Illamasqua Melbourne Haul

Hello all, Melbourne has been absolutely amazing and one of my best times was found haunting the Illamasqua counter, first day there i spotted it and without being able to make up my mind about anything i walked away withe one of their matte eye shadow in Deamon (a bold bright red) and made an appointment for one of their creatives to do my makeup for me later in the week which cost $50 and was then redeemable in products. I'll do a separate post on that but i wanted to show off my goodies and see if there was any preference for which bits and pieces i review first.

The stuff i ended up picking up (in the end) were;
Illamasqua Skin Base foundation in 02
Illamasqua Hydra Veil
Illamasqua Color Pigment in "Hollow"
Illamasqua eyeshadow in "Deamon"
Illamasqua Powder blush in "Katie"
and Illamasqua lipstick in "Growl"

I'll do a separate post on Melbourne, the PAX expo and my visit to Illamasqua when i get back to Perth (Sunday) but if any of these products interests you more then another leave me a comment and i will do that one first. For now i will leave you with some awesome promo pictures from Illamasqua, a brand i have completely fallen in love with while i have been here in Melbourne. 

Travel Supplies

So i haven't really traveled much since getting into the whole makeup thing so i thought it might be fun to share the stuff that i decided to take along with me, what i thought counted as essentials for my time away.

So here is the list of what i packed:

Base

x MUA Matte Perfect Primer

x Korres Ginger & Vitamin Foundation

x Garnier Oil free BB cream

x Ben Nye Luxury Powder in Cameo

x Essence Breaking Dawn Shimmering Powder

Eyes

x Naked 2 Pallet (essential neutral eyeshadow for any occasion)
x Maybelline Eye Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze
x MAC Star Violet eyeshadow
x Models Perfef Eyebrow Pencil in medium
x Essence Long Lasting eye pencil in teal
x Essence Long Lasting eye pencil in brown
x Maybelline "The Falsies" waterproof mascara
x Napoleon Perdis mascara (don't which one because the name has faded away)
x Face of Australia black gel eyeliner

Lips
x Revlon Just Bitten Lip Stains in Honey and Crush
x Australis Long Lasting Lipstick in Foxtrot and Oogie Boogie
x Korres mango lip butter

Blush
x NARS Blush in Deep Throat
x Illamasqua blush in Rude

Brushes
x Real Techniques Duo Fiber Blending brush
x Real Techniques Blush Brush
x Real Techniques Buffing Brush
x Real Techniques Blending Brush
x Eco Tools eyeshadow brush
x Urban Decay double sided Naked 2 brush

Lush

x Godiva Shampoo Bar

x Fresh Farmacy cleansing bar

x Godmother soap

x Butterball bath bomb

Other

x Moo Goo Full Cream moisturizer

x Swisspers cleansing wipes

x Paw Paw ointment

x Antispeptic cream

x Bandaids

That seems like a huge list having typed it up but I'm pretty confident that everything there will be useful, if not I'll do an updated post with what was most useful and what wasn't useful at all. What beauty stuff do you pack when your going away?

Review Maybelline Fit Me Pressed Powder

It's taken me a while to do this post because shortly after i got this i found the L'Oreal BB Powder and fell in love, and this one sort of got left in the dust. However i have recently finished that and I'm waiting for it to go on sale again since $26 is a bit expensive for me, so this one is back in rotation along with my Ben Nye loose powder which i will review after it's gotten a bit more use. 

This is a two layer compact with a powder puff and mirror in the bottom section and a circle of powder in the top layer. It's fairly creamy despite being a powder and is very blend able and if you require extra coverage it's not too difficult to build up some more color. I particularity like that it's a matt finish with no sparkle at all despite what looks like some sparkle in the product itself, i suspect that a darker shade would therefore make a nice contouring shade if you felt so inclined. (overall there are 18 shades though i am not sure how many of those made it to Australia as i have seen different shades at different stores). The shade i have is 920 Classic Ivory. There are 9g of product in this compact which is a pretty good deal.

As you may be able to see in the photos it's very densely packed and using a brush on it (kabuki) brings up no extra powder so it looks like it will last quite a while. Overall i do like it, but i like the L'Oreal better as it just seems more natural on my skin where this can sometimes look a bit too powdery and feel a ittle heavy as a result. It's decent enough but not anything special, use it if you don't have a favorite or are looking for something new to try.

Review: Essence all about matt!

Hey, i'm in Melbourne right now! Woot, if you have know any cool places to visit let me know in the comments below. Now, todays review is about one of Essence's new line products the "all about matt" essence powder which as the name suggests is a matt-yfying compact powder. It's a quite hefty at 8.0g and feels like it's got a lot of product in there, it also seems to be quite popular as this was the last one of the shelf when i picked it up.

