Review: Smashbox Wonder Vision eye set

You know what's crazy? A few years ago I would've never given a penny of my hard earned money on expensive eye shadows. Although I've always been a fan of makeup, I just didn't really care much for eye shadows. It's just something I never thought I'd use. Boy was I wrong! Lately I've been going eye shadow crazy--but mostly for the palettes. The most important thing for me is to incorporate as many diverse colors as possible. I'm not a huge fan of getting similar colors just for the sake of getting a similar color. I like having my palettes all be for different purposes. With that said, I've been going crazy with the really big palettes out there, like the Naked palette. I wanted something that was compact and a bit smaller, so it would be easier for me to switch out and carry around.

So when I saw these babies on sale at Macy's, I knew I needed to pick them up! I did get to swatch them a little bit while I was at the store, but everyone knows that department store lighting can be very deceiving. They were originally $35 but were on sale for $25. Each of these come with an eyeliner and mascara as well. They seemed decent when I tested them at the store, so I thought this was a great deal! And even better, they'd make great gifts! So let's see how they turned out at home.

There are 3 different palette options: Sparks, Cosmic, and Flash. I only got Flash and Cosmic. Sparks is a more neutral palette and since I already have a few neutral palettes, I didn't feel the need for another one.

This one is FLASH. As you can see, it's a very shimmery pinky neutral palette with 5 different colors. I really wanted this one, despite having the Naked 3 already, because I'm IN LOVE WITH PINKY NEUTRALS. I don't think you understand. I am just obsessed with pinks. Okay, let me stop myself before I go crazy again.

Swatches: (from Left to Right) plum, slate, purple shimmer, taupe, ballet pink, pink shell

I tried my best to show the most accurate color of the shades. These probably took about 3 or so swipes to show the colors off. And I did use a shadow primer.
The first thing I will say is, it does to have a bit of fall out. The formula of the shadows are not very hydrated at all, meaning they are mostly a powder formula. I'd say, the quality is an in between of drug store eye shadow quads and a more higher end shadow. The color payout isn't that great, but regardless, they are still very pretty shimmer colors that are good for neutral looks with a bit of sparkle.

Note: I haven't used these on my actual eyes yet.

The second palette is called COSMIC. And omg--I really like this one.

(From Left to Right: sapphire, smoke, aqua, luster, silver, sandstone)

Right off the bat, you can see that the color payout on this palette is much more pigmented! It might also be just because these are darker colors in general, but either way, I think these colors are quite nice. The last color, sandstone, looks almost like an invisible chalky color, but this is a great highlight color as well as silver. I'd like to think the two mixed together would make a really nice highlighter. My favorite colors on this one is definitely Sapphire and Aqua. They are so so so pretty in person!

Here's another look at Sapphire. YES. It is a black color with specs of blue-ish purple micro glitters! It's so beautiful in person!

This palette still has the same formula as FLASH though, so you'll expect some fall outs either way. But in terms of being a palette that I'd use, I see myself grabbing this one quite often! I love the neutrals that are in this as well and think they compliment my skin tone much better than the pink one. It's also quite versatile in itself. I can just look at this and think of all the Day to Night looks I could create with just this little palette. Plus it's compact!

Lastly, as mentioned, these each do come with a Smashbox Full Exposure mascara in Jet Black and Limitless eyeliner in Onyx.

I have yet to use this on my actual eyes, so I can't really say much about it besides the fact that it's not waterproof and the bristles seem dense and short, which would be ideal for my sparse lashes. I'm not a fan of non waterproof mascara though, so who knows.

The liner is also a non waterproof crayon liner.

I did a little a sample of it here.

In conclusion, I think they are pretty decent considering they're only $25. I mean, the palette itself should be worth that price. So the fact that you get two extra items is a great deal! I checked Sephora and the mascara itself is $19! So is the pencil. So that's $40 worth of product for free already. Like I said, I haven't tested the mascara and eyeliner, but how bad could they possibly be for a $20 product? lol. Knocking on wood.
Considering most drug store palettes aren't that great and the better ones are around $10-$15, this is totally a legit option for all you makeup lovers out there. Interested? You can grab these HERE.

