Menarys Mega Beauty Event- 20% off Benefit*, Free Clarins Gifts, 25% off Lancôme & 30% off YSL

20% off Benefit with a Bob & Berts' hot drink purchase  

Menarys is a complete beauty lover's dream right now. We called down for some coffee & cake in Bob & Bert's & spied a fantastic offer for one of my favourite beauty brands, Benefit.

When you buy a medium hot drink, you will get a voucher for 20% off a Benefit purchase over £20. The voucher lasts until 31st August, and the girls at the counter told me there are new lip kits with lip liner & lipsticks in one hitting stores around the 25th.  

What to buy: any of the new wave of Benefit expert brow products that launched last month. The girls will help you select the right colour & products for splendid brows every time. I have the Goof Proof pencil, and it's my new go-to brow product. 

There are also a selection of Benefit gifts. I love these and have a couple. They have small versions of the post popular products & allow you to try them without having to buy full size, and double up as travel makeup kits. I bought the 'Do the Hoola' kit in Gatwick Airport & highly recommend it. Bangor have it in stock. 

The next fab offer to share with you is the Menarys' Clarins'  gift event. It begins this Thursday and lasts two weeks. When you buy two Clarins products, one being skincare, you will receive a gorgeous beauty bag (not the one shown, the one on the leaflet) and you can choose four free mini-products to take home.

while stocks last

Choose from One Step Cleansing Water, HydraQuench Cream, Extra-firming Night Cream, Gentle Refiner, Beauty Flash Balm (I love it), Eau Dynamisante, Instant Smooth Perfecting Touch and finally Wonder Perfect Mascara. 

Plus, if you buy an extra skin care product on top of that, there's an extra gift for you worth £22. 

What to buy: Clarins Double Serum. It's won a tonne of awards and even out sold Boots' very popular serum last year.

Now this is a biggy. The YSL concession in Menarys' beauty hall has 30% off. That's 30% off EVERYTHING. If you are a YSL beauty addict you'd be worth your while popping down and buying your whole year's worth of products and get a third off it all. Stick it on the credit card (just don't blame me later, I'm such an enabler!) 

What to buy: If you are new to YSL & want to try something, why not go for their super product, Touche Eclat? Hailed as a wonder product when it launched, it's spawned a dozen copycats & an entire range of its own. But it's the original under-eye brightener that still wows, and with 30% off its a great time to try it.

Finally the Lancôme counter has a similar offer with 25% off EVERYTHING. 

What to buy: the new Grandiose Liner. A clever, new product with a swivel tip for easy eye lining. I reckon even I could do a cat eye flick with this magic wand and at 25% off.

Two Days Left to Take Advantage of the Clarins #Feed10 Gift at Menary's

There's only today and tomorrow left to get to your local Menary's store, visit their Clarins concession and pick up their free Feed 10 gift bag.

Buy two Clarins products, one being Skincare, and they'll gift you everything shown in the picture above. Great sized samples to try out and find a new favourite. You're also doing a good deed as for every #Feed10 gifts given out, Clarins will feed ten vulnerable children worldwide. 

Heres a quick look at each of the free products. 

Moisture Rich Body Lotion. Very smooth and easily absorbed, this is pretty much a full size product. 

Hydra-Quench Mask. Creamy, gentle and a pleasant scent. 

Exfoliating Gentle Refiner. I really like the texture. The microbeads make you feel like you're really giving your skin a total freshening up. 

Relax Bath & Shower Concentrate. I'm not a bath person, but I'm going to let my son keep this for his bath times. 

Hand and Nail Cream. Another product I don't use personally, but my Mum loves a good hand moisturiser, so I'll pass this along to her. 

The lovely Jennifer at Bangor Menary's also gave me the current Clinique Bonus offer when we visited last Saturday. Unfortunately that was the last day of that current offer, but they usually always have some sort of offer running, to try your local Menary's to see what offer followed up this one. 

The reason I'm still featuring it is because I was really impressed with the  Clinique Long Last Lipstick in the shade Blushing Nude.

My usual nude lipstick is Naked Beige by Soap & Glory, but this is a very close match and the texture is a real jump up in quality. It's very creamy & feels great on. I think I'll swap over to this for my day to day lip, and buy it again when the sample runs out. 

So visit your local Menary's for the Feed 10 Clarins offer until 4th October, and check out the other beauty concessions for their individual current offers. I would post about Bangor's Fashion Night Out next Thursday, but their PR lady says it's practically sold out already. If you see me and Smix at it, say hi! 

