Beauty chat - freebies/gifts with purchase/offers THREAD FOURTEEN

[OvaHere]

Time for a new thread, our first in a MN Community Group. We've chatted and purchased beauty bargains so much we've become a literal tribe! 😂

In other news PLouise was out of the gate with ridiculous speed announcing the first advent calendar waitlist in April.

In celebration I thought I'd try out a poll. It runs for 7 days, there was only 6 options so comment in the thread for those that come under 'Other'.

As always, welcome back long standing beauty bargain hunters and hi to anyone new who would like to join. Usual caveats about the threads being bad for you wallet still apply, but enjoy anyway. 🤗

TF Fig Erotique is one of my favourites, I got it for my birthday but it is £££ although there are some sample services selling decants.

@IDontHateRainbows ive been trying to work out if those sample services are selling the real deal or ripoffs….it seems unlikely that open bottles of Sahara noir are listed for 100s on eBay but that you can buy genuine decants so cheaply from scentsample etc!

I'm back in the UK and the face the future Easter mystery and the birthday edit both miraculously reappeared so it would have been rude not to order as I really like the serum. You effectively get the reset and revive edit for £10 as a bundle, I wouldn't have ordered it on its own but its worth it if you're getting the birthday edit. Or in my case the birthday edit again.....

@Beautyfox hope this thread is a nice distraction and that your DD is well looked after x

Hi, thinking of perfume that lasts - the Jo Malone cypress and grapevine is still lingering today after I applied it last night.

@Fillybuster I really like Miller Harris Hydra Figue, it’s an airy, oceanic kind of fig scent. I’m a fan of Miller Harris generally, they have some lovely scents. They sell samples and you get the cost back in a voucher for a full size.

Hope your DD is ok @Beautyfox and you get home soon.

Look fantastic'monthly box looks fantastic (ha!) for May 😍

What’s inside:

Color Wow Travel Insta-Wow 60ml (Travel Size) worth £15
Brushworks Blow Dry Brush worth £7.99
Sol de Janeiro Rio Radiance Mist 30ml (Travel Size) worth £10
Elemis Pro-Collagen Hydrating Cleansing Mousse 30ml (Travel Size) worth £16
Innisfree Green Tea Ceramide Milk 15ml (Deluxe Size)
Cetaphil Moisturising Lotion 29ml (Deluxe Size)

https://beauty-detective.com/lookfantastic-beauty-box-may-2026/

@beautyfox hope your dd is improving
For anyone who likes Clarins, they have a nice gift with £90 spend - choice of five travel size samples. They are good sizes 😍
I like the double serum, and they have the 50ml in a gift set which comes with 2x15ml creams and a little eye cream sample, for only a few more pounds than the 50ml serum on its own
https://www.clarins.co.uk/UK_specialoffers.html

I actually managed to use Boots’ recycling scheme today and got my £5 in points. It was a pain as Boots wi-fi is unusable in my local store so I had to keep going outside to restore the 5g - fortunately the box was right by the street exit. Goodness why this worked, but it did!

Bought £10 worth of shower gel and hand wash to qualify for the points - so half price, basically.

I often get this sort of stuff from Boots, so it was a necessary purchase. Now I have got the hang of it, I will be back next week.

I also picked up my half price KBeauty sunscreen and the lip balms I bought to qualify for the free Vit C serum.

FYI boots have got some decent multiple offers for advantage card holders atm. Beauty and fragrance, and they usually stack. Worthwhile looking and a surprisingly wide brand selection. I got an iconic bronzing drops for half price

@IlovePond the points accumulate - I have around 30£ from offers and the recycling over a few months, most of our household toiletries come from there. It is a bit of a faff though

@Fillybuster What about Diptyque Philosykos? That’s figgy and has good lasting power.

I have about £300 worth of Boots points I can’t bring myself to spend 😅 also £200 at Liberty. I’m really awful for hoarding credit/ points. If it gets past a certain point I can’t bear to spend it.

@Fillybuster DS & Durga Debaser has fig notes and I find it more long lasting than most.

At the very low end of the price range, I picked up a Fig and Tonka fragrance in Oliver Bonas a few days ago. That range is all half price in the sale, and they also had an extra 10% off all sale items. It’s not long lasting, but at only £6.75 in the sale, you can spray it all day long 😂

Thanks @Lurkingshark - it’s a shame you can only deposit 5 items per day.

There’s a Byredo sample (Bal D’Afrique) as a complimentary SpaceNK sample currently. I’m tempted to get LE Velatura Balm in Meeting the Ex but I still haven’t tried the two I bought recently and I think it might be too blue for me.

@IlovePond it IS a shame and I have not yet learned how to bypass it. Sometimes bigger fed up and take it to space nk?

Ugh I mean I get fed up!

Hang on, does this mean I should stop just chucking my empties in the recycling bin & trade them in, instead? Somehow I had missed this. I know JL offered a trade in for a while but that was a real hassle so I stopped saving things to take. But I live in London with easy access to SNK and Boots, so it sounds like I’m missing a trick! Advice please!

Thank you all for the figgy perfume suggestions too! Loads to check out! I mostly lean more towards “green fig/fig leaves” than the actual fruit (I’m not a floral, sweet or vanilla scent person), if that makes sense? I love the Diptyque scent for candles & room sprays and on other people’s but, strangely, not on my skin - I don’t know why that is. Will def check out the others!

@user593
I got to try the Byredo Bal d’Afrique by chance earlier this week, it was lovely. I was in Paris for a few days and one of the places we stopped at for coffee had this as handwash and hand lotion - so gorgeous! I told dh that he had to go and check out the swish restrooms, but it was a bit lost on him, he’s happy with a bar of soap (Some of the other places we went too didn’t have any soap at all, but such is life 😜)
@FillybusterI’ve had a Boots Advantage card for years but only started doing the recycling this year. I keep a bag with beauty recyclables in the cupboard and then upload 5 at a time onto the app, and put those in a wee bag of their own, so I can take them with me when I’m next in Boots. I buy the basic household toiletries ( for non fussy DH & DD ), vitamins etc for the £10 spend. It’s a whole other decision what to spend the points on, I don’t like to let them go 🤣

CB have sent me a refund for my missing £1.60 face mask. I wasn’t expecting a refund and nor was I going to chase it given I’d gotten the bonus points and spent them already.
They go from one extreme to another 😅

I just bought the limited edition cult beauty 2025 advent calendar! With 20% off and £15 account credit. Delighted at £177. Let’s see if it arrives.

The Fwee pudding pots are down to £11.52 on Boots. The existing 10% off is stacking with the 20% off.

Also stacking with a £5 off £25 spend on cosmetics offer so now £18.04 for two, £9.02 each.

So happy for you 😊 and hope it arrives 🤞