I'll eventually do some looks with all these shadows! So stay tuned.


*This is a non sponsored product review. All products mentioned were purchased first hand.

Real vs Fake: Urban Decay Naked 2 palette

So long story short, I bought the Naked 2 palette from ebay and ended up getting a FAKE palette!

I didn't start using it right away but when I told my friend about it, she noticed that the outer packaging looked different from hers. Neither of us are die hard crazy 'Naked' fans or anything. We just wanted a nice, long lasting, versatile palette. We initially thought that maybe hers or mine was a special packaging, but we came across some bloggers who were saying that they have been duped by fake palettes from ebay and Amazon! I was pretty shocked and then laughed about it....AFTER I bitched out the seller on ebay of course. :)
I was curious to know exactly how different they are from one another. I mean, the fake palette looked pretty legit after all......so I did a quick comparison test to see how they match up.

FYI: A legit seller on ebay sells the fake Naked palettes, but they don't label it as "Naked" since that's a brand name of Urban Decay's. They give it some generic name instead, like "12 color natural palette" or something. They go for about $25 each and I've seen both the Naked 1 and 2 dupes being sold.

[Keep in mind: The more "purple" looking one is the FAKE one. The brownish looking one is the AUTHENTIC one.]

Purple hair + other randomosities

 So I tried to dye my hair blue with Manic Panic semi-permanent dye, but it came out TERRIBLE. I guess I kind of expected it since blue + yellow = green but seriously, my hair looked like what I can only describe as Oscar the grouch being obliterated and his remains splattering all over my hair. Yeah.......it was that bad.

So I had a little bit of my Fuschia dye left from before and I diluted the crap out of it and tried to overlay it on top of the green/blue fiasco. Turned out okay but now my hair has a lot of random color streaking. In some ways, it's kinda cool but at the same time, it's a little weird looking in person lol. Well at least it's only semi-permanent. I'll enjoy/hate it while it lasts. :P

It does have an ombre effect at the tips, which kind of just happened accidentally because my tips were much more on the 'whiter' side of blonde than the rest of my hair.

The contacts I got are Honoo Violet lenses or something like that, I got these ShoppingHolics I believe. lol I forget. This is what it looks like in room light.

My makeup station. I got another container thing from Target (on the left side) to store all my big brushes and BB creams and etc stuff. I like that the brush holder is actually meant for a blowdryer lol

My mascara stash. I honestly do not even know why I buy mascara. I don't know if this is considered "a lot" or "little" to most girls but seriously, I think I've used all of these maybe like once or twice. I might do a review on all of them esp. for girls like me because I have NO LASHES. I mean, you know girls say that all the time (esp Asian girls) but no really, I really have very short lashes that are almost invisible. So if I want dramatic, I just use falsies. They are so much easier! The only mascara I have not used at all yet is the Falsies volume express one by mabeline (it's the pink one). My favorite/most used mascara is a combination of Lash Accelerator and that black Loreal waterproof mascara next to it. LOOVE that Loreal one! Makes my almost non existent lashes exist!

On a last random note, my boyfriend got me a DeathAdder as an early bday present LOL. The DeathAdder was actually my first gaming mouse which I bought super long ago (I believe 3-4yrs ago??) and it broke on me like a few weeks ago. It was the best mouse ever. Countless games of Counterstrike, Left4Dead, and LoL were played with that mouse. Then I had to substitute a shitty mouse to play LoL until now. YAYYY love this mouse!! /geeking

Icy Tropical Delight

I was talking about wanting to do more makeup related posts. Not really because I'm aspiring to become a guru or anything like that but mainly because I invested so much money into makeup that I don't even use on a daily basis -__-. And in any case, a lot of the makeup I buy is sorta unconventional because they consist of bold colors, like the lipstick I'm wearing and the loud eye colors. I am honestly sucha lazy blogger. I don't wear makeup like this IRL, even though it would be cool too mainly because my eyes are super sensitive so wearing contacts or a lot of eye makeup irritates my eyes super easily. Since I got a new camera, I figured I can take some pictures of my makeup easier instead of trying to take pictures of myself with my big fat DSLR or have crappy quality ones from my Macbook. 

