Another Halloween is upon us, and unlike last year this will be the only Halloween collection I’ll feature for this year. Most of the other collections generally left me feeling a bit underwhelmed, and honestly so did this one except for one final polish, Zom Body To Love, which you’ll see at the end.

I’d say generally speaking these polishes (not sure if it is because they are only mini) were below OPI’s usual standards, I felt they were a bit more difficult to work with, thick and slightly streaky. And honestly, a crème black and white is nothing spectacular. In retrospect I’d have been better off just purchasing the last polish instead.

All swatches are 2 coats with no top coat.

I Only Date Werewolves

A crème black, definitely nothing special unless you have a particular love for black nails.

He’s My Boo

Just another crème white, but I do make a slight exception to white just because they are popular with French manicures, so you get a little bit more use (at least for me) out of white than black.

Mummy Knows Best

A pumpkin orange crème, a bit of a variation and I don’t think I have anything quite like this in my collection so if you happen to love orange on your nails this is worth a look.

Zom Body To Love

The star of the collection! A green glow in the dark polish, seriously! I think I might have to get a full bottle of this stuff if I can still find it, I’m in love with it It applies pretty clear, just a slight green tint, but turn off the lights and bam! Glow in the dark, how epic is that?

The glow isn’t consistent because mini bottles of OPI don’t come with metal beads to properly mix the formula in the bottle, one of the reasons I’m considering getting a full sized bottle… that and I’d love to overlay this polish over a normal manicure. So it looks relatively normal during the day and then you have pretty glowy nails at night

Another month, another bunch of products (mainly skin care, whose surprised? NOT ME!) Let’s go into what was used

Swisspers Cotton Pads
My staple cotton pads, I like how they are sealed all around so less likely for it to rip if I rub too rough and you can buy these in bulk on special! What’s not to like? I use these for apply toner, removing nail polish, removing makeup and many other random things not necessarily makeup related.

Sasa Cotton Pads

Got these whilst living in Hong Kong as they didn’t have Swisspers there .These were still great though, they had an adorable flower pattern all over them, I still have another roll to go through, but now that I’m back home, I’m back to using Swisspers so may be a while till my remaining Sasa cotton pads get used!

Bobbi Brown Single Eyeshadow Containers

Cheating I know!! You might recognise these from my previous Rich Colour Eye Shadows. I just popped out two of the shades I used the most and placed it in the duo palette I received to make usage easier

Peter Thomas Roth Max Sheer All Day Moisture Defence Lotion
I used this as my daily moisturiser for a period of time, and honestly it was great. Did nothing to improve nor damage my skin. It was slightly oily, but surprisingly less so than in comparison to many other SPF / Moisturiser combinations. For that reason I’m not going to bother re-purchasing, and have moved on to Cetaphil

Estee Lauder Resilience Lift Eye Creme
Honestly never used this as my eye cream, actually before I do my night time skin regime, I always need to go over my lash line with a cotton bud to remove any lasting eyeliner / mascara. Rather than using eye makeup remover I tend to use eye cream as well, I just feel it’s more gentle on my skin.

I have to admit to being a tad slow with my reviews as of late, I’m hoping now that since the year is gradually coming to an end it’ll give me a great opportunity to sort myself out. Estee Lauder kindly gifted me with this palette quite a few months ago, but I only just recently got around to using it and hence reviewing it.

Estee Lauder’s Five Color Eyeshadow Palettes comes in a range of colours, from what I can see they range from neutrals to some more earthy colours such as blues and purples, don’t however expect any neon yellows, this is Estee Lauder after all

I loved that the colours in this palette really did complement each other, I was able to use all five when doing my eyes, but honestly I probably could get away with using 2-3 if I was going for a simply smokey eye. I am glad that the black portion of the palette is the smallest as that is always the shade I use the least of. A little goes a long way!

Quality wise, this palette is impressive. You can see in the swatches below that they all swatch pretty well, if I was being nit picky I’d say that the gray shades were probably the most stubborn, but that’s me searching for a reasons.

This palette retails for $90AU at Myer or David Jones, most certainly not a cheap palette by any means. The colours are lovely, but certainly not unique if you’re someone on a very tight budget who wants this same look, I’m sure you can achieve it with more budget eye shadows.

But this palette would be perfect if you have the cash, luxury palettes in general to me are great splurges

Sorry for the blurry images X_x; I’m testing out a new lighting set up, a rather crappy one I have to admit. Hopefully I can work on it a bit more this long weekend!

I’ve always wanted to show you guys my “everyday” makeup look, this is basically the look I wear to work each day. Neutral, simple and can be done by anyone. Admittedly I added a couple extra steps to dress the look up a bit more for the sake of this chapter, but essentially it is exactly the same.

But the beauty of this look really lies in the video. After all, a neutral everyday look is just another neutral everyday look. Since my tutorials are now all in video format, I decided to throw in a bit of a storyline and theme. Essentially a girl who needs to literally start again, both with her heart and her makeup.

