HUGE Collective Haul! -- U.S. Makeup Swap + Beauty Bar + Korea Haul + New Vanity Setup

Hey guys! I really haven't been able to post much, so as you can imagine, a lot of stuff has been backed up that I really want to blog about!

In addition to my huge Etude House Pink Artiste haul from a while back, I've accumulated a whole lot of other stuff from makeup swaps, general shopping trips and my Korea Trip.

I can't possibly review them all so I guess I'd just share what I got with you and let you do the picking as to what you'd like me to review :) If you see anything you'd like me to review feel free to drop a comment! :)

So first up is a huge haul from my makeup swap with the wonderful Amanda from RiceySupreme (youtube: ahyedizzy). 

This haul is singularly responsible for my recent addiction to lipsticks. I've never been a lipstick junkie before, but I've been more open to exploring different colors after this haul. I'm particularly in love with the Wet n' Wild Lipsticks she sent me, especially the one in Bare it All. It's my favorite nude lipstick thus far!

I've also discovered one of my HG BB Creams from this haul. I never thought I'd fall in love with a U.S.-made BB Cream, but here I am totally in love with my Flower BB Cream in BB2. It's a perfectly yellow-toned BB Cream that's completely matte and ridiculously long lasting! It's perfect for the humid climate here in the Philippines and definitely works wonders on oily skin :)

Another favorite from this haul is the L'oreal HiP High Intensity Pigments Matte Shadow Duo in 807 Poppy. The colors are ridiculously pigmented without being powdery and they remind me of Banana and Nutella! It's my go-to neutral eyeshadow duo and I wear it almost everyday haha.

Needless to say, everything from the swap was extra extra special, but these were the ones that totally caught my eye :)

Next up, one of my smaller hauls. I had to stock up on my essentials before my Korea Trip so I got two of my fave products in the world. The K-Palette Real Lasting Eyeliner was on sale so I just had to get it. It's my HG eyeliner and literally lasts the entire day (even longer). How do I know this? Let's just say a day-trip to Myeongdong and an overnight stay at the Airport put this eyeliner to the ultimate test ahaha. The same goes with the FairyDrops Platinum Mascara Water Proof Type.

And now, probably the largest haul is from my trip to Korea. I probably would've bought more, but baggage and time constraints really limited what I could get. It's a shame really, since practically all the cosmetic shops were on sale when I went there.

The amount of samples the shops in Korea give out is ridiculous. I actually have more samples than photographed above but I set them aside for giveaway purposes *wink wink*.

I don't have a lot of individual pictures of each thing I bought becuase I haven't had the time to schedule a product shoot yet, but the things that I'm totally in love with as of now are the Precious Mineral Any Cushion, the Drawing Show Creamy Pencil in BE103, the Dear Girls Tint and Lip Balm in RD301, Rosy Tint Lips in #7 and the TheFaceShop Daily Beauty Tools Eye Lashes.

Feel free to request reviews as you feel necessary! :)

Korea is also definitely a fashion haven. I couldn't NOT come home with a few things. Plus they were surprisingly cheap! I love the fact that South Korea takes pride in their clothing being made in authentically in Korea! The make is amazing, and because they make clothes primarily for the domestic market (not for export) the price is very very reasonable, especially around college areas!

I couldn't resist getting some cute socks! Just 1000 Won each pair (~1$).

Not to mention these ridiculously adorable Big Bang socks >_<

There were also an abundance of affordable skater skirts of extremely good quality for 5000 Won each!

I was a bit of a cheapskate when I was in Korea because I wouldn't dare buy anything more than 10,000 Won (~10$). All these tops, tights and skirts are 10,000 Won or less (most are 5000 Won), with a few exceptions. I'm such a bargain shopper ahaha.

One thing I did splurge on is a new bag and a pair of cute sneaker wedges. Can you believe the bag is only 15,000 Won??? It's extremely durable, really good quality and the leather trimmings are legit. The shoes were a bit pricey but I wasn't in the mood to bargain, so meh ahaha.

And last but not least, I have new makeup organizers c/o the wonderful Miss Bella PH. I totally love their new Bella Box and Bella Tray. They are invaluable additions to my growing vanity area ahaha.

You Jelly?

