July + August favourites and empties

Yay back on time~ (sort of)

I meant to post this a couple of days after the others, so it'd only be a few days late, but I dithered over whether I had a favourite because these 2 months were the busiest so I spent very little time wearing makeup or paying attention to my skincare. 

Favourites

Chichi baked single in I’m every woman (matte medium brown) 

    Chi Chi? Chichi? Anyway, completely matte baked eyeshadows are something I’ve never seen before (or since) so I was quite interested when I saw this. I’ve been looking for a good transition shade for ages and though I had my eye on a MUFE shadow, I also really wanted to try this, especially because these swatched so pigmented and so smoothly. I love this shade, it’s not exactly what I was going for but it’s so versatile and it blends seamlessly into skin even without primer.

Empties

Sukin facial moisturiser

    Technically I still had a little bit left but I dumped the bottle and scraped the little bit out into a tub so . . .  (edit: I finished it off on the 6/9 so not far off)

This was an ok moisturiser in a kinda hard to explain way. It felt moisturising but it left my face shiny afterwards, in a freshly moisturised kind of way not a greasy/oily way but still. It was a good basic moisturiser but not helpful with my oily t-zone. I think this would make a great basic moisturiser for dry skinned people, and I think it might have mild calming/soothing properties as well so good for dry and irritated skin. The smell, though mild, was certainly in the calming range. 

Cheap blush brush

    After I bought my new gloss blush brush I honestly don’t know why I didn’t dump this straight away, I mean I did like the shape of this one as well but it’s not like the shape was all that unique I didn’t need to hold onto this for comparison *sigh*. So I dumped it after I remembered this fact.

Maybelline forest smokes quad + Revlon satin eyeshadow single in shimmering sienna (packaging)

    So like a month before I bought the z-palette I dropped my favourite Maybelline eyeshadow quad (it’s my only Maybelline quad but I was quite fond of it) and broke the lid so I couldn’t travel with it, which was rather annoying. I forgot to put it in the z-palette straight away because at first I just wanted to get rid of all the single eyeshadows that were bugging me. The Revlon one I always meant to transfer to a z-palette as I love the colour but I can never be arsed to open the singles lid when I’m working from a palette. 

May + June empties and favourites

(So I meant to upload this right after the march + april empties you know, sort of on time, but then I forgot about it due to the below-mentioned point of temporary respite being over. I'm now in a longer break in work, hopefully I can get more done on blogging)

    So I know I said uploads would be sporadic since I was getting my uni project together but even I was surprised that I essentially fell off the (communication) grid for like 4 months. Even now I’m not done, I’ve just reached a point of temporary respite.

Favourites

Z-palette (black, large)

I’ve been meaning to get at least 1 for ages now, since I hate having to open single eyeshadow compacts. I’d considered the unii palette but the z-palette was so much cheaper and available at crush cosmetics (an Australian online shop). This is so convenient~ I spent an afternoon transferring most of my single eyeshadows and blushes to it and it’s already about ¾ full so I’m going to need another one soon, ;P.

Sephora in Australia (rant I meant to post like 5 months ago)

    So this was meant to be a bit more of an analysis which is why I held back on this mostly finished post, but it's been a while, I kind of can't be arsed to care about Sephora anymore and if I'm going to write anything more, it would make more sense to me to just write a new post so here is a slightly outdated Sephora in Australia post. (It's also good for breaking up the litany of empties *sigh*)

[A few things that have changed:
- the Australian dollar dropped dropped to below $US0.70 today, a 6 year low, which again makes prices in Australia seem better
- Sephora will be opening a second store in Maquarie shopping centre this month, so if you live on the north shore but didn't already hear about this, now you know (I hear they're planning on opening Melbourne ones soon but I don't know when)
- I checked on the Bite Beauty pencil again 3 months after my first visit and it was ~$30 so I may have actually remembered that incorrectly but that's still a high price (but bite beauty was never cheap so)
- it's now been almost a year and the other prices haven't changed
- although they now have a website, it's not an online store, the Australian website doesn't even have a catalogue, just the brand names available (wait quick check shows they now have some products listed)
- they do now have the ABH contour palettes and they have brought the Kat Von d shadelight eye palette in (slightly faster than the above) ]

Oh and as an aside to Sydney-siders who want Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics lip tars and pencils, they're available at Scotty's makeup and beauty store next to Broadway shopping centre for $2 cheaper.

Oh look a post that’s not a review/empties, how strange!

