I love Christmas and I probably love the months prior to Christmas even more, because that’s when the prefun takes place. The prefun meaning: decorating the house, decorating the Christmas tree, listening to Christmas music, baking, shopping for and wrapping gifts and honestly my favorite part: shopping the new Holiday launches in the beautyworld. The Holiday collections start launching at the end of September and every year there are some wonderful gift sets and products to buy for your loved ones or for yourself!

I’d thought it would be fun to write a little Holiday Beauty Gift Guide this year, with products that I am already loving and products that are still on my wishlist. Enjoy and get inspired! 🙂

These are my recommendations for this year! It’s all either make-up or skincare. At the end I will give some haircare and fragrance recommendations as well, from Sephora and Ulta.

Make-up

I am a huge fan of all the Sephora Favorites sets. These sets give you the chance to try out several products from popular brands without spending a lot of money on it. Most products are trial size.

This set contains five highlighter products from Fenty Beauty, Benefit, Artist Couture, Milk Make-Up and Cover FX and comes with a cute make-up bag. A closer look is coming soon on Weeks of Beauty!

Here you can find all the amazing Sephora Favorite sets. There are sets for make-up, skin-care, hair care and fragrance. Some sets have a theme like the set ‘Soko to Tokyo‘ (Asian Beauty) and ‘Inner Beauty‘ (for a healthy body, so you get beauty from the inside out).

Some more mini’s that could be nice as stocking stuffers: Fenty Beauty Bomb Baby Mini Lip and Face set, Marc Jacobs The Undersmoke Kit and Marc Jacobs Cream and Sugar Nude Lip Trio. All mini’s of the brands most popular products.

Charlotte Tilbury is doing very well in the gifting department every year. A little while back I wrote about the Beauty Icons Gift Set which would be a gorgeous luxurious gift. Charlotte Tilbury also has some cute stocking stuffers like this Mini Hollywood Liquid Lipsticks Charms set, featuring two mini liquid lipsticks.

And more mini’s! Stila and Cover FX come out every year with mini sets of their best selling charms: the Stila Glitter & Glow Liquid Eye Shadow and the Cover FX Custom Enhancer Drops. I picked up the Stila set last year in the USA and I regretted not getting the mini Cover FX Custom Enhancer Drops, so I got them this year! Review on those coming soon.

Earlier this year Benefit came out the ‘The Blush Bunch’: a set of six mini blushes and bronzers that are perfect to give the Benefit boxes a try. These products really are mini because every box contains 1,6 grams of products, were a travel sized blush contains around 3,5 grams and a full sized blush around 8 grams.

I bought this blush bunch on Feelunique.co.uk for 19,50 pounds. The set has a value of 49,43 pounds, so it’s an amazing deal!

Every year Hourglass comes out with an Ambient Lighting Edit. This year it’s the Ambient Lighting Edit Volume 4. It’s the perfect way to try the brands face powders out and it makes a beautiful luxurious gift for every beauty lover.

The palette contains two face powders, one strobing powder, one bronzer and two blushes. The palette is pretty high in price though because it retails for $80,-.

A lovely idea for stocking stuffers are these small Huda Beauty Obsessions Palettes. They retail for $27,-, making it the perfect way to try out the Huda Beauty eyeshadows.

In the picture are Mauve Obsessions and Coral Obsessions. I once gifted the Warm Brown Obsessions palette and it was a huge hit!

And last but definitely not least in the make-up category: Christmas themed make-up! This year I had to get my hands on the Too Faced Gingerbread Spice Eye Shadow palette because how darling is this!? I think it makes such a nice gift for any one who loves Christmas and make-up, like myself. The palette smells like vanilla and gingerbread and contains both matte and shimmery shadows, mostly warm toned. The names of the shades are the cutest ever, like Reindeer Paws, Lookie at my Cookie and Warm & Toasty.

Even though my palette crashed in the mail (hence the empty shade Spiced Rum), I am already loving it so much. A review on the palette with more pictures and swatches, is coming soon!

