Happy Bday Deauty!

Hi my beloved readers, glad to have back :)

I'm happy you decided to read this blog post. You've probably read the title of this post, and yes, Deauty has already celebrated their 1st anniversary! YAY! Come to think about it, I'm already a proud owner of my own little spot on blogspot for over a year. Time flies by so fast!

If you haven't heard about Deauty before (click here to go to their website), it's basically a Belgian subscription service that allows you to test out make up and skincare products for an affordable fix price every single month.

The beauty box offers a variety of (drugstore) brands such as Avène, Essie, Clarins, L'Oréal, Kerastase and many more. On a monthly basis you receive about 4 to 6 products. Some of them are samples, but you often receive full size products which is always nice to test out.

Honestly, I still have products laying in my Deauty box because I haven't gotten the chance to test them out. But so far, I'm a pretty darn happy customer :)

I've already gifted a friend of mine a 3 month subscription and she was very pleased with it. It shows that you don't have to be a beauty geek to appreciate a beauty box.

Deauty, keep up the good work and I hope to see a lot more surprises of you in my letterbox! Congratulations with your 1st anniversary and I wish you a lot many more years to come! Hip hip hooray!!

Favorites of the month: June 2012

Hi there! It's that time of the month again! No, I'm not talking about PMS, it's monthly favorites...YAAAAY!! So, let's jump right into it, shall we? :)

As some of you may know I bought a Clarisonic a while back, and I decided to try it out before I wanted to review it. Well...I tried and fell in love :)

Clarisonic - sensitive brush

I've been using it every other day, other days I may do a light scrub or just go over with it with some toner, about which I'll talk more in just a second. I've been using the Philosophy Purity Cleanser or the Bioré Acne Gentle Care - Oil control facial foam.

Philosophy Purity Cleanser

                                                                   





The Philosophy is a bit more drying to my skin, but since I do want to use up the entire bottle, I'll moisturize my skin immediately after towel drying my face.

Bioré Acne Gentle Care Oil Control Facial Foam

As Bioré's name says so, it's a foam. It's not as drying as the Purity cleanser. I definitely will be repurchasing this one as soon as I'm out of cleansers.









I use the brush for sensitive skin and I have to say, I finally understand what the fuss in the beauty world was about the Clarisonic! My skin has gotten a natural glow to it, without being oily and my impurities have significantly disappeared. I'm really loving it, parapapapa!

I've been using my Biotherm toner for a very long time, and I had to switch up toners because I think my skin got used to it. And since acne was popping up on occasions I couldn't afford to have them, I started using a Clinique' toner.

Clinique anti-blemish solutions toner

Most people use the 3 step skin care line, but since I'm not most people I just wanted to try out this clarifying lotion. If you look at the bottle you see there's a powder at the bottom, which is acne medication. You just shake up the bottle so the powder can disperse in the liquid and I just a put a little bit on a cotton ball and go over my face with it.

I always learned that it's better to use a serum before putting on your moisturizer. Well, since my skin has been so good to me, I wanted to pamper my skin as well. I tried the Estee Lauder Idealist Skin Refinisher serum.

Estee Lauder Idealist Skin Refinisher serum

After using this, I barely notice dry spots on my face. Take that combination skin!

Summer's up (yes, Belgium has summers as well!) and my skin gets quite dry during warm temperatures. *enters Garnier moisturising gel* :)

Garnier gel-cream

It's a very moisturizing gel-cream for the body for those with dry-sensitive skin. It says it contains L-Bifidus** (which is inspired on pro biotica in most yoghurts to keep your skin moisturized) and peach extract. It has a slights peach scent to it, but it's not an overpowering scent that will bother those who don't like scented goodies. I prefer gels to lotions because those just make my skin glows like I've put shimmer all over body. Gels just work better for me and I'm really loving this product.


I've been a huge fan of the Shu Uemura pro concealer for years, but since they're discontinued, I had to start looking for a replacer (not a dupe, because I'm afraid I'll never find something as good as my SU pro concealer).

Maybelline Pure Mineral Concealer: shade 1

I bought Maybelline Pure mineral concealer when I was back in Hong Kong, and I finally gave it a try. Since my skin has been approving, I need less concealer and the Maybelline covers up just fine actually. When I do need a little bit more coverage, I'll go back to my Shu Uemura, but Maybelline's liquid concealer is not doing a bad job at all.
Perhaps that this will be my go to concealer from now on. Maybe it's Maybelline?

A monthly favorite ain't a favorite without mentioning my nail polishes :)
I've really been digging my Essie Tart Deco.

Essie Tart Deco

It's a bright coral, slightly orangy, and I just love this baby! It's bright enough to give my outfits a pop of color, but it's not too bright that screams heeeeeeeeeeey, look at me! :D

Well beauties, this is it for this month. Stay tuned for more make up loving!

Favorites of the month: April 2012

April 2012, 'till never!
I had a great month: first dance lesson in years, first Emeli Sandé's concert, started working again, birthday, got to see my great friends, ... overall, great month!

I don't have a lot to show for this month, because I've been using a lot of the same products from last month.

Let's start off with eyebrows. I've always used drugstore eyebrow pencil, but unfortunately they were always a bit too brown for me. I just never found one that was a bit grey/light black, until I found this eyebrow pencil from Lioele...yay! It's got a pencil on one side and a spooly on the other side. Lovely pencil!

