My first award & Friend's hen party

I received my first blogging award from Ai and Mei. I really encourage you to check out their blog! They're really new, but already hugely popular and has lots of nice beauty tutorials.

With this award, you're meant to:

-link the person who has given this award to you, and pass this award onto 15 other blogs

So, I would like to pass this award onto the following great blogs:

13 December

A Beautiful Sentiment

Angmogirl's Blog

Bitten Before/ Yumeko

Blair

Innerchild

Le Belle Cose

Lolanne
Pinkfish Pie
PowderPuff Girl
Rainy Days and Lattes
Rita in the Real World
Shanghainese Dumpling
Tummycake

Yellowjellybaby

On a separate note, I went to a friend's hen party in Nottingham last weekend. My husband has close friends in Nottingham, so he drove me there and booked a lovely hotel for us to stay in. It's located on the outskirts of Nottingham, so was quite secluded and romantic.

The hotel bathroom had quite a 'loud' design, but I liked it as it was different, and not all stark white.

My husband met up with his friends while I went to the hen party. The hen had to wear a whole collection of flowery garlands. She thought I was being sarcastic when I said it suited her complexion, but i really think it does! For my own hen party, I had to wear a tiara, and a flashing 'bride to be' sign, whilst holding a star-shaped wand. Cringe, (but secretly quite attached to it by the end of the night).

The rest of us had to wear a pretty flower lei, with photos of the bride to be attached. The girl who planned the party went through the poor girl's facebook pictures and picked out the worst ones to laminate. As unflattering as they were, she still looked good in all them.

Here's a couple pics of me and my ex-flatmate:


It was my first ever hen party I attended (thatwas not my own). I had a great time, and it was so nice to see my Nottingham ex-colleagues again. I can't wait for the wedding, as my friend will make a beautiful bride.

asos haul - loving my new dress!

My order from asos has arrived! For some reason, I hardly ever buy from asos. But the other day, I was browsing the online shop and found a few gems. The obvious problem with clothes online shopping is that you can't try on the clothes, but I find that asos is pretty good in giving you an overview of what they look like. I especially like the fact that you can view the outfits on the catwalk.

The box below is one huge package, but sadly it was mostly packing material.

Inside was a dress I ordered. I also couldn't resist ordering some beauty products:

I loved this dress as soon as I saw it:

The dress on me. Please ignore the straps sticking out. I wasn't wearing it to go out, just trying it on and thankfully it fits! My face is cut out in this pic as I just got out of bed and am in my glasses.

Now, as this is a beauty blog, I'll proceed onto the products I also bought from asos:

I bought the Illamasqua blush in Tweak

It's highly pigmented, so I only use a tiny bit with an extremely light hand. It gives a 'just in from running in the cold' flush look to the cheeks, which I love! Here is a swatch on my cheek:

I also bought Pixi waterblush in no.1 and Pixi moisture tint gloss in no. 12

The water blush is a liquid stain that gives a rosy tint to the skin. I found that it was quite difficult to blend, and had to be extra quick when applying it. (or else I ended up with two red splotches on my cheeks)

Hand swatch of the waterblush:

The tint gloss was really thick, and quite messy to appply. Lip swatch of the tint gloss, a natural colour:

All in all, I'm really pleased with the haul, and am looking forward to wear the dress somewhere!

My Foundation Diet and FOTD

Hi everyone, I decided to do a post on this foundation diet I've been going on about, and how it's going.

Why I went on a foundation diet

After my cold, my face truly suffered. It was parched, bumpy and irritated - mainly from the constant rubbing of tissues against my nose. I was soon reliant on foundation to make my skin look normal.

Unfortunately, my sensitive skin was further irritated by the foundation, and I decided to give it a chance to heal. I was then inspired to go a step further and try to achieve good, radiant skin so that I wouldn't need foundation, and also so that I can feel confident wearing less makeup.

How the diet is going

So far is going well. My skin has managed to heal itself. It's still sensitive, but I find it more radiant, and I am getting used to not wearing any foundation or tinted moisturiser for my face. There's still room for improvement, but it's still early days. I won't be off foundation permanently though. They'll be days when I'll want more coverage, and I'll still be doing foundation reviews if i come across any great foundation in the future.

Here's a foundation-free FOTD:

Face: Illamasqua Powder Blush in Tweak

Eyes: Bobbi Brown gel liner in Black

Followed by Lunasol Germinate Liner in White Lightning on top (for a little shimmer)

MAC Eye Kohl in Fascinating on waterline of lower eyelids

Maybelline The Falsies Volum' Express mascara on top and bottom lashes

Lips: Guerlain Rouge G in Georgia

What I did to achieve better skin

Apart from drinking lots of water, and tying to eat healthy foods I've turned some form of exercise and skincare products to improve the texture of my skin:

Bikram yoga

To lose the extra pounds I've piled on during my recent trip to KL, I've taken up Bikram yoga. It's an intense form of yoga where the poses are done in a hot room of 45 degrees celsius, with a humidity of 40%. It's known for improving blood circulation, and people can expect to burn up to 1200 calories per session.

