Think Pink in Spring

Spring is just around the corner with its lush, vibrant of blooms and pale blue sky. There is no better way to welcome the vivacious season than with romantic hues of bright pink and pastel in your makeup routines.

As I’ve mentioned in my March makeup menu, I’ve been helplessly in love with Paul & Joe’s perfecting foundation primer, it gives ethereal glow to my skin and toning down the redness (my skin is currently on purge for acne treatment). After adding base product of choice, a dusting of shimmery pink blush will further freshen up your face with illusion of blooming roses or pink peonies.

I’m taking the pink into my eyes as well. Many stunning pink eyeshadows are available in the market, but my favorite will always be this quad from Jill Stuart. Pop of vibrant candy pink in the center and inner corner, plus fluttery lashes courtesy of Maybelline Lash Sensational makes me look so much more awake.

You cannot have too much pink, they said. Rimmel Kate Moss do incredible red and nude lips, but in pink area, their #05 is an incredibly beautiful true pink lipstick with creamy texture and a touch of glossiness. Lastly, Burberry is bringing spring with a hint of autumn in their My Burberry perfume. With sweet peas and citruses on top, and roses as base notes, this perfume will make liven up your spring day.

What's your favorite spring makeup look?

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25 Photo Props Idea for Blogger

Props have become essential in beauty blogging world as much as the products themselves. Props can make lackcluster photo alive, props can make that boring black casings stand out; props can do magic and all things of dreams! Good props can even be the star of picture for stocks. Here are a couple of photo props idea to spice up you blogging photography game.

1. Notepads & notebooks 2. Journal 3. Stationeries like colorful pens or rose gold 4. Hair pins 5. Colorful sequins 6. Tinsels 7.Ribbons 8.Nicely wrapped gift box 9.Plates/dishes 10.Coasters 11.Makeup brushes 12.Empty candle jar 13.Candle jar 14.Rings and bracelets 15.Hair ties 16.Fake flowers 17.Perfume bottle 18.Shopping bag 19.Wire basket 20.Greeting cards 21.Eyelash curler 22.Keychains 23.Purse & wallets 24.Mugs 25.Miniature cakes or sweets

What's your favorite photo props?

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High End Beauty Wishlist

I’m back to that phase of watching too many youtube videos which resulted in craving for high end beauty products (particularly these two from Fleur de Force and Alix of I Covet thee). Since I just had a major huge splurge (that would be revealed later this month), I cannot buy any of these soon, but here are high end beauty products that I wish I could afford somewhere later this year.

Burberry; regular reader must be familiar enough with my love for Burberry. It’s a brand that I universally love across all lines, and their beauty lines included. I’ve only tried a small number of them but each of them are so dear to me. This year I’m thinking of getting either their blush in cameo or their fluid glow in gold.

NARS; even though Nars is notorious for their blushes, I find myself drawn more to their eye products, particularly their duo in Isolde and eyeshadow primers, both are influenced by lovely Sally of The Makeup Directory, for I heard they perform incredibly well on oily lids.

Charlotte Tilbury; after changing my opinion of them, I’m willing to give CT a little more love. Their eyeshadow quad has always been the talk of town, vintage vamp captivated my heart the most with their burgundy tones and glittery golds.

Urban Decay; UD just become available locally last year so they become more accessible, which means I can sample them first before trying. The naked concealer and beach bronzer are already in my wishlist since 2016, I’m just waiting for the right moment to get them.

Jo Malone; is perfume considered a beauty product? I hope it is. Recently I just became smitten with Jo Malone’s Wood sage and sea salt cologne. It’s not the scent that I thought I’d love, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I adore it.

 Do you have any high end makeup wishlist?

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Skincare Routine for Oily, Blemished Skin

Having oily & acne-prone skin means having a lot of skin woes and concerns. There are so many things that can trigger our breakout from food and skincare, or even skipping a good face wash after a long tiring day. My skin is far from perfect, but here are things that I do to maintain my oily skin that breaks out quiet easily as well with the highly-polluted environment where I live.
 

Double cleanse; going home at 10 pm every day doesn’t stop me from double cleansing. While some people find this routine tasking, and can be stripping for dry skin, this is a must for me because even little dirt can clog my pore and trigger pimple the next day.

Toner; for some people, toner is a product they can easily leave out from their skincare routine, but for me, it is an absolute must. Good toner do not only remove some dirt residue from our skin, but also refine our skin condition, balancing its PH, and prepares it so skin can drink up the product well and effectively.

Blemish clearing product; rather than trying to stop them from appearing, I choose to focus on after-care treatment that helps getting rid of acne-scar or blemishes. Kiehl’s Blemish Control Daily Skin treatment is silky white liquid that does wonder in clearing out my acne scars. If you want to focus on prevention, the infamous La Roche Posay Effaclar is good place to start.

Clay Mask; clays is known for its ability to absorb dirt out from the skin, and is good friend for us with big pores. I live in pollution prone area and my face is exposed to dirt and car’s smokes every day. I slather clay mask at least twice in a week to get rid of impurities and all those evil bacterias.

Do not skip moisturizer; I’m sure you’ve heard it so many times before but do.not.skip.on.moisturizer! Many oily-skin friendly moisturizer is available on the market now, find the one that works the best for you to keep your skin from becoming dehydrated and produced more oil instead from its thirst.

What is your routine to deal with oily skin and acnes?

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5 Disappointing Products

If they have their ‘hits’, every brands must have their misses as well. I think every can relate with having this one brand they love so much, but one day, one of their product failed to meet the expectation. Bad apples, they said. But not in any way these bad apples totally ruined my impression about a certain brand for I know each brand have their own ‘ace product’, and maybe I just happened to pick their less than stellar product. Here are 5 beauty products that disappointed me.