Lioele Auto Eyebrow pencil

Then off to eyelashes! I've tried a lot of mascara's, and I now know for sure that European drugstore and high end mascara's (YSL, Maybelline, Bourjois, Yves Rocher, ...) don't do the job for me. Asian mascara's on the other hand actually do keep my keep my eyelashes curled, lengthens and gives volume to them. One of my HG mascara is definitely the Fairy Drops mascara.

Fairy Drops Scandal Queen

Next up is blush! I've been a huge blush freak lately and I own mostly drugstore blushes aside from my MAC blush. I've read a lot of good reviews on the Shu Uemura Glow On blushes, so I decided to spoil myself with one of these babies! I intended to get the Soft Coral one, but the sales guy recommended me this pink one. If you want some more information on this one, go ahead and check out my review :)

 

Shu Uemura blush pink 30

And I'll end this fav of the month with nail polish! I was always the girl who loved neutral colors and was afraid of using brighter colors...until 2012! I love wearing bright colors on my nail such as red, brighter pink, green, blue, purple, ... all the colors of the rainbow :D If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably know where I got these 2 Sasatinnie nail polishes from...yup, from Hong Kong! They have this huge drugstore called Sasa, and you can honestly find EVERYTHING there! It's been one of my must go's whenever I go to the other side of the world, haha!

Sasatinnie nail polish: left: P573 Rose - right: Q23

I must admit that it looks paler on the picture than in real life. It's this beautiful toned down hot pink...aah, just love it! But seriously, if anyone ever goes to Sasa...get these nail polishes. They need 2 coats, but they're cheap as hell and have an amazing color range!

Sasatinnie Rose

Anyways... that was it for this month! Hope you all enjoyed it and stay tuned for more beautilicious goodies! :)

Favorites of the month: March 2012

Tired of reading 'I can't believe the month flew by and it's already April'? Well too bad, because it did fly by and I am surprised it is already April! :D

I was quite excited to write this post because it'll be my first 'favorite products of the month'. I love watching/reading these posts of fellow beauty youtubers/bloggers. It proves how products can work out differently to people. It can be their HG or it can be the why-did-they-make-it kind of product.

Anyway, enough of the chit chat! Favorites, appear thyselves!

First of all we have a product I've already reviewed before, it's the Maybelline baby lips.

Maybelline Baby Lips: smoothing cherry

This lip balm doesn't only look cute, it hydrates your lips like hell and it smells SO good too! The HK Maybelline baby lips are different from the ones you can get in the States. In HK they're available in 4 flavors: cherry, berry, mint and orange. Now, each and every flavor has its own purpose. Cherry takes care of intense moisture and smoothing, berry makes sure your lips are protected, the mint one is medicated for repair and the orange baby lips makes your lips hydrated. These are all translucent and don't have a color pay off. And oh, have I mentioned that they all have an SPF of 20?

Since I have the typical Asian eye lashes (read: droopy, straight down looking, short eye lashes), I need a mascara to make my eyes appear more open.

Dolly Wink: volume mascara

If you haven't heard of the Dolly Wink line before, it's a Japanese brand and they've decided to collaborate with Japanese model Tsubasa Masuwaka. She's made the packaging so cute you can hardly resist to try out the products! And yes, the quality is darn good!

This mascara lengthens and gives volume to my lashes. The thing I like the most about this one is that it gives a boost to my lashes, yet it still looks natural.

Last favorite face product is blush!

Mac blush: Melba

After hearing so many good reviews on it I couldn't wait to try out this product after buying it. I'm really glad I listened to the beauties out there...I simply LOVE this blush! It's a peachy/apricot color and it warms up your complexion in an instant. This blush is very well pigmented and has a matte finish: one slight dab of the brush and it'll be more than enough!

Hair! Hair! Hair!

Lush shampoo: I Love Juicy

I'm sure many of you have already heard of Lush before, so I decided to walk into a Lush shop. First reaction: huuuuuuuuhhh, so many scents, don't know where to look, where to start,... I did some research on shampoo to wash my let's-fry-some-chips-on-that-hair with and tadaaaa: I Love Juicy turned out to be my hair's best friend!

I have tried A LOT of shampoo's to take care of my oily scalp and dry ends, but nothing has really wow-ed me. I used to wash my hair every other day. Now I wash my hair every other 2 days with the I Love Juicy. This shampoo has a very strong fruity scent. The fruity ingredients are pineapple, mango and kiwi and then there's sea salt for volume and seaweed extract to make your hair squeaky clean.

I mainly use this on the roots so it can get all the oils out of my hair and I TRY to condition the ends of my hair every time I wash my hair.

The only downside to this goodie is the price. But if it keeps doing its job, I won't mind paying that extra bit for a product that works wonders on me.

"You can tell a lot from a person's nails" - Ian McEwan

Catrice: Walk On Air

Unfortunately Catrice is only available in Europe. But what I like about Catrice in general is that they have pretty good products for the price you pay (which is peanuts!). I've discovered their nail collection a few years ago, and since then it's my favorite drugstore brand for nails. Their range of color is amazing AND they regularly have new nail polish collections which are LE. The nail polish you see above is called Walk On Air and it's from the Hidden World collection. It's a peachy color with purple shimmers...SO BEAUTIFUL! It's the perfect peachy/coral color for spring and summer and it's just one of those colors that makes you happy no matter what :)