Wicked Wednesday: Bobbi Brown and Burberry in a Park

I’ve been busy with an exam and assessments so I apologise for my tardiness with today's post. This isn't exactly the most informative or interesting post either and again, I apologise. I promise you I have really good posts lined up for the near future. So please bear with me for now. 

I recently got my hands on a pair of Burberry frames and I have to say that I am in love with them! No, I don’t need glasses but they have become a fashion statement these days. Having said that, I think this provides me with the opportunity to experiment with makeup for glasses. I hope that one day I will be able to post up a makeup tutorial for spectacle wearers. 

Aren't they beautiful?

I have yet to take a photo of myself wearing these glasses yet because I have two massive ugly pimples on my face at the moment. I will upload one once my pimples have cleared. 

 A couple of weeks ago, I had this epiphany for a makeup tutorial (keep your eyes peeled!). I approached Bobbi Brown and requested for one of their products. They were very kind and generous in providing it to me for free. It is a Long Wear Eye Pencil in Black Navy. I thought it’d be nice to give a quick first impression rundown on the product. 

I’m sure I’ve drummed it into your heads by now (for those of you who are regular readers of my blog content). I love Bobbi Brown products. I was really excited to receive it. It brightened my horrible week up a little. 

I really liked how the eyeliner came with a sharpener. For first time pencil eyeliner buyers, this would be very handy. Plus, it means more bang for your buck. According to the product information, this is the pencil version of Bobbi Brown's much loved Long Wear Gel Eyeliner

It's a gorgeous dark blue and here's a swatch of it. 

With direct sunlight

In the shade

After I swatched the eyeliner, I waited a couple of minutes to let it set. Then, I swiped my finger across it to see that if it would budge. I'm happy to report that it stays relatively well. You can see that it has smeared slightly but that is expected of most pencil eyeliners. So you don't have to worry too much if you accidentally rub your eyes (like I sometimes do) when you're wearing this eyeliner. It won't be too big a disaster. 

I know that my blog seems to be chock full of materialism. Please allow me to take a moment to balance some of my narcissism out with the following photo. 

My boyfriend and I had a small picnic in the park today. Hence, the tartan blanket you see in the photos. It was such a lovely day. We were seeing nature at its best. Quality time with him still trumps receiving an awesome beauty product from Bobbi Brown. As the saying goes, "the best things in life are free."

Illamasqua's Price Drop!

You may or may not have already heard of the good great news! Regardless, I thought it's very much worth doing a quite post about it. I received an email from Illamasqua, announcing that they have dropped their prices!

Since it's officially spring in Australia now, this is the perfect opportunity for us Aussie ladies to stock up on some new makeup to go with the season!

I did a comparison of Australia's new Illamasqua prices and America's Illamasqua prices (on Sephora) and I'm thrilled to say that (most of) the price difference is literally just a couple of dollars! I'll definitely be popping by an Illamasqua counter soon!

What do you think of the price drop? Isn't it just wonderful?!!

Triple S: Lash Mishap!

Something really awful happened. I chopped off a tuft of my lashes with my cheap eyelash curler. At first, I didn't realise what was happening. I was putting on mascara and I thought something looked odd. My lashes didn't look full like they usually do. I pulled up my lashes to check and found a "big gap" in my lashes.

After Googling frantically for a reason to my abruptly shortened lashes, I discovered that cheap eyelash curlers tend to cut off lashes. I deduced that it's the poor design. If you look carefully at the photo above you can probably see a couple of lashes have been pinched to right angles. In due time, it becomes a weak point and the lashes snap off. I hope I am making sense!

The Culprit!

I was so peeved that I went and bought myself a new eyelash curler from Shiseido shortly after the incident. It wasn't an impulse buy though. At first, I told myself that this was a sign to buy the Shu Uemura Eyelash Curler that I've been lusting after for quite a while. After having done my research, I found that a lot of consumers are happy with Shiseido's and it is a lot more affordable than Shu Uemura's at the price of AUD25. In fact, a lot of reviewers say that it is equally good, if not better than Shu Uemura's.

Apart from testing it out at Shiseido's counter, I have yet to actually try this curler out. The Shiseido lady was very lovely and I liked how my lashes turned out when she curled them. When I tried it on my other eye, it did not turn out the same but she promised me that it will with practise. I will probably do a review on this product in the future, once I've fully trialled it. For now, I am going to leave my lashes alone as much as possible, so that it can grow. Hopefully by applying olive oil/vitamin E oil to them, it will speed up the process a little bit and strengthen them. I will have to wear false lashes for events and dinners for quite a while... 

