The Secret Santa Solver : £15 and under

Hello there, Fairypants fans! We're sorry that we didn't have a post ready for you last week, but we've been working on a special something for the festive season, and we'll have an extra post up later this week to make up for it! We present to you the very first edition of the Fairypants 'Secret Santa Solver'!

You know how it is - everyone at work draws names out of a hat and all of a sudden, you're saddled with buying a present, on a budget, for someone you maybe don't know so well.

We're here to take the stress out of the festive season for you! Here are our top 3 present ideas for a budget of £15 and under - AND we'll be covering other budgets later in the series :)

#1: The Ultimate Lip Kit - £12

If your recipient regularly wears bold & bright lip colours, the chances are excellent that they would appreciate our Ultimate Lip Kit. Comprising one of our super-sweet Lip Scrubs, a sumptuous Lip Balm and one of our beyond-beautiful (not to mention ridiculously moisturising) Lip Paints, this set is an absolute must-have for anyone who likes to look after those smackers! You can choose any combination of all of our flavours, scents and colours for each product and get a beautifully boxed gift set for just £12!

The Ultimate Lip Kit - £12

#2: Fairypants Boxed Perfume - £13.50

Ask around: if your lucky gift-buddy has a sweet tooth or a love of cocktails, or is even just a perfume-hoarder (plenty of us are, it's nice to have lots of options :D ), for just £13.50 you can present them with a perfume unlike any other. Our range of vegan perfumes includes scents such as Peach Melba, Strawberry Bellini, Cola Bottles and so many more!

Perfume 30ml - £13.50

#3: Mix & Match Nail Varnish Gift Set - £15.00

This one's easy. Look at your recipient's hands. Are they wearing nail varnish? If so, we've almost certainly got at least one set of nail varnishes that they will love. You can mix and match - for instance, if their signature colour is pink, you could pick out five pink-toned variations from each of our lines! Naturally, you could also just choose one of our pre-selected gift sets. For bold, sassy mani-fans, the Neon Gift Set is an absolute must have, but our Matte Pastel set is perfect for nail-fashionistas who like to keep it more toned down.

Neon Nail Varnish Set - £15

As I'm sure you already know, all of our products are 100% cruelty-free and vegan-friendly - tested only on willing humans! If you have become the Secret Santa to a vegan or vegetarian lady or gent, quite frankly we're certain that anything you could present to them from our selection would be gratefully received! All products are handmade in the UK and created by our very own Fairy Queen, Natalie :)

What would you love to receive as a gift? If you give it a quick tweet/share on Facebook, your Secret Santa has no excuse not to spoil you ;)

xox

Click here to see our '£10 and under' Secret Santa Solver!

Etsy puts on her Fairypants!

Now, we don't know about you, but when we're having a bad day, we like to treat ourselves to a bit of retail therapy. We don't always know what we fancy, but we love a good window-shop. Like most people - we like to get our little fairy mitts on things that are unique. Don't you love being the one to introduce your pals to a new product or brand when they ask where you got your shoes/lipstick/bracelet from? It also feels great to support smaller businesses and crafters. For this reason, we love a bit of Etsy!

Etsy is a wonderful online marketplace, stacked to the rafters with the handcrafted, the beautiful and the unusual. The expression 'made with love' is pretty much par for the course in this world wide web wonderland. You can 'favourite' your preferred sellers so that you don't miss their new products and announcements, and better yet, it has its very own lovely app for shopping on the move - we find that a cheeky bit of Etsy browsing really cheers up the commute on a dreary evening ;)

If you didn't already know, Fairypants is on Etsy! All of our lovely goodies are arranged into categories for ease of browsing, and there's a contact button just in case you have any questions about any of our products or policies. There's a super simple search function to help you sniff out those harder-to-find products too! Natch, for those bold, cruelty-free-cosmetics fans, the obvious choice is 'vegan neon nail varnish'. For those who prefer their claws to be a little more toned down, you could of course search 'vegan pastel nail varnish'...

As for navigating the app, that's easy as pie!

Use the 'sections' function to find what you're after!

Browse the scrummy flavour/scent ranges of our products!

If you're not sure what you're after, you can just scroll through all of our individual products and bargain gift sets!

If you're a new addition to the Fairypants clan, put your mind at ease looking at the fab reviews we've had from our past customers!

Happy shopping, fairies!

xox

Drinking Port in Porto!

Around this time last year we were approached by a team of researchers from Keele University, asking if we'd tell them our story of how Fairypants came to be. We said yes, and we had a lovely Skype chat one afternoon.

After Christmas we were sent the transcription of the interview, and we found it so interesting to read it again that we serialised it on our blog - read it here.

Then in spring time, we were contacted again - did we want to travel to Portugal in September to present our business story at a seminar concluding the research - we said yes, of course!

We flew out to Portugal on Thursday 22nd September, fizzing with excitement to meet new people and explore a new country. We landed and were immediately struck by how laid back and relaxed it was - much more so than at home!

View over the river Douro, Porto

Obviously the scenery helped too! We were greeted by two members of Keele's expert research team, and we had a really lovely time exploring the historic city of Porto.

On Friday we had some more exploring to do, followed by heading to the University of Porto for our presentation. We had so much fun telling our story, it's always nice to look back on where we started - and to see how far we've come. We also shared some of our plans for the next few months, and it's so exciting to see what's still to come this year.

View from the Crystal Palace Gardens

Afterwards we had the most lovely meal of our whole stay - at a vegetarian restaurant with lots of fab vegan options! Not very Portuguese as we chose a Malasian curry - but it was DIVINE!

We stayed for one more day, and we spent the Saturday walking around Porto - burning off the calories from the night before! We sampled some amazing local Port, and bought some cheesy souvenirs to remember our brief but gorgeous visit.

River Douro

We had a fabulous time, and we at Fairypants HQ count ourselves very lucky to have had the opportunity to travel to Portugal, and to participate in the study. We hope we get to read the finished findings soon, it's very interesting to see real research on young entrepreneurs, and to see that our hectic way of life isn't that unusual after all.

Most of our followers and customers will know that our Chief Fairy is a lady, and as such she was shocked by some of the statistics revealed by the study - only 1 in 3 young entrepreneurs is a woman. With the gender pay gap still in existence, and so many women still coming up against the so called 'glass ceiling' it seems like the only way forward is to create your own glass ceiling, then smash it into smithereens.

That's what we'll be doing at Fairypants HQ, anyway...

Shop some of our newest releases now - and keep your eyes peeled for more!