Sales Haul - Part 2 - Boots - Jack Wills And Illamasqua

As per usual the Boots Christmas sale started on Christmas Eve. I looked and then I clicked the X and closed the page. Why? well everything I wanted had either already gone or it was still too expensive for mean old me. Fast forward though to this week and the 70% off final clearance started. Again I missed out on a few bits but I did manage to pick up two things.

The Jack Wills Weekend Essentials kit was something that I'd had my eye on for a while, unfortunately though the £65 price tag put me off. Like a lot of people I assumed that it would be a Star Gift, but despite having a small reduction on Black Friday it didn't actually become a Star Gift till after Christmas when it was reduced to £35. I thought about but it was still more than I wanted to pay so I held off and I'm glad I did, I ended up paying just £19.50 for it.

The kit comes packaged in a canvas sports bag, and contains 6 products in the Jack Wills Hope Cove fragrance. Everything is full sized and you get a body scrub, a body lotion, a body butter, a body wash, and a body mist. You also get a mesh body polisher and a Jack Wills branded water bottle. I'm useless at describing fragrances but I really, really like the Hope Cove fragrance . It's very unusual, it's warming, with a bit of floral with a tiny bit of fruit.

This sale haul was all about the fragrance, and whilst some of the sets that I really wanted were out of stock I did manage to pick up this bargain from Illamasqua, which was reduced from £45 to just £13.80.

I going to be completely honest with you - I hadn't actually smelled Illamasqua - Freak when I ordered this set. It was a bit of a risk but when you consider what you got in the set,the value, and the saving,it was a risk worth taking.

The Illamsaqua Freak Fragrance & Make Up Gift Set, was a Boots exclusive and contained a 30ml bottle of Freak Eau De Parfum, a 15ml Nail Varnish in Raindrops, and a 1.3g Pure Pigment in Furore.

Furore was actually the real reason why I bought this kit. Illamasqua Pure Pigments in this size retail at £16.50, compare that to £13.80 for everything your about to see and you'll see why this purchase makes sense.

I'd wanted Furore for quite a while, it's a gorgeous peach, champagne, nude shade. I've never actually tried an Illamasqua pigment before so I'll be giving this a good go and reviewing it for you x

As well as the pigment, the set also contained a full sized Illamasqua Nail Varnish in Raindrops. Raindrops is one of Illamasqua's most popular shades. It's a light grey, blue jelly, with quite a bit of iridescent sparkle. This would normally retail for £14.50 but it's currently £5.80 on the Illamasqua website which again shows the overall value of this kit. I actually already own Raindrops and love, so I'm currently debating whether to hang on to this one as a backup or to give it away - decisions, decisions!

So the value of this set is pretty evident already but the star of it, is undoubtedly the fragrance itself. The kit contained a 30ml Freak Eau De Parfum which retails at around £34 on it's own!

I'm very much a sweet fruit and floral girl when it comes to fragrance so this one is a bit of a departure for me. Although it's a floral, it's a very heady almost, masculine fragrance, crammed full of  unusual ingredients such as hemlock, queen of the night and frankincense. At first I found it a little too strong but it's really growing on me, and I actually love the dry down scent, when the initial headiness had evaporated. Being an Eau De Parfum you only need a couple of squirts, and you have a fragrance that will last you all day.

On those two items I saved a pretty huge £77.70 when you compare the price I paid to the normal Boots price. Pretty impressive even if I say so myself. Sometimes it pays to wait and sometimes it pays to take a risk every now and then. Apologies that neither of these sets are available online any more but it's worth checking your local Boots store to see what sale items they have left. Oh, and don't ignore some of the smaller stores I've had some of my best sale bargains from some of their smaller stores x Thanks for reading x