All The Things I Can't Live Without...

As much as I dislike the word haul (what is a "haul" anyway? Who came up with it? And who decided to use it for huge amounts of makeup purchases??), I can't think of another word to replace it so, here's part 2 of IMATS Toronto 2011 with my haul and the student's makeup competition.

First, the competition. The theme for this year is Tribal Beauty.

I spotted a few models and their student MUA getting ready.

This student with her makeup skills did an absolutely stunning artpiece on her incredibly beautiful model. I was lost for words when I saw this.

Tell me you're not blown away, huh???

Then, at 2 pm, everyone headed to the main stage for the proper competition itself. I apologize if the pictures are blur cos I was sitting quite far away and had to rely on my zoom. Plus, the models were busy strutting their stuff and it was difficult to catch them.

Contestant No. 1

Contestant No. 2

(argh, that guy!)

Contestant No.3

She's the shortest one, third from the left.

Contestant No.4

Sorry, I couldn't get a good still image of her, but here's contestant no. 5 and her!

Contestant no. 5 had on some creepy white contacts. o___o

Contestant No. 6

Contestant No. 7

Contestants no. 6 and no. 7 were kinda meh.

And lastly, contestant No. 8.

And here are the winners of the competition!

3rd place: Contestant No. 8

2nd place: Contestant No. 3

Sorry, couldn't get a good picture of her receiving the award! T_T

1st place: Contestant No. 4

That was kinda expected, for the 1st place's winner, lol!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Moving on to my IMATS haul.

Colourful IMATS pamphlet, showing all the companies that were there.

I'd like to mention that I was fiercely determined to keep within my budget of CAD$200 and I think I did pretty well. :) Here are my spoils, don't look like a lot right?

I emerged with 3 items from that jampacked MUFE booth, the HD Foundation in 120 (CAD$31/S$40), the Face & Body Foundation 32 (CAD$28/S$36.50) and a magnetic palette (CAD$7/S$9). The prices listed are after the 40% discount. The steal-of-the-day had to be the palette, omg! I think it's retailing for US$20++?

My OCC lip tars! They were going for CAD$10/S$13 each. I got them in "Interlace", "Grandma", "Trollop" and "Stalker".

Then I went to Nigel's Beauty Emporium (didn't take any pictures there, cos it's SUPER crowded) and bought some false lashes. These were 7 pairs for CAD$10/S$13. They feel a lot like Ardell lashes actually with their flexible spines, but a lot cheaper.

I also grabbed two packets of disposable mascara wands, the normal brush pack was CAD$2.50/S$3.25 while the plastic bristle pack was CAD$3.50/S$4.55.

The pack on the right has made a revoluntionary change to my makeup routine, I'll tell you more about it in another post. It is awesome!

These are the Corwn brushes I bought. The packet of sponge tip applicators was a freebie thrown in. I can't remember the prices for each brush, but the total for them 3 were CAD$9.50/S$12.35. Super affordable!

I bought the two C-shaped eyeshadow brushes for highlighting the browbone, as you can see, the brushes really cover a huge area.

And here are the Bdellium brushes I bought, total was CAD$15 for all three (the guy at the counter gave my $1 off, lol).

I got the precision blush brush, the large smudger brush and the blending brush. One of my goals for IMATS was to get a good but smaller blush brush and a smudger brush to smudge e/s out on my lower lash line, so I got these. The blending brush is a dead dupe for MAC's 217 and the Sigma E25, which I love. All these brushes are made of natural hair.

Total damage: CAD$147

Pretty good huh? I wished I had bouht some stuff from the MAC Pro booth though, I didn't know they were having 20% off! T-T

All in all, I had a great IMATS experience; while it was eye-opening, all that makeup left me fatigued and I couldn't bring myself to look at cosmetics for a whole week after that, ha ha!

Hope you enjoyed my IMATS entires as much as I enjoyed the experience! Thanks for reading.

Before I left for my exchange, my uni friend and fellow beauty junkie tippied me about the IMATS that was happening in Toronto in November and I made it a point to not miss it. To a student, the trip wasn't exactly cheap - the coach and IMATS ticket cost about CAD$120 - and I went alone, meaning that I had venture into this unknown place without any help or companions. That said, it was worth every penny and the cold feet I had the night before.