The Big Monday Morning Round-up: Clarins Double Serum, Lidl Fashion, & Drop a Jean Size Challenge Midpoint Check-in

I've follow up news on three different topics I've blogged about before, so I'm combining them in one big Monday morning round-up. 

I blogged a few days ago that I was trying  Clarins Double Serum which is the UK's leading serum product with a string of awards to its name.

Its a unique oil AND water product, and Clarins have found a combination so they work together rather than separating as those elements usually would. You can see the bottle above is split in two, oil on one side, water based serum on the other. When you pump to dispense both come out and you combine them before applying to your face. 

I was given a few samples at the House of Fraser 'Beauty Confidential' event, where you can currently pick up Double Serum for £59, saving £10 on their regular price.

I have tried all my samples, one each night and truthfully I haven't noticed much of a difference from my usual Boots No.7 serum. The Clarins rep said that to really get a good idea of the product you need a week's worth of samples, but by the time I reached that concession after my Laura Mercier makeover, they were almost all gone. So perhaps that's why I didn't notice any different YET, I only had four nights' samples.  

Also I thought the samples themselves were a little small. I realise it's an expensive product, so samples will be costly to give out for free, but I found it tricky to get any of the water based side of the serum out of the sachet at all. 

I do want to give Clarins Double Serum another try though. The lady representing them said they get sample sizes in every few weeks, so I will try to see if I can get a seven day supply of samples when I'm up again. 

I'm keen to visit House of Fraser while the Beauty Confidential offer is still running, as the other product they showed us, Instant Smooth, is also £10 off at only £16.50

This stuff is magical. It was their innovative product they shared with us during the talk that night, and what it can do has to be seen to be believed.  

Rubbing a tiny amount on the palm of your hand, then comparing to your other one, will show you just how effective Instant Smooth is. Wrinkles and lines are filled in and simply disappear. I had never seen anything like it.

Of course the effect is temporary, once you take off your makeup at the end of the day your wrinkles are back- but it's a cheaper and less drastic measure than injected fillers. 

So, who managed to get something wonderful from the range of Lidl Fashion that arrived in stores last Thursday? 

I was thrilled to find the striped t-shirt I had wanted at the press event, at only £5.99 in my local Bangor store. I couldn't find the panelled leather look leggings, but I've a feeling they said those will be in store in November. 

Finally, I'm one week into my drop a jean size challenge. My weight is inching down, and those size 12 jeans are looking more like they will fit every day. In fact I was able to buy size 12 leather-look leggings yesterday in Exhibit.

 The New You site has lots of new bundle offers in time for slimming down for Christmas, if you fancy joining me.

The £6.95 Monthly Beauty Box That Will Find You Your New Favourite Products For Less

The You Magazine Discovery Box is a classic monthly subscription box, that costs just £6.95 including delivery. 

Now that all of a sudden I'm Mrs Makeup, I wanted to check out some of the subscription boxes you can buy online, which let you try a handful of samples of different brands every month. The big names are Birchbox and Glossybox, but ever the bargain hunter I spied the You Discovery box cost just £6.95, saving £3 a month compared to the other subscriptions.  

You still get to try brands you might not otherwise buy from, independent companies and bigger, well known brands like Body Shop. The September Revitalising themed box includes a gift card for £10 off when you spend £25, which I'm thinking of using it before the October deadline and buying some Christmas presents. 

The other products are a seaweed & aloe eye gel, several samples of Skyn firming eye gel, face masks, a serum and more. Another unique feature of the You box is every month you can choose two samples from a selection of brands on offer. So as well as some surprises in the post, you are guaranteed at least two products that you really want to try out.

As well as the monthly box there are limited edition special boxes on offer, such as this Burt's Bees themed collection. 

All in all its the beauty box for me. It's cheaper, I can choose two samples, and who doesn't like getting a little present in the post, even if it is from themselves? 

Next I want to mention a product I'll be trying out over the next few nights, and which I'll tell you all about properly after that. 

On Thursday night a group of local bloggers were invited to come along to House of Fraser to listen to representatives from five beauty brands giving us a short talk on their newest and most innovative products. 

The ladies from Clarins showed us this amazing new wrinkle eraser, but also spoke about one of their top products, the multi-award winning Double Serum. As I said I'll tell you all about it after my trial, but apparently it's a real game changer of a product, so I'm excited to try it out. 

The House of Fraser event was to launch their Beauty Confidential promotion, where a selection of products across all the beauty brands are £10 off. That includes the Clarins Double Serum which is now £59 down from £69. So I have my little samples and I will tell you in a few days if I notice a difference from using my usual Boots No7 serum. I'll also tell you a bit more about the other beauty brands and products we heard from last night.