So ladies, beware!! You might want to be careful when using a cheap eyelash curler. You might want to do some research and think twice before you purchase a cheap $3 eyelash curler from the Japanese beauty stall at a market! Lesson learnt!

Have you had this experience before? How did you get through it?

Wicked Wednesday: If You Have a Lot of Time to Kill...

 As promised in the winners announcement post, here are the videos that I've made.

In these videos, you'll get to hear suggestions/comments made by other entrants. I also let you know my thoughts on them and give you an idea as to which requests I will be fulfiling! I apologise for the poor quality; I was using my brother's old film camera. Forgive me for the length, there were 98 entries to go through! I ended up cutting a lot of them out. What and you'll see why!







I spent A LOT of time filming and editing these videos and trying to upload them onto Youtube. I hope you liked them! Fingers crossed that you don't feel like I have wasted half an hour of your lives...

What do you think of the videos? Should I make the occasional video or just stick to writing?

Lauren Conrad Style Top Bun with a Hair Donut (Tutorial & Mini Review)

Please allow me to introduce to you my awesome friend, Marj. She is a fun-loving, free-spirited and cheerful girl who has kindly agreed to be my model for this hair tutorial.

Remember the post that I made some time back about buying a hair donut? Well today, I will show you how to use it (hopefully) to do a Lauren Conrad Style Top Bun!

Stylebistro.com

I will also do a quick review on the hair donut at the end of this post. So let's begin!

Marj has very long hair. The photo above is to give you an idea how long it is. She would need a hair donut that is at least medium-sized or larger to "fit all of her hair in". Before we started, I brushed her hair and prepped it with Aveda's Light Elemenets Smoothing Fluid to make her locks smooth, soft and shiny.

Step 1. Tilt your head forward and gather all of your hair into one big bunch. If you have a fringe, you can leave them out.

Step 2. Lift your head back up and tie the bunch of hair into a high pony tail. The position of your ponytail depends on where you want your bun to sit. For example, If you want your bun to sit directly on top of your head, then your ponytail should be on top of your head. In Marj's case, she did it a little towards the back of her head.

Step 3. Now, grab your hair donut and put all five of your finger through the centre of the donut. Start pulling your hair/ponytail through the centre. It's similar to how you put on a scrunchie (except you don't twist the donut and loop it around).

Step 4. Pull all of your hair/ponytail all the way through and make sure that the donut is sitting against your head.

Step 5. Next, tilt your head slightly forward and spread your hair over the donut and smooth them down as evenly as you can.

Step 6. Start by taking a lock of hair and pull it diagonally across and backwards (making sure that the donut is covered by the hair). In the process, start tucking the hair under the donut. Keep one hair on top of the bun to have better control and to make sure the bun will turn out smooth.

The photo above is a side shot of the previous photo.

Step 7. Pin that lock of hair down with a bobby pin. Make sure you direct your pin towards the centre of the bun and make sure pin will end up hiding underneath the donut.

Step 8. Continue with the same process (Step 6 & 7) around your head/donut. Make sure you stick with the same direction. Don't worry if there is "leftover" hair (the remaining length of your hair). Just gather it and combine it with the next lock and it will eventually get tucked in under the donut/bun. If you've already covered the whole donut with hair and you still have some lengths of hair left out, just twist it a little and tuck it around and under your bun. Pin it in place to avoid your bun coming undone.

Step 9. Pin up any loose/stray hair (that are too short ot be included in the bun).

And there you have it! A Lauren Conrad-esque top bun!

 

It's okay if the do looks a bit messy. It just makes it look effortless. Doesn't Marj look pretty? I think so too!

Review: Overall, this is a good little hair accessory to have but it is expensive at AUD10. You can make a sock bun, which would be cheaper, but the size won't be as big and the shape won't be as smooth. Not that it really matters. The quality is decent and I think it will last me a very long time (fingers crossed). My sock buns are fraying where I had cut off the toe area.

I would like to thank Marj for letting me play with her hair.  I would also like to thank RLD photos for taking and editing the photos. If you liked the photos in this post, please feel free to like his Facebook page! He will be uploading extra photos in the near future.

What do you think of this hair tutorial? Was it helpful? Would you like a sock bun version of this tutorial? Please leave a comment below! Thank you!