My Favorite 2010 Products

Hope you had a good Christmas and look forward to a new year. Let me share with you some of the things I've enjoyed using this past year.

Eyeshadow Quad

Maybelline Expert Wear Eyeshadow in Natural Smokes

This is by far I think the most affordable, high quality eye shadows. I really like using this throughout the year. I got it from the drugstore when they had 40% off. It's like 5-10% of what I normally would pay for a dept store eyeshadow quad. I didn't buy the other color quads though. Pigmentation is great and I just love, love, love the lid color. One downside though as you can see is the cheap flimsy packaging. It cracked when I brought it to Asia with me earlier this year. And I dropped it on the floor and there goes a chunk off of the dark brown color. Oh well... Nevertheless, I would repurchase it. Hope they will never discontinue this!

Eye Shadow Primer

NARS Eyeshadow Primer

This is one the best things that saves my oily lids. I smudge technically all the mascaras and eyeliners; no matter if they are smudge proof or water proof. With this, it helps my eye makeup stays much longer than they normally would. I don't get panda eyes as frequent. Cannot go without this.

Mascara 

Fiberwig Lash Knockout Volume Mascara

Not sure where you can get this. Perhaps AdamBeauty or Sasa carries it. I got it in TW when I went there for a visit. It doesn't come right off like the original Fiberwig mascara does but it comes off easily with the Mac eye makeup remover. It gives you a very nice volume; much better than the original.

Masks

Laneige Water Sleeping Pack EX

I got this jar from the Incheon airport in Korea. Can't remember the price but it was around $20. I've used their 1st version since way back when they were sold for $10 at the department store... For a lazy person like me, I just put a thick layer on my face before going to bed whenever I feel my skin is getting a bit dry, everything just soaks right in. I would wake up with a glow on my face.

I remember I had a bit of their previous version left before going on a long flight to Asia. I brought it to the airport and putting everything on before getting on the plane. My skin just absorbed it like a sponge and didn't feel dry on the entire plane trip (I'm talking about 11 hour flight). It's a must have!!

Missha Collegen Mask

Very moisturized and it contains a lot of fluid, so usually I put this on for about 20-30 minutes. One downside though is when the mask is getting a bit drier, it may fall off from your face. Anyways, I just lay flat when that happens. LOL Not sure if you can get it in the US though. Maybe on Missha's website. I got this at the Incheon airport for $18 w/10 pcs at the time.

My Beauty Diary - Southern France Apricot Mask

This makes my skin very soft and stays on my face nicely. They use a newer material for this mask than their other ones. I wish the holes for the eyes are slightly bigger. haha 

Hand Cream/Lotion

Korres Guava Body Butter

I just love this lotion because it's very moisturizing and this is my 3rd tube. Sometimes Korres website will have deals or just wait for Sephora to go on sale. It's thick and have a sweet scent to it. Not overwhelming and I think the scent doesn't last very long, which is good. I don't like the scent lingers too long on my skin. It contains no paraben, mineral oil, propylene glycol , or ethanolamine.

Nail Polish

If you notice, I do like painting nails. It sort of like a stress relief for me. I like certain brands, like OPI, Essie, China Glaze. The only one drug store brand I would repurchase is Revlon. You can always get good deals from Ulta on those salon nail polishes. Always look for nail polish without these three chemicals: formaldehyde, toluene, and DBP.

For the ones I listed here, they work for my skin tone (from left to right):

OPI - No Spain No Gain

Essie - Plumski

China Glaze - Spontaneous

Sephora by OPI - Call Your Mother

Rimmel - Lasting Finish Pro - Steel Grey

Butter London - All Hail Mcqueen

Seche Vite - Dry Fast Top Coat

Nail Maintenance

Nailtiques Nail Protein 

When my nails chips or peels, I will use this. Somehow my nails grow faster after I have this on. I didn't believe it at first but it does work.

California Mango Cuticle Oil
This is amazing and smells wonderful! My cuticles are very dry and this just soaks right in. I keep this at my desk at all times. You can get this at Sally Beauty.

Dior Holiday Collection Makeup Palette

Holiday season is here and it's a great time to shop. But we need to be smart about our spending and best use of our resources. After careful consideration, I got this Dior makeup palette during Sephora's Friends and Family 20% off sale a little while ago. Regular retail price is $75. The package is very pretty with red patent material. Size is about 4"x 5 1/4" x 1 1/4". It has a zipper closure. I don't like holiday palettes that use heavy duty paper packaging or the ones with bulky package. I know the ones like Too Faced or Smashbox or Tarte make a great holiday set because of the range of colors and variety of shadows but I don't want things to take up too much space and it's difficult to store. That's why I find this Dior palette more appealing because it makes a good travel size kit and pretty compact.