Feel free to drop me any questions and requests! I have more exciting posts to come!

Ada, signing out!

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NOTD: Etude House Sweet Recipe Icecream Nails

Hey guys! I'm back with another much anticipated post care of Etude House's new Sweet Recipe Collection. I did an earlier haul on this + other things from the Sweet Recipe line and was super duper excited to try this NOTD out. This will be just the first post on an entire installment of posts featuring Etude's new Sweet Recipe Line.

The Ice Cream Nails line has been much raved about for its cute and innovative packaging. I never would have thought to make a polish line shapped like icecream cones! The colors are so cute and pastel-y. The two polishes from the line that I'll be using today are the Sweet Recipe Ice Cream Nails #1 MintChoco Chip and #3 Apricot Candy.

Aren't they just lovely? Their consistency is a sheer milky polish that is thin enough to let the chunky glitter shine through sparsely, giving the illusion of sprinkles on ice cream. They dry pretty quickly too and are really easy to apply!

 They look quite nice on their own, but as I do in real life, I thought they'd look a lot better with a little extra something added to them. And what goes better with ice cream than chocolate fudge? I used one of the polishes from Etude House's regular line, DBR401 Bravo Brown, a nice thick chocolate brown color.

The result were the cutest nails I've done on my hand in a very long time~ I'm totally in love with my nails right now and I almost feel like I could eat them!

The chocolate fudge gives a new unique twist on the everyday french tip and is really easy to do with a thin brush, dotter or a toothpick! I found that the consistency of the Bravo Brown polish was thick enough and had the perfect texture to act as a chocolate polish.

I used to be a nail biter and have since quit the habit, but dang, these nails make me want to bite them all over again haha.

MintChoco Chip is a pastel blue with sea green undertones and perfectly mimics the ice cream flavor with its chunky glitter. I find that when I apply it on, the glitter is applied just sparse enough to give the right effect. It's mixed in with some iridescent pink, periwinkle, green and blue glitter. Apricot Candy on the other hand is a very flesh-toned pastel with red, orange, green, yellow and red-violet glitter chunks. If you're not one for really loud statement colors, this is a nice neutral polish with a little splash of color :)

What do you guys think? Have I sold you on the polish yet? And that's not even making a dent on the amount of products I have to share with you.

Coming up is a review on the most popular item on the line so far, the Baby Choux Base endorsed by Sulli of f(x). You can catch a preview of the post below ;)

Ada, signing out!

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Polka Dot Love Nails

Lol I waited until after V-day to post this because I am a killjoy that way. Also I am swamped with academic requirements so I don't exactly have all the time in the world to devote to properly posting D: I am a fail blogger, I am sorry.

So to win over your hearts (I hope), I've prepared this cute easy to do nail look using some of my favorite polishes to use this time of year - Etude House Nail Polish in PK014 (from this giveaway), Etude House DBR402 Crown Brown Polish,  L'OREAL Nail Color Vernis a Ongles in 203 Till the Sun Comes Up and Essie Nail Polish in Red Nouveau (both from Amanda of RiceySupreme).

Don't the colors just scream flushed pink hearts? I'm totally loving this color combo because it's just so femininely pink with a dash of bright color, but also very neutral and wearable - The best of both worlds. I'm not a fan of loud hot pink and I'm more into warm-toned pastels so this is right up my alley.

I used  L'OREAL Nail Color Vernis a Ongles in 203 Till the Sun Comes Up (a neutral warm tan-peach) as a base for all my fingers save the ring finger, for which I used Etude House's Nail Polish in PK014 (a sparkling light pastel pink). I painted pink-brown polka dots on with Etude House DBR402 Crown Brown Polish and accented my ring finger with a bright red heart using Essie Nail Polish in Red Nouveau.

This was unbelievably easy to do and IMO looks quite nifty if you want a simple nail look for the month :P So if you're lacking a significant other, at least you can still fall in love with your own nails hahaha.

I'll have better more well prepared posts up soon hopefully, after all the hullabaloo of exams and requirements.

Ada, signing out.

NOTW: Pink Crackle and Pop

It's another lazy day - the awkward day sandwiched in between two weekends when you just wish it were friday already. I have more prim and proper posts planned but in all honesty, I'm much too lazy to actually pull them off so I thought I'd give myself a break with a simple Nail of the Week.

