Candy Cane Vodka...

So loads of you followed our advice back in September, and made some alcohol with different fruits and sugar. The only downside to Blackberry Gin (that we've found) is how long it takes.

So what do you do if you don't have that long?

Easy - use sweets!


You can flavour alcohol with any hard candy - just make sure it's vegan if you are, and then you're laughing. We made Candy Cane vodka for a party we've having on New Year's Eve, but you could go wild - how about using hard fruit sweets to make a rainbow of different flavours! What about Rhubarb and Custard, or Kola Kubes?

All you need is two ingredients - alcohol, and sweets. We chose vodka, but it's totally up to your personal preference.

Per 1 litre bottle of spirits you'll need around 100g of sweets - or however many you've got. The more you have, the stronger the taste will be. For our Candy Cane vodka, we had 10 full size candy canes, so we used those.

In order to make this drink ready in the shortest amount of time, whack your sweets in the food processor, and whizz them into a fine powder. The finer the powder, the quicker it works. We had some chunks in ours, but it turned out fine!

Next, funnel the powder into an empty bottle, and top with the alcohol. Give it a good shake. Your alcohol will be ready to drink once the powder has all disappeared - this will be around 24-48 hours. If you don't have that long, leave it as long as possible, then  sieve out the bits before serving.

Tesco's own vodka has been TRANSFORMED

The photo above shows the bottle 24 hours later- it's nearly ready to drink, Here you can see a little sediment at the bottom, but this had disappeared by the 48 hour mark.

So we'll be racking these up as shots tomorrow night - we'll let you know how it tastes! We'll be serving our guests some food too, so we're not irresponsible hosts! Hope you all have a lovely New Year's Eve! xox

Father Christmas is coming!

We know that you're already aware that he's on his way - we don't have to tell you that.

This time tomorrow all the excitement will be over - and we don't mind telling you that Christmas Eve is far more special to us than the big day itself. As you read this, we'll be all tucked up with our family, watching a Christmas film, and eating food that's really bad for us.

So we just wanted to take this opportunity to thank every one of our customers for all the support they've given to Fairypants over the last year.

We'd be nothing without you, so give yourselves a great big squeeze from us - and a lick from Fairycat!

We hope that tomorrow and 2016 bring you and your family joy, and health - and we'll be seeing you soon. Eat, drink and be merry!

Merry Christmas, guys!

xox

STOP - Hamper time!

If you’ve been reading some of our earlier posts about food stuff you can make, now is the time to capitalise on it! Did you follow our instructions and make your own alcohol back in September? Are you queen of jam making, or do you just make a mean mince pie?

Get yourself some nice boxes, and you’re set. You can collect some from online shopping deliveries, or you can pick them up pretty cheaply online too. You can also go upmarket and use baskets, buckets, cake tins – anything you like! You just need to make it look pretty.

Decide how much stuff you’re going to fill each hamper with, and see if you have enough in stock – do you need to make more, or do you need to make anything fresh, like gingerbread?

Let’s start with that alcohol. Homemade alcohol just gets better with age, but if like us, you used fruit to flavour it, it’s about time you strained that out. Open your bottles, and strain the fruit out over a jug or bowl. You can save this alcohol soaked fruit too – it’s really nice on ice cream for a simple, yet grown up dessert!

Now you need to decant those big bottles – I usually use the retro milk bottles you can get. Some places charge a lot of money for those, but if you do your research you can pick them up fairly cheaply.  All I’ve done here is fill the bottle with the strained alcohol, then labelled it around the neck. Check that the seal is water tight before you pack up the hamper – you don’t want any leakages!

Alcohol sorted, let’s move on to jams and other preserves. We’ve shared our basic jam recipe before, and we reviewed Mary Berry’s Christmas Chutney for you too – take your pick! We’ve made three different kinds of jam this year, so we can offer a choice of flavours to our friends and family! Normally I’d label each jar with a sticker, but I’ve done some with the same labels as the bottles too. Mix it up!

Now we’re adding our infamous pickled onions – we’ll probably never make these ever again, so the lucky recipients need to make the most of them! Again we’ve added a label, though you really don’t have to, it’s obvious what they are!

Finally, we’re adding fresh stuff. These home bakes can’t really be made too far in advance, but they also need to last a few weeks. If you exchange gifts early, the recipient won’t be opening your box until the 25^th, and they need to last a few weeks after that so they have time to eat them!

So chocolates are nice and easy – if you get yourself some small moulds (Lakeland do good ones, but so do the pound shops!) all you need to do is melt the chocolate and pour it in. Our favourite is dark, salted chocolate. Melt the chocolate as you normally would, add in some good quality sea salt. Let them set in the moulds, and bag them up in cellophane. Don’t forget the labels – especially if you get excited, and add something like chilli!

Another good one is gingerbread – we’ve shared a few good vegan recipes, and there are plenty available online. The good thing about gingerbread is even if it does go soft, it still tastes good!

Finally, we’ve got an excellent old fashioned recipe for peppermint creams  - you can get vegan and non vegan recipes online, so just have a gander! It can be hard work creaming the icing sugar, but it’s a very vintage festive treat.

So have you got all the ingredients for hampers? Who’ll be opening one of yours on Christmas Day? xox

Holo tastic!

Do you remember when we launched our amazing holographic nail varnishes? If you are a fan of our different nail shades you’ll know we usually release ranges of 5 shades – but when we unleashed these bad boys we couldn’t choose, so we ended up with 10!

As such, they’re our largest range, and they’re so versatile – because they’re a bit textured, it helps the glitter stick, and you end up with really decent coverage after just a couple of coats – check out one of our amazing Instagram followers – give her a follow over at @nonsmudjnails – she posts lovely photos, mainly of indie polishes like us! Look at those talons!

