Double month this time! That’s because at the end of June I was travelling between Germany and France! And as you know pretty much dropped off the face of blogging during my Europe trip~ Hence the few more empties that I have for you all today.

Keeping in mind that I’ve decided to stop including stuff like cotton pad wrappers, makeup remover wipes. We all know I go through those like candy so I didn’t think there was much point continously including them. Figure I should focus on actual products, and I’m so glad this time I actually have more makeup products than skin care to show you

It’s the small accomplishments in life that matter ;D

• Clinique Super Defense SPF 25
• Guinot One Step Cleansing Water *
• Avene Lotion Gentle Toner
• Integrate Eyeliner
• Philosophy Miracle Worker
• Trish McEvoy Eye Primer
• Lancome Hypnose Doll Lashes Mascara (review)
• Lancome Definicils Mascara
• Clinique High Impact Mascara * (review)
• Face of Australia Impact Curl Mascara * (review)

Products marked with a * were sent for consideration.

When I went to Europe I was really keen to be able to finally try out all my favourite collections before they arrived in Australia! Unfortunately I was disappointed to learn that it seems the release dates are only in “early” in America, not Europe So I was sad I couldn’t find this polish whilst overseas, and instead found it by the time I had arrived home. Ah, irony :/

Chanel’s polish in Diwali is part of Chanel’s Bombay Express De Chanel collection, inspired by India.

The polish is highly metallic, which usually causes a streaky finish. But thanks to all the shimmer you can usually work with it to produce a smooth coat. I found the colour to be a pretty close dupe between Chanel’s Gold Finger (will review this later) and Face of Australia’s Calypso – Gold.

This polish is limited edition, so if you’re keen you can purchase this for $39AU from either David Jones or $30US from Chanel.com.

So, a continuation from my trip to Italy. After Italy, we flew up to Berlin for a few days. Unfortunately our flight was overbooked and hence delayed -_-; And as it was a connecting flight, our luggage was lost along the way So for the first night we were stuck using whatever was in my carry on bag, which was mostly cameras and laptops… Not the best start to Germany.

Eventually however and our luggage arrived the next morning, thankfully we were greeted by Toby’s brother and father who were waiting for us. After a few very interesting days in Berlin, we went back to Toby’s hometown for a relaxing week in the country It was bliss~

Hope you enjoy the vlog and my few photos below

Like Father…

Like Son XD;

My favourite building in all of Germany (that I’ve seen so far), it reminds me of Disneyland These are the original gates to Old Lubeck!

It’s been a good 2 weeks since I was last on a plane and my skin has FINALLY recovered. When I started my interstate travels I figured dry skin wouldn’t be a problem because my flights were only 90 mins each way twice a week. How bad could it be?

Apparently quite! Within a few weeks I noticed my cheeks which were never dry, were actually starting to flake and certain products that used to serve me well would burn on my skin All that travel had made my skin sensitive and dry

Fortunately using a few techniques and new products I was able to both control my skin and by the end bring it back to normal.

Oil Cleansing
My favourite so far (and I’ve tried three others) is Bobbi Brown’s Cleansing Oil. It has no smell and great at getting all my makeup off. I know a lot of people say that cleansing oils leave their skin dry, but the main reason I’ve become addicted to these is because I don’t need to scrub my face to remove my makeup, it literally melts off. Before I would usually depend on makeup wipes or makeup removers with a cotton pad and I’d need to rub my face quite a bit, which left me more sore than clean. Anything that doesn’t put too much physical pressure on my skin is great when it’s feeling dry and sensitive.

I can’t seem to find this original cleansing oil anymore *sad face*, but Bobbi Brown seem to be promoting a new “soothing” version, which I have yet to try (but will review soon!). You can purchase it from their US or AU website, or Nordstrom for either $42US or $60AU.

Hydrating Serum
Works wonders on dry areas of your face. The one I was using (because it was in my rotation / testing batch) was Sukin‘s Hydrating Serum, which I kindly received as a gift from the people at Sukin. This is an oil based serum, which at first left me wary, but when I felt how soft and hydrated my skin was after, I was sold I applied just a few drops of this every night to just the areas that needed the extra moisture, massaged it in and then topped it off with my nightly moisturiser.

You can purchase this from any local Priceline for $23.95AU.

