The beauty retailers seem to be in some sort of crazy pre-Christmas bid to outdo each other when it comes to giving away piles of luxury miniatures or bundling them up into attractive advent calendars. The Liberty calendar, the Harvey Nics GWP, discount codes galore – it’s like a giant beauty race!

Not one that I particularly wanted to get caught up in, post-wise, but I have never been able to resist discounts and free things (every time I go to the GAP website they have a 30% off code and I end up buying more baby stuff) – and the latest offer from Space NK is actually slightly different…

It’s a beauty advent calendar – the 25 Days of Beauty – but it’s also a gift-with-purchase. Before I start harping on about the value of this impossibly tiny tube of luxury face cream or that miniature vial of precious oil, I’ll tell you that behind door number one (or more accurately, inside box number one) there’s a gift card with fifty quid on it. The spend to get the gift, which has a touted value of over £380, is £250, but I suppose that if you were doing your epic Christmas shop anyway, you would, in effect, be getting 20% off. Or at least a 20% bonus.
But if you’re a proper beauty junkie then lots of the bits and pieces inside the beautiful box will definitely get your heart beating faster – a Frog Prince cream blusher from Lipstick Queen (it’s green. GREEN!), a cute mini Laguna bronzer ...