On my very first session, I found it to be 1.5 hours of torture. But felt great afterwards. I've been regularly since, and it's gotten easier and easier. Anyway, onto why I mentioned this yoga in my post - as there's alot of sweating involved, I've noticed that my skin glows after each class. My skin looks its very best after each class, and I wish it could look as glowy all the time.

Elemis SOS emergency cream

Now onto some of the skincare products I used. To begin with, I concentrated on healing and soothing my bumpy irritated skin. Over the years, I've tried loads of products claiming to soothe irritation, but I found that Elemis SOS emergency cream worked best on my skin.

It's a thick balm that felt really comforting on my skin. In less than a day, my skin was feeling calm and looking normal.

La Roche-Posay Effaclar K

I don't have my own image for this product, as my sister tried out mine and loved it so much that she kept it. So I need to get myself a new one ASAP.

It's my all time favourite product for retexturising my skin. I use it everytime my my skin has uneven texture, and it smoothes it out instantly overnight. I don't know how. But if I had to nominate a miracle cream, this would be it.

Elemis Visible Brilliance

My next step add abit of glow to my skin. Feeling happy with the SOS emergency cream, I revisited the Elemis counter to try out more of their products. I came across their new Visible Brilliance cream, and loved it from the first application. After trying out their sample for a week, I went and bought the full sized bottle.

It's a serum with an extremely light texture. It contains multi-minerals combined with Red Seaweed, Swiss Gerden Cress, Blonde Pea Protein and Dew Bean to provides instant luminosity to tired skin. I noticed that the serum had a subtle pearlescent effect and my skin was alot more radiant when used under my daily moisturiser.

Elemis Tri-enzyme Resurfacing Gel Mask

Onto my favourite Elemis product, the tri-enzyme gel mask.

I found this to be the product that made the biggest difference to my skin. It's a mask that encourages effective retexturising of the skin whilst balancing sebum levels, resulting in radiant, smooth shine free skin. It's powerful acting and left my skin feeling incredibly fresh and feeling brand new. I love this product and always look forward to using it.

SKII air touch foundation review

Eventhough I'm on previously mentioned foundation diet, I'm still writing reviews on foundation & foundation alternatives (especially this one, as i like this product alot!)

I heard lots of good things about this foundation, mainly from other beauty bloggers. This foundation was also used on the cast of Twilight in the movie New Moon.

What SKII says:

Achieve a look of flawless beauty...using the wonder of ionization technology to arrange fine particles evenly over the skin. With Pitera and hydrators to help create smoothness and radiance reminiscent of a baby's skin.

So far, it's sounding good..

I purchased the SKII air touch foundation from the Harrods online store. Unfortunately, this item has been discontinued with Harrods and its' no longer available for purchase there. So now I'm currently sourcing places to buy this foundation in the UK.

The foundation comes in 4 shades:

OP1 -Light golden tone (Light)

OP2 - Golden tone (Medium)
BP4 - Rosy tone (Medium)

BR6 - Neutral (Dark)

I bought the shade OP1. This is my first ever (and only) air brush foundation. I have to admit, it look me a long time to figure out how to attach the refil. (I'm the kind of person that does not read the instruction booklet, then regrets it later).

There's a fancy looking dial on the foundation bottle which needs to be turned to the droplet setting to test that the foundation is coming out, then turned to the 'on' setting to spray the foundation.

The foundation is to be sprayed about 10cm away from the face, moving slightly from left to right, drawing a curve. The spray feels like an extremely fine mist. There is so fragrance, and the foundation feels extremely light on my face.

I'm really happy with this foundation as it provided an extremely natural look. The coverage is on the lighter side of medium, but is buildable with longer spraying time. The foundation also looked the dewiest out of all the foundations I've tried. As it's a spray on foundation, the application is flawless. The downpoint is that for the application to be flawless, the foundation must be left to dry. But it takes so long to dry!

I turned to this trusty foundation whenever my skin is at it's worst and needs quite abit of coverage, like when I had a terrible cold a couple of weeks ago and my skin was all bumpby and prickly from overuse of tissue. Anyway, this is a great foundation with buildable coverage and is probably my favourtie foundation at the moment.

Pink mini haul

I recently went on abit of a pink phase, and bought some pretty pink-ish makeup. First up is Estee Lauder and Michael Kors Very Hollywood blush in Sunset Coral 07.

The Very Hollywood Collection comes in a gorgeous coral pink box, and has a nude beige pink packaging.

The blush itself is a light peachy pink colour:

Here's what it looks like on my cheeks:

Next up is the Estee Lauder and Michael Kors Very Hollywood Sheer Lip Sheen SPF 15 in Bungalow Pink. It's a vivid raspberry pink:

A swatch of it on my lips:

My next purchase was a MAC in Lillyland cremeblend blush in So sweet, so easy. I think they're only selling MAC in Lillyland products online on the MAC website here in the UK. I haven't managed to find any in the shops.

The blush is a light, yellow pink. A really sweet and pretty colour:

A swatch of the blush on my cheeks. Applied with Illamasqua Blending Brush 2 (great for applying cream blushers)

Please excuse my undereye circles. I was ill with a cold when this pic was taken. My skin was chafed too from constant rubbing of my nose with tissues.

