Kissme Heavy Rotation Milky Matte Lips Swatches

Kissme is a Japanese drugstore brand, found in drugstores here locally for relatively reasonable prices. The Kissme Heavy Rotation Milky Matte Lips (what a mouthful of a product name) are a bunch of pale nude lip colours with a very pronounced matte finish, not unlike the NARS Pure Matte Lipsticks released sometime back. The difference is, these are all in light shades, whereas NARS had theirs in a wider range of colours.

There are four shades in all. 01 Pure Pink is a very pale nude pink; 02 Vanilla Pink is more like pale peach with hint of pink; 03 Sweet Pink is a pinky peach, and is pale but not as "nude lips"-like as 1 and 2; and 04 Cinnamon Pink is the darkest, also a little bit leaning towards orange. I'd call it a peach with hint of cinnamon.

All the colours are very pale, nude lip (or corpse-lip, depending on your skintone) type of concealer-ish colours. They have a very heavy matte texture and are a tad drying. I recall some bloggers/makeup artists using actual concealer on lips for that extreme nude lip effect, I imagine this is probably similar (except that it might not taste as bad as concealer).

Apivita Pink Clay Mask: Gentle Cleaning For Your Face

Apivita is a Greek skincare brand, with a focus on natural and holistic skincare. Although personally I'm not really a suscriber of the "all natural skincare is better" theory (after all, not all synthetic ingredients are bad for your skin, and not all natural ingredients are good for your skin), but I've been trying out some of their products, and I generally think that the brand's products hold up to a pretty good standard. I don't think it's the "natural" branding as much as the fact that the products are easy and pleasing to use and effective.

This next product is one case in point. The Apivita Pink Clay Mask is the most recent product I've tried from the brand, and I like it. It's billed as a "gentle cleansing mask with pink clay", which piqued my interest significantly. Pink clay? Sign me up!

The mask is actually pink, and rather thick in texture, like most clay masks. It's thickness really makes it luxurious to use, and very substantial feeling. I rather like clay masks for my oily skin as I find they help to absorb some of the oil out of my pores. For the Apivita Pink Clay Mask, I had rather good results. The mask helped to make my skin less oily, while at the same time softening my skin. For me, the mask really worked.


Although I'm not always the biggest believer in all-natural products, I do appreciate it when a company lives up to its natural branding. You can see that Apivita has made an effort to adhere as much to natural ingredients as possible - other than the usual ingredients one would expect to find in a clay mask (Kaolin, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Talc), there are also a number of other ingredients that gave the skin-softening effect I saw when using the mask, in particular the sunflower seed oil and the caprylic/capric triglyceride (derived from coconut oil). I liked that the company made an effort to balance the oil-absorbing and moisturizing properties of the mask - it really made the mask do as it says - clean gently, without stripping the skin.


If you want a face mask that does what it says it does, which is 1) clean gently, 2) keep your skin moisturized, and 3) lives up to its natural skincare branding, this is definitely something for you to consider. You get two sachets, but there's a lot of product in one sachet, so you could use each sachet twice.

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)

Benefit's New Kits Let You Kick Some Class!

Benefit has come out with two new box sets, both with the most adorable packaging ever! This time, the sets are packaged like textbooks, and have a very quirky, fun vibe about them! In line with the textbook/classroom theme, the copywriting for these sets lets you know that these handy kits will "Kick Some Class".

The first set is How To Look The Best At Anything, and is a Complexion Set of mini-sized products covering all your base makeup needs: primer, concealer, foundation, and powder! The set comes in four colours, Fair, Light, Dark, Medium, and Dark. My set is Light, and it seems to be the right shade for me (NC20 in MAC). I love the packaging for this one, it looks just like a book! Everyone who has seen the set has commented on how cute the packaging is, too.


How To Look The Best At Anything has small sizes of Porefessional, a primer to minimize the appearance of pores, a Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow (the colour of the foundation changes with the set you buy, the Light set has "Cheers to Me" Champagne), a Boi-ing concelaer (once again, the colour differs from set to set, the Light set has 01 and 02), and a Hello Flawlesss powder (in Light the colour is "Me Vain?" Champagne, but the colour is different with each set). Don't you love how the set opens up like a book?


Here's a closer look at the products in the set. They're small sizes, but pretty decent, and perfect for travel. They'd also be a great buy if you wanted to get a "try-me" kit before splashing out for the full-sized products.



The second set I have to show you is one of the Lip and Cheek Sets. The one I have is Feelin' Dandy, a set based around the Dandelion boxed powder. Other sets available are Sugarlicious (based on Sugarbomb), and Go Tropicoral (with Coralista).


My Feelin' Dandy set has mini sizes of Posietint, High beam, Dandelion, and one of the recent launches from Beneit, the Ultra Plush Lip gloss in Dandelion.


I really like this set, it's handy, and very nicely colour-coordinated. And it's just so cute! Such a nifty little set.


Would i recommend these sets? Yes if 1) you want these sets for travel, 2) you want a bunch of smaller-size products for trying out, or 3) you want to get these as a gift (seriously, the sets are soo pretty and giftable!). I like sets like these, the idea of having everything I need all in one place is always very appealing to someone with rushed morning routine like me!

(Product was hsent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)

Vanity Trove Decleor Beauty Event: Sign Up Now!

Vanity Trove is organizing a beauty event with Decleor, and the event is officially open to everyone! The event is happening on 17th November, at The Pines Club, from 11am - 4pm. The cost is $39, but is redeemable for Decleor products.