IMATS Toronto 2011 was held at the Toronto Congress Centre, which is quite a pain in the butt to get to as it is not in the downtown area at all. It's near to the Toronto airport actually, but I managed to make my way there without any trouble.

I actually took a midnight coach from Montreal down to Toronto so that I can be at the event bright and early. I even had some time to put on some makeup, so here's my LOTD:

The IMATS was held in one of the exhibition halls, and it was end autumn and approaching winter, hence the bare trees and rather bland atmosphere.

Oh yeah, it was cold, so I quickly hurried into the hall. This was the first thing I saw, it was so exhilarating!

I remembered I reached at about 9 plus, and there was already quite a queue forming. But the registration did not take long.

Armed with my IMATS shopping bag and my green wrist band, I was all ready to experience IMATS 2011!!!

Just right at the door of the hall was Make Up For Ever. I did my preparation work before going for this event, reading up on tips and tricks, and a lot of people advise going to the MUFE booth first because 1) They have huge discounts 2) The queue is going to get crazier. And as you can see, at nearing 10 am, there's already a lot of people there!

Almost their whole range was there I think, and they were giving 40% off which is a huge discount. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact prices for the products. You can spot some prices in the pics below, but I do know it's a lot cheaper than our SG prices (if you don't include the MUFE annual sale).

And here's the queue for MUFE. At 10 a.m. in the morning. This is crazy.

MUFE also had a live makeup demo going on. I was loitering around for quite a while at the booth cos I wanted to see how the transformation went. The model looked stunning at the end of it!

Right next to MUFE was Obseessive Compulsive Cosmetics (OCC). Needless to say I got my hands on some lip tars (see Part 2).

After MUFE and OCC, I explored the hall to see what other companies were there.

Royal and Langnickel brushes were there, being the official sponsor of the event.

They had a crap ton of brushes!

CAD$7 for kabuki brushes! They were soooo soft, but I held myself back from geting one as I already have a good kabuki brush and I was on a budget.

Crown brushes were there too (with another crap ton of brushes). I got myself a few brushes from Crown, cos they were so inexpensive.

Lit and Naked Cosmetics were there. Omg, glitter and pigment heaven!! They were giving free demos, but I didn't go for it as I already had my makeup on.

Yaby was there, with their miniscule pans of eyeshadows, lol!

Face Atelier was there..

..and so was Graftobian, with all their cream foundations.

Hakuhodo was there. Omg, I laid hands on their brushes...and I couldn't let go. Their brushes are the softest of any brush I've ever touched! But oh so expensive! ): So I just stayed there for 5 mins, fondling the brushes like a brush pervert.

I spot myself some Ben Nye (hello there)!

And my face went like this "-___-lll" when I saw the price tag on the palettes.

Bdellium tools were there! I was quite impressed by their brushes; though not as soft as Hakuhodo's (duh!), their prices are a lot more affordable and some of the brushes were really good. Those green vegan brushes were sooo cute!

NARS was there, not a lot of people were at their booth though.

They also had a live makeup demo, and the makeup was pretty pretty pretty~

Alcone was there, but I didn't care much for it cos I'm not familiar with the brand.

And I saw bottles upon bottles of brush cleanser, lol!

Airbrush makeup companies, Temptu and Dinair, were there as well. That sales assistant at Dinair had some crazy hair and makeup going on!

It's not surprising for MAC Pro to be there, but it was definitely surprising for them to be selling products there with a 20% discount! Sadly, I didn't buy anything, kinda regretted. ):

Moving on, Eve Pearl and her famous salmon concealer was there.

Embryolisse, a skincare company, and Pari Beauty were there. Again, I'm not familiar about these companies so I didn't pay much attention to them.

Last but not least, NYX had a giant booth right smack in the middle of the hall. And the queue was crazy! I only poked around a bit, and honestly, the discounts weren't that good and we could easily find the products in our SG blogshops, so I didn't buy anything.

