Review: Joliette Caribbean Radiance Range

Brands that have a story and heart behind them always tug at my heart and Afrodeity is one of those brands.

Afrodeity was founded by mother and daughter team Alicia and Joliette around the knowledge of healing herbs, oils and butters passed down through the generations.

It’s an online store that retails natural Caribbean Inspired hair and skin products. Their ultimate goal is to help small farmers in the Caribbean reinvigorate the declining agricultural industry and to stop a dependence on importation of essential foodstuff.”

I love supporting small business owners who are doing fantastic things and have met Alicia the founder a number of times and each time have been inspired by her story and journey.

So when Alicia asked if I would like to try their newly launched skincare line named Joliette – the Caribbean Radiance range, I couldn’t wait.

In Alicia’s words "I created Joliette in honour of my mother, for whom the brand is named and for my daughter and her growing head of gorgeous curls"

The whole range is a natural based line that incorporates natural fruit extracts such as papaya, strawberry, lemon and cranberry, alongside a number of oils and butters. Namely olive, coconut, apricot, sunflower, shea and vitamin e. The line is designed to help to even out your skin tone and promote a radiant complexion.

If you are not a fan of scented products though, then you might struggle with these as they are heavily scented. However it’s a gorgeous coconut scent. Think real natural coconuts and the face moisturizer also has a strong scent of the different fruit extracts. I’m usually wary of anything that is heavily scented, particularly for my face but I haven’t had any sort of reaction, which I think is largely due to Alicia’s background as a chemist.

Joliette Caribbean Radiance Facial Cream Wash

Described as a “unique 2-in-1 blend of a cream cleanser and a foaming face wash. It nourishes and protects the skin whilst actively illuminating the skin with natural fruit extracts”.

I am really enjoying using this cleanser either in the morning or as the second part of my double cleanse in the evening. It is smooth and creamy and feels more like a moisturiser than a face wash, and it doesn’t leave my face with a squeaky overly clean feeling, instead its soft and lightly moisturised.

Ingredients include: liquorice extract, papaya, cranberry, strawberry, lemon and mango fruit extracts.

£14.00 for 150ml

Joliette Caribbean Radiance Facial Scrub  

Described as a “2-in-1 blend of cream cleanser and moisturising face wash with exfoliating volcanic pumice to leave skin feeling clean, clear and ready for action.”

For regular readers you will know that I am not a fan of grainy face scrubs, I instead prefer chemical exfoliators or if I’m going to use a grainy scrub, I much prefer finely milled textures such as crystals, powders or rounded jojoba beads. That’s because I find these are much gentler and effective on my skin. I find that the grainy ones tend to scratch and aggravate my sometimes-sensitive skin.

So unfortunately the grains in these were way too harsh for my skin. I do however enjoy using it on my body.

Ingredients include: Apricot kernel oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, papaya fruit extract, cranberry extract, strawberry extract, lemon extract, mango fruit extract.

£12.00 for 150ml

Joliette Caribbean Radiance Facial Moisturiser

The Caribbean Radiance Moisturiser has been designed to” illuminate and tone skin whilst creating a smoothed out, even skin tone.”

One of the beautiful things about this moisturiser is that it has an SPF 25, a great sun protection with the addition of zinc oxide, which thankfully dries to a completely sheer finish that will not look ashy or white on darker skin tones.

It does have quite a number of oils in it, which I initially thought would make my face look shiny, however although the oils do come through after some time, my face just looked the same as it normally does with no extra shine. I found it be lightweight but with the perfect amount of moisturising properties.

I can’t attest to it’s evening out of my skin tone, I think I would need to use it for longer to really asses that. You are meant to be able to use it both during the day and at night, but I personally would only use it during the day due to the SPF properties.

Ingredients include: liquorice extract, papaya, cranberry, strawberry, lemon and mango fruit extracts.

£14.99 for 60ml

You can find out more about the brand and purchase the Joliette products on their site here 

Have you tried anything from either the Joliette range? What did you think?

3 Lip balms to Weather Proof Your Lips

Don’t you just hate it when you pop your lipstick or gloss on and it just emphasises how dry your lips are?

I’m a bit of a lip balm obsessive, particularly in winter when the heating and frosty air just seems to draw all the moisture away from your lips.

Here are my 3 current favourite industrial style hydrating lip balms to give cracked, painful and chapped lips the heave ho.

Yu-Be Moisturising Skin Cream £13.50

Developed in 1957, this lovely moisturising skin cream is one of Japan's best selling vitamin-enriched skincare creams. With a rich glycerine formula, it goes on like a cream but immediately sinks in as you rub it in. It’s the lightest of the 3 and has a nice matt finish so is great for applying your lipstick afterwards.

It does have a bit of a camphor fragrance when you apply it, but this fades away quite quickly afterwards. It’s also multipurpose, so can be used anywhere else that feels a little dry.

Lanolips 101 Ointment - £10.99

I had heard so much about this, but had resisted until recently when I was out and had forgotten my makeup bag at home. Don’t ask! Anyway the freezing cold air was seriously drying out my lips and I could feel those little painful cracks starting to appear! So what was a girl to do? I leapt into my closest Boots and picked one up. All I can say is I finally understand what the fuss is all about.

This little tube completely soothed my dry and somewhat painful lip and applying another layer before bed, I woke up with soft, smooth lips.

