Holiday spirit to the tips of my fingers

I recently received my order from Cherry Culture (hopefully doing a haul post soon) so I wanted to try out some of my newest purchases. Love these L.A. Colors Art Deco polishes. I used it to draw the bows. Aren't they cute? Just like little Christmas presents lol By they way, the red is Maybelline Salon Expert in Unforgettable Red.

Hope you guys are enjoying your holidays and the last couple of days of '09! Happy (Early) New Year!

Boxing Day CRAZE

The day after Christmas had to be one of the most tiring days of my life! It was Boxing Day, which can only mean one thing: Boxing Day sales. Myer opened it's doors at 6am and you can guess who was one of the first people through the door...me! lol Unfortunately I had work from 10am-3pm so I had to leave and be a sales assistant for a while. Watching people shopping and snapping up all the bargains without me was pretty hard to watch haha.

After my shift I was ready to go and take on the crowds. I shopped around Harbour Town and Highpoint and eventually got home at 10:30pm!! By then I was absolutely pooped and my wallet practically empty lol. I bought so much stuff. I got a cute tshirt 50% off from Myer, a 'love' keyring $9.99 reduced to $3, a glomesh purse and a few cute headbands all reduced to $5 from Diva, a pair of pointed black flats $10 from Famous Footwear, a 2010 diary 50% from Typo, a Fila jumper 50% off from Fila, Pierre Fontaine heels $80 reduced to $30 from Shoe Factory, a singlet and trackie shorts from Supre and last but not least a hat $90 down to $30 from Mimco. It's my first ever Mimco item!! =D





I'll probably hit the shops again soon to see what other bargains I can find. LOVE sales!!

Jingle bells jingle bells...

Yep it's that time of year again...

Merry Christmas
Hope you all have an awesome day, get all the presents you always wanted and are surrounded by love =)

I'll leave you with some scenes from around Melbourne.

The stars of Bourke St. Mall. They look so pretty at night.

Stone Santa! It's a real man! (he's also on Bourke St. Mall)

Block Arcade

Gizmos and gadgets

A couple of weeks ago my phone contract expired so it was time to get a new one yay! My dad gave me a list of phones I could choose from. I have always been a Nokia girl. The last three phones I had were Nokias, they were very reliable and I never had a single problem with them. But I didn't really like the Nokias on the list so after some looking around I decided to get the Samsung Preston Icon S5603T.
Isn't it cute? I really wanted the white version but it isn't available in Australia. I have a thing for white phones and my last phone was white. But nevertheless it's a nice basic phone for me since I don't need all that snazzy stuff and the black/charcoal looks very sleek and professional =P

I also got new glasses! I don't wear my glasses often, mainly just in lectures if the lecturer puts up slides with tiny writing. Anyway, love the black and white combo =)

hehe I was wearing my PJs in that photo.

And look who I bumped into on my way to work! It's a really bad photo of me but a great one of Santa lol

Look what I got! sssdawna's giveaway prize

Not too long ago, the lovely sssdawna from Beauty and a Budget held a giveaway with heaps of awesome prizes and I was one of the lucky winners =D
I received a neatly wrapped package in the mail with a little card and look at the goodies I found inside!
A Wet n Wild eyeliner, a flower necklace and Hard Candy blush! My absolute favourite prize out of the three is the Hard Candy blush in Honeymoon. Hard Candy isn't sold here and I love blushes so I was really excited to try it out. The marble pattern is so pretty and the texture is soft. Honeymoon is a really light/pale peach colour so it is very subtle and natural with a sheen. Great summery colour, perfect since it's summer down here. It can also be used as a highlighter. Love it!

Big thanks to sssdawna for my goodiesssss. *Hugs and kisses*

Thank you!

I would love to thank sssdawna from Beauty and a Budget for giving me the Honest Scrap Award about a month ago (sorry I took so long to respond to it). You guys must visit her blog!

The Honest Scrap Award rules are as follows:
1. present the award to seven bloggers whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design or who have encouraged you.
2. tell those seven people that you have given them the Honest Scrap Award.
3. share ten honest things about yourself.

I will list my favourite bloggers at the end of this post. But for now, 10 honest things about myself...hmm...
1. There is something about the colour pink that always attracts me.
2. I always go to sleep cuddling my Garu toy which I got from my boyfriend.
3. I have very poor focus and motivation when it comes to uni.
4. All the high-end makeup I own was given to me as presents, I've never bought any myself.
5. I am the stingey-est person you will ever meet lol
6. Sometimes when I put my makeup on, I imagine I'm doing a tutorial video in my head...and for some reason I imagine in an American accent LOL
7. I am more a gold girl than a silver girl.
8. I am very short...approximately 157cm.
9. I have no idea what I want to do in the future in terms of a career.
10. I can not watch horror movies at all.


I would also like to thank Geeky Mac Boy who gave me this One Lovely Blog Award. You are too kind =). (Again I apologise for not responding sooner). If you haven't seen his blog before, go visit!

The rule is that to accept this award I must award 15 other bloggers.

To be honest I do not know very many blogs and so I do not follow a lot of blogs very closely. So I find it very difficult nominating 7 or 15 other blogs. If you know some amazing blogs out there please tell me about them, I would love to check them out.

