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

It's technically not a haul, since I didn't buy the items but it feels like a haul cos I love playing with new stuff! A few weeks back, The Sample Store put up some retail size Sasatinnie Super Dolly Mascara for grabs and I immediately redeemed it along with a few other samples.

Did I ever mention that having monolids gives me an unhealthy obsession with eyeliners and mascaras?

Anyway, the items I redeemed were the Quick Touch 1 Minute Hair Dye (for my dad to try), the Sasatinnie mascara, La Roche Posay's SPF 50 Sunblock and Bio-Essence's Deep Nourishing Toner.

Such cute packaging~

After reading through the description on the back of the packaging, I immediately ripped out the mascara and tried it!

The applicator is actually a plastic comb (something like the Majolica one) that was suppose to be revolutionary in having teeth all 360 degrees around it. Not sure if you can see it in the pic above. For me, I find that more gimmicky than useful; I'll explain that in a while.

Here are on-eye swatches:

It's actually the mascara I used in my previous LOTD, the one with the orange lip. Looks ridonk-culously good here but I don't really like it.

Here's a few reasons after trying it for a few times:

1) The comb with 360 degrees of teeth does nothing at all. I don't actually use the other teethed sides, just the one with the main grooves.

2) The formula is super wet. Like takes-10 minutes-to-dry, smudge-everywhere kind of wet. ): It's so bad that I need a mascara guard every time I use it, or it's bye bye to my eye makeup.

3) I find it clumps for me, even if many other reviews claim it doesn't clump. Worse still, because it's such a wet formula, you can't even comb and separate out the clumps.

4) Don't bother using it for the lower lashes, it's too wet for that. It just smudges everywhere.

5) When it finally dries, it's kinda...rubbery?? LOL!

In a nutshell, unless it's the last mascara left in my arsenal, I won't reach for it again. It's just too messy to use.

As for the other samples, I haven't tried them yet. Except for the Bio-essence toner, which I find not bad. :) But not all that fantastic either. Now that school has started and I'll be rushing about once again, I guess the frequency of my posts will decrease. But still, thanks for reading this mini review on the Sasatinnie mascara!

Ha ha yesh, I've been obsessed with the trend lately and I finally found the courage to wear bright lips out! Kudos to Sophia (retailtherapy) for doing that all along. :) Presenting 2 LOTDs that I've rocked last week!

LOTD #1: Orange Lips

Close-ups:

The main focus here is my lip colour, which is NYX's Round Lipstick in "Heredes". It is still my most favourite bright lip colour to wear out, cos it's this gorgeous burnt siena-orange colour that compliments my skin tone very well. Because my undertone tends to be very yellowish, I find corals and orangish shades look better on me than plain or bluish reds.

I decided to go with the whole orange look by sporting orange-coral eye makeup (MUFE Aqua Cream 05, orange eyeshadow) and orange blush (MAC's Streo Rose MSF). The winged eyeliner and lashings of mascara complete the look.

And I loved how my hair colour turned out in this picture! Maybe wearing orange makeup would be too startling against black/dark brown hair, but I find that it goes very well with my straw-coloured hair! It's like camouflage, ha ha!

And one silly face for you (my failed attempt at the duck-billed pose).

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LOTD #2: Chanel Rouge Allure Laque in "Dragon"

Omg, ever since I've been into the red lips look, I've been LUSTING after this liquid lipstick. It's SOOOO gorgeous!!!

And expensive.

Which explains why I went to a Chanel counter to try it on first. I tested it as a stain, cos I was out shopping with my friend and I didn't wanna scare anyone. It still looks fantabulous IMO (my friend got tempted to buy it too, ngah hah!)~

The whole look I had on that night:

And my OOTD(night):

I find simple clothes work best with red/bright lips - another reason I found courage to test out the smokin' red Chanel laque that night!

Me loves Chanel~ *grins*

And ending the post with the normal silly face~

Sorry for the grainy picture; I took this with my friend's camera when we were out walking. Guess I'm thick-skinned enough to camwhore right in the open!

