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

IMATS Toronto 2011 Part 1 - Student's Competition & My Haul

Regis — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:06:39 SGT

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.

IMATS Toronto 2011 Part 1 - The Event

Regis — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:19:22 SGT

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!

Trip to Thousand Islands & the Niagara Falls

Regis — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:50:34 SGT

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!

The First Makeup Haul in Canada

Regis — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:48:27 SGT

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!

Let's Take a Walk Around Montreal

Regis — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:50:11 SGT

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. :)

Why, hello everyone!

Regis — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:05:16 SGT

I have been gone for too long already, haven't I? I bet you're even wondering why this post had appeared in your news stream before clicking it curiously

Ha ha, just to refresh everyone's memory, I went to Montreal, Canada for my student's exchange 8 months ago and haven't updated since.
1) Because school work was really hectic there.
2) School work is also really hectic here, when I came back.
3) My family had just moved from our home of 12 years to a new place = even more hectic! (I've a new glass cabinet just for my makeup, it's so pretty! I shall show it to you soon, then you can probably see my makeup collection too)

All that was 4 months ago, so I did return to SG safely and I didn't disappear into thin air in Canada. Anyway, I have just finished writing my thesis for my degree with honours, so between the graduation and the time when I've to look for a job and start working, I decided to restart this blog! I still have my poster presentation next week though, so I shall immerse myself into blogging bit by bit...

With that said, I have just so much to write about, argh!!!

Like this! I attended IMATS Toronto, 2011, whoo! My dream came true.

Someone smell an IMATS haul post coming up?

And the Niagara Falls.

Experiencing autumn for the first time.

And snow too!

We went to Hollywood, Los Angeles~

And the many many MANY foods that we tried... *drools*

And of course in between all of that,

Walmart haul.

Drugstore haul.

Nail polish haul!

Lip Butter haul!!

Sephora haul~

Ha ha, so much to talk about, so little time, so let's get started! I hope you guys are looking forward to hearing all of this. Please do let me know if you're interested in non-makeup posts, like my trips and adventures in Canada and the States, or you just wanna see what cosmetics I splurged on. Tell me ok?

[Photo Collection] New York City Day 1 - 4

Regis — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:26:00 SGT

Hello people!

As promised, here are the links to the photo albums on my FaceBook. I specially made them public so that you all will be able to view them, but do let me know if the link are not working alright? This will save me A LOT of work by not uploading them on Onsugar (that wll take ages).

New York City Day 1

A group of NTU undergraduates, me and another 3 buddies, took a 24-hour flight from our little red dot over to the Big Apple. Snap shots of the flight (inflight food!) and our first impression of USA and Times Square.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150275458406569.322682.55465...

~~~~~~~~~

New York City Day 2

The day when we went to the Harry Potter exhibition (no photos allowed unfortunately) and strolled around downtown Manhattan, until when we finally arrived at the Empire State building.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150280692791569.324153.55465...

~~~~~~~~~

New York Day 3

Then, we headed for the largest departmental store there, Macy's and the famous Central Park the next day!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150280734051569.324168.55465...

~~~~~~~~~

New York Day 4

We paid a visit to the Rockefeller and Cornell Universities (very good academic institutes) before heading down to the Statue of Liberty. And that is how I got the display picture on my FB profile, ho ho ho!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150287562501569.325998.55465...

~~~~~~~~~

Day 6 and 7, as well as the pictures I took aboard the Adirondack locomotive I took from New York to Montreal will be up next. Enjoy these for the time being~

Haul From New York City

Regis — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:04:38 SGT

A thousand apologies for being MIA for so long, lovely people! I've been busy visiting places, eating, shopping, then getting from New York to Canada and finally settling down for school here in Montreal.

I've been away from home for.. hmm, almost a month now. Things are awesome here, Montreal is a lovely place to be in! Of course I found the time to upload loads of pictures onto my FaceBook, but I guess only the onsugarettes who are on my friend list can vew them. I'll try posting the FB link on a separate post later.

Without further ado, let's show you all what I bought while I was in the Big Apple for 1 week!

Yeah, that's all the stuff and I crammed it all in that Sephora carrier. It may not look a lot, but it burnt a big hole in my wallet!