When it opens up, there's a heavy plastic cover and 2 eyeshadow sponge tip applicators are placed on the top.

 After you remove the plastic film, there are 6 eye shadows, a DiorBlush in 950, a DiorSkin Forever compact powder in 030, a DiorShow Extase mascara (4ml), and an Ultra Gloss in Flash 662 lip gloss (4ml). The mascara, lip gloss, and compact powder are yet to try. The gloss reminds me of Flash 686 but this has more red to it. The 6 eye shadows can be easily mixed for day and night. I've used this shadow a number of times and they are easy to apply and blend and the quality is no different than their regular shadow palette, which is a good thing. I notice some other brands may compromise their holiday collection with cheaper packaging and use a different location to produce their holiday palette to keep the cost down. And at times, the quality of the shadows are compromised.

Here's a swatch. I don't know if you can tell I've put the powder on the far left because it almost blend in with my skin. LOL. I may use that for touch up but haven't tried it on my face yet. The blush on the far right as labeled. The blush is a light pinkish color and gives your cheek a light glow and not too overwhelming. If you use the shadows in this palette, especially if you use darker shades for a more dramatic look, you probably don't want your cheeks to be too pink. Overall, I think this is a great buy.

Lancome Teint Miracle

I stopped by Nordstrom counter the other day and got a sample of the Lancome Teint Miracle to try. I'm in shade Ivoire 4N. Full size comes in 1 oz and it's $37 for the bottle. They have 20 shades, so shouldn't have a problem finding the right shade. Packaging is good because it's comes with a pump. My personal preference with foundation is always one that comes with a pump. Just more sanitary and won't get messy. I don't put on foundation everyday and usually I can do with just concealer. Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation in Warm Sand is what I use currently and that feels quite light already. But this Teint Miracle looks even more sheer and yet coverage is good. The foundation is quite watery and not thick. I don't feel like having something on. If you have blemishes, I am not sure how well it covers but for me, coverage is pretty good and evens out my complexion. My skin is very sensitive and this doesn't break me out or cause any allergic reaction.

I've tried this for 2 days in a row. Though I do notice the T-zone area gets kinda oily after a few hours but I think just need to touch up a bit then. My cheeks tend to have dry patches if the product is too dry and this didn't happen at all. Probably will consider purchase this once I'm done with the Bobbi Brown one.

Nordstrom 11/6 Mascara Deals

I was at Nordstrom the other day and the sales @ the Chanel counter told me about buy two get one free mascara deal on 11/6. I think they started doing that last year. If you need to stock up mascaras, perhaps go and reserve them now. Bobbi Brown sales also told me the same thing, so I guess probably other brands are also participating.

Note: I used to buy Lancome waterproof mascaras but because of sanitary reasons, I throw one out every 3 to 4 months. It becomes quite expensive if I keep using Lancome. Earlier in the year I stocked up a bunch of Fiberwig mascaras from my trip to Asia, so I probably won't make any mascara purchase.

Nails with Light Blue tips

Getting bored with single colors? Here's what I did with my nails.

• Seche Vite Base Coat
• One coat of Essie Mademoiselle (Sheer Pink)
• Paint the tip of the nail diagonally using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Extreme Wear in White On (You can use any white nail polish)
• Then paint the tip using Essie Lapis of Luxury (light blue). As you can see the white part became just a strip.
• Make dots using H&M Blue Sky (Turqoise Blue) and add stickers. The floral stickers are from Daiso. Not sure if they still have that though but you get the idea.
• 2 coats of Seche Vite Top Coat to make nails long lasting and prevent the stickers from coming off.

Integrate GY905

Integrate is another drugstore product line from Shiseido and available in Asia. I got this new Integrate GY905 from a gal on ebay who shipped from Taiwan. The cost of this is $19. I thought the pricing is alright. In TW, it costs NTD $390 at retail, so roughly $12. Exchange rate is pretty bad now with the weak US dollar, so you really have to do the research in order to get a good deal. The whole product line contains 9 different color palettes; 5 colors in each palette and the packaging is pretty cute. The product contains 3.5g of eye shadows, which is not a lot. But it will take a long time to see the pan, at least for me. I like the pigmentation and the shimmer in this palette. NARS eye shadow primer is a must on my eye lids now as it holds up everything. So, honestly I don't know how well it stays up without the primer. But I read from some of the Chinese blogs and they commented the staying power is pretty good. Another thing is its sponge tip applicator is pretty high quality. I really like this palette coz it's rare to find a nice gray shimmery eye shadow that stays. I'm also eyeing on BR 701 but will wait until my return to Asia in a few months.