Does anyone own Chanel's "Dragon" (I know Sophia does~)?? Do share your experience or love of it with me, I'm dying to hear about it! Thanks for viewing guys. :)

[Non cosmetics post]

I'm someone who's always itching to make stuff and personalize things. Blame it on me being a girl, or on my mom's art-driven genes. I adored art lessons in primary and secondary school; I taught myself how to draw anime/manga since I was 8 years old; I "zhnged" my own pair of Cotton On flats; I still do love drawing scientific images (nothing like 'em cells!) - I guess makeup was an eventual thing for me, cos it's a form of art too!

Anyway, back to the topic. It started when I got myself an organizer on Gmarket back in December last year. Decided to be more organized, cos I'm always messy and losing track of things.

Here it is; a beautiful diary imported from Korea that cost me S$12.50 (I figured I'd be more motivated to write in it if I found it attractive =x).

Chocopen~~~

Gawd, how I love the cream colour of the jacket and the cute motifs at the bottom. The inside is cute too, the paper quality good and a small slip of stickers was also included. IMO, it was a good buy!

Ha ha, I was so looking forward to using it this year... when I received another 2011 organizer. -___-

It's just a simple black one from Daiso; I got that during a Daiso gift exchange during one of the christmas gatherings I attended. I'm afraid I don't have the picture to show you guys, but it's really plain and the paper quality isn't that good (hey, it's only S$2). But being the miser that I am, I wanted to use it and not let go to waste.

Thus, I decided to dress it up and save the good Korean diary for 2012 (provided the world doesn't end. In that case, we wouldn't need an organizer anymore, would we?) Ta daa!! My handiwork. :)

The insides:

(see my "bua hiao bai-ness"?? ha ha ha xD)

I couldn't stand how plain and boring it was, so I pasted a ton of pictures of the things I loved most. :) At least the diary attracts me to write in it now. Hurrah to personalization!! Thanks for viewing this post people, take care!

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P.S. Just an ironic picture I'd like to share with you~ :)

Ha ha ha, I love my cat~

I've been into a simple makeup look phase recently - a smudge of eyeliner at the lash base, oodles of mascara, a tiny bit of blush and a matte lippie.

I dunno if it's the same with everyone, but I go through makeup phases like growth stages. For 2 weeks or so, I'll be wearing a particular look everyday, after which I switch to another look and that lasts me for some time too. The last phase I think was the whole gothic, rim-my-eyes-with-tons-of-eyeliner look.

Anyhow, I snapped a few pictures of one of my nowadays routine looks.I actually was quite pleased at how it turned out, cos it's not too overbearing and it's classy enough for a friends gathering.

The eyes:

Ooh, me loves mascara~ And me loves Jones (miwitch) too! Why? Cos the Etude House Tear Drop Liner is the best thing that I've ever received! I've used it in a lot of looks and for different things (the temporary wrist tattoo) and it's awesome! I love how glittery it is. :) As for the lips, I'm wearing Stage's Wonderlust Semi-Matte Lipstick. I love the colour of this lipstick; that's why I wear it out even if it's drying on my lips (can see lah hor, all those lines in my lips).

More pic spam!

And of course I had to be a myopic idiot and cover it all up with my spectacles, heh!

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Oh yes, before I forget!!! I keep forgetting, argh!

A BIG thank you to Lynn (beadsandends) for the small Christmas giveaway. I was only suppose to get the fruit masks but generous Lynn threw in the Lakme Kajal Eyeliner too. I really appreciate babe, thanks so much!

And thanks everyone for looking! :D

I believe almost everyone has at least 2 sides to their personalities. It's our multi-faceted characteristics that make us all interesting and unique, non? I know I do - I behave totally different when I'm with different groups of people. But how exactly do I behave with each bunch? Well, that's for me to know and you to find out~ :P

Anyway, I was inspired to do this simple manicure from Urban (the weekly read that comes with The Straits Times). They were writing about the upcoming fashion trends for 2011 and apparently, manicures and nail art are still gonna be big this year! Yay! In it, they mentioned about painting the under side of your nails if you have long enough talons, so I decided to try it.