    So the Sydney Sephora store opened on the 5^th of December 2014 and it was causing a buzz before and after that. And I figured I’d put my thoughts on that on my blog, because what else are blogs for?

    To start off with when people caught wind of the news that Sephora was planning on opening a store Down Under (and another couple more after that) consumers were excited and it only got bigger when Sephora claimed to be bringing US pricing to Australia.

(and of course Sydney-siders let out a cheer when it turned out that the new Sephora store would be in Sydney not Melbourne but anyway)

March + April empties (and favourites?)

 . . . Hi. 

Um . . . all I can say is uh, you were forewarned? ^^; 

yeah my project has sucked my life into a pile of denial and yeah 2 months late but better than not at all, right? . . . maybe?

So I love watching/reading monthly favourites as well as empties, however I usually don’t have a lot of things to talk about myself, what with my relatively infrequent use of makeup, so I decided to combine the favourites and empties of every 2 months, like Fables in Fashion does, though she limits it to 2 favourites a month. I may not even have 2 favourites in a month so I’m just going to leave it at whatever number of things I’m loving at the moment. (P.S. if you haven't already heard of Celina, check her out she's awesome.)

Favourites:

Australis budapash velourlips

I’m making this a favourite for the sole reason that I love this colour. I only wore it like once or twice in April (bought it in late March) but every time I just wanted to stare at my lips in the mirror because this colour was so perfectly what I wanted.

 

i know it looks a bit bloody but trust me it's gorgeous

Batiste dark & deep brown dry shampoo

This colour is harder to find than the brunette one, some pricelines don’t stock it I think so I didn’t realise they had this, but I love that it’s dark enough that you can’t really see it in my hair.

 

picture from boots.com

Gloss professional angled blush brush

Up til now I’ve been applying blush with my fingers or a cheap rounded brush which I didn’t like ‘cause it was scratchy. I’ve been eyeing a couple of blush/contouring brushes online but then I went to Gloss and actually touched a tester. So soft and smooth~ and it was angled so contouring would be easy right? This brush is so much more comfortable to use and softens the blush so much faster than my fingers (obviously).

Empties:

Daiso face powder

Well I didn’t finish this so much as I dropped it and it fell down a grate ;P. but I hit major pan before that happened so I came really close! I bought this powder because its colour (pale yellow, you know asian here?) was a good match for me in terms of tone though it was noticeably lighter. My T-zone would start getting shiny looking after ~4 hours, which I’d say is pretty decent for a $2.80 powder. It wasn’t the finest milled nor the smoothest when applied, and if I reapplied it didn’t last as long but for the price, not bad.

Otaku pomegranate mask

Was nice? I think the pomegranate one was meant to be brightening and it might have, but I was so tired the day I used it I’m not sure anything could’ve made a difference. It did leave my skin feeling moisturised and I think it was good for my forehead which may get oily due to dehydration, it’s kinda debatable whether it’s that or just excess oil period.

Klorane dry shampoo with nettle – oil control

So now I know I don’t have OILY hair as according to Klorane because this stuff was hardcore. It sucked all the oil out of my second day hair to the point that my roots were a little powdery and dry feeling and this is with minimal spraying. Also it apparently takes me only 2 months to go through an average bottle of dry shampoo (in this case a 150ml), and that’s with semi-regular use. I clearly have too much hair. Now I really want to try the dry scalp one. And maybe a bigger can.

February empties?

Ok so I stopped posting because I was busy with uni and now that I've got a small break in submitting things, I've squeezed this post in. Until I work out exactly when I have to do things, posting will be sporadic if at all here, and honestly it might be sporadic throughout the year.

So I have an obsession with watching/reading other peoples monthly favourites and empties post/videos so I figured I’d try to do them myself. However considering I don’t wear a lot of makeup or use a lot of skincare my empties posts may not be monthly, probably bi-monthly at best.

Actually let’s just call this the January + February empties post yeah?

This month there’s a bit more because I dumped some makeup products because they were too old.

p.s. I don’t have a picture of all my empties all together because I hate having empty stuff lying around and I dump them all straight in the recycling. :P

next time I’ll try and get a picture of all of them, maybe independently and stick all the pictures together heh.

Australis mousse foundation in buff beige

    I’ve been meaning to do a review of this but in the end it was too old to keep any longer so I dumped it. I’ve got the pictures and I’ll probably post the review later, but in short this foundation catches on dry patches and can’t control oil, so unless you have the most perfectly balanced skin that doesn’t dry out or get oily I can’t recommend this to anyone. It was comfortable to put on but the colour was off for me. There are only 6 shades in this range and none of them really matched me, which is no surprise considering I have yet to find a good match in any ‘pharmacy’ brand. 