Anyway, I also have a bunch of cosmetic glitters and wanted to use them again! But boy, let me just say that glitter specs falling into your eyes while you're wearing colored contacts is really not so fun. 

(my camera likes focusing on just one eye. Eep.)

It's really difficult to capture the glitter specs on the camera by myelf. In normal shots, the blue kind of just looks like shimmer but it is in fact micro glitter specs. This was the best I could do with some help from photoshop of course. :3

Foundation: BB cream 

Base eye shadow colors: Sugarpill Acidberry and Mochi

Eyeliner: L'oreal gel liner

Lashes: Decorative Eyelash (Japanese brand) 

Cosmetic glitters: (Coastal Scents) Ocean Blue and Tinsel town (silver glitter) on top.

GYARU LOOK ~ Watanabe Kaoru inspired

So I went to Marukai the other day to pick up some stuff and ended up getting some falsies! I actually don't wear false lashes often---more like, AT ALL, because my face and eyes are extremely sensitive and I get really irritated by makeup in general -__- I know. I was not meant to be a beauty guru and this is why. Anyway, so I know a lot of people have been talking about these Japanese lashes called DIAMOND LASH and I actually saw some at Marukai. I was about to pick them up when I came by these other pack of lashes called "PLAYGIRL" and I actually thought those lashes were prettier looking and it was $3 cheaper. So I picked them up and motivated myself to do a GYARU look!

I'm definitely nowhere near a GYARU, basically a fashionable Tokyoite with really specific makeup and fashion style, but I've always liked the style. So this time around I tried it myself!

Here's a picture of me with my natural hair.

If you follow me on INSTAGRAM, you probably saw this already :)
btw add me on INSTAGRAM!: LORAEMON

I tried my best to show you guys the eye makeup. I used my new

SUGARPILL eyeshadows! :B (see last post)

And of course, one for all the beautiful ladies ;) 

.........

I honestly love looking through gyaru magazines and looking at the pictures online occasionally, but I do not know much about the GYARU world. Although I have been told if I were to follow in any gyaru model's footsteps, I'd most closely resemble KAORU WATANABE's style. Which is funny because she's the only gyaru model I really know. LOL I didn't even know she was a gyaru model until someone told me a few years ago on Livejournal. I thought she was just a magazine model in Japan. But she's pretty cool I must admit. 

This was the banner I made! 

I looooooooove her style!! She just looks fierce. LOL

+Lo+

SUGARPILL PACKAGE

I got my Sugarpill package in the mail today! :) 

Miss Kika designed packaging 

Mochi and Acidberry

Sorry the quality of the photo is meh. I took it with my phone to post it on Instagram really quick LOL. The excitement of packages gets to me........

I was ITCHING to get these two colors as soon as I saw Amy from Sugarpill rock it in her looks on instagram. Boy does that woman have some awesome colorful looks that she can pull off so well. It makes me want to buy every single of one of those eye shadows on her website. 

Besides, how can you deny the absolute prettiness of the package design? Isn't it awesome? I mean seriously, being the packaging whore that I am, I knew I'd instantly throw my money at the Sugarpill website just because of the packaging. But as we all know, judging a book by it's cover may turn out to be disappointing. Not with Sugarpill though! The colors are really unique and very pigmented! They are absolutely lovely. And for $12 each they're pretty nicely priced too!

