ABBW Part 1: IMATS

Hey girls (and guys :P)

I apologise for this delayed post, I'm kinda still recovering from the AMAZING weekend I had at the first ever Australian Beauty Bloggers Weekend where 85 beauty bloggers all around Australia came together in Sydney for a fun-filled weekend on all things beauty!

Luckily for me, it was held in Sydney so I knew I didn't have an excuse NOT to come to an event like this :) I was first informed of the event on twitter where one of my beauty blogger friends, Tram, told me to register for this beauty event held in Sydney! So I registered, with the thought in mind that hey, its beauty related AND its in Sydney, so why not? Glad I did register before it closed because I was guaranteed a spot, yay! :)

Thatttt was all the way back in May/June? Months and months went by and next thing you know its September 24! All during those months I read updates on what the event was going to be like, what sponsors/speakers were going to be associated with ABBW and as the days went by, the more excited I got!

The weekend of 24/25 was a wet and windy one unfortunately, but that didn't dampen our spirits! I met up with Tram and Alice, both gorgeous beauty bloggers and we made our way to Darling Harbour in search of Novotel Hotel to register and also where most of the events were going to be held. It took us a while to figure out the entrance of Novotel since we entered in at the back of the hotel, but we got there eventually and were greeted with Jacie and Kimmi, the awesome organisers of ABBW that brought the event altogether seamlessly :) 

Jacie has the most amazing nail swatches! Her nails are so so pretty, perfectly shaped and amaaazing application of nail polish no matter WHAT the consistency. Kimmi's blog talks about anything and everything beauty related, and her posts are always so detailed and informative :)

At registration, we were provided with our own lanyards and imats/abbw passes with our blogs on it yay!

So after we registered at 8ish on Saturday morning, the girls and I headed back to Sydney Convention Centre to get ready for IMATS (International Make-Up Trade Show) where lots of make up brands come and showcase their products and sell at a cheaper price than in store. Luckily for us ABBW attendees, our IMATS tickets were already paid for! I think if you wanted to buy a ticket for one day, it cost $40-$45? That's if you dont buy it presale. Pre sale tickets are only $30/day so you can totally save your money for other things like make up ;) 

Before entering the doors, people kindly offered us an IMATS bag to hold our goodies, and also a booklet informing us of what products from what stalls were on offer and what to check out

It was only 9am in the morning and the stalls were already filling up quick. Especially Make Up Forever and MAC. Wow some girls were just so KEEN! I wanted to get a hold of the Macroviolet Fluidline from MAC but they sold out :( Crown brushes were so so cheap! The lines at most of the bigger brand name stalls were just so crazy, there was no line system and everyone tried to push in to get what they wanted. Make Up Forever took so long because people bought a lot and the sales assistants were manually writing out receipts, it took forever! 

The view from the top! Alice and I were trying to find the Royal & Langnickel Suite for ABBW'ers because there was free manicures and complimentary morning tea there especially for us yay hehe. We went up the wrong set of stairs and so I took this from the top. As we were about to make our way down, I bumped into Shizuka from heartofpearl cos she went up the wrong set of stairs like us haha Ah, she's so pretty! :) Unfortunately I didn't get a pic with her :( 

Pic of the three of us at the Royal&Langnickel Suite , Alice, Me and Tram! They had yummy quiches and orange juice hehe.

As we were leaving the suite, the guys gifted us with a set of their S.I.L.K GreenLine brushes yay! This is what it looks like on their site here hope you guys can see that! The brushes are so soft and amazing. I haven't used all their brushes yet. I've only used the blush brush and its soooo soft on your face and picks up product well. Full review most likely later....in a few weeks! Stay tuned for that, I'll post it up I promise!!

So we wandered around trying to see what there was to buy ... honestly I didn't buy that much things. I knew I wanted a new blush brush but I found that in the brush set we were gifted .. so I didn't feel the need of purchasing any more of those. I did pick up a retractable kabuki brush from Royal&Langnickel for $10. So so sooo soft! I can't stress enough how soft their brushes are!

Oooooh I also purchased a red lipstick. It's not red red...I chose a pretty pinkish red but it got sold out so I settled for this lipstick colour instead. I was worried it wouldn't suit my skin tone but the make up artist there told me that my skin tone was really versatile and that I could wear most colours. That surprised me actually.  All this time I was worrying about warm and blue toned reds...not knowing what colour to settle on. I got it from Serge Louis Alvarez (SLA). I had never heard of the brand before in my life, but they were having a deal with lipsticks - 3 for $30 so me and Tram split it up. She got two and I got one.