Here's the side of my nails that faces up (the side that you normally see):

Ha ha, it's all sweet and paddle pop-esque! I wanted to play with softer colours using the Etude House nail polishes I bought from my Malaysia trip. I quite sure it's not showing up in the pictures, but that bright blue polish actually has a green/gold reflux to it. It's a cool hologram/duochrome polish to wear!

And here's the under side, where I went for a more edgy deep green-orange combo. Also Etude House polishes. :)

(see that scratch on my 2nd finger? My cat did that, one temperamental afternoon.)

So it turns out like this:

Ha ha, corny but I think it's interesting! Excuse the screwed up image, my picture editor is still cranky. So that's the manicure that I've been spotting for the past week and since the polishes have not chipped at all and still look good, I've no intentions of switching them yet. I'll probably have to cut my naisl soon though, cos it's time to get down to making pineapple tarts! I make them in small batches to sell to friends. :D

Anyway, thanks for viewing people~

I was messing around with one of my Daiso palettes and here's the look I came up with.

Close-ups of the eyes:

Because the palette consisted mostly of pale and pastel colours, this look turned out to be very sweet and fairy tale-like. The palette is the one right in the middle, at the top.

I also used the glitter Tear Drop Liner by Etude House to create some sparkly dots and designs (more obviously seen above in the 2nd picture), and dabbed some on my lashes to make it more magical looking.

I actually has on some light pink blush, which you probably can't see due to the strong lighting; but you can still see the highlight! My lips were nuded out with NYX's "Circe" lipstick and the Daiso lip gloss that I bought too (not too fond of this one).

Normally I don't bother with concealing my lips (or putting any lip makeup on at all) so I was kinda disturbed with how pale my lips were. In my opinion, it made me looks sick and dead. I got really uncomfortable with it so I wiped it off, and felt much better instantly! Can smile already (that's my normal lip colour)!

Ha ha, awesome fun, really. Thanks for looking people!

Revealing all the NYX lipglosses that I've gotten in my last Cherryculture haul when they were having 20% off!

From left to right: Mega shine lipglosses in "Candy Shop", "Cosmo", "Plush Red" and "Vixen". Last one is the Round Lipgloss in "Vamp Red".

Given my 'thrifty' nature, this is actually the most number of lipglosses I've bought at one shot, and it all started with me lusting after MAC's Venomous Villains "Wrong Spell" lipgloss. I've had these for about a month already and I've been testing/playing around with them. Ha ha, it's lots of fun colouring my lips with all these dark colours; too bad I can't wear them out in SG.

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Swatches of the glosses on my hand:

Left to right: Candy Shop, Plush Red, Vixen, Vamp Red (round lipgloss) and Cosmo. The shimmer-free swatch on the top right is of my first NYX Mega Shine lipgloss that I got in "Natural".

Here are the lip swatches:

1) Candy Shop

This lipgloss is the least pigmented out of all the NYX lipglosses I got. The rest are kinda like liquid lipsticks but "Candy Shop" has got a very nice sheer wash of pink colour with enough shimmer and shine.

Please excuse the screwed-up labels in the following images, I don't know what went wrong with the editing programme. But the top left pic is of my naked lips, the bottom left is with the lip gloss and the right pic is pretty self-explanatory. :)

2) Plush Red

I really like Plush Red a lot; it's the lip gloss that I've used the most amongst the 5 that I've bought. It's like really bright red liquid lipstick but I like suing it as a stain as well.

3) Vixen

Hah, this was the supposed dupe of MAC's "Wrong Spell" and yep, it's downright vampy. I don't actually think I'll dare to wear this out like this, most probably I wear it as a stain instead. It's too outrageous for conservative SG. Maybe I should be thankful I didn't get the MAC one, but I haven't tried it so i wouldn't know. =x

4) Vamp Red (Round Lipgloss)

It's pretty similar to "Vixen" but "Vamp Red" leans more towards the maroon/plum side while "Vixen" is more brownish. Also, the round lipgloss is significantly more diluted than the Mega Shine glosses, so it can apply streaky and uneven.