In addition to pink makeup, I also found this adorable throw from Marks and Spencers:

I thought i'll add this in. It's my own personal gem, my PhD thesis. I've collected my copies from the book binders and handed them to the university for their library collection. Below is my own personal copy which I've put on display in my bookshelf (abit sad I know, but I'm quite proud of it!)

Skinfood BB cream review

This review was done quite some time ago before I went on a self imposed foundation diet. Before I start, I'll very briefly explain what a BB cream is for those who've not heard of it before.

A BB (blemish balm) cream is a product which combines foundation, concealer, moisturizer, SPF, anti-ageing, anti-acne, and whitening treatments in one. It was originally developed in Germany by dermatologists to soothe the skin of patients who have undergone laser surgery. Korean companies then made this product widely available, and soon BB creams became hugely popular in Asia.

This all happened around 3 years ago. Nowadays there are so many brands of BB creams. I started revisiting my interest in BB creams whilst trying to find the perfect alternative to foundation. I've tried some of the most popular brands (Skin79, Dr Jart, Missha, L'egere and Skin Food) and am reviewing one of my favourite brands today -Skinfood.

I've tried both the Skinfood Gingko BB cream and Mushroom multi care BB cream

Skinfood Gingko BB cream

This BB cream is formulated with ginkgo and green tea extracts. It has a slight herbal smell which I quite like. The coverage is sheer and the texture of the cream is fairly thick. A major downpoint of BB creams is that they are usually only available in 1 or 2 colours. I have this BB cream in Shade 1.

(shade1-for fair skin with yellow undertone, shade2-for slightly darker skin with pink undertone)

It's one of my favourtie BB creams due to its sheer coverage, and the fact that it doesn't really irritate my skin. It also gave my skin a dewy look, which is what I look for in foundations. I would like it alot more if it included an SPF.

Though I like this BB cream alot, I find that I hardly ever wear it. In general I do not find that BB creams improve my skintone overtime.

Skinfood Mushroom Multi Care BB cream SPF20

This BB cream contains aloe and mushroom extract. The consistency is similar to the Gingko cream, but it provides a much higher coverage. What I like best about this BB cream is actually the scent. It smells divine... It's quite a strong scent which exactly smell like mushrooms. I can't quite pinpoint the scent.. I'd probably describe it as ever so slightly medicinal (but in a good way!). I have to say that not everyone likes this scent though.

I don't have a pic of it on my face, but here it is on my hand. (Shade 1)

It spreads relatively easily to provide medium coverage. If too much is applied, it does have a tendancy to look slightly cakey.

All in all, I quite like the BB creams. However, I generally find that BB creams do not live up to their massive hype, and would really only ever wear them when my skin needs some coverage and don't want to wear foundation.

Back from Malaysia

I'm back from visiting my family in KL, Malaysia. My sis also came by from Australia, so it was a nice little reunion! My sis and I also stopped by Kuching, Sarawak to visit our grandpa and relatives. We soon realised we spent more time eating than not eating, and as a result I now need to go on a diet.

I didn't really take any pictures of my trip, as I was mainly spending time with my family. However, I did do alot of shopping. I wanted to buy things I couldn't get in the UK. I also bought quite a few cute little dresses in preparation for summer, aswell as some shift dresses for work. Below are a pair of earrings I found at the numerous gold jewellers dotted around the waterfront in Kuching, followed by some pics of my beauty haul.

Make up for ever HD invisible cover foundation #117
I've heard lots of good things about this foundation. It's designed to provide medium to full coverage while remaining invisible on-screen and real life.

Canmake Powder Cheeks PW20
An inexpensive Japanese brand blush that gives a pretty baby pink glow to cheeks

Vichy Bi-White reveal lightening deep cleansing foam & double corrective whitening emulsion
I've always liked Vichy products and couldn't resist trying their whitening range. Especially since my skin's been looking a little dull lately.

Silk Whitea Organic Peach Water-Binding Mask & Organic Strawberry Whitening Mask
My sis and I have tried this a few times and love their fruity scents and the nice glow they provide.

Laniege Water Sleeping Pack

A hydrating mask which works while you sleep. I got this to help rehydrate my skin after the drying effects of 6 flights in 2 weeks. I loved how easy it was to use (i.e. apply onto face, then go to sleep). My face felt more hydrated the next day, but so far I haven't seen a vast improvement in my skin.

Laneige Sunblock Triple SPF40

A 3 in 1 product combining suncare, relievement of photo aging, and correction of skin tone. I'm not sure what i think of this product. It illuminated my skin, but gave me a very slight white-cast. It also contains silicone which I've heard is not great for the skin.

Near my grandma's house a loads of shops selling everything you would never want, all in one roof. However, I managed to find a new nice things and bought them in the spirit of Chinese New Year. I got these cherry blossom sprigs to give our home a more oriental feel.

And these pigs as both my husband and I were born in the year of the pig (and also because they are quite cute!)
A quick, and random NOTD to finish off. This is my current favourite nail colour: Chanel, Ming #471. I like it so much that I've pretty much worn it exclusively all winter.