I was in a very Punk/Pop Princess type of mood so I thought why not exemplify it in the form of two of the most cliche and overly used colors used in the characterization of that stereotype? Yehp, pink and black are definitely very Post-Harajuku Avril Lavigne-y. Despite crackle nail polish being an old trend, I thought it suited my inner mood, so why not? Who knows, we may see a revival coming in. LOL.

I used pretty cheap polishes for this NOTW because they dried quickly and I only really had time for a quick nail-job. The pink is the color 236B Greenwich Village from the In a New York Color Minute line by N.Y.C. (New York Color). This is a pretty old polish that my aunt got on sale and handed down to me. The black crackle polish on the other hand is an obscure Korean brand called Nail Up. The brand sells pretty good matte environmental and cracking polish for cheap (80 to 120php a pop). You can find their stall and sometimes even the owner manning the stall over at the 2nd or 3rd Floor of Trinoma? I'm not actually sure haha. I'm horrible with directions. But it's definitely worth checking out because their selection is huge and they sell a variety of nail art tools like dotters, nail stripers and stamps.

So yeah, that's it for now. Hopefully I'm in the mood for some more serious posts later on :P Hope this will suffice for now~

Ada, signing out.

[EH] Juicy Cocktail Gradation Nail Polish 2

Earlier on I posted about my haul from Etude House which included the Juicy Cocktail Gradation Nail Polish set as well as a review on the orangey-peachy-coral-y set of the product, or specifically the color in #1.

Today I'll be doing a follow up review on the purple set, #3

Okay, so I said I'd follow up on the wear and tear of the polish set from last time and quite frankly, I was impressed. The nail polish stood its ground for a good week and a half without chipping and very minimal shrinkage. Were it not for the fact that I had put nail jewels on my ring finger (those are quite unreliable), I'm sure they would have gone a full two weeks or more. They lasted especially long because the coral color of the batch complemented the tone of my nails, so even when they grew out, the color change wasn't so obvious.

With such good results from the last set, I decided to go ahead and try the other set.

Nothing much different about the application except that this set seemed to dry much faster than the other one. You can check out the other review for reference.

I tweaked the color of these on photoshop a little bit so they would be true to life and this is as true to life as the color gets. Color-wise, I prefer the coral set because it seems less loud, and because I have yellow toned skin, partially attributed to anemia, purple isn't really the best of nail colors to sport as it really does bring out how yellow my skin is.

My nails are also longer in this review than the last so you can see how the gradient looks on longer nails. Personally, I think this polish looks better from afar than from up-close because the gradient isn't as smooth upon closer inspection.

Again, for about 8USD, this is a great steal - you get no-brainer application and pretty nails as well. Plus, all the polishes can be used alone as well. I'm probably going to try out the other colors as well, the gold and turquoise/mint ones look promising, but they have larger glitter as their last polish so that might be an entirely different ordeal entirely.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post!

Ada, signing out.

[EH] Juicy Cocktail Gradation Nail Polish

Earlier on I posted about my haul from Etude House which included the Juicy Cocktail Gradation Nail Polish set. They had some of the sets for testers in the boutique so I tried the pink one and from there I didn't even hesitate getting two of the sets available.

The one I'm presenting now is the orangey-peachy-coral-y, or specifically the color in #1.

So the set has three polishes, one coral-cream polish which goes on semi-opaque in an almost creamy-gel consistency. (Think milk+original Jell-O).

One coat of first color.

I was pleasantly surprised with this polish because it wasn't streaky at all and even alone, with another coat, it would have gone completely opaque and left me with a nice coral-cream finish. Haha my hands are pretty wrinkly. It's a combination of genetics and ethanol drying (because I do molecular biology labwork).

The second polish is definitely more of an orange color and this is really what gives the polish set the name "Juicy Cocktail" because it really reminds me of orange sherbet or something. The polish itself is a gel polish, meaning it's translucent with an orange tint, but it's the orange glitter fragments that give it the extra 'oomph' and color.