This event also coincides with the launch of Decleor's Life Radiance II, so you'll also get to learn more about Decleor's newest products and services. The flyer below is pretty detailed, so I don't need to say much more. The closing date for registration is 5 November, so if you're interested, do sign up soon.

(Info is provided by the company. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company in anyway.)

Fall/Winter Inspired Smokey Eye (Sort Of): Purple, Green and Bronze

One of the trends to come around for Fall/Winter 2012-2013 has been dubbed the "alternative smokey eye". It basically uses shades other than black (say purple or green), to do an eye look. Like in the photo below.

It isn't really that alternative, and I'd hesitate calling it smokey (to me, a proper textbook-definition smokey eye is that the lid colour should be deeper than the crease shade, but maybe that's just me). But I decided to give it a shot all the same. I'm not a
runway model of course (I know - shocking right? :p NOT.), so I adapted the look a little bit to get the below, which I felt was a little bit more wearable:

The idea was to use similar colours (in this case purple, green, bronze) to get an eye look. For this look I actually drew my three shades from various palettes - some are Sleek palettes, if I recall. I applied the purple on the inner half of the lid, the green on the outer half of the lid, and the bronze on the contour area.


To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this look. It's a little darker than I normally like my eye makeup to be, but I think it's not that bad in real life. It doesn't look like a black eye at least! And although I've worn purple and green before in a brighter eye look, the darker combination makes it quite season-appropriate.


So there you have it, my attempt to get into the Autumn/Winter Season! Is anyone else doing colour for Fall/Winter?

Scary Halloween Nails: Bloody Scarred Nails

My last Halloween nail art was nice, but it wasn't really scary. So this time, here's my shot at trying to scare you, LOL!

This was actually quite easy to do, and I imagine anyone could do it, really! For the base, I used a mannequin hands shade (a shade that matches your skin colour closely - it was all the rage back a couple of years ago), Nails Inc Basil Street, one of my all-time favourite polishes ever. I guess you could use any shade for the base, but I wanted a skin-like colour that would stand out against the red blood layered over it.


For the "blood", I sponged on some red nail polish. In this case I used Eyeko Saucy Polish (also previously blogged about before), and sponged it over my nails for that gradient effect. For this, a rougher sponge with larger pores would actually work better for the "splatter" effect than a finer sponge. I really just used a sponge that I had on hand for polishing shoes. LOL!


Lastly, I freehanded on the scars with a black polish and a long skinny nail art brush (I got mine from Born Pretty Store, I wrote about them in a previous Chinese New Year nail art post. I didn't really think too much about where I was placing the scars, which is why perhaps the placement isn't always optimal for all nails. But still, it was cool. Lastly, to keep in the scary Halloween theme, I deliberately didn't cleanup the nail polish, so it's supposed to make my fingers look bloody and gross, LOL!

So I guess my nails are all ready for Halloween! Now all I need to do is dress up like a mummy or something, and I'll be ready to go!

Stuff I Tried And Didn't Like: Face Shop Top Coat

Don't you just hate it when you do your mani and it looks great at first, and then ding it hours later because the topcoat takes too long to dry? It's so frustrating. Well, now you know which topcoat to avoid if you don't want this to happen to you!

Face Shop has a few topcoats, and the offending one I used was the Face It Nails 04 Long Lasting Top Coat. There seems to be two types of top coat with this name (Korean brands, particularly Face Shop, do this sometimes - remember my Face Shop PP409 which had not one but two other polishes with the same name?), a pink one, and a clear one. I used the pink one, shown below.


Source
Anyway, let me proceed to complain about how this lousy topcoat ruined my manicure. The other day, I decided to paint my nails - just a quick, two-coats-and-I'm-done thing. It was awesome, by the way. China Glaze Westside Warrior. Military olive green, deep but not so dark you'd mistake it for black, and a totally chic edgy neutral.

I had used another Face Shop Base Coat, the Lovely Me:ex Nails No.2 Base Coat. I didn't really have all that much to say about it. It was okay-I-guess.


Source
So base coat, two coats of Westside Warrior, and that lousy topcoat. I waited for a few minutes, and then carried on with my day. With other topcoats (Seche, Nails Inc, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri) this hasn't been a problem, but with the Face Shop topcoat, the next thing you know, the surfaces of a couple of my nails got dulled and roughened, just because I was doing things like typing at my computer and getting cash out of my wallet. That was a first sign things were bad. The best topcoats I've used are dry to the touch (though still dentable) within the first half an hour after application, so typically I expect that a good topcoat will allow to do most everyday activities (gently and cautiously), and then be fully dry (or at least no longer dentable unless you use force) an hour or so after that. This one felt like it was soft and dentable the entire day. Look at the photo of my nails below, after one day. You can see all the surface scratches and smudges. And this is already the better looking hand. SIGH.

Anyway, I figured that since I painted my nails in the afternoon, when I went to bed at night, I shouldn't get sheetmarks. Right? Nope, WRONG. I woke up the next morning with more dull nails and a couple of dings. Because, y'know, more than 12 freakin' hours isn't really long enough for a good topcoat to do its job and dry completely. HAH.

So now you know. I tried out a sucky product so you don't have to! Would I recommend this? Well, if you're looking for a topcoat that's still not fully dry and still dentable after 12 hours - be my guest. Else, save the money, and thank me later.