Interspersed throughout the day, there were talks and panel conferences by reknown makeup artists and youtube gurus at the main and forum stages. I attended a few of them, partly to glean some tips from the experts and also to rest my tired legs.

The first talk I attended was EnKore's (Koren).

He was wearing this Hello Kitty apron thing that was so adorable!

He was teaching us how to use colours to compliment and intensify our eyes, and it involved the colour wheel and all those complicated stuff, but he did a demo on a model with a palette from Sugar Pill.

But...if you asked me, honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the completed look. =/

After the talk, I spotted both Koren and Elessa from Pursebuzz working on a model at Jordana cosmetics.

So that's about 80% covered on the event itself, phew! In part 2, I'll be showing you guys the student's competition and my haul! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

One of the first things that my companions and I made sure to do once we reached Canada was to visit the Niagara Falls, so we booked a 2 day-1 night tour before our school term started.

Our first day consisted of visting the Thousand Islands and the CN Tower in Toronto.

Sounds like the condiment that you dress your salads with? Well, they kinda related - the salad dressing is named after these islands, originating when this lady chef from New York served this actress the dressing and the latter named it Thousand Island because the veges in the sauce reminded her of the islands.

Meh, whatever.

I couldn't care more about the condiment but the scenery on the boat tour we took was pretty nice. A more interesting fact would be that the waters in which the islands are scattered in is actually shared by Canada and USA, whcih explains this boat that's flying two flags.

One of the more famous sights is the Boldt castle.

It's built on the Heart Island and the story goes that this rich guy (I've no idea if he's actually royalty or not, but I doubt so) constructed this castle specially for his beloved wife, but unfortunately, she passed away before it could be completed. So it lays in its half-completed ruins until the authorities stepped in and took over the construction. Now this castle is opened to visitors and wedding ceremonies.

We couldn't step foot onto the island cos it belonged to USA and we'd need a passport just to cross over, ha ha! But the boat got close enough for us to snap a few good shots.

After the boat ride, we stopped over for a buffet lunch which was quite good. The variety of food there was awesome! *activate salivation*

A few more hours on the road and we reached Toronto. It was one heck of a busy city; it reminded me of New York and SG more than anything else.

Eaton Centre, one of the shopping malls we popped into.

I spot Sephora~~~ But I didn't go in, cos we were in a rush.

The interesting vehicles we saw as we roamed arund Toronto. Seriously, who has seen a yellow school bus nowadays? This is so cool, kinda reminds me of the magic school bus (I love that show, so educational!).

Then we headed for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre...

...where the CN Tower, the tallest free-standing tower in the western hemisphere, stood (I couldn't fit the whole tower into my camera frame, lol).

Knowing that fact, we just had to go up to see the scenery. Downtown Toronto looked like a lego miniature from up there.

At one of the top most floors, they had this glass floor panel where you can stand on and look over 300 feet down. It was pretty scary at first, I defnitely wouldn't recommend it to people who are scared of heights!

As for me, I got used to it after a while and soon, I was gamboling around on the glass panel!

We visited the gift shop to grab some post cards before we left. If you are unaware, the animal that represents Canada is the moose!

And here's me peeking under a big, bad undressed moose!

That was the end of the first day, we went back to the hotel to rest for the night.

The next day, it was Niagara Falls time!!! We went up yet another tower, the Skylon Tower, to take a bird's eye view of the waterfall.

Then it was time to take a Maid of the Mist boat ride, which brings you right up to the raging waters of the falls.

Like this.

Needless to say, I got really wet.

But I was happy! There's a queer sense of accomplishment being showered by the waters of the Niagara Falls.

There was another tour where they brought you to walk the trail that's along and under the waterfall. But we didn't have that included in our tour.

My friends and I went into Marriott Hotel, which was nearby, to dry ourselves off and this is where we spotted this interesting gumball machine! You put a quarter in, and a gumball drops from the tank down a series of slides and metal plates (makes the sound ting! ting! ting!). After that, you grab the gumball that comes out from the bottom of the chute.

The last stop of our tour before touching back down in Montreal was a pie factory!

Honestly, they didn't only have apple pie. They had pumpkin pie (it was really good!) and pecan pie and blueberry pit, etc.