It looks red but it's got a slight hot pink undertone. Swatches to come! It was too pretty to swatch!!! :( 

Happy snaps of IMATS

HE WAS ALL GOLDDD AND METALLIC! yum. LOL

Ah I totally forgot to stalk Napoleon and take a pic with him!!!

How awkward is it when everyone's taking a photo of you .... Her dress was so gorgeous but! AND SHE WAS SO TALLLLLL. Ok, maybe cos I'm short..but ppffffft :D

photo from Tram! :)

At the Royal&Langnickel Brush stallll. Brushes started at $3!!!

Gorgeous Cosmetics Eyeshadows & Fake Eyelashes

I think these were Inglot lipsticks? I can't remember ...

Pigments

Inglot Nail polish heavennnnnnnnnn

The highlight of being at IMATS was meeting Elessa from PURSEBUZZ on youtube! :D 

I remember Pursebuzz as one of the first people I ever watched on youtube because I watched her vid on "How to curl your hair with a straightener" yeaaars ago or some hair tutorial. I remember watching heaaaaaaps of her hair tutorials. She was like my idol back then haha, but then I stopped watching. Cos I think she stopped making vids for a while.. and I was out of touch with youtube for a bit too.

But when I met herI was literally starstruck. She's so friendly and nice and bubbly :) She gave us these cute pink sequinned headbands with pursebuzz on the inside! And she told us to tweet her the pic hehe and we did and she replied back to us! *feels special*

I know this post is getting a bit lengthy so I'll leave it at this. I'll post up Part 2 tmrw or in the next few days so watch out for that! :)

Until next timeeeeeee :)

Taped/Lined Nails

YAY for another nail post! 

I saw this picture on tumblr the other day and it totally inspired me to do it on my own nails. I thought it was really different and cool and relatively easy, providing you have the time and patience :)

Here's what my nails look like:

And this is the picture that inspired me

Credits to: chalkboard nails :)

So pretty!

I had trouble deciding on what colours to use, only that I wanted to use a metallic and a normal solid colour. I picked up Ulta3 - Envy because thats one of my fave metallic/foil finish polishes for $2 too! (or $2.25...)

Then I looked for a colour to match it. I didn't feel like going red so I jsut chose a coral pinky colour. Super pretty combo I think.

This was my first attempt. I started on my pinky and worked my way inwards. Obviously the pinky turned out ridiculous cos my tape was wayyyy too thick.

So I redid my pinky and my ring finger too cos I wasnt satisfied. 

The tapes I used for one hand. HAHA. Needs to be super thin like 1-2mm for it to look good. But once you're on the middle finger, index or thumb you can make it a liiiiiiittle bit bigger. Or you could just mix and match thin and thick lines, whatever you think looks good! 

I don't think it really matters what colour you paint first really, both would look fine :) I just painted two coats of the coral colour first. WAIT TIL IT DRIES!!!!!! You don't want your nail polish sticking to the tape.

Stick the tape in any way you want. There's no right or wrong. I used max 3 tapes for one finger. I think any more than that, wouldn't look good because of the thickness of the tape. I guess the smaller the thickness, the more tapes you can put on your finger .. if that makes sense. I'm such a bad worder :(

You can either do all the tapes at once or work on one finger at a time ... I recommend taping your fingers up all at the same time cos then you wouldnt smudge your newly painted fingers by putting on the tape or cutting up new ones or whatever.

Paint the second colour on top and then wait til that dries then all you gotta do it peel it off! Simpleeeee right :)

My pinky looks soooo much better now hehe

Finished product! :)

I'm definitely gonna try this out again with different colour combos. For now I think I might leave it for IMATS and ABBW this weekend woooooooooo excited! 

China Glaze - TTYL & Glam

I am so so soooooooo glad I have these two gorgeous colours to add to my nail polish collection!

TTYL is actually a colour from their OMG collection in 2008. I know, 3 years. But still, better late than never :) I'm not that type of girl who is always wants what's "in season". Just as long as what I have looks good. That includes clothes and accessories haha.

TTYL is a gorgeous light pink HOLOGRAPHIC shade that seriously is so darn gorgeous and amazing in the sun. I didn't actually get a chance to take a photo with it in natural sunlight, but with flash you can see all the epicness that this nail polish holds.

Its like a rainbow in your fingersssss! 

Two coats pictured.

I'm not sure how old Glam is, but it's still pretty nonetheless. I had trouble deciding on Dollhouse and Glam because they actually look really similar. They're both pink glitters but Dollhouse had more hexagonal and bigger shaped glitter pieces whereas Glam had smaller ones. In the end I chose Glam just cos I felt it looked better in the bottle haha. I went home and looked up swatches and I'm glad I chose Glam cos I think it looks a lot better, in my opinion :)

Here is what I did a few days ago with two coats of Glam on my ring finger.