And oh boy, do I hate the smell of this lipgloss!! It smells like Mama Lemon Washing Detergent, and I feel that it even tastes like it. Aside from it's not-bad vampy colour, super eww! Never buying the round lipglosses again. =___=

5) Cosmo

Okay, basically what the labels are saying is that it looks super good on the lips, but once you wipe the gloss off, it leaves semi-permanent silver shimmer on your lips. Not sexy at all! It's like you're having silver foil pasted on your lips. I wasn't too fond of this lipgloss, cos I don't fancy frosted lip products in the first place.

But I must admit, it looks pretty in the lip swatch. Maybe it's one of those glosses that photographs better than when viewed in real life.

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And this is currently my favourite bright lip colour to wear out.

It's basically applying "Plush Red" all over my lips, letting it set a little, then blotting most off. After which I layer on Milani's Lip Mixer lipgloss (which I got from under-twenty20), cos it's sheer and shiny enough to give a nice finish and it's thick (lasts long!).

I like how it's not too bright (like attention-grabbing, in your face bright) but it's got enough colour to brighten my whole complexion. Plus, it makes me teeth look a little whiter.

Thanks for looking at the swatches and reading this entry! I hope these images helped you if you're considering in getting some NYX lipglosses (get the Mega Shines, they're sooo much better than the Round lipglosses). Talk to you guys soon~

I've been messing around with the Daiso cosmetics which I've bought recently in Malaysia and besides the lovely palettes, the green pigment intrigues me the most. Why? Cos it's a colour cameleon! Lemme show you!

The cream base was just a random translucent sticky base, while the white and black bases were the NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils in Milk and Black Bean. When the sunlight hits the pigment directly, all 5 swatches gives off that gorgeous gold reflux; but when you angle them away from the light, you can see they're distinctively different colours. The wet and white base swatches give off a more vibrant blue while the the dry and cream base swatches mixes a bit of green and gold. The black base swatch gives off the brightest gold reflux, there's hardly any blue/green colour.

Anyway, my friends and I went for a session of karaoke and so, I decided to test drive the pigment out.

This would have been my normal to-go smokey eye, but the Daiso pigment added a flash of greenish shimmer to the middle of my eyelids. With UDPP and my L'oreal Gel Liner as good bases, the pigment held out well through the whole day. Even when it was raining heavily that afternoon, through our korean BBQ that we had and when we went strolling along Clarke Quay at 11 p.m. at night~

My karaoke-cum-best buddies!

We sang this song, ha ha ha!

And a sweet ending to an enjoyable day! Green tea shaved ice with red beans~

Thanks for reading guys!

My family and I always make it a point to holiday in Malaysia twice annually, to take a breather from SG and to selfishly satisfy my never-ending shopping cravings. So last week, we went on a 4 day-3 night shopping trip in KL and Sunway Pyramid!

Actually, I wasn't aiming on buying much cosmetics cos (and I'm really happy to announce this) I'm satisfied with all my makeup I have. I'm planning to seriously use some up before buying more. For now. I don't know how long my satisfaction with my stash will last though. The last "lust product" for me now is only the Urban Decay Naked palette (which I pathetically haven't gotten Q__Q )

But my primary goal for this trip was to get a full manicure and pedicure done! After attending the basic nail course in the nail school, I've always done my own mani's and pedi's but this time, I really wanted to be pampered. Hence, I scoured around Times Square Berjaya and found this nail parlor with very attractive rates! I got a full mani and pedi for just RM$66 (S$28) with 2 free nail art thrown in.

For the first time, I'm proudly showing you guys my troll feet!

[In sunlight]

\

[In indoor lighting]

The poor manicurist had to scrub and file at my feet for ages in order to get rid of all the cuticles and dead skin, but she did a fantastic job and for the first time in a long while, I had nice smooth feet~

This beautiful purple-blue duochrome polish is by Creative Nail Design (CND) but I didn't get the specific name. I absolutely love the strong blue shimmer that flashes when the light hits my nails, and the polish was very shiny even without top coat.

