Hair is important.

When it comes to HAIR products, I admit that I go a little out of the way, spend a little bit more, to get the products I want.

I think hair is very important, even more important than make-up because hair is well, always on your head. Also, hair shapes your face and brings out different looks from you. Damaged hair is inevitable, especially if you're like me and chemically damage your hair from time to time. I've dyed my hair too many times to count on every one of my fingers, but I can tell you that hair DOES grow back and it will get healthier. You just have to take good care of it and sometimes that means investing a little.

I'll show you the products I use for my everyday/every time I wash my hair.

Oh yeah I dyed my hair PINK last week. It started off like this. SUPER VIBRANT.

And a week later, somehow it faded a shit ton. Oh well. It was cool while it lasted
but I admit that I like this toned down pink more. It's kinda multi-faceted!

Organix: cherry blossom ginger Shampoo
You can purchase this shampoo at most drug stores and super markets here in Cali and they retail for about $5-7 each.
So yes, it's pretty expensive for a small bottle of shampoo. It looks nice though. 

I don't know what it is about the word "RICE MILK" but for some reason, it makes me think it's great for my hair lol

SO...is it worth it?

Well, I'm not really sure if any of these "organic" ingredients are actually helping my hair at all. It's supposed to be
an organic shampoo without harsh chemicals but that usually means that if you're hair is chemically damaged,
it's not going to do much to help the texture of your hair. It might be healthy for your hair but it's not going
to really make it look nice.

This one was okay. I give it a grade of B simply because it smells awesome and it makes my hair pretty damn shiny.
The only downside to this shampoo is that it makes my hair kinda brittle and leaves it very thick. Not the best for my
damaged hair but I think it's a pretty good shampoo for ordinary hair.

Grade: B-

Since my hair was dyed PINK and is now fading to a slight blonde/brown color, I want it to not have that brassy orange
tone to my hair like what most Asians get when they dye their hair blonde of any kind. The orange is pretty inevitable
unless you are slowly bleaching your way to a champagne blonde, which is not very easy to be honest. Unless you have alot of money to spend at the salon or want to damage your hair relentlessly, getting that ashy blonde all the time is not the bees knees.

My recommendation? Using blue shampoo.

So the cool thing about John Frieda's SHEER BLONDE 'Color Renew' Shampoo is that the shampoo really is BLUE in color. In case you don't know the significance of that, blue is used in bleaches, some dyes, and hair products to correct the tone of BLONDES that are chemically altered. It's really just a simple color logic approach. Blue cancels out orange and yellow because it's a COOL tone. If you want ashy color or champagne blonde, you need to have a COOL tone to your hair. Orange, yellow, and red are WARM tones so using the blue shampoo helps cool down the brassiness of the orange or yellow in dyed blonde hair.

Does it work?

To be honest, I've used this shampoo before. Albeit, it's again, pretty pricey for a small tube of this stuff but I think it's worth it if it works. Retailing at about $7-10 a bottle, I say this can actually work for you after 3-5 washes. I wouldn't recommend washing with it every time though because it tends to dry out my hair a lot.

GRADE: B+

TSUBAKI is a shampoo line by the well known Japanese cosmetics company, SHISEIDO.
You can buy this shampoo online. Amazon even sells them from their Shiseido store and it's about the same price you would find in a Japanese market. I got these from my go-to J-Mart, which is Marukai in Little Tokyo. They sell it for about $15 a large bottle like these. The cool thing is that you can buy refill shampoo which comes in packets for a few bucks less instead of buying these huge bottles again.

Hands down, THIS IS MY FAVORITE SHAMPOO+CONDITIONER thus far. And trust me, I've used MANY shampoos on my hair, expensive or cheap, and this has by far done the best for my very damaged hair.

Now I know it sounds pricey, but if you think about it, salons try to sell you TOP NOTCH shampoos for about $20. And even they are not always that great, depending on the hair you have. If you go to the super market, they sell some high tier shampoos too like NEXXUS, which retails for about the same price and same amount.
I've actually tried NEXXUS before and to be honest, I think it's really hyped up. I've used better shampoo from SUAVE that have the same effect on my hair. Expensive doesn't always mean BEST QUALITY when it comes to shampoo, because most companies that make shampoo use the same kind of ingredients but with different scents and what not.
What's different about TSUBAKI's shampoo line is that they use tsubaki amino oil in their shampoo. Basically Tsubaki is a scent-less flower, but it's very soft and very velvet like. The same kind of ingredient is put into the shampoo and it works really well on Asian damaged hair like mine. There are different kinds of the Tsubaki line but they all use this Tsubaki amino ingredient which works WONDERS on my hair.