It’s made out of 100% Ultra Medical Grade Lanolin and its extremely thick so you might need to build some arm muscles to get it out of the tube if you leave it out in the cold, but once on it melts into a smooth un-fragranced and nourishing balm.

Let's talk about skin: What is Skin of Colour

Image Credits - Iman

One the things I love about beauty is that it isn’t a one size fits all type of world and what works for one woman, isn’t necessarily going to work for another.

Having your most amazing skin is about truly understanding your skin and what works and doesn’t work for it, be from your skin type to skin condition (more of this to come in the series) to your skin colour.

Whilst having lunch with a good friend the other day, who is on the complete opposite end of the diverse beauty spectrum to myself, with pale Caucasian skin and the straightest of hair ,we got talking on the differences in our skin tones and our beauty concerns.

This prompted her to ask me a question she said she had pondered about a couple of times having seen the term “woman of colour/ skin of colour”.

Her question was in two parts

1.         Does woman of colour only refer to black women?
2.      Does skin of colour really differ to Caucasian skin aside from the actual tone?

In the last census in 2011, 13% of the UK population identified themselves as either Asian, Black or Mixed Heritage and it’s a demographic that is experiencing the fastest growth here in the UK.

So I thought this was the perfect opportunity for a blog post to look at the definition and characteristics of skin of colour, if it differs and how this could affect your skin care routine.

First up:

What is skin of colour?

People with skin of colour are generally classified as those with non-white heritage. This includes people of Asian, Black, Mixed Heritage and Indian descent.

Does it differ from Caucasian skin?

Skin is skin so doesn’t really differ too much on an anatomical level, however there are a number of differences in the characteristics between skin of colour and Caucasian skin which can affect how your care for your skin. The most notable are: 

Max Factor Creme Puff Blushes on Dark Skin: Review, Pictures and Swatches

How gorgeous are these blushes?

I'm a big fan of the Milani Baked Blushers, which sadly is only available in the states. You can however sometimes find it online. I had also heard that these are a great drugstore dupe for the Hourglass Ambient Light blushes, which I'm yet to try.

So when I spotted these little beauties, I couldn't wait to try them out.

Max factor launched these Creme Puff Blushes in six shades. and although they all seem pretty, when I swatched them in Boots, these two were the only ones that I thought worked on darker skin. All the other shades were either a little too light, shimmery or pink (but think baby pink). 

They have a beautiful marbled effect of colours and because they are baked they go on incredibly soft and merge the two different tones with a slight shimmer effect.

I just love the soft focus of the blush and how it provides a glow, making you look like you are lit from within.

The two shades I picked up are

25 - Alluring Rose - which is a brown, rose gold and peachy shade. This has more shimmer in in and is still a little light in my skin tone so I much prefer to either wear it as a highlighter or to layer it on top of another blush. If you have any spots or open pores which I do, I would recommend using a light hand with this blush, as shimmer can highlight any areas you are trying to hide.

30 - Gorgeous Berries - is a berry and pink shade and is my favourite. It's the darkest shade of the line and is a soft and pretty tone on my skin tone.


These are them swatched on my skin and a few images of me wearing them.  I actually layered them on top of each other. (I'm trying to start taking more pictures of myself and seriously struggled with the camera so if anyone has any tips on how to take selfies with your dslr camera, please please share) 

These blushes are available from both boots and super drug and retail for £8.99

Have you tried any of them and will you be picking it up?

Have a lovely weekend

Xx

Brighten up your shower: Rituals Happy Buddha Shower Gel

This last month has been so grey and cold that I’ve found myself needing a morning pick me up to get me out the door.

Currently brightening my morning shower routine is Rituals Happy Buddha Shower Gel  (even the name makes me smile)

It’s in an aerosol type can and is a gel-to-foam formula. It starts off as a gel then puffs up in a similar way to hair mousse before foaming up on contact with water. And combines Mandarin and Yuzu together for a great zesty pick me up, leaving your skin with a soft warm fragrance.

It retails for £8.50 for 200ml from Rituals and a number of department stores (Note the size in the picture above is a small sample size I got as part of a gift)

Have you ever tried anything from Rituals? What did you think? Would love to get some recommendations in the comments below

I would love to stay in touch with you, please subscribe or join with Google Friend Connect (see the right hand column )

Are we friends yet? If not why ever not? Follow me on  Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and Bloglovin

Motivational Monday: Start Where You Are

Good morning Monday, Good morning February, Good morning lovely readers.

As we move into the second month of the year, I find the need to make a confession.

Shhhh….come closer, it’s a secret.

My confession is, that I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

And if you are anything like me, this means that you sometimes get so bogged down with the details and in trying to make something look “just right” that you don’t get started at all.

Case in point is my lack of blog posts over the month of January, I was trying to switch things up so much, and felt I needed to have a certain things in place that nothing actually happened.

The key, I’ve found is to simply start, take what you have and start. Don’t wait until you have the whole thing figured out or you have everything in its perfect place, otherwise you will find that it will never be perfect and months down the line you will still be waiting to start!

So the idea is to bring what you have to the table and keep on moving forward from there.

Have a great week ahead

Segun. x

Are you a bit of a perfectionist as well? Or do you get so caught up in the details that you miss what you need to do? I would love to know in the comments below. Also let me know, what you are going to stop waiting for and start doing instead?

Monday Motivational posts are posted every other Monday.

I would love to stay in touch with you, please subscribe or join with Google Friend Connect (see the right hand column )

Are we friends yet? If not why ever not? Follow me on  Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and Bloglovin