We stuffed ourselves with a few slices before heading back. All in all, it was an awesome experience and a trip so worth going! If you happen to visit Canada, definitely join one of the Niagara Falls tour!

Being in a temperate country with four seasons does weird things to you.

Like I found myself wanting a bronzer real badly. It has never happened before, I was never a bronzer girl. I far preferred having healthy flushed cheeks over contoured cheekbones, but something about the approaching autumn just flipped a different switch in me. Hence, my first cometics haul in Montreal started with me searching for a good and affordable matte bronzer.

I believed I bought all of this in Jean Coutu, one of the drugstores in Montreal. Not from one store though, cos I visited several outlets that day. Another drugstore is Pharmaprix (or Shopper's Drug Mart in places outside Quebec). The funny thing about these drugstores is that their offer items vary from store to store, so even if 5 outlets are Jean Coutu stores, they will have different items on sale.

You probably can tell I found my bronzer. Here's Rimmel's Natural Bronzer in "Sunlight".

I got it quite cheaply, it was on offer for about CAD$4 (S$5). It's not bad, being matte and so affordable, but not fantastic because it's a bit too light for me and slightly orangey. But I work around that and I'm still using it everyday now. There's hardly a dent in it, I'm never gonna finish 14g of bronzer!

And even though I probably don't need these, I got some more mascaras! Cos these are the much-raved mascaras, and being a mascara freak, I've gotta try them. Loreal's Voluminous in "Carbon Black" and Covergirl's Lash Blast Fusion in "Very Black". They were on offer too, CAD$6 or $7 (S$8 or S$9) a piece.

Revlon lip products! Omg, they were going for sooo cheap in the States and Canada, that it makes Revlon products in SG look grossly overpriced.

Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in "Rose Dew" and Super Lustrous Lipgloss in "Pink Afterglow".

They were going for CAD$3 (S$4) each, yeah, WTF-cheap right? I went back to the store to exchange "Pink Afterglow" for "Coral Reef", as I wanted a more pigmented lipgloss. The exchange policy is fantastic there, I just said I had a similar shade of lipgloss and they allowed me to switch it!

Revlon's Colorburst Lipstick in "Soft Rose" and Colorburst Lipgloss in "Peony".

They were going for CAD$5 (S$6.5) the weekend I was doing this haul, lucky me! I love the colour of "Soft Rose" and the texture of the lipstick is wonderful and so comfortable on the lips!

I wanted to try lip stains, so I got this Covergirl set that was on clearance for CAD$8 (S$10).

I really liked the lipstain and was happily using it..until one day, the cap came off inside my purse and all the product leaked out. -__- That was the end of the lipstain, and I had to scrub my purse. Ha ha, lesson learnt - never place any marker-like products in your purse! The lipgloss was meh, I passed it to my little sister.

Here are the pictures of the lip products (excluding "Pink Afterglow" since I didn't open it to do the exchange, and the lipstain because... well, it looked like an ordinary red marker).

And hand swatches!

Left to right: Rimmel's bronzer in "Sunlight", Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in "Rose Dew", Revlon Colorburst Lipstick in "Soft Rose", Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss in "Peony" and the Covergirl WetSlicks Lipgloss (I've got no idea what the shade name is). The star above is a swatch of the lipstain.

Here are some of the lip swatches:

Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in "Rose Dew"

Revlon Colorburst Lipstick in "Soft Rose" (I LOVE this colour!!!)

Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss in "Peony"

Covergirl's Lipstain (again, I don't know the nade of the shade)

Moving on, I also purchased an eyeliner set from Annabelle, which is a canadian cosmetics brand. It came with a lapis blue pencil kohl liner and a gorgeous sparkly blue glitter liner. I used a $1 off coupon wit this, so this set cost only CAD$7 (S$9+).

The glitter liner has got blue, green and pink sparkles in it, how pretty~

Next, my very first Physicians Formula (PF) items! Again I got the set, cos it's a lot cheaper than buying the items individually. I think I got this for CAD$22 (S$30), which is really reasonable for 3 eyeliners and an eyeshadow palette.