I seriously think that if you want to have nice hair after damaging it so much, you should make the investment and get this stuff. You won't regret it. This is my 2nd bottle of the shampoo and it is hands down my favorite. The shampoo is very silky, very light and not THICK and even without conditioner, the shampoo lathers really nicely into my hair. It feels really manageable and soft while I'm shampooing and that's before I condition!

GRADE: A++

I bought this after I recently dyed my hair because I wanted a shampoo that might
help the color be preserved. I like Infusium's leave in treatment products so I
thought I'd give the conditioner a try.

To be honest, the conditioner is very thick and does not leave the hair very
silky or soft like my Tsubaki does. But I do feel like the color is a little more
vibrant after I brush my hair and blow dry it. But it leaves my hair looking
damaged so I don't know if it's worth it for my hair but I can say that it does
make your colors look nicer.

GRADE: C

Once a week I do the Neuance airy treatment for my hair. It's supposed to be
for the last 15cm of your hair, helping the damaged ends fix themselves so
that your hair can grow faster and not be too damaged at the ends.

I've read some reviews on this product before on bloggers who use Japanese
products and I always see a bad review on them. I used it for myself and I
don't know if it's really repairing my split ends or anything but the last
few inches of my hair does look a little better after each apply. Then I realized
why people are giving it bad reviews.

You're not supposed to use it on your WHOLE head. You're supposed to use it
on the roots of your hair and on the very last few inches of your hair. It's not
a HAIR MASK and it is intended to be used for the most damaged areas.
I did try using it on my whole head and I can see where they are coming from.
No, this little bottle is intentioned to be used on specific areas of your hair
so be sure to read the instructions thoroughly or go online and translate it
whenever you buy foreign products. Just because it's from JAPAN or from KOREA
doesn't mean it's quality. I think people need to understand that before they go
out and expect a product to be wonderful lol

Grade: B

And lastly, after I'm done shampooing and conditioning my hair, I let my hair towel dry for about 5-10 minutes. Once it gets damp and is no longer dripping, I take my blow dryer, spray the 44 IRON GUARD onto my hair, and proceed to blow dry with warm setting.

The CHI products are supposed to be TOP NOTCH Salon quality hair products. They are pretty expensive. I think the Keratin mist is about $24 and the Iron Guard was about $17ish or so. I know, it sounds really pricey but again, if you want to keep nice hair, you have to invest in products for it. What a
pain in the ass right? But I just recently got these two products and I THINK they are doing alright. The CHI KERATIN MIST is an all over hair mist that you are supposed to leave in your hair after you dry it or after you wash your hair. It's a leave-in treatment.
The IRON GUARD is supposed to be used before you use heated appliances on your hair, like hair dryer, straighteners, or curlers. It's supposed to help protect your hair from the damage the heat does to your hair. I think it does work because my hair doesn't look as f*cked up as it used to when I usually straighten or blow dry my hair but also, the product makes your hair kinda funky, like you used gel on it or something. Not a lot, but some parts of my hair start feeling sticky and kinda hard, but it's not that bad.

For the price, it's a little so-so. But I think it does what it's supposed to do. If it were a bit cheaper, I'd give it an A but because it's so expensive for the normal consumer, I'm sure there are other products out there that are cheaper, that do the same trick.

GRADE: C+


That's all for now!

+Lo+

Cosmagic Review + Makeup for Bom look

Right off the bat, I thought this eyeliner seemed really interesting. It has a unique
triangular tip rather than a thin rounded tip or a flat brush tip. Perfect for my eyes
because I have very small, monolid eyes that can be difficult to draw on sometimes.

And inside is a cute little instructions manual. 

So there's two sides. One side is the liner and the other side is the blender. As you can see, it's a bit triangular at
the tip.

This is ONE stroke. It's a bit light honestly, it doesn't go on really BLACk or anything but if you apply it a few times
it gets pretty black, as you can see in my Bom look photos. I only used this eyeliner to line my eyes. 

This is the blender. It's also angled in a peculiar shape which helps create dynamic effects when smudging the liner for
smokey eye look or dramatic eye effect. It's not like a sponge or felt -tip like most smudging sticks are. This one is rather
'hard'. I think it's much better because the smudging doesn't get very messy!