Again, this polish, for its cost and marketing, is pretty decent. Most gradient polishes, especially those with glitter tend to go on like a thick gloop because of the adhesion forces between the particles (sorry, chemistry mode). This however went on thinly and evenly and when it dried it didn't leave that characteristic 'bump' of nail polish only applied to the tips. You can't really make out the gradient in the picture, but it's pretty obvious IRL becaue of the light bouncing off it.

The last polish was definitely the cherry on top. Or should I say orange on top? It was more a deep-orange, almost red color and like the last one, its consistency was more of a gel than a cream. But at the same time it was also more opaque than the last sparkle polish

One thing that really brings out the gradient with this last polish is that the glitter in it is much finer and smaller than that of the last, so it packs on denser upon application on the tip. Again, no problems with the application of this. No streaking, to clumping of glitter and no bumps/bubbles in the polish. I think a lot of this product's success can be attributed to its brush tip, because while other brush tips tend to make the glitter stick to them, this set's brushtips allow the glitter to glide on smoothly to the nail.

After the final application, I decided to spice the entire thing up with some nail jewels I bought for 25php (about half a dollar) in some sidestore on the street, and then topped it all of with a generic topcoat (although unnecessary had it not been for the jewels). The contrast between blue, purple and the orangey-coral really gives my ring finger a nice pop to it haha. These pictures are much more vibrant and true-to-life because I adjusted the lighting for these.

For all those beginners out there, I strongly recommend this set out. It's almost a no-brainer applying this and at the same time you get a beautiful, professional looking result, whether you have long nails or short nails like mine. It's even left-hand (right-hand if you're actually left-handed) friendly as well.

So all in all it's a pretty good set for the price (about 8 USD). All the polishes can go stand-alone so you really don't need to do gradient nails and just use them as is.

The only real qualms and cons I have for this (and any gradient nail set) is that they take ages to dry, so while  it's a really easy nail piece to do, it takes quite long for each layer to finish drying completely before the addition of the next (which is the best process for gradient nails). But I guess it's patience. Everything would be much easier if I had my own nail dryer haha.

I'll get back to you guys on the wear and tear of this polish, especially chipping wise.

Like a lot of polish lines, just because one color is good doesn't mean the other is as well, so I'll do a second review on the #3 polish later on, but so far so good. I highly recommend this set ;)

That's it for now. Sorry again for all my male readers. Maybe you can take this as a cue for a nice just-because present for your girlfriends or something. Haha. See you guys soon!

Ada xoxo

Lol Summer's almost up...

And I have not updated my blog at all. How sad. My last post, I think, was an apology post for not posting as much. Blergh. I don't post that much at all. Summer's been pretty boring so I really haven't been able to put everything up.

I have a whole lot of footage that's just sitting here in my hard drive waiting to be edited, but I've just lost my motivation to do so. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

The summary of my summer was basically Clearance, Graduation, More Clearance, Sleep, Beach, Mall, Dentist, Enrollment, DOST crap and more sleep to be blunt. I also did a bit of spring cleaning along the way.


 
I got pretty into makeup, nails and hairstyling this summer. It's almost become a hobby at this point. I talked my mom into getting myself my own flat iron because hers is just crappy >_> I don't use my flat iron for straightening because my hair's already pretty straight. I just like curling my hair once in awhile :P


Oh and did I mention? I got my new iPhone 3Gs for my grad present. I know. I'm late D: I'm sorry. but yeah. I named her serendipity :)



So to pass the little time that's left before torture resumes and I go off to college, I did my nails. Got the stuff from a little kiosk in Trinoma. The nailpolish there is really cheapo and cute :D My first go at doing nailart on myself. My left hand looks gorge and my right hand looks like it exploded. Ohwell. You win some, you lose some :P Practice makes perfect right?



I've also been doing some EOTDs out of boredom. I haven't been able to get my hands on the Moi Palettes that I wanted so I got myself a cheap Ever Bilena Palette to satisfy my craving for colorful eyeshadow. To add to my eye gallery I uploaded my EOTDs on a facebook album. lol. Yes, I am vain. Hey, it's a hobby. Don't judge.

I bought all of my stuff with my own money. Save my makeup brushes which my dad gave me :D

Blah. Pretty weird blogpost. I know. If nothing interesting happens in college, I might just turn this blog into a beauty blog lol.