For now, the blogs below are blogs that I follow very closely and read all the time and I highly recommend them.
Beauty and a Budget
Notes from the Toothfairy
Kandee the Make-Up Artist
Geeky Mac Boy
Bebo

Fading Nails

I love nail art. Love looking at pretty designs but I don't have all the skills. So simple designs are my thing lol I found pictures of fading nails (I think they are also known as gradient nails), I thought it looked really cool and simple so I gave it a try.

The name pretty much tells you what fading nails are. It's where one colour fades into another or into a different shade of the same colour. There are quite a few different ways to do it. I used a similar technique to this video I found on Youtube:

Well here are some photos of my fading nails.

More obvious fade:

Subtle fade:

New Haircut

I have been growing my hair out for ages...it grows REALLY slowly so took me a long time to get it to the length you see below. Anyway, so I was getting sick of the long hair and thought I'd go the chop.

I went through heaps of pictures and my friend suggest I get a long bob. I really liked Rihanna's hair at the Grammy Awards 2007.


I got my hair cut at Shine on Little Bourke St. I asked my hairdresser to cut my hair like hers but longer and for a normal side fringe. So voila!

Before:

After:

The photo's don't really show the bob-ness of the cut but trust me it looks good lol. I really like it =) Kind of wish I got it cut a little shorter though. Anyway I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Biore - ULTRA Deep Cleansing Pore Strips Review

You know that typical scene in chick flicks...girl is just lazing around the house, when she gets an unexpected visit from the boy of her dreams. She opens the door forgetting that she still has a pore strip across her nose and is totally embarrassed when he points it out. Well that was what started my curiosity about these strips lol.

I have many many many blackheads/clogged pores (or whatever you want to call them) on my nose. So the idea that a product could just rip it all out in a single go was very appealing. So I decided to give the Biore - Ultra Deep Cleansing Pore Strips a try. My friend raved about them so I had pretty high expectations.

I've used these strips 3 times now. The 1st two times I tried them I was very disappointed. After pulling the strip off and inspecting it, I found that very very minimal dirt was removed. So before writing up a review on them, I decided to try them one more time. Surprisingly, this time was more successful. I'm not sure why...I may have applied it better? There was a fair bit of gunk stuck on the strip.

Overall I think these are just 'ok'. They aren't miracle workers, they don't remove all the dirt and all those big blackheads on your nose, just the smaller ones. But they also definitely aren't just a silly gimmick. I will probably continue to purchase.

Lancome - Declaring Indigo eye makeup

When I saw the pictures for the Lancome - Declaring Indigo range, I fell in love with the eye makeup on the model. I love the combination of colours and how vibrant and bold they were.

So I decided to have a little play around with the makeup I have and see if I could do a similar look. I was really annoyed with my camera because it just refused to pick up the vibrancy of the colours and all the detail i put into these looks. Fortunately i was able to fix this up a little thanks to "auto fix" on PhotoBucket lol

Here are some pictures of my two attempts to copy her look.

New Jewellery

Hey guys!

Sorry for the long wait but I am finally back and hopefully blogging much more often. Well this post is just going to be a short one. From one of my earlier posts you all probably know I work at Diva, which is an Australian fashion jewellery retailer. So here are a couple of new things I've bought from there.

I got this earring pack. I mainly bought it for the big aqua studs...they are GORGEOUS and i LOVE the colour. In the photo they're a bit dull, they are brighter in reality. The roses are cute too.

I also bought this bangle set. ALL these bangles are included in the one set. I'm really into gold and wooden kinda stuff. Thought these would be great to accessorise my summer outfits. We are heading into summer down here YAY haha

Request - Contour that face!

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while, I've been super busy with work and exams are next week arghhhhh!

Anyway, so i thought I'd squeeze in this post before i disappear over the next couple of weeks for exams. Well, my beautiful friend Triana asked me a while ago for a little guidance with contouring so voila! lol (sorry I took so long to do this post).

It was so hard to get the contouring to show in photos and taking photos of the steps was difficult too...I probably should have tried making a video...maybe next time =) Anyway so here's how I like to contour my face.

So first put on your foundation as per usual. Then you need a contouring product. There are some products specifically for contouring out there but you can also use bronzers, blushes or foundation. I use Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse - Tan. This shade is much much much darker than my skin tone. Just for you guys to get an idea, the Maybelline Matte Mousse shade that matches my skin tone is Sandy Beige.
With the mousse, draw a line from near the top of your ear to almost the corner of your mouth. This is where you want your face to look more hollow and angular.

Then blend it in with your fingers so there are no harsh lines. Try to blend down below the line more than above because you want your cheek bone above the line to be more highlighted and brighter. Add a bit of powder to set it and you are all done!

Before:

After:

Sometimes I use my Max Factor - Natural Brush-On Satin Blush in Subtle Amber to contour. It's a pinky brown colour. Any blush that has more brown or grey undertones is fine. I hold the bristles of my blush brush together so it's flat and squashed together so I have more precision. I apply it around the same place I would draw the line with the foundation and then blend it out.

Well that's how I contour. Hope you guys enjoyed and hope that was helpful Triana!

Notes from the Toothfairy's Jewellery Giveaway!

Today I checked out a blog called Notes from the Toothfairy. It's a really cute blog with random fun posts such as pictures of the day, stories about her life, giveaways and much more. You guys MUST check it out. I'm reading it right now as I write this post lol.

Anyway, she is currently having a jewellery giveaway! She will draw a winner every Sunday until November 8th and the winner gets to choose what they want from 2 stores! check out all the details on her blog. So hurry and check out this awesome giveway! Click here.