My rating? I give it a 9/10! It's really easy to use and the unique tip makes the application very smooth and clean especially for those with monolids! It's a very smart design for eye lining because you can create the thickness of your
lines as you desire. The smudge tool is super smooth and effective in creating smokey or dramatic looks. 

This is the mascara that I used for my own lashes and the fake lashes.

The next few products are intended to show you what products I used for the Bom look. They are not reviewed! (yet! Feel free to ask if you'd like!) 

See how the wand is curved? It helps make the mascara easier to apply, especially if you have short lashes like mine!

Revlon lipstick. Sorry, I don't remember what it's called exactly but you can base it of the look of the packaging. :)
I got this from Target. Color: Candy Pink

These fake lashes were the cheaper ones I got at the Japanese market. You can also find a similar design at Sephora!
A bit more pricey though but these lashes are really quite nice :) 

I use Coastal Scents 88 color palette for eye shadow! *Oh no! One of the colors is missing! >__<*

I like to mix the brown with the golden brown and the bronze colors together. Makes a nice, not so harsh color effect. :)

And that's really all I used for the look! Oh, well except..........

For foundation I used BARE MINERALS
Colored contact lenses were bought at a local accessories shop. 
And yes, I purposely wore them two different colors. I have always worn them like that, I think because I loved Yuna from Final Fantasy X lol. Most people think it looks really weird though but I think it looks cool! :D  To each her own. 
The wig (yes it's a wig!) I got from YESSTYLE (<----link to product) 
It looks EXACTLY like the photos. In some light, it can look a bit fake but especially without flash, it looks pretty nice. The material is really soft, almost like real hair but it's not. I believe it can be used with 
heated appliances! I'll have to test it out since all the instructions are in Chinese.

I would say, M.H.S. makes nice wigs. They are a Taiwan based brand. It doesn't feel super cheap BUT
it's also NOT CHEAP. It's $70......so it's definitely not very cheap. But if you're looking for a wig you think you will wear around and not just once for a cheap costume party, I guess I'd recommend it. And considering the amount of hair (synthetic) fibers are on the wig, I guess 70 is somewhat reasonable. But plus S&H it's kind of not worth it. But I guess you can be the judge of that. :)


If you'd like a review on any of the mentioned products, let me know! I'm new at this beauty stuff......so forgive me if my photos are not the greatest or my tutorials and reviews suck =P Practice baby!

+Lo+

JAPANESE BEAUTY PRODUCTS HAUL *pic heavy*

OMG.....I'm actually doing a haul. LAWL.

I'm going to put in my two cents on make up and how I see it. If you don't care about the blabber though, feel free to skip this humongous amount of text and go straight down to pictures. Does no one like reading anymore?! D: No really, I wouldn't blame you. 

So just to give myself a little back story for all of you who might stumble upon this blog, I don't normally wear a lot of makeup. However, recently, I've been following a lot of gyaru and beauty guru blogs. I'm not sure why. I guess because secretly I want to dress up and look cute for the camera too. But in reality, I'm old and lazy. Okay, that's a lame excuse........no but really, I think it was just that I never have the money to buy all this make up and stuff to look fancy....so I never really tried to post any content of any sort like that until I bought some cool makeup or whatever. That and I'm a huge tomboy and I just like being au naturale most of the time lol.

I actually used to wear a lot more makeup, hence I have a whole kaboodle full of makeup that hasn't been used in forever. But I realized that the more makeup you wear and the more often you wear it, the more it wears your skin out. Pretty fair right? But then you see some beauty blogs and wonder how these girls still have such fabulous skin?? Well it's no secret. In order to keep the skin from failing from all the unnatural makeup we put on our face, we must nourish it with products that will help heal.

I for one, am not a fan of that. I don't really like the idea of my skin becoming dependent on products to make sure my face doesn't look like shit. So for the past year or so that I haven't been wearing much makeup, my skin looks AWESOME. I mean, I don't have the best skin ever but most people ask me what kind of foundation I use because it looks pretty damn natural and I tell them, "I'm not wearing any....>;D" and let the jealousy commence. No, but it's really not that great but it's not as bad as a lot of girls who wear make up every day. And I know, because I used to be that girl. I don't know about everyone else, but I honestly do not want to invest that much money just to put MORE chemicals on my face. SOO DA NE?