Okay anyway, I'll actually use these colors and post them on my blog to show you guys what they look like on my face :D If you've been reading my blog, you know that I'm not really wearing any makeup these days. So I figure buying these would kind of inspire me again to try cool makeup or whatnot. 

+Lo+

Evil Queen / Edgy / Dark look

OMFG. It's 5am. I don't know what's wrong with me but I felt compelled to do this look. Mainly because I REALLLY wanted to try my new lipstick out.

Sorry for the lighting. It's night time so the lighting is just TERRIBAD everywhere. I had to improvise.

I tried to do a 'tutorial' but it turns out I'm terrible at make-up and should never tell anyone how to do make-up. LOL. It's true okay! I can only do like--one look. =___=

PS, this is my REAL hair that you're seeing. I told you (last post) IT TURNED BLUE. It was not intentional. I guess the blonde from before was really porous and any bit of color would take on to it. So when I dyed my hair BLUE BLACK I didn't think the blue would really seep into my hair THIS much. But it's actually fading (as you will see in the tips) so I'm going to let it rest for about a month and then redye it black. Hopefully it will actually be black this time.
BTW, so I was going to do this look with my circle lens that I bought from EyeCandyLens a while back. But the minute the lens touched my eyeball, my eye was burning with the fury of Zeus almighty! WTF. I seriously thought my eye was going to burn off and I would go blind. Or at least half blind. >__< ; WHAT THE SHIT?! I'm new to circle lens but can anyone tell me what the hell that was all about? I just put the lens in solution. Am I supposed to use specific solution or something? Because I wear soft contact lenses so I figured I can soak the circle lenses in the same solution. But OMG. Seriously scariest moment ever. It stung like super bad. I was afraid of infection so I literally dunked my face into cold water with my eye open and after a few minutes the pain subsided. GEEZUS. Okay excuse my french but FUCK CIRCLE LENSES. I am no longer down with that shit. I will stick with my black, soul-less boring ass eye color thanks. *shudder*

Update + Life + BLAH BLAH BLAH

There are quite a few things I've been wanting to blog about. So for the sake of my old mind, I'm going to write them out here so I can remember to blog about them. lol.

Anyway, so I've been feeling kind of under the weather this past week. Actually, ever since I came back from Vegas I've been feeling a bit 'off' for lack of better terms. Which is also something I really wanted to talk about. 

I know I said I would take tons of pictures at Vegas but......that didn't happen. It was mostly because my trip to Vegas was less than--well, "awesome". Don't get me wrong. I had a great time bonding with my high school friend but because of me not feeling 'well' the whole entire trip ended up being a bust. I was super mad at myself that I let this happen. Well, you know what. I'll just blog about it right now. 

Oriental Gold BB CREAM + updates

I got this baby in the mail today!
I know there's alot of reviews out there already in regards to this BB cream but I'll see if I'm up to do a real review on it. I haven't used it yet so I'm not really sure how good it will be personally. So far I tested it out on my hands and it smells really good! Kinda reminds me of Korean women who spray a little bit too much perfume when I go to the Korean malls in Ktown lol but in a good way and smells subtle. Okay that was the most fail description but trust me it smells nice.

The other thing I want to try out is the cheek and lip tint. I find it really kinda cool that they implemented that into this BB cream. Like, I wonder what compelled them to add that because none of their other BB creams are like that. So far I've tested it on my hands since I haven't washed my face yet. It does start off really gray/white-ish but it does in fact fade and blend into your actual skin tone. I think maybe the gray is intentional since this is a Korean product and most Asians tend to have yellow tone skin. But I think this is a bit 'too' gray looking. After 15-20 mins I think it's starting to blend in even more so we'll see. The real test is through taking pictures! I'm hoping flash won't make me look ghostly. It also has a bit of a sheen to it but it's semi-matte. I recommend using some powder with it if you're not into looking shiny or dewy. Otherwise from what I can tell, it seems to look very nice and natural which is exactly why I invested in BB creams.