Magic happens when you actually combine the two together. It's SO BEAUTIFUL!!! :')

Seriously I wish the camera could capture the wonderful holographic glitter combo. It's super super nice in real life. Just trust me on it!

I think this was 4 coats. And I know sometimes when you hear like anything more than 3 coats, you think its gonna be super thick and gluggy but 4 coats didn't even FEEL thick at all! I just wanted to keep piling on the glitter hahaha.

Got complimented a few times at work today hehehe.

For Sydney girls, you can grab these China Glaze polishes for $6 each at ProNail Supply in Bankstown (opposite Bankstown Sports Club)

Hope you're having a mad weekend with the GORGEOUS WEATHER!

Physicians Formula Happy Booster Bronzer

Hiiiiiiii! I know I've been away for a bit, just haven't been motivated to blog, mainly cos I think I'd bore you guys to death! And I know I've said this a bajillion times, but seriously guys, follow me on twitter, it's a lot more entertaining, even if my statuses are only 140 characters long.

Onto the review/show. Seriously, I can't review something properly. In a way, I'm kinda reviewing it by describing it and showing you pictures, but I recently had to do a critical analysis on this neuro topic and that was hell. I mean, the last time I critically analysed something was back in Year 12 for HSC English. And that was TWOOOO years ago. Wow, two years ago since I graduated. Doesn't it amaze you how time goes by so quickly? I mean, I remember my formal like it was yesterday! Ok maybe not yesterday but you know what I mean! I remember there was a footy game going on on that night, and it was the Eels vs Bulldogs and you can imagine the hype with that. All the boys were constantly on their phones checking the scores until the game was over. I can't remember who won, but aaaaaaaanyway.

I'm 3rd year uni student next year WTFFFFF.

OK REALLY ONTO THE REVIEW NOW.

I know I mentioned wanting this product since um ... a long long time. And I was originally leaning towards the blush they had cos I LOVE BLUSHES. But in the end I leaned towards the bronzer because I actually don't own one due to the fact that I'm too scared to use one and therefore would make me look orangey and fake tanny. Ew. With a pale complexion like mine, I'm scared to try out anything that's dark on my skintone because I know it would show up and people would notice and think I have a grubby mark on my face :O

SORRY FOR ALL THE WRITING!

The blush I bought from ebay here for about $18. It took a while to arrive though, even if it was from the USA :/ But that's alright.

I got it in 7320 "Light Bronzer". There's also other shades, but I went for the light one to be safe haha.

PACKAGING

The packaging can be bad or good, depending on which way you take it. It's not like one of the boxes where theres a flap that you can easily open and then slide the product out on your hand. I had to full disassemble the box to get to the product, which was actually stuck to the back of the box with that gluey material that you get from samples in the magazines. You know what I mean? It's not super glue, so you can be really careful and peel off the compact off the box. So yeah this could be a good thing since you know that the compact is sturdy and I guess it decreases the chance of it moving around in the box and making pieces shatter and stuff.

I'm holding the box upside down.

The sticky gluey thing that you get from samples from a magazine.

THE PRODUCT!

Super cute hearts in different brown shades and a pretty pink pop.

Haven't tried the brush, it's just sitting pretty :)

The smell it gives off is actually quite nice, it does smell like violets, even though I have no idea what Violets smell like LOL. But it's a flower right? And it smells like a nice flower! HAHA.

SWATCHES

I know swatching on your hand isn't actually really accurate to how it shows up on your actual face, but that's the colours anyway. Pink from the heart, and the different shades of bronzer. It's not too pigmented I guess, so that's a good thing cos then you can build it up as you go. I usually have to build it up, but I like it, cos I have more control and also reduce the risk of looking like an Oopma Loompa.

If you look at the product closely (which I have failed to do, sorry!) there's tiny shimmers but don't let that put you off cos it honestly doesn't make you look like a fairy!

Natural lighting gives off a matte finish.

With flash you can see the sheen it gives off, but personally I like it, cos when the sun reflects off it, it pretty much looks like you're glowing, which is pretty much what you want a bronzer to do right? :)

Heres how it looks like on the face, I couldn't decide which picture showed the colour the best but yeah :)

Now that I've tried out this bronzer, I really like it! I'm glad I have this in my collection now and even though I'm using it now, I can't wait until summer YAY

It makes me wanna try out other bronzers now that I'm not scared of them anymoreeee.
Do you guys use bronzers? Which do you use?