Here's a swatch. Isn't that pretty?

Hello Kitty Nails

I got some Konad nail stamping stuffs awhile ago. Wanna do a Hello Kitty nail after seeing this video. Anyways, the nail plate was a pain to use. Have to practice before start applying onto your nail. The gurus made this nail stamping task so effortless. Oh well, here's my first try. Still room to improve to get all the images stamped to the nails.

1. Base Coat: OPI
2. Two coats of China Glaze Tempest
3. Stamp Hello Kitty on to my nails using Konad Special Nail Polish. I got the GCOCL A02 plate somewhere on the internet. Painted the bows into red. I used the OPI Ohare & Nails Look Great! Wish I have yellow to paint her nose. :(
4. Added a few nail stickers
5. Top Coat: 2 coats of Seche Vite

Purple Nails

I was planning to paint a golden nail design but then I saw my purple nail polishes... so, I changed my mind. The above are the nail polishes I used to paint on my nails. After base coat (I use nailtiques nail protein), put a coat of light purple. Here I used Majolica Majorca VI 112.

 Then used OPI Do You Lilac It and painted mid way to the tip.

I then added China Glaze Spontaneous to the tip.

Because I wanted to diffuse the lines between each color, I used a sheer shimmery color from OPI called Dazzle Me.

Last thing to do was to put on a top coat, here I used Seche Vite Top Coat. Makes my nails last longer and shiny.

Light Pale Pinkish Nails

Occasionally some people would ask me where I got my nails done. It's all DIY coz I like to play with my nails. I used to just change the color, then gradually learned to draw some stuffs on it.

This nail looks simple yet elegant. I've used 5 nail polishes to complete the look.

• Base Coat: OPI
• 2nd coat all over the nail: Essie Mademoiselle
• Paint half of the nail from the middle to the tip: OPI Princess Rule!
• Another coat from the middle to the tip: Sinful Colors UFO
• Add nail stickers
• Top Coat: Seche Vite

OPI - Tickle My France-y

I wear nude color nail polish once in awhile but not all of them look good on my fingers. It either doesn't match my hands or make my fingers look darker. OPI Tickle My France-y looks alright with my hands. Here's the bottle:

I painted 2 coats of the nail polish and added some nail stickers. I think the color looks a bit darker in person. Didn't take this with flash though. For top coat, I used Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.

HadaLabo Gakujyun Moisturizing Cream

A friend of mine sent me a HadaLabo gakujyun moisturizing cream. HadaLabo is one of top Japanese drugstore brands and their products are good for moisturizing. My friend has the same sensitive dry skin as me and said it's working well on her skin, so I give it a try. Packaging is pretty simple. Nothing fancy and the price is very affordable, around $13. It doesn't contain any fragrance or mineral oil, so which is a plus. This can be purchased via Sasa in case you wonder where to get it.

This moisturizing cream is quite light and moisturizing. However, with the weather here in the US, it's probably not enough when use alone. I put a serum before using this and works pretty well.

Dior Eye Essentials Set

A good friend of mine got me the Dior Eye Essentials set for my birthday. So generous of her!! It comes with a notebook, a sample size Diorshow mascara, and an eye shadow palette. Here's the box:

The box contains the Dior 5 Colour Designer Eye Shadow Palette in 508 and the Dior Diorshow mascara:

Here's the back of the eye shadow palette with ingredients and instructions on how to put it on. One thing to notice is that this palette is made in Japan instead of France. Either way is cool coz personally I own a lot of Japanese cosmetics products.

Inside the box, the shadows come with a velvet case cover as their usual packaging and a colored written instruction in different languages.

Here's the case for the palette. I only own one other eye shadow palette from Dior and the case looks different. Anyways, I kinda like the CD logo hidden as the background.

Once you open it up, a plastic film showing what each compartment is.

Took a picture with flash. Notice the top right hand corner color is very shimmery. I love. I love.

Here's a swatch of each color without flash and in natural light. Keys are in reference to the plastic film as shown earlier:

The texture is very silky and smooth; different than the other Dior palette I have which feels relatively dry. #5 is a gel liner and it glides on well. I can't say much about staying power because with my oily lid, I always use an eyeshadow primer to make the eye shadows stay longer. I use NARS eye shadow primer and stayed all day. This palette probably is good for folks with lighter skin tone. Looks pretty natural because most colors blend in with my face.

Lavshuca Melting Eyes BE-01

Summer is here. Finally got a chance to update this blog. It's been awhile again...