Here's a more accurate picture of the purple colour.

And my manicure, using my cat Mocha as a contrasting backdrop. And again, I forgot to get the name of the polish but it's something by China Glaze. Looks like the polish "Stellar" though, after much googling.

Gahh, how I love the gold glitter reflex in this polish. Even in low light, it shines so beautifully.

And here are the two free nail art I got (pretty white flowers)~

Definitely worth the RM$66 I'd say. I'm going back for another round the next time I go KL. :)

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My rojak haul.

And though I didn't go berserk on cosmetics, I lost it when it came to nail polish! When it's so friggin' cheap, how can you not haul?! (self-imposed nail polish ban for the year)

I love Etude House's glitter polish but they're kinda pricey in SG, so I always make it a point to stock up when I'm in M'sia. The pink and gold glitter polishes were RM$8.33 (S$3.53) after 30% off the retail price while the blue and peach duochrome-y polishes were RM$5.95 (S$2.53) after 50% off.

These two were RM$4.83 (S$2.05) each after 30% off.

Skinfood polishes are another korean polish brand that I love, especially for their neutral, earth-toned colours. Just don't get the carcinogenic ones. =x This two were RM$8.80 (S$3.73) each without any discount. Still cheap though, compared to SG's prices.

And another thing to haul in M'sia.. what else?? Ha ha, of course Daiso cosmetics!! Good to play with, really cheap prices and not available in SG.

I've always been quite impressed with the quality of Daiso e/s. This kind of pigmentation is awesome at only RM$5 (S$2.12) per palette.

Swatches of the colourful 9 shadow palette (one which my mom helped herself to).

The first 2 blue e/s here are swatches of the green pigment "Shiny Powder" (lol); the most left was swatched wet while the one next to it dry.

Swatches of the purple and blue quads.

Note that all swatches were done without a primer/base, so these are their true pigmentation.

Jewelry that I bought, 3 rings and 2 bracelets for RM$30 (S$12.72) only! They had some crazy discount thing going on.

And the 2 products I aimed to buy for this trip, my eye cream and eye drops.

Ha ha, what a lengthy post! *yawn* In a nutshell, when you go shopping in Malaysia, please do not hold back. Technically, you're saving loads!

Anyway, thanks for looking even though it was sooo draggy, cheers everyone!

When you can't (or more like, unwilling) to get the real thing and when you don't wanna splurge on the Chanel ones...

..do what I did and draw on some of your own! :) All it took was some liquid eye liner (make sure it's a good budge-proof one) and Etude House's Tear Drop Glitter Eye Liner (given by miwitch). Ohh, and some creative juice!

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A close up of the design at the wrist:

And those at my middle finger, thumb and the back of my wrist:

And how it looks against a black polo tee and denim shorts (sorry had to show you guys my crotch Q__Q):

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A few cam-whoring pics with my creation:

I had on a winged eyeliner and some of Etude House' glitter eyeliner on the inner corner of my eyes when I went out that day. Paired this simple eye look with some orangey-red lips but after dinner and  coffee, it all wore out.

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Anyway, I loved the idea so much that I wore it out to a friends gathering the next day. Of course since these aren't permanent, I had to redraw them but no problem! I had on another design for that gathering (but didn't photograph it cos I was in a rush). And I got a few compliments, even though one of my friends exclaimed "Waste eyeliner!!!"

I was like "Hello, I have been using this eyeliner for 1 year and it isn't even finished!"

"Ohhh, trying ways to buy new eyeliner harh?"

Ha ha, he totally read my mind! But yeah, I think my eyeliner is finally drying out a little after this tattoo thing and it's good! Cos I've got my eye on one of the new pen-type liquid eyeliner recently brought in by Watsons, heh.

So that's my home-made version of the Chanel-esque temporary tattoo and if you want some but cannot afford the Chanel ones, this is a good thing to try out. Or if you're finding ways to use up eyeliner, this is definitely a good way! Ha ha, hope you guys enjoyed the pic spam, thanks for reading!