Maybelline One by One mascara waterproof version

    This was the third mascara I bought, and I thought long and hard trying to pinpoint what I wanted in a mascara, amongst all the completely over the top marketing bullshit that mascaras seem to excel at. I chose not to buy the falsies by Maybelline because I mainly wanted length and curl, not so much volume, but I kinda want to try it just for comparison now. This mascara didn’t do that much for my lashes, it sorta made them slightly thicker, which made them seem a bit longer as the tips became more obvious. It could hold a curl but if I put on more than 2 – 3 coats my lashes started to droop. I like this mascara for not clumping my lashes like the old Revlon one did, though they do start clumping after 2 – 3 coats. It’s more of a definition kind of mascara in that sense.

Montagne Jeunesse breakout face mask + moisturiser

    I finished the mask in January and finished the little moisturiser pocket in February (mainly because I forgot I had it). Honestly not much to say about this mask, I didn’t feel like it did anything much it might have brought 1 – 2 pimples to the surface but I still got pimples while using it and my forehead still got oily so I won’t buy it again. The mask felt like any other clay mask, though it dried faster than the others, and the moisturiser felt tingly in that menthol way when I put it on, and smells like mint but otherwise didn’t really do much. Didn’t dry out my face so I guess that’s a plus.

Nivea Pure & Natural moisturising day cream

    I finished this on the first day of the new year and because I’d kept forgetting, I didn’t have another moisturiser yet, argh. I managed to buy the Sukin facial moisturiser the next day whew~!

Neutrogena alcohol – free toner

I was swapping between this toner and the Nivea pure visage toner before but since this bottle was nearly finished (and I cracked the bottle near the lid), I began using this one all the time to finish it off and I finally finished it in January I think. 

Rimmel Scandal'Eyes waterproof kohl kajal eyeliner in 06 deep blue and 01 black review

So I forgot to do it before, but I've edited some of my photos because I'm a crap photographer (sharpening in an effort to fix blurriness is really all I've done), so I figured in the interests of transparency I now need to label all the pictures I've altered (although considering how bad my photo editing skills are I think it's pretty obvious which ones have been edited, and which haven't). I'll be going back through my posts and labelling the pictures so after today all pictures on this blog that have been altered will be labelled as such. (technically I've altered all of them since I add a watermark but you get the idea).

Seriously Rimmel why the heck have you called it a “kohl kajal” liner? Kajal = kohl!

    Anyway, when these eyeliners came out last year, I was interested in some of the colours, but didn’t have very high hopes as I already owned a Rimmel pencil eyeliner that creased on me and wasn’t as black as I wanted. But when I swatched the blue (the black tester was always missing, or there weren’t any blacks at all) I was pleasantly surprised by the richness of colour and the smooth application. I bought 06 deep blue on sale in 2013, and bought 01 black late last year (also on sale), hence why the blue one is a bit shorter.

Garnier Clean Sensitive gentle cleansing milk review

    Ok so as far as I can tell, this product isn’t for sale anymore, however I think the new Garnier cleansing milks have a similar formula, and this could serve as a rough guide to whether you’ll like cleansing milks overall (that’s what I did anyway). I really should have dumped this bottle like 2 years ago but since I barely used it in the beginning, I had an almost full bottle and I just couldn’t dump it. (hello, it says hoarder in the blog title).

    First off, my understanding of the cleansing milk concept is that they’re sorta like a pre-mixed dual-layer makeup remover, containing both watery and oily ingredients emulsified together. You apply it to your face or a cotton pad and wipe the makeup off, no need to rinse after. This cleansing milk isn’t the consistency of milk but more like a cream moisturiser. It’s not runny and I feel the need to rub it into my face when I’m using it, to help break down the makeup. The bottle is sturdy but squeezeable, and the lid is great for keeping the product air-tight and making sure thers minimal mess. The only annoying thing is that since the lid is curved, I can’t stand the bottle upside down to get at the product at the bottom.

Revlon CustomEyes mascara review

First makeup product review~!

 

setting 1: length and drama

Which is not going to end nicely because to sum up this review before it’s begun, this mascara is not very good.

    First of all it’s one of the 2-brushes-in-1 mascaras, which in this case means that twisting in the handle gives 2 options, “Length and Definition” and “Length and Drama”. As can be seen in the pictures this mascara clearly has a plastic bristle brush, which started off purple-blue (bought it before starting blog so no pictures of clean brush).