Solution? Wear primer and mineral make up. I use bare minerals as my primary foundation and it is really nice for my skin. It's very light but has a lot of coverage. Not everyone is going to like mineral make up because not everyone's skin is going to go well with mineral make up. If you have super dry, kinda bumpy skin, mineral make up will only make your flaws more apparent. But if you have smooth, soft, and moist skin, mineral make up is like magic. Of course, if you don't have soft skin, all you need is a little lotion on your face before you put it on, or in my case, I use mineral make up primer. And I don't want to rant on too much about this unless someone actually wants to know what products I use on my skin, etc. But you get the point. I use mineral make up as concealer too. Again, if you want to know, just ask! :) After all, the most important feature on women is their EYES. It's true. Eye make up is what draws people to look at your face, not your foundation. Well, unless you wear a shitload of foundation and cake it on, THEN it will draw people to your face, but not in the good way. Anyway, more on this later.

I'm going to shut up now and go on to the part that people actually care about. HAUL! I felt like I had to keep writing on and on because this is the first time I'm doing a beauty post. I like to explain things okay!

PALTY hair dye. I'm sick of my fugly brown/black hair that faded ugly. So I'm attempting to bleach it and try the jewelry ash color! I used it a long time ago and it turned out ashy blonde. I loved it! But it was kind of an accident. -__-

This is a hair treatment formulated for the last 15cm of your hair! I hear people have pretty good experience with it so I'm trusting their reviews. :3 It was pretty expensive though for such a small bottle. *__*

Size*

Tsubaki is my favorite foreign shampoo! It makes my hair hella shiny and soft. My hair is pretty damn damaged so it's a little piece of salon miracle whenever I use this shampoo. Too bad it's FCKIN expensive as all hell. So I got the small bottle. :) I'm on a quest to treat my hair so it doesn't look like a wig and shit.

I thought this was interesting cuz it came in a pack of 3. Hmm....Wasn't as expensive as some of the other liners so I thought I'd try it out since i haven't seen any bloggers yet to have reviewed this. Review will come soon!

I believe I first heard about this on Ekiblog.com She has such great reviews of Japanese products! Seemed like just what I was looking for. It's supposed to be super black and go on like a tattoo. Interesting. 

I'm sucha sucker for Japanese packaging T__T Anyway, I thought this mascara was interesting. The thing I like about Asian beauty products as opposed to the department store brands, is that the Asian ones are formulated to cater to ASIAN EYES. Even if you bought a really expensive product from YSL or something, sometimes it's not even all that because the wands are huge and Asian people don't have as deep set of eyes as White people or our lashes are much shorter. So I really thought this was interesting because the wand is supposed to be thin and curved. Review will come later. 

Yes, I succumbed to Tsubasa's collection of Dolly Wink lashes! They are pretty expensive so I don't recommend it for people on beauty budgets but since I figure I won't be make up shopping in another.....forever years, I wanted to try these  out. The design is very interesting because the lashes are thicker in the middle and outer area of your eye, which makes it more natural looking. We'll see if these live up to the hype in my eyes. :P I'm totally unbias about this kinda thing. 

Bought a bunch of cheap lashes for Fanime lol Wanted to dress up even though I don't have a costume or anything. These were like $2 each but they don't seem that bad. 

New nail polish! Will have to try these out later.

 Okay so quick side story, I got this watch at Popkiller in Little Tokyo, because Ichi, the worker there is awesome and because I thought this watch was really badass looking. I know it looks like an imitation G-Shock or Baby-G but whatever. It was like $15 as opposed to my $50+ Baby-G that is freaking tiny! And really I just like watches as a fashion accessory. But then while I was trying to take the watch off, THIS HAPPENED................

LIKE WTF RIGHT?
I didn't even pull on it that hard but it's one of those moments where you don't mean to pull but the latch didn't seem to budge so I tried to pull it UP off my arm and the metal piece holding the band together just flew somewhere. O___________O ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!! So super pissed. I looked for it for 20 minutes. It's so damn small it's like impossible to find it.......but I suppose I can find an alternative or super glue it together but FUCKk. I just BOUGHT it. I guess the saying is true. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAID FOR. T____T FML.

Anyway, that is all for my haul. I will review some products here, especially the ones that I don't see mentioned much on these blogs, but the products like Dolly Wink lashes, I'm sure even remotely interested in gyaru fashion, you've read reviews on top of reviews about it already. But if interested, shoot me a comment!

Also, my bad for the terrible product photos. I have TERRIBLE lighting in my bedroom. Like, the only natural light I have is the sky outside my window and the sun shines away form my window so all I really have is an overcast lighting. I know probably nobody really cares about that shit, but being that I really love photography, I'm pretty anal about it.

Feel free to ask questions! :)

+Lo+