 

I still have the Too Faced The Sweet Smell of Christmas mini lipstick set on my wishlist but I was unable to grab it before it sold out everywhere, too bad! I am still hoping that it will launch in the Netherlands as well in a couple of days, so fingers crossed!

I am also patiently waiting until the Pat McGrath mini lipsticks come back in stock.

Skincare

There are so many options for fun skincare value sets so you or your friend/family member can try the brand and their most popular products out. I love skincare mini’s because I am pretty picky when it comes to skincare. I want to make sure I like something before I am investing in it.

Another favorite Sephora item are the Sephora Play! Boxes. The Play! Boxes are only available in a subscription but now they are coming out regularly with Sephora Play! Smarts boxes which you can purchase separately for  somewhere between $15 en $20.

I bought the Sephora Play! Smarts Skincare By Age: 30’s andSephora Play! Smarts Skincare By Age: 40’s. I am in my early 20’s but the products that were featured in these two sets were so amazing (according to the internet) so this is the perfect way to give these different brands an products a go.

It fun to gift to anyone who loves to try something new.

Another skin care pick is the Drunk Elephant ‘The Littles’ set. Drunk Elephant just launched on Cult Beauty and SpaceNK and this set is amazing for trying the brand out. It’s such a popular (and high end, wow) brand in the USA so lot’s of people are loving the launch in the UK (and through those websites it’s also available in most European countries).

Tatcha skincare are a lovely gift for the luxurious skin care lover. Pictured above are:

• Tatcha Pore-Perfecting Moisturizer & Cleanser Duo;
• Tatcha Bestsellers Set (got this for my birthday this year and I love it!);
• Tatcha Smooth, Poreless Skin Obento Box.

Hair care

For hair care I’ve got some picks I think that are lovely to gift, but I don’t have them myself.

 

 

The sets shown in the pictures above are:

• Sephora Favorites Best Hair Every (Sephora.com);
• The Little Beauty Parcel – The Hair Edit (Feelunique.co.uk);
• Living Proof x Feelunique Exclusive Box (Feelunique.co.uk);
• Briogeo Hair-O-Scopes (Cultbeauty.co.uk, Sephora.com, Sephora.fr);
• Ouai Haircare On My Ouai (Cultbeauty.co.uk, Sephora.com);
• Briogeo On-The-Go Travel Kit.

I’ve hear a lot about the Briogeo Holiday Gifts this year already. I think it’s a popular brand that’s still growing and growing.

Feelunique has stepped up the Holiday Gifting Game this year and I am loving it. They have beauty boxes available, kind of like the Sephora Favorites sets but they call it ‘The Little Beauty Parcel’ with skincare, make-up, hair care, Man skincare and special brand focussed edits.

Fragrance

One of the first luxurious beauty gifts I got for Christmas was a Marc Jacobs Daisy fragrance gift set. It contained a bottle of Daisy and a travel size bodylotion and travel size shower gel. The fragrance gift sets have been around for a while already, but lately I’ve been seeing gift sets with fragrance and make-up from the same brand. Full bottle of fragrance and miniature make-up item.

 

Featured in this picture are:

• DIOR Miss Dior EdP 50ml + Body Milk 75ml set (Douglas.nl);
• MAC Shadescents Crème d’Nude (Douglas.nl);
• Yves Saint Laurent Mon Paris EdP 50ml + mini Rouge Volupté Shine (Douglas.nl);
• Jo Malone London Cologne Intense Cologne Intense Collection (Douglas.nl);
• Sephora Favorites Deluxe Perfume Sampler (Sephora.com).

So many options!

Advent Calendar

For any one who really wants to go big, there are a million advent calendars to choose from.

 

Advent Calendars shown in this picture:

• Charlotte Tilbury Beauty Advent Calendar: Charlotte’s Beauty Universe;
• Space NK The Space NK Advent Calendar;
• The Little Beauty Parcel – 24 Day Beauty Advent Calendar (Feelunique).

And then there’s are so many more beauty advent calendars on the market this year.

What is your favorite gift to get and gift to give with Christmas? Do you have anything from this blog on your wishlist?