I've heard so many good things about Physicians Formula eyeshadows that I had to get at least one palette! The eyeliners may look average, but after using them for 4 months, they are my HOLY GRAIL eyeliners! No kidding.

Product pictures of the e/s palette and the eyeliners:

I kinda got two black eyeliners instead of the brown that I was suppose to get in the "brown eyes" set (you can tell the other black liner came from a "green eyes" set), but I've no complains about the switch cos this black eyeliner is my Go-To, I-Will-Die-If-I-Ran-Out-Of-It eyeliner.

From top to bottom: PF sparkly purple and black liners from the "brown eyes" set, PF sparkly black liner from the "green eyes" set and Annabelle's Kohl liner in "Blue".

Hand swatch of the liners:

Top to bottom: Annabelle's glitter eyeliner, Annabelle's Kohl Liner, PF sparkly purple liner, PF sparkly black liners.

Hand swatch of the PF eyeshadow palette:

All in all, I spent about CAD$60+ that day (I bought a few other necessities as well, like shampoo) which converts to about S$80. Not bad for such a big haul! But that's only the first and there's more to come, lol!

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but my friends and I didn't take a direct flight to Montreal. We flew to New York first, then took a locomotive up to Montreal. It was a 12 hour ride, but the scenery was awesome and I enjoyed every minute of it. That being said, by time we reached Montreal, it was already 8 plus in the evening and we were famished. So our landlord brought us to this chinese restaurant to have some light and soupy food (no more burgers and fries, please!), and this was my fortune cookie I got during dessert!

Ha ha, looking back now, I think that sentence pretty much summed up my whole exchange. It was the most amazing, awesome, spectacular experience of my entire life, and I didn't regret one bit.

After the meal, we took our first tour around our neighbourhood. And this greeted us!

A soapy, sudsy fountain! Apparently, someone decided to throw a whole boxful of detergent into the fountain, and it started spewing foam and bubbles. But there's something relaxed about Montreal, that the officials don't even mind if you do something wacky like this (you'd been heavily fined if this was in SG).

And people were having fun in it! For example, this guy:

He launched himself into the suds and starting playing around like an 8 year old kid, ha ha!

Our landlord would take us on car rides occasionally, to visit the interesting sights in Montreal. One night, he brought us up Mont Royal, which is a mountain that's right smack in the middle of the town. That's where we got to see this stunning bird's eye view of Montreal.

The people living on the mountain are usually the more well-to-do, which explains the granduer of their houses. Really classy and breath-takingly beautiful!

Here's Bailey, our landlord's chihuahua who accompanied us everywhere (even into a church and shopping mart, cos they let dogs roam everywhere in Canada and the States). He was enjoying the night breeze during one of our nocturnal car rides.

The next day, I decided to roam around the town myself and snap some pictures!

It was end of summer and the weather was beautiful then. The people were clearly enjoying the last bit of heat underneath the clear blue sky. At that point in time, it was around 18 degrees.

The is La Baie ("The Bay" in English), a departmental store that stocked all sort of stuff and cosmetics like NARS, MAC, Clinique, Benefit, Mario Bedescu, Origins, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Georgio Armani, etc. Kinda like our Tangs!

And there are cycling paths that are specially built separate from roads so that people can cycle safely in Montreal! And the people do cycle everywhere! I cycled everyday to school too, cos the weather is just too nice (you don't perspire much) and it's convenient and the public transport is dead expensive.

If you start to go up Mont Royal, you see shop houses and little quint cafes. I took as many walks as I could before winter started, cos there was so much to see and there's alays something surprising or pleasant to discover!

Like here, I found these two cute kitties who were lazing outside a second-hand bookstore.

Omfg-they-are-so-long whiskers....

The animals there are puffier, supposedly because of the cold weather, and I don't mean cats and dogs. I mean squirrels too! They over run my school, seriously. Instead of seeing sparrows or crows liek we do in SG, you'd just see squirrels scampering around. And you don't see many cats here too. I only found 4 cats through out my whole stay in Montreal (including these two). The people there clearly favour dogs.

Anyway, it was on this trip that I bought my first cosmetics in Canada! And all the product photos and swatches will be the next post. :)