Hope you enjoy the video and the story line, I know I had fun shooting it even though I had to shoot it over two days X_x; Enjoy!

MAC Prep + Prime – Base Skin Visage
Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation SPF 15 PA+ – Sand
MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural – Light
Benefit Box Powder – Coralista
Urban Decay Primer Potion – Original
Bourjois Trio – Neutral
MAC Eyeshadow – Wedge
Benefit Her Name Was Glowla Gift Set
Integrate Liquid Eyeliner – Black
Benefit They’re Real Mascara – Black *
Maybelline Define-a-Brow Gel – Clear

Products marked * were sent for consideration

My most favourite time of year with regards to makeup is the holiday season. I love the new palettes, products and collections that flood the market. I’m a sucker for palettes and gift sets, you know, cause of the visual prettiness of them all (don’t look at me that way, it’s called being shallow!).

First up is the Ultimate Party Palette by Bobbi Brown I’m actually surprised how compact this palette is, at about 8cm by 7cm by 2cm, much smaller than last year’s “main” Bobbi Brown palette. Unfortunately that also means less product, I found the eye shadows to be surprisingly small!

They look sizeable in the photo, but they are about 0.2g less of product per pan for the eye shadows and 0.4g less product for each of the lip glosses in comparison to last year. And while the price is about $10US / $30AU cheaper than last year, last year’s palette had ten eye shadows rather than just eight.

For comparison, this palette retails for $65US / $130AU, last year’s was $75US / $160AU. But ultimately (pun not intended) I’m providing the swatches below to help you make an informed decision on what sort of gifts you either want to purchase for yourself or others.

I found the eye shadows to generally be very good quality, easy to work with and the shades when applied lightly can be used for every day, with the option to change into a more night time look. Bobbi Brown is the master when it comes to sensible colours, I can imagine the majority of my co-workers and my less colourful makeup friends loving the variety of shades here.

The only shadow I found difficult to work with was Crushed Granite, very sheer and packed with rough shimmer. A real pain. It’s worth noting too that the darker matte shades such as Plum Navy and Black Topaz are good at adding shadows and deepening your eyes, but don’t expect intense pigmentation from these two. Typical of Bobbi Brown, they are designed to give your eyes an elegant “natural” ease into smoky eyes, rather than anything dramatic.

I found the lip glosses to be more on the disappointing side this year in terms of variety and pigmentation.

The first shade “Rave” is probably my favourite, it has the most pigmentation. In fact, I love how the gold shimmers in the pan actually transfer into the swatch! It’s truly gorgeous. However the remaining three is where my disappointment settles in, far too sheer to really see a difference on the lips. On my bare skin you can see each gloss has a different tint, but on my lips, especially those with more naturally pigmented lips, all three are likely to end up almost looking identical.

Don’t get me wrong, great quality, slightly sticky, soft and applies wonderfully. But it would have been even better if there was a more distinct colour range.

All in all, it’s a very cute palette. Probably not the most useful one out there, but you have to give it to Bobbi Brown for usability. Keeping the lip and eye products separate is essential to stop your lip glosses from picking up eye shadow fall out (and yet soooo many companies still put them right together). The additional applicators are actually useable and the mirror is the perfect touch.

Would make a great gift, and I know I’d personally love to receive this! But practical? Probably not.

Okay I’m trying, and I’ll try harder this coming weekend. But you guys know I’m trying to branch out my fashion posts, and when I saw these adorable white shoes, I thought I’d love to feature them in a post! They were from Target, they are cheap, cute and very comfortable.

Then I thought, I could wear some nice casual clothes and show you my low-key typical weekend outfit like a good fashion blogger would.

And I thought, why not even explore the cut of my top? This is one of my favourite jumpers, I wear it every chance I can. It’s comfortable, drapes down my shoulders perfectly, makes me look slim and clinches at my waist perfectly.

But I’m not a good fashion blogger, actually I don’t know what I’d call myself. Oh wait, that’s right. I’m child, at heart. See, I had just straightened my hair for the first time in weeks that day and noticed my hair was extra swishy (thanks to a product I shall review soon).

So I decided to jam pack my memory card with… what else, swishy hair photos! *cue awkward model music*

I know dude, seriously. I can’t take myself anywhere anymore *rolls eyes*

Jumper – ASOS
Jeans – GASP *gasp*
Shoes – Target
Watch – Burberry
Singlet – Miss Shop
Necklace – Tiffany & Co

Pros:

• Non-gritty texture
• Minty flavour
• Leaves lips feeling refreshed / slight tingle
• Visbily high shimmer / micro glitters

Cons:

• Semi sticky formula
• Requires several applications for one wear

Price: $42AU / $23US

Rating:

Where: Bobbi Brown, Myer and David Jones.