Thick Night Moisturiser
Every night after applying my serums, I made sure to top it all off with a thick basic moisturiser, my favourite being Olay’s Moisturising Cream. It has a very thick consistency that helps seal in all the hydrating properties from my serums, which leaves me with soft supple skin in the morning

If you’re kind, you can find this at any supermarket or Priceline for around $11AU to $12AU

Spot Treatment
Saving the best till last, and my new holy grail for combating dry skin as bad as my eczema (yes I use this for Eczema patches on my face!) yet completely unconventional. Introducing Garnier’s Hand Cream as pictured above. This is perfect for extremely dry patches, just pat a small amount on the area (usually around my nose or cheeks) and it leaves my skin smooth and soft. You wouldn’t expect it, but it works amazingly well! This was especially great when I came down with a terrible cold and was blowing my nose every few minutes. Just dab this on between each use and my nose did not flake like it usually does during a cold.

And at $4.25AU a tube at full price (Like Olay you can get this from any supermarket or Priceline!), I can’t sing enough praise for this (I have two, one at home and one in the car ;D)

Whilst in Paris, I managed to finally visit Sephora! Not to mention, I got to visit the biggest Sephora in the world (apparently), and they weren’t kidding. The Sephora on the Champs Elysee is insanely large, and not surprisingly completely crowded. I wasn’t planning to buy much, but then when does that ever happen when a beauty bloggers steps into the holy grail of all makeup stores?

These Ultra Plush Lip Glosses are Benefit’s latest invention, essentially they took each of their powder box blushes and created lip gloss versions. I decided to pick up Coralista and Dandelion as they appeared to be the more wearable shades (though realistically they are all pretty wearable).

For some reason these glosses remind me of butter. Weird I know, but the texture feels like thick creamy butter and it even smells like sweet butter mixed with coconut? It’s the strangest smell! It’s by no means offensive, but I’ve never come across glosses like this before.

These are certainly not moisturising glosses, but they aren’t drying either. Fortunately they are not sticky, they have a lot of slip, but that also means you need to re-apply every few hours to maintain the same level of pigmentation. On my lips I needed quite a bit for the pigmentation to show up, though I reckon generally my lips are pretty pigmented on their own.

All in all, interesting glosses. I probably wouldn’t repurchase these again, but that doesn’t mean they are bad glosses (I’ve tried much worse!) I really think there is a market out there for these, but if you could try before you buy! Texture and wear are pretty standard, but smell really threw me off.

If you’re interested, you they are available at $16US from Benefit Cosmetics.

I think I’m still trying to get used to the fact that I’m at home and don’t need to pack and get ready to catch a flight to Sydney. To ease back to home life I’ve instead been spending a great deal of time just tidying up my rooms at home, organising myself and basically trying to simplify my life as best I can.

If travelling has taught me anything is that you really can live life with very little. And my life is just filled with a lot of unnecessary things, made worse by the fact that I am a beauty blogger.

So with the support of friends, I’ve made the decision to sell off anything I don’t need, including clothes, makeup, equipment, basically anything I don’t actively use will get sold. And I’ll use the money to reinvest into the blog aka continue purchasing the latest makeup collections, try new products, once reviewed the cycle continues, I sell off what I don’t need.

I think this new project which I’ve entitled “Simplify” will really help clear my mind (and my space), help reduce my anxiety and mostly free me from the grasp of having to own so much stuff and instead invest in quality over quantity.

First step was clearing out a bunch of makeup I no longer used, most of which I will not be selling directly on the blog. And as I’m not personally comfortable dealing with selling thing personally (thanks to a heap of bad experiences) I’ve enlisted the help of friends to help with the process. Hopefully it’ll leave me with more time to focus on blogging, working and enjoying life

Oh and before I go, thought I’d let you know I’ve uploaded a new makeup video dedicated to Italy

I’ve been wondering whether I should post this review or not, mostly because I don’t think this particular palette is available anymore. I’m pretty sure it’s completely sold out. However I’ve had these photos for a while now, and I made sure not to post them before because I had purchased an extra palette for my dear friend Sefie and wanted her to experience the palette for herself before I had my take on it

But not surprisingly I purchased it for her because I personally loved it and… well it’s Dior!

This is one of my favourite high end palettes, the pigmentation is amazing as you can see. But what I loved most is how well these colours worked together. I tried my best to use all five colours in this palette for the photos below, and the result was an incredibly bronzed sun kissed look. I was surprised at how easy this look was to create (and how much I loved it). The eye shadows are beautifully milled and blend so well into each other with very minimal effort.

