Earlier in the summer, I was invited to be part of an expert judging panel for the Sainsbury’s Beauty Awards*. Now in its seventh year, it’s an annual specialist event that celebrates the best beauty and grooming products that are available to Sainsbury’s customers.

There were a lot – a lot – of products to test, but I’m no stranger to having a bathroom overflowing with tubes and bottles and jars and I spent a good few weeks happily ploughing my way through the list before attending the judging day. I’ve got my testing routine down to a fine art after all of these years, so it actually didn’t take long to narrow things down to my own personal shortlist before giving those products a more thorough going-over…

Now I don’t want to sway your opinions, because you have got a little voting opportunity coming up, but I must say that there were some absolutely outstanding items. I was pleased to make some new skincare discoveries, including Nivea’s Double Effect Eye Makeup Remover and the very tongue-in-cheek Cucumber Eye Pads from Dirty Works, and a brilliant “everyday essentials” (or every month essentials) find in the form of the Sensitive Soft Like Cotton pads from Always. Sanitary products are never glamorous or particularly exciting to talk about, but these have none of that plasticky, sweaty covering that most pads have and I thought that they were rather a large step in the right direction.

But enough of my own favourites: there’s one category that the expert panel had nothing to do with and that’s the Sainsbury’s Customer Choice Award. This is the public’s chance to flag up the products that they’ve found impressive, ground-breaking or simply irreplaceable when it comes to beauty and grooming. You can vote for your own best-in-show product by clicking here – voting closes on the 9th September 2016. I’ll be attending the awards ceremony this autumn, so it’ll be interesting to see what gets picked out and hailed as the new winner.

Vote for the Sainsbury’s Customer Choice Award

*this post is an advertorial for the Sainsbury’s Beauty Awards