One of the newer glosses released from Bobbi Brown, though as per usual, I’m probably a little late to the party. Despite appearing pink in the tube, this gloss is pretty sheer in terms of pigmentation. No surprises it’s name “Bare Sparkle” rings true to the product formula. I found the formula to be relatively sticky, but not as bad as Lancome’s Juicy Tubes. Not as thick in formula either.

Check out the amount of micro shimmer packed into this gloss below. Unfortunately to really get the full blown effect you do need to re dip your applicator several times to get a decent amount, something I always hate doing.

Despite the high level of micro-shimmers, this formula is not at all gritty. I was expecting to feel a sandy texture when I pressed my lips together, but nope. Smooth as a crème formula.

All in all, a good gloss. It doesn’t have any outstanding features to really highlight, nor is there anything terrible about it. I am however sure a gloss like this is relatively dupe-able for less. I’d only personally consider this gloss if you love Bobbi Brown or want a gloss with a minty feeling.

Introducing Zoya’s Touch collection, as part of their Summer 2011 range. I think off the bat I can already tell you that you do not need all three polishes from this collection. Unless you are an absolute nude addict without any nudes in your collection, I can’t see why you’d need all of these.

That aside, these are some amazing polishes. They apply beautifully, rich in pigmentation and the finish is fantastic. I expect nothing less from Zoya. All swatches are two coats, no top coat.

Also I’m being extremely lazy today and just quoting descriptions off the Zoya website just due to lack of time Enjoy!

Minka

A pale, milky beige nude with yellow undertones and a hint of pearly silver shimmer.

Pandora

A medium pink-beige nude with blue and mauve understones and a hint of pearly silver shimmer.

Shay

A dense, fleshy light peach with slight orange-red undertones anda hint of pearly silver shimmer.

You can purchase this bottles for I think around $18AU a bottle? If you’re looking for a local seller in Melbourne / Australia, I recommend giving Miss Fox Nails a ring.

Sorry for the almost 10 hr delay! YouTube was being an absolute pain today and took me four tried to upload Oh well, it’s up, done! Definitively 15 mins past the schedule day, but oh well!

Ahh, upbeat look time, finding music for these kinds of look is always fun. I like to play the music whilst I do my makeup so I get a better idea what sort of poses and expressions to give, unfortunately for some reason if you watch till the end, I thought at the time of filming that stupid monkey-blow-fish faces was best… lesson? Don’t film 3-4 tutorials back to back in the early hours of the morning, nothing good comes from it!!

As for the look, this was inspired by one of Katy Perry’s looks in the recent GHD ad campaign I thought the look was just “electric”, and had to try it… pun totally intended! Hope you enjoy

MAC Prep + Prime – Skin Base Visage
Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum Gel Foundation – 51
MAC Studio Sculpt Concealer – NC15
Bourjois Pressed Powder – 01 Rose Clair
Rimmel Natural Bronzer – Sun Bronze
Benefit Box Powder – Bella Bamba
Canmake Highlighter – 01
Coastal Scents Brow Tones
Maybelline Define-a-Brow Gel
NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil – Milk
Coastal Scents 88 Eye Shadow Palette
MAC Superslick Liquid Eye Liner – On The Hunt
Maybelline Pulse Perfection – Blackest Black
DUO Eyelash Glue
Savvy by DB Luxury Liner – Shimmering Slate
Face of Australia Lipliner Mechancial – Pink *
Illamasqua Lipstick – Atomic *
MAC Superglass – Superflash!

Products marked * were sent for consideration

Bleh, YouTube is being a pain and my video upload has already failed twice now Unfortunately since I work during the day I don’t really have the capacity to try again and upload. So when I get home tonight I will try again and hope it works, so you can definitely expect this week’s Book of Fables to be coming soon, just slightly delayed

Figured I’d take the chance to ramble on a bit on what’s going on lately, kinda like a diary. I used to blog personal entries all the time on Live Journal, but haven’t had that sort of luxury in the last few years.

This weekend is going to be a fun one for sure, will be attending the Chadstone store opening for Armani Exchange, it starts at 12pm so if you’re in the area I implore you to come and have a look. Apparently Anthony Callea will be there as well (Australian Idol runner up), not that I follow him or anything, but to me it certainly sounds like a big exciting event! Seems exciting~ (more importantly what do I wear? How should I do my make up, my hair? I know… first world issues!)

The next day I’ll be attending Armageddon, it’s kinda like Melbourne’s version of Comic Con. I’ll be cosplaying Xiao Qiao with my friend Asham, likely entering the competition against my better judgement, but we shall see! I totally qualify for the Novice / Newbie category too!

Anyways, again if you’re keen, do come by and see if you can find the girl with the giant fans I love meeting new cosplayers!

Trust me; my weekends are not always so exciting. They are mostly me attempting to clean my room (it never happens), explore Azeroth, wasting time on YouTube or running errands…

Let me know what your weekend plans are like! I think the occasional personal / ramble post is nice sometimes.