And of course the patterns the eye shadows have been set in are nothing to sneer at either. I’ve never really come across an eye shadow palette that I loved so much, yet was terribly scared to use because I don’t want to destroy the pattern on the shadows, nor use this up. I’ve been through a lot of different high end palettes in my life in beauty and I just haven’t come across a palette like this before.

Again, I feel slightly bad because this particular palette is sold out, but I wouldn’t feel right if I couldn’t honestly tell you how I feel about all the products I use and love

I wanted to share a few photos from my trip to Europe, so I decided to break it up into each country This week I’m covering Italy. We stayed in a total of three cities, Roma, Florence and Venice My favourite city being Florence for its contained charm, delicious food and I have to admit the hotel we stayed at really added to the beauty of the city! By far the best hotel I’ve ever been at given the price I can see myself returning one day as I want to spend more time renting a villa and actually “living” there for a while.

I manage to put together a quick vlog regarding my visit to Italy on my personal youtube channel Tell Me Your Fable. Please feel free to let me know what other videos you would like to see there, right now it’s pretty much acting as a “catch all” channel till I can make up my mind.

And now on to the photos

My first meal when we landed in Roma, I’m now addicted to 4 cheese pizzas :9

In Roma we stayed just outside the Pantheon so this was our view most nights The weather was wonderfully summery!

The most delicious ricotta I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, I still salivate just thinking about it :9

Mickey Mouse! Or Sailor Moon :9 Either way cuuuuute and delicious <3

Venice!

Street food in Venice, Gondola Pizza :9

There is no time like the present to get back into the swing of things. I’m still not 100% fully recovered yet. I’m at that spot where I’m well enough to concentrate at doing work, but probably still sick enough to scare the people around me in the office. So of course I went into work because I’m considerate about my team that way.

It’s Monday so I wanted to do a bit of nail polish talk, and I’m likely to drone on a little more on this post than others because I’ve managed to spend a more time with these polishes than I usually do. Let me know what you think, I’m considering either stopping or slowing down the “collection swatches” posts and focusing more on individual polishes so I can give more indepth reviews. Or maybe I can kill my nails and do both lol. I’m a dedicated blogger

These polishes are some of my first from Dior (I had some 5-6 years ago and they sucked!), and I am in love. The brush for the Dior polishes are wide and rounded at the ends, fits my nail perfectly! I found it so much easier to paint my right hand, which is always the hand I struggle with the most, my paint job on that hand usually looks like it was done by a 2 year old, big improvement with Dior.

The polishes themselves last a good 4-5 days before I experienced any chipping, if I even do before I get too much regrowth. All in all, -love- these polishes!

Bikini

A bright orange based red, I wore this solidly for the 4 weeks when I was in Europe. It just suited the holiday perfectly because on most days I experienced 30-35 degree weather. It was bright, sunny and deliciously summery (aka complete opposite of Melbourne). I only had to re-apply this polish once a week, which wasn’t because of chipping and only because I had far too much regrowth. I’ll have fond memories of this polish (as lame as that sounds)

Saint Tropez

It’s strange, even though this is my favourite polish from the collection (I love me some blue) I chose not to take it with me on holiday because I didn’t think it would easily match my outfits as a red based polish would (and I only brought one polish with me). Right or wrong, I still adore this polish and did manage to wear it for an entire week before I left for Europe (as we were doing a blue theme dress at work, so naturally I painted my nails to match). It lasted just as long as Bikini. All in all I love both polishes!

Morning lovelies, I’m back~~ Actually I’ve been back for a couple of days now, but honestly have felt like a bit of a train wreck. I came down with a persistent cough a day before my 22 hr flight back to Melbourne, which was compounded by some terrible jetlag and then only got worse as it worked itself into a cold. The worst part is going to bed each night, thanks to my coughing I’m finding the only way I can get sleep is using sleeping pills.

So that’s not great, but being back home in my own bed is. (keeping in mind I haven’t slept in my own bed for more than a few nights for four months now) Europe was pretty amazing and I have a ton of videos and posts that need to be edited and written for you all. Expect them to all come out quite randomly. I’m still not feeling the best and given I will be returning to work next week I just want to focus on getting better so I’m not a total mess next week.

My next assignment is confirmed in Melbourne for at least 7 weeks, which is great news! It means I can finally get back into filming my Book of Fables chapters, blogging more consistently and generally just feeling more at home, spending quality time with my family and friends etc.

Hope you all are doing well, and expect the regular posting to start up against very soon Missed you all! <3

Toby’s pose pretty much 95% of the trip in Europe.

Mine only 20% of the trip