First up, mascaras!

I bought all the mascaras that I've heard so much hype about and isn't available in SG. From left to right, that's the Maybelline One By One, The Falsies Flared and 2 Covergirl Lashblast. The mascaras averaged about US$7-8 each, which isn't expensive considering how much mascaras cost in SG.

Then I got some Milani stuff!

Actually I wanted to get way more, but I either couldn't find the items I wanted or the lack of money in my wallet prevented me from doing so. I got 3 of their baked blushes (Luminoso, Rose D'oro and Bellissimo Bronze) and 1 Liquif'eye liner in "Black" (ha ha, how predictable!).

My Wet N Wild purchases more than made up for my inadequate loot on Milani. I went crazy on the brand!

Aside from that single gel eyeliner, which I've heard SOOO many good things about, the rest are their eyeshadows.

I got 3 trios, which only differ by a bit given the fact that they belong to the same colour family; it is practical for me to buy these though, since these are the colours I will reach out for more frequently.

And I managed to fulfill my aim of getting a "Comfort Zone" back-up! Together with the "Blue Had Me At Hello" and the two famous 6-pan palettes, "Vanity" and "Lust". I'm still aiming to get the "Petal Pusher" palette though, maybe when I return to New York in December...

Then along came my Sephora haul. Seriously, I spent money like I drink water when I'm in the Sephora's in USA, seeing how I don't purchase much from our local branches.

Another mission accomplished, and that it getting my Naked palette (like finally)! I was at Times Square's Sephora on the day they launched the Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV, and I was this close to getting it...but after seeing how much I had left in my wallet, I decided to be practical (come on, the colours weren't that fantastic; the packaging the shadows were in were another story though).

I bought the sample set of liquid tints from Benefit, a travel size tube of Laura Mercier's tinted moisturizer and a makeup set from LORAC, which came like this (but I threw the packaging away):

The set includes a baked eyeshadow trio which I love using (the quality and pigmentation is simply amazing), a mascara (3D lashes or something), a marker type liquid eyeliner which I also adore (it's even better than the Japanese one that I own, quality is fantastic), a blush (beautiful matte mauve shade) and a lipgloss. All for US$39, super reasonable can?

Aside from that, I got my first MAC fluidline from New York too. It's in the shade "Avenue" from the MAC Me Over collection that recently launched.

I was still in NYC when it launched so I popped by a MAC boutique and swatched all the goodies from the collection. I was really tempted to get one of the lipsticks and the much-hyped-about "Stunner" blush... but nah! Budget budget!!! This gel liner was US$16~ after taxes btw, which is so much cheaper than the price in SG.

I got some necessities too, nothing much to say about these items. There's the teeth bleaching gel, Mario Badescu's silver powder (freaking cheap here in the states), a bottle of Seche Vite and a small tube of Queen Helene's Mint Julep mask to try.

Last but not least, how can I not try Lush when there are so many Lush shops here?

So I got me some "Big" shampoo and some "Porridge" bar soap. The friendly sales girl threw in a sample of the "Veganese" hair conditioner for me to try out with the shampoo, good customer service I must say!

So that's my haul from New York. Don't fret, I bought even more cosmetics here in Canada! I'll be sharing them with you guys soon. Also, I'll be tryin out the FB photobook links, not sure if they will work here. It's better to view them via FB cos there's so many pictures, it's impossible for me to upload them onto Onsugar, ha ha!

Anyway, thanks for reading, you guys take care in SG! I'll write again soon~

Aboard The SG Flyer

Regis — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:05:49 SGT

[Picture-heavy post]

My university clique and I made a trip to the SG flyer last Friday, as both a group activity and a farewell to me. There was suppose to be 7 of us, but one of the girls couldn't go. Anyway, we were all SG Flyer virgins except for my guy friend, Terry, so there's no need to mention that we were super excited for it. Plus, we got the tickets at S$10 each only!

Let's hand the talking over to the pictures!

4 of us girlies waiting at the MRT station for the others to arrive.

And as soon as everyone was present, we started walking towards the flyer. There's Marina Bay Sands in the background!

It was the perfect day for the outing, with crisp blue skies.