 I don't use any store bought foundations except my Rimmel liquid foundation and a Cover Girl one I used to use a long time ago. My main foundation has always been BARE MINERALS. The thing with my skin is that it's really weird and complex. I swear my skin is like bipolar. Sometimes it's super dry and other times it's gets really oily. Although I have noticed that my skin only gets super oily when I eat something kinda oily. Otherwise it's usually just dry around my mouth and nose. I don't really break out unless I'm on my period or I ate like a bar of chocolate lol so my skin is fairly smooth. I don't like department store foundations either because they tend to be very heavy on my face. I could only stand to use Bare Minerals because it was very light make-up. And although some people might think that's a blessing, I just hate that my skin is so weird. I'm glad I've never needed acne control or anything like that but I wish my face made up it's mind about being oily or dry. Most foundations I've used have made my skin flaky or oil up. So when I heard about BB creams, I had to try it. Since it's not REALLY a foundation, I figured it might be what I'm looking for: something light but has a coverage and can deal with my combo skin.

Anyway, this weekend I'm going to Vegas and I expect to take lots of pictures this time! Since Saturday we'll be around the strip the entire day, I'll get to test out some of my make-up products to see how long they last. The true test to any beauty product is the long term effect after all.

Until then, have a great weekend everyone~!

+Lo+

PARK BOM look version 2.0

I finally got my wig in the mail today! HOORAY! Shipped from HK, so it took a little while to ship but it took roughly 2 weeks or so, which isn't that bad. Now the only thing I'm missing are my circle lens which I ordered from EyeCandyLens.com. 
As a disclaimer, I know that ECL is a website a lot of bloggers have been talking about, but I also think that a lot of the bloggers that order from them need to inform people from the U.S. (especially because most of those bloggers ARE from the U.S.) how long the shipping takes. Because maybe it's just me but I get extremely impatient and antsy when shipping for a small business online takes too long. I always feel like I'm never going to get it or something. But anyway, I say this because I ordered the contacts about 3 weeks ago and they still haven't come. I know they are also shipping from HK but still......
I realize a lot of the bloggers who use ECL are actually sponsored by them, so they get the lenses for free. So I guess it's not much to complain about. But I paid $25 for a pair of circle lenses. I want to make sure they come and come soon! Anyway......

Since I got the wig, I got way too excited and decided to just try the wig on and do make-up for it. Unfortunately, my DSLR is being wonky and I think I might've broken the lens :(( so until it's fixed, my laptop camera will have to suffice. I know, I know, the quality sucks, but it's better than nothing right?

Two things you should note is that I obviously am not wearing the circle lens so it does make a big difference....and also the other BIG DIFFERENCE is that I'm not wearing any double eyelid glue or sticker. Bom takes WAYY too much eye make-up for the glue or sticker to hold up, so yeah. I know this 'look' is purely for fun and I don't expect to look identical to her, but still....I'm pretty OCD about things like this. I want to try and look as SIMILAR as possible to whatever I'm replicating. So I'm kinda sad I don't have the contacts, but meh! It was still cool wearing the wig! LOL

Reference photos of Park Bom of 2NE1.

KAY BYE!

+Lo+

Make-up station!

Just thought I'd like to share my make-up area. It's not much but at least it's organized! loll I bought the clear container at Target as well as the white 3 tier drawer thing. Pretty nifty yo! Target has these little sale thingys for $1! I bought the heart shaped basket for 1 buck at Target! teehee

The mirror from Costco, which Patrick bought me :3 since before that I was using the big mirror on my closet to do my makeup :( . The drawers have all my compacts, eye shadow palettes, and powders. The top has my brushes and I bought the brush container at some Japanese store in Little Tokyo. Behind my make-up tray are my face wipes and in the pink basket is my lotions, make-up remover, fix+, and other misc.

I've also been experimenting with different eye shadow looks. Glitter!! I'll do a tutorial of this super simple glittery eye lash look later! Stay tuned.