HOW PRETTY WAS MISS UNIVERSE? Did anyone watch it? I'm glad Angola won, she's really gorgeous ! AND I LOVED UKRAINE'S DRESS! I know it's formal season now haha so if I had a formal now and a dressmaker, I'd tell her to make me Miss Ukraine's sexy dress!
I really like miss Angola's dress too hehe. Both dresses were my favourite out of top 10 :)

SO PRETTAYYYY

New phone! Samsung Galaxy S II

Hi ho!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go ....

(yeah....Snow white anyone? LOL ANYWHO)

Just thought that today would be the day to show and tell my sexy new phone that I got for my birthdaaaaaaaaaay hehehe. I had to wait til my cases came and then I was gonna show it to you all :)

The process of me opening it .... (itouch photos)

I saw the box. And the first thing that came to my head was .... jewellery? LOL but then that was my FIRST INITIAL reaction but then I thought that the box was too big for a jewellery box ... DUH. Haha.

This is the box compared to my hand ...

So then I opened the box and saw the bubble wrap and the black box and then I STILLL THINK ITS A JEWELLRY BOX for some reason LOL.I DONT KNOW it coulda been a necklace or something u knowwww?

I did know that it was bought online though. But hey, jewellery can be bought online right? 

I honestly don't even know why I kept thinking it was jewellery. I mean, I didn't even want jewellery that baddddd, did I? ANYWAY

So I removed the bubble wrap and saw the words "SAMSUNG GALAXY S II" and I literally burst into tears. Seriously. LOL

I was so surprised and I didn't even expect a present like this at all! 

I was planning to save up for one until the end of November, because that's when my contract ends and I really wanted a new phone! Cos yeah I still have (HAD) the Nokia E71 haha.

The phone! That screen protector there on the front with the logo on it ... I didn't wanna take it off until I bought an actual screen protector LOL so I was pretty much navigating the phone with the screen on top and was trying to look under all the logos and the alien man hahaha.

Better pictures now!

How gorgeous is it :) heheheee

To be honest I'm not into those techy things they say about amoled screen and something about ghz HAHA. I just want a nice phone! So sorry I cant provide you with all the technical stuff but I'm sure google can help you!

It's suuuuper thin! And suprisingly light! My cousin said it's cos its made of cheap plastic but WHATEVER BRO.

The back with 8mp camera!

The screen is super bright and pretty too. You can change the background, that's my old background, the forest thingy, now I have the background as the lace pattern you see on my blog background but in blue :) 

You can full personalise and move widgets wherever you want. it's kinda like your computer desktop where you can add or remove widgets and move icons around and what not. Its really awwwwesome.

AND did you know that Angry Birds (full version) is free on android? Haha. I know you had to pay for it in the apple store. I LIKE ANGRY BIRDS OKAY.

The covers! I have 4 covers actually. LOL. Two gel ones, a black and purple one, and 2 hard case ones, which is what I'll show you today.

Pink polka dot! It's so girlyyyyy I KNOW, but I'm a little girl at heart, you know? Can't resist cute things hehehe.

 And my leopard print one! I wanted a leopard print one where the spots weren't purple but they don't look that bad! I wasn't gonna fork out $15 for a case haha. These two babies cost me $2.99 each! YAY

But yeaaaaa, I ADORE AND LOVE my new phone, it's got everything packed into this one phone. I used to carry around my Nokia E71 and my ipod touch around together all the time and it was just so annoying switching devices. 

I do miss my itouch though. I MISS TINY TOWER! And HANGING WITH FRIENDS. 

Android have crappy apps LOL, but the built in widgets in the Galaxy S II are SO AWESOME.

Like for example thers this app/website that lets you track your phone if you lose it and you can like, make it ring even if its on silent and then you can even send a text msg to the phone saying that "This phone is lost, please take good care of it" or something like that :D SOOOO COOOL.

There are soo many other cool things about this phone like, you can voice command stuff. For example, you just click on the voice command thing, and you talk to it and be like "Text (insert name here), I will be late" AND IT WILL DO SO. Seriously! Or you can tell it to "google the weather in africa or something LOL.

And you can also tell it to write notes for you etc etc.

 

OH AND SWYPING TOO ! I remember seeing the ads for the original Galaxy a few years ago and it introduced the concept of swyping. It's just letting your finger trace from letter to letter to form a word without lifting up your finger and it will recognise whatever word you're trying to type! Most of the time it's fine but when you gotta input your own words like, say ... a suburb or something.. it wont recognise it straight away but then when you input it, it will remember the next time so you dont have to keep creating the word, you know what i meannnn?

But yeah that is the end of my show and tell.

The question is, Would I recommend you buying/getting this phone?

OF COURSE!!!!

Its mad cool, trust me :)