vouchers for Beauty Expert. For every £5 you have in Tesco vouchers you get double the value in Beauty Expert vouchers. So for my £10 I got £20!

I was spoilt for choice about what to get and as I'm on a spending ban I didn't want to put much money towards my purchase but I found this little starter kit from Ren for £19. I have been wanting to try this brand for a while so this gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. And it was free!

Boots

In my local store they had Soft and Gentle deodorant on clearance at only 97p so I picked up a can and they currently have all skincare on 3 for 2 so I used my points and got the new Garnier Intensive 7 days body lotion in mango (£2.99), Nivea pure and natural cleanser and Nivea pure and natural toner (both £3.36).

Also on clearance was Eylure body tape, Babyliss straightener brush and Mavala nail polish remover pads.

Boots and Zest

I should have took these photo's separately but never thought, I don't feel very well today so you'll have to forgive me!

From Boots I got Sanctuary moisturiser and toner (both with £5 off as I used my facial skincare vouchers). I wanted the face wash too but the Boots in York was out of stock :-( And I got the 17 photo finish face primer (this was free as my mum got this for me!) Sorry for the bad light on that product too.

And from Zest, which is one of those tiddly little shops crammed with discontinued cosmetics, I got a Sally Hansen Kwik Off nail polish pot (I already have the Apricot one and love it) and a Wet n Wild mineral foundation in fair (again I have one of these but it's in medium).

The Gift Company

I've been looking for decorative things for my bathroom for ages and in the shop window this little pelican caught my eye and I had to have it! It was £7 and my mum bought me the matching boat but I'm getting that for Easter.

Daisy Taylors

Daisy Taylors is a cute little gifty type shop in York and they sell some really pretty stuff. I got a little basket (£3.99) which I knew would come in handy, only problem is that I've forgot what I wanted it for!

And I bought my friend a gorgeous card for her wedding (£4.90) and a cute little cat card (£1.99) for Chris's niece's birthday which is on saturday.


Have you bought any new goodies recently?