Earth, worn by @nonsmudjnails

Check out some of our other shades though – you’ve already seen Earth, but what do you think of the others? Like we said, we can’t pick a favourite!

Venus

You can buy the whole gift set for £30 too, all 10 bottles working out at £3 each – perfect if you’ve got a few presents to buy, or if you and your mates want to save some money!

Sun 

 You can also get a free bottle of our amazing Nail Varnish remover if you buy any Nail Varnish gift set before Sunday 20^th December, so get on it! Each polish is £3.99, or the gift set of all 10 shades is £30 - get them here. xox

Good things come in small packages!

We thought it was about time we gave you what you want. You’ve been buying our super kind to skin Dry Skin Balms for a while now – and although you lovely lot seemed pretty pleased with the two different sizes available, we had a few requests to make them even smaller.

So we did – now you can buy mini sizes of each of our 3 varieties. Unscented, Rose & Mint and Orange & Vanilla now come in 30ml as well as the standard 60ml and 100ml.

30ml Unscented Dry Skin Balm £3.99

This is good for many, many reasons.

You can now try different scents, without committing yourself to a really big tub of the stuff. Brilliant if you’re dying to try one of the scented versions, but you’re not sure how your skin will react.

They make perfect stocking fillers – they’re the right size, and more importantly- the right price!

30ml Rose & Mint Dry Skin Balm £3.99

You can now get one of each scent in a gift box for the same price as one large 100ml tin. Bargain. Perfect if you’re indecisive.

They fit in your handbag – if you’re a bit of an on-the-go person, your 30ml Life Saver will take up much less space.

30ml Orange & Vanilla Dry Skin Balm £3.99

If you’re going on holiday – don’t forget to pack one for your (inevitable) sunburn. Al least now it will fit snugly in your hand luggage.

If there’s a couple of you that would like to try the Skin Balm, you can buy the gift set then split it between you – just make sure you get the one you want!

30ml Dry Skin Balm Gift Set £10.00

So how about it?! Give one a try, and you’ll never look back!

xox

Some last minute present ideas!

Sunday 20th December is your last day to order for guaranteed Christmas delivery  -so we wanted to make it a bit easier for you.

We imagine you’ll be ordering a few gift sets (they’ll help you tick a few of your mates off in one go), so we want to give you a little treat too.

Pastel Nail Varnish Gift Set £15.00

Specifically, if you order one of our £15 Nail Varnish gift sets you’ll receive one of our amazing new scented Nail Varnish removers for free! It’s up to you if you keep that for yourself or give it away – we don’t judge! If you’re super organised you can even let us know which scent you’d like to try – otherwise we’ll send you a random one!

Strawberry & Grape Nail Varnish Remover £4.99

If you order any of our other gift sets you’ll receive a skincare freebie – it might be a sample of something we sell already, like our Dry Skin Balm, or we might be sending you something totally new to try out!

So freebies are always exciting, especially if you keep it for yourself (shush, we won’t say anything if you don’t)

But which gift set to buy? That’s the question. It depends entirely who the gift is for – are they into skincare, perfume, what? Do they want a mix of products or the full range?

Nail Care Gift Set £10.00

For your mate who’s obsessed with creating the perfect mani, give her the gift of a perfect foundation with our Nail Care kit. Cuticle oil, base coat and top coat make the perfect base for whichever crazy nail art she fancies next.

Cocktail Gift Set £50.00

For your mate who likes smelling sweet we’ve got you covered with our perfume gift set – choose from Sweet Treats, Sweet Shop or Cocktails. Give the whole gift to one lucky friend or split it and solve several present dilemmas at once.

Mini Skin Balm Gift Set £10.00

Finally, have a look at our brand new Mini Skin Balm gift set- this is perfect for your cold weather conscious friend – if they’ve got eczema or psoriasis then this is the gift they’re craving! Even if they just suffer with dryness in the winter months, you’ll perk them right up with our full range of scents all in the perfect 30ml handbag size.

So good luck with your shopping – just think of all those smiling faces on Christmas Day! xox

More freebies?

You know how much we love you, right? RIGHT?

Well we'd like you all to know about our latest act of kindness - we know how hard it is in December - you have to buy all the right presents, for the right people. But how are you supposed to find the time?

We do all our Christmas Shopping online, so we thought it was possible you might do, too.

To make it even easier for you, we want to offer you Free Delivery until Monday 8th December - that means you have all of this weekend to get your orders in.

And, if you're getting free delivery from us, it means you can save some of your pennies to pay for all the other stuff you need, like sprouts and mince pies.

What will you be treating your friends to?

xox

More Sweet Shop Favourites!

You’ll know all about our sweet shop inspired perfumes (or have you been living on the moon?!) but we thought it was about time we expanded our Sweet Shop lipbalms!

We’ve been selling our Parma Violet lipbalm for a god while now, and you guys just can’t get enough! So we decided to introduce Rhubarb & Custard and Pear Drop into the mix too! What do you reckon?

Rhubarb & Custard Lipbalm £3.99

Rhubarb and Custard tastes just like our perfume smells, so if that’s your favourite scent, or if you just can’t get enough of the sweeties then this is the balm for you.

Fruity and a little bit sour, the rhubarb is balanced perfectly with creamy, vanilla-y custard. So good you’ll be licking it off straight away. Don’t blame us.

Pear Drop Lipbalm £3.99

Pear Drop is the total opposite – it starts off sour, and it stays sour! It says something that just putting it on makes my mouth start to water!

Both of these amazing new flavours are really yummy, and they’re available in a gift set with Parma Violet for just £10! How good is that?

Sweet Shop Gift Set £10.00

xox