Laneige White Plus Renew Skin Refiner; Laneige is one brand that always impress me with their skincare so when I picked this up, I had high expectation, especially after how their Light Balancing Emulsion played a big role in getting rid of my acne scaring. However, this emulsion literally had no effect on my skin at all in a sense it didn’t deliver what it claimed to do; brightening up my skin. For something that’s priced higher compared to their other refiner, i don’t think this one worth the money.

Jill Stuart Ribbon Couture Eyes in Indigo Tweed; Jill Stuart jeweling eyes is such a stunner that I had high expectation when picking up this palette, especially with its swoon worthy color. Sadly, the formula is so lack-cluster. Other than the weak pigmentation, it’s almost impossible to work this eyeshadow for it always disappears upon blending. At least, like any other Jill Stuart product, this one is gorgeously packaged, so it is forgiven(?).

Bobbi Brown Spot Treatment Concealer; Bobbi Brown is the brand that lured me into the world of beauty, so my trust to them is also blind. This is one of the first products I tried for them, and I always wanted to make this work, but sadly, it just didn’t. This gotta be one of the most drying concealers I’ve ever tried; it flaked unflatteringly and emphasized the blemishes instead.

Chanel Le Vernis; now before you raised your eyebrows high because I did mention  this nail polish as my favorite last year, I’m not going to refute my claim, but I still do think that for its price, this polish can do better. Maybe it’s the thin formula, but I found this polish always bubble? up weirdly on first layer and I have to apply another coat to make it spread evenly. I do not have this problem with Jill Stuart polish which costs half of this (and packed even more elaborately).

Benefit Porefessional; with my big pores, porefessional is one of those highly coveted product that I want to try. Sadly, I fall into that category of people who got break out from this, and while this work well for other people, it didn’t make my face condition any better.

What products have disappointed you?

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Make Your Own Green Tea Latte

As a huge green tea enthusiast, green tea latte or maccha latte is a huge thing for me. I need my green tea latte, or any green tea offering in that matter, to still retain that deep and rich bitterness of green tea instead of being too milky and barely taste of green tea powder at all. Starbucks still has my favorite green tea latte now that I’m no longer in Japan where everyone know exactly how I’d like my latte to be, but sometimes when I’m at home and craving for some green tea latter, I like to make my own latte. I got this recipe from just one cookbook which has another amazing Japanese food recipe on her site.

250 mL milk | 1 tbs hot water | 1 ½ tsp green tea powder (or to your liking, I use 1 tbs) |1 tsp sugar

1. Sift green tea powder to get rid of lumps then mix them with hot water , stir until smooth in the cup you’re intended to use later.

2. On saucepan, heat your milk and sugar over medium heat until small bubbles start appearing. Turn off the heat. If you have frother, you can froth it at this stage, seeing as I do not, I don’t, and it’s okay, the latte still taste amazing.

3. Pour the hot milk into the cup with green tea paste. I like to stir them together before sprinkling some more green tea powder. If it’s too bitter, you’re free to add sugar to your liking. Sip them while they’re hot.

 Have you tried making green tea latte on your own?

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March Makeup Menu

As the rest of the world is getting ready for warm, vivacious spring, I see lots of bloggers are starting to reshuffle their makeup menu. Though I do not experience the season change myself, I’ve been making some changes in my makeup lately; focusing on the base and keeping the rest pretty simple. Here I’m sharing my latest routine.

The perfect base; I’m up in my base makeup game lately. I start by patting in Sunscreen from Innisfree, then prep my face with this lovely primer which is the most recent addition to my makeup stash from Paul & Joe, this primer is one of the best selling primer in Japan and I can see why; it gives my skin ethereal glow even better than Max Factor’s offering, plus it’s thin consistency makes this super easy to blend and a little goes a long way.

On top of the primer, I  apply Nars Velvet Matt Skin tint and Maybelline Fit Me Powder. While it sounds scary to pile to matte products together, the primer underneath helps maintaining the healthy glow on my skin.

Flushed Cheeks; On the cheeks I’ve been loving Jill Stuart Blush, the perky peachy pink blush with fine golden shimmer really brightens my whole complexion. I like to use the lightest color as highlighter on my cheekbones, tip of my nose, and cupid bow using my ring finger.

Simple Eyes; For a year I swore myself off from eyeliner because I thought my eyes are already big enough between them. However, I’ve been rekindling my love for them lately, I’m nowhere fancy with my eyeliner so it only goes as far as tight-lining them but when I ‘m feeling fancy, I do a simple cat-eyes. To make my eyes look even awake, I’m still pretty much in love with Maybelline Lash Sensational.

On The Lips; Remember when I said I didn’t like Charlotte Tilbury Lipstick? Yeah, that day is long gone. I know the season is over but I personally think there is no rules when it comes to beauty. I’ve been whipping Glastonberry a lot lately, instead of swiping them, I Just dab them gently on lips for understated, dark-berry lips.

What's in your makeup menu?

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Looking forward in March

1. Working out; I'm back to exercising this month, hopefully can snatch at least a 30 mins on treadmill thrice a week

2. Getting side projects; I got a couple of small side projects last month from a friend. This month, it will be on bigger scale and even if it means less time to sleep (since I'm also working full-time), it's nice to know I'm helping.

3. Starting non-beauty related blog posts; while I love beauty products, I want to expand my writing a little to something else that I'm also interested in. Watch out for a simple recipe every month ;)

4. Swap coffee for tea; in span of two months, I've been functioning with a grande-sized caffeine and average 3 hours of sleep everyday, which isn't doing good for my health at all. While I don't think I can truly part from coffee, I think switching it with tea can do me some good.

5. Trying out this new Paul & Joe foundation primer that promises your skin an inner glow.

What are you looking forward to this March?

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