Lavshuca has a new line of eyeshadow palette. It's called Melting Eyes. They are all in neutral color tone. Packaging is cute. Why can't the drugstore brands here offer cute packaging like this? Here's it is showing the front:

Here's the step by step instruction on the back:

Wonder how it compares to its other palette. Here's a comparison between  Eye Color Select BR-2. This new palette seems to contain more than before. But how many girls would actually use them all up?? I like the square shape eye shadows rather than irregular shape. Easier to use with sponge tip applicator and with a brush in particular.

Here's a pic with flash:

#1 is not a shimmer white color. It has a golden tone to it. I use it for highlight and inner corners of my eyes.

#2 is the base color in light orange. This line has a hint of shimmer but not sparkly. Just very subtle.Blends well with #1.

#3 light brown color to use for lower eyelid. 

#4 is used as eyeliner or for smokey eye effect.

Here's a swatch:

All colors are pretty pigmented. They feel very silky and easy to blend; quite long lasting. But I feel the BR-2 one lasts longer than this one. Nonetheless, my eyes don't crease at all after using Too Faced Eye Shadow Insurance. I guess it's always good to prime your eyes when you use eyeshadows, especially during summer time.

Essence Nail Polish - 33 Just In Case

I was at Ulta the other day and saw a new display from Essence. It's an European drug store brand and surprisingly, their products are inexpensive. They have a bunch of colorful nail polish, so I picked this golden bronze color in 33 - Just in Case. Their nail polish is 5ml; about 1/3 of a regular size nail polish. The price is $0.99 and best of all, it's Made in France. So, why not give it a try.

The color looks a bit lighter than the bottle. I had two coats of nail polish and I like the consistency. The brush is quite good for the price you pay. And I added some flower nail art stickers, so I needed to put 2 coats of top coat to secure them. The color is very nice and this lasted for a week. If I didn't do dishes or chores, this nail polish probably would have lasted longer.

My Current Lip Balms

I think every woman should wear lip balm no matter whether she wears makeup or not. It's a basic necessity. Your lips probably are one of the first things people would look at; as you talk, laugh, or smile. You don't want your lips to be chapped. Don't even wait until it cracks and bleeds...... \(><)/

I like trying different lip balms because my lips tend to be dry and I like to have it on all day. I have a lot of lip balms and they go very fast. Usually can finish one in 2-3 months. My ideal lip balm would be something in a tube, not in a tin because I don't like using my fingers to touch all over the lip balm and put on my lips. It would be nice if it's organic or with natural ingredients because it's very likely they all go to my stomach... Tried to search for an answer on the web about how much we consume lipsticks and women consume 4 to 6 lbs of lipsticks in their lifetime. I guess I am on the higher range or perhaps more...lol

Above are the ones I currently have:

1. Weleda Lip Balm (0.17oz. Got it at Whole Food. Around $5. Ain't cheap though.)
2. Nivea - A Kiss of Moisture (0.17oz; Got it from Rite Aid for $0.99 @ clearance)
3. H&M Fresh Vanilla Lip Balm - with organic jojoba & bees wax (0.5 fl.oz; Got it @ H&M for $4.95)

Out of the 3, I like Nivea the best. Partially is because I got it for $0.99 but normally this would cost around $2.49. It's very moisturizing because of beewax and shea butter and has a hint of sweetness. Normally I don't like lipstick with a taste to it but this one is tolerable.

The best value out of the three probably would be the H&M lip balm. Even though it says Fresh Vanilla, you can't really taste it but you can smell it. I like this better than the Kiehl's one because it comes out thicker than the Kiehl's and not as oily. Let me show you the back for the ingredients:

It's organic certified by ECOCERT. and Made in Sweden. 99.3% of the total ingredients are from natural origin. 14.1% of the total ingredients are from organic farming. This lip balm is quite moisturizing and doesn't need to reapply it all the time like some do.

Weleda lip balm is not really my love. It's scented with rose oil and I don't like the smell. But because I spent about $5, I just keep putting it on. It doesn't glide on well and I have apply a few times to make my lips feel moisturized. Oh well, almost finish it. Probably won't repurchase again.

Something Sweet

Hello everyone. Long time no see. So sorry for those who stopped by here once in awhile but didn't see anything new. :( I have lots to share but didn't have the time to write... I will write more frequent as time permits. Here's something I would like to share. China Glaze's Something Sweet is a very pretty pastel pink nail polish. Good for the Spring and Summer time. I like China Glaze because it's very long lasting, doesn't chip as much as the other brands and it's very good for my fragile nails.

On my nails, I have OPI base coat, 2 coats of China Glaze Something Sweet, nail stickers from Skin Food (Rose Bay 03), and 2 coats of Seche Vite dry fast top coat. 

That's all for now. Have a good week!!