It has a very nice clean and simple look, with a very subtle line design raised in the powder that takes a while to disappear because honestly you do not need a lot of this product, personally my forehead gets a bit oily toward the end of the day and even just one swipe of this makes it disappear where as applying it in the morning slows down the process significantly, but it should probably be limited to use only on areas that need it otherwise it might be a bit heavy, plus if it's not necessary why bother?

It's a white powder in the compact but on your skin, unless your particularly dark it becomes transparent especially if it's applied over foundation. It's quite nice and i can see it lasting for a long time, so if you have trouble with oily or shiny skin this is the product for you.

KKCentralHk ES False Eyelashes

 * The following product was submitted freely for review by the company in question, therefore this is a sponsored post. That does not impact the authenticity of the review below.  Because it is a sponsored link (ie. these items were sent to the reviewer) this review will contain links back to the seller. These are not paid links.

A little while ago i was contacted by KKCentralHk to review some false eye lashes for them, i thought this would be fun since i hadn't done of a review of this type of product yet, and let me tell you why; i almost never wear false eyelashes because my own lashes are actually quite long (yeah i know, woe is me) which makes wearing an extra set of lashes kind of uncomfortable so i tend to save it for special occasions, on top of that i had never tried these types of "fancy" lashes. That is, ones that don't mimic lashes but create unique and fancy patterns. So for the purpose of having some fun i choose the Honey Butterfly Rose Paper Lashes  and the the Bright Peacock Paper Lashes. Basically one was a set of roses and vines and the other was a set of peacock feather like lashes, both of them made of paper and fairly stiff to the touch.

As you can see these lashes are quite long, and will more then likely need to be cut down to fit properly, also when due to the way they are packaged the edges have a small amount of glue on them to make then stick to the raised section in the box meaning those parts of the lashes may be a bit difficult to use and i recommend simply cutting them away rather then dealing with "extra glue".

My first attempt with the rose lashes i did not heed my own advice and so the corners of these had the extra glue and ended up poking me in the eye, though i think that's really my own inexperience showing it's colors here. The edge on these was a bit stiff but it this seemed to help align it with my own lashes. I decided to do this test without any other eye makeup except a little eyeliner to help blend the lash line with the rest of my eye so it didn't stand out quite so much, but as you can see it was still quite obvious, these lashes aren't subtle and there is no reason to think they will be. Initially i wasn't sure how i felt about these lashes as because of the extra glue and my own misplacement they were a bit uncomfortable and poked me in the eye a bit, 

However with my new alteration my second use of these was much more satisfying and i think a lot more fun.

Firstly i started of doing a full set of eye makeup (Maybelline color tattoo in bold gold with Mac Star Violet and Amber Lights and Face of Australia black eyeliner), i was inspired by Iron Man at the time :) This is without any mascara and here you can see the massive change these lashes exhibit.

After the glue gave me a little trouble (as you can see on the left eye) these lashes actually sat very smoothly and didn't cause me any discomfort which I admit had been a concern as they are quite big though not actually heavy. A little bit of patience meant i was able to get both sets to look quite good together and sit quite evenly and cleanly. Below are a few photos at different angles so you can see how lovely these patterns can be.

The removal process was also very easy and both times the lashes did not tear and i was able to reuse them once again after the initial application, they stayed on well all night and i got a ton of compliments. Perhaps not the best lashes for everyday (unless your a pop star) but very fun for special events or costume dress. I can imagine quite a few new year or Halloween looks that would be fun with these.

Head to kkcenterhk to check out these and many other products from eyelashes, nail products, clothing, health products and makeup. They are based in Hong Kong and  ship internationally.

Review: Face Shop Jelly Apple Peeling

Hey guys, sorry for the slow posts. I got a new job two weeks ago and have been trying to get into the swing of things since then, plus being actually at work and then tired after work left little time for blogging. Still here we are today with my new ex foliating cleanser. This is the follow up to after i finished my  Peeling Day in Honey Black Sugar  which actually worked really well but i was worried about it being too rough and the kind of damage it might be doing to my skin. Not to mentioned that this peeling cleanser was really what i had in mind when i first bought the previous product, i was tricked you see by the fact that both use the word "peeling" where in reality the first was a regular rough sugar scrub while this none is a gel like cleanser that actually causes peeling of dead skin.

These sorts of "asian" cleanser seem to have been gaining in momentum recently and i was curious to try it as i don't particularly enjoy foam cleansers and i worry about "scrub" cleansers (on my face). This one as i mentioned goes on as a gel and doesn't really foam or bubble in any way, kind of just spreads out and as you move it around begins to ball up along with (presumably) dead yucky skin. It smells very fresh, sort of like an apple puree or juice, it's quite pleasant.

Overall i quite like it, I'm not 100% sold on the concept but yes my skin is smoother and makeup goes on quite nicely the next day. I'm just not sure it's as effective as certain cream exfoliators, I'm still intrigued by it though and would be interested in trying a similar exfoliator maybe from a different brand.