The foodcourt at the Flyer, which is modeled after the 1970's vibe and the famous streets in SG. The food is obviously overpriced.

My friend, Terry, waiting for us while we went to the ladies.

After which, we took the escalator up to the floor with the carriages. I love this escalator, it's so Tron-like!

Walking along the cyber space-themed corridor to the Flyer!

In one of the exhibition halls right before the entrance to the carriages.

Here comes the carriage!

And all 6 of us onboard safely!

The view from the Flyer is awesome! You can see everything from up there...

... like the pier, and the eco trees at Marina Barrage..

..the expressway...

..Marina Bay Sands...

and even the Merlion, hah!

Here are a few shots of us:

(flabby arms D:)

(obviously I was being an idiot in the background)

(and Terry looks like he's got a broken neck here)

We caught this guy and his family waving and snapping pictures at us in the next carriage! So cute!

After the Flyer, we went for dinner and decided to head to the Esplanade to chill out.

There were some blue funky lightings there, so we kinda played around with them and ended up with some creepy Juon-esque pictures!

Then we headed over to the centrestage to watch a B Boy Dance Battle!

And we ended the night with some goodies from Max Brenner and a long chat session. From left to right is the Dark Chocolate Soup, the Mexican Spicy Hot Chocolate drink (we thought it tasted like curry chicken, not good) and the Apple Tart.

We ordered the Chocolate Souffle too!

But out of all the chocolatey stuff, I love the apple tart the most! It was dayumz~

Ha ha, sorry for the pic spam but the outing was so enjoyable that I wanted to share it with you guys. Hope you found this post interesting and helpful if you're thinking of visiting the SG Flyer!

[Picture Tutorial] Iridescent Cut-crease

Regis — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 22:23:48 SGT

Picture-heavy post

This tutorial was heavily hinted for by Charlene - yes, I finally got down to it, dear friend. :) And since I'm such a noob at making videos, I could only do picture tutorials. I think this was rather crudely done too at that, but hopefully you'll still be able to recreate this look after following through the steps.

This was the look that was requested for:

This is the end result of this tutorial:

It's slightly different, cos I included a few more steps. When I did the former look, I was actually rushing for work so I didn't add in much colour. The outer-V in this look is more accentuated and coloured in. Enjoy!

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

This is me without any makeup on, except for some concealer and Kose's Tinted Makeup Base. Plain jane.

Before everything else:

We're gonna be using the shading technique for this eye look. What it means is that the highlight and contour of the eye will only involve pencils and lots of blending, similar to sketching in real life. I really can't remember where I learnt that from, but I saw the method online once and I loved how simple and effective it is.

I'm using my UD 24/7 Eye pencil in "Zero" (really short pathetic stub) and my Essence Metallic Eye Pencil in "White Divine". Any black and white eyeliner will do, preferably those that can be smudged out. "Zero" is too oily for my waterlines, but perfect for shading.

Onto the application proper (click on the image to enlarge it):

Up until step 6, you should get something like this:

Then taking a fluffy e/s brush and the e.l.f. Eye Transformer palette, select the blue shade. We're going to be using it all over the lid; this shade in this palette is crucial for the blurple-to-light blue iridescent effect, once it goes over the shading.

And you'll end up with something like this:

This was where I stopped for my previous look, and you can too. Just top it off with eyeliner and mascara, and you're good to go. However, I'm going to bump it up a notch since I have more time on my hands now.

(P.S. I really dislike calling the dip in our eye socket "the crease". Cos it's anatomically wrong for most of us Asians. Our crease is our double eyelid, which doesn't coincide with our eye socket at all. The westerners call their socket "the crease" just because they have more pronounced double eyelids and it coincides with their eye sockets.)

You will get this, after accentuating the outer-V and eye socket:

Almost done! All you need to do is to draw a winged liner, preferably with a liquid eyeliner pen...

... like so. Remember to allow the wing to follow the cut-crease that you made.

And fill in your brows and put on mascara (defined brows are important for this look). The eye makeup is done!

Put on some orange-coral blusher along your cheekbones, and some natural pink lipstick and the look is complete!

Hope it wasn't too confusing for a first-time tutorial. Hah, who am I kidding..? But I feel satisfied bringing this to you, so thank you very much for viewing it!