Review: MUA Intense Colour Lip Liner in Softly Lined

A really quick review today; I tried to use this MUA Intense Colour Lip Liner in Softly Lined this morning and I thought I’d just come on here and make some quick comments on it. This costs GBP1 before shipping from the MUA Store, and comes in 5 shades. MUA is a really affordable line of makeup from the UK; it seems to me as the british equivalent of ELF, with prices ranging mostly between £1 – £4, but they also have a luxe line that runs slightly higher.

NOTD: Hot Pink with a Snog

A recent haul led to this NOTD – I bought a Butter London set so everything used for this nail look is part of the set I grabbed. Butter London Nail Lacquer Vernis in Snog is a very eye-catching bright hot pink; I really like it and I think it’s girly but classy. The formula is really nice – one coat was pretty much all I needed but I used two to even it out; it goes on smoothly and dries down pretty fast. Wear time is pretty good too… it’s been 3 days and it still looks perfect.

Polishes used:
1. Butter London Nail Foundation Flawless Basecoat
2. Butter London Nail Lacquer Vernis in Snog
3. Butter London Hardwear P.D. Quick Topcoat

What’s on your nails right now?

Unboxing: LookFantastic Beauty Box February 2015

A super duper quick unboxing today – because I’ve done a lot of unboxings lately and don’t want to bore everyone with unboxing posts everyday. But I love getting beauty boxes! Ever since Memebox decided to desert us international customers, I’ve been trying to find some other affordable and interesting beauty boxes that I could purchase all the way here in Singapore – if you know of any, please leave a comment! Anyway, back to this month’s LookFantastic Beauty Box!

Item 1: Moroccanoil Treatment
Quick Thoughts: This is 25ml and worth £13.45. I already knew that this was going to be in this box, and is the one that I looked forward to the most; I’ve heard so much great stuff about using Moroccan oil.

Item 2: PawPaw Original Balm
Quick Thoughts: This is a mini 10ml, while the full size of 25ml costs £6.95. I still have a few PawPaw products from my trip to Australia last year so I won’t be touching this.

Item 3: MONU First Defence Illuminating Primer SPF15
Quick Thoughts: This is 20ml sample size, and the full size of 50ml costs £27.95. I don’t usually use primer although lately I have tried to incorporate it into my daily routine. This bottle came incredibly filthy though – the whole white bottle’s exterior was covered in some black powdery dust.

Item 4: Erno Laszlo Sea Mud Deep Cleansing Bar
Quick Thoughts: This is supposed to be a cleansing bar made with therapeutic sea mud. It’s 17g, which is a really teeny tiny bar. I’m not exactly that excited – not really a cleansing bar person.

Item 5: Bellapierre Cosmetics Natural Lip Liner in Cinnamon
Quick Thoughts: This is full size, but the colour… oh the colour! It’s a dark brown. There’s just no way I can use this a a lip liner. It feels quite hard as well.

Item 6: Korres Citrus Little Body Milk
Quick Thoughts: This is a small 50ml bottle. I like Korres products and citrus scents so this would normally rank quite high up on my excitement meter, but I have way too much body cream.

This whole box cost me £15 inclusive of shipping, approximately SGD32. This is actually my most disappointing box from LookFantastic. I think it’s still great value but the beauty products either don’t match me or I’ve used them before, or I just have too many of. I guess if you’re new to beauty this will be great box to try something new, but for someone with a huge stash, and after previous fantastic boxes, this was just a little let down for me.

$avvy $undays #5: Budgeting the Unexpected because Sh*t Happens All the Time

Food, entertainment, phone bills, rent/mortgage – these are some of the things that we can easily plan and budget for every month, and even several months in advance. Of course, we don’t usually budget to perfection – so I always add a margin of safety to my budgeting. So assuming that I need S$80 for my phone bills every month, I will put aside S$100 – just in case I incur additional charges like I sometimes do by going over my data limit.

Unboxing: Beauty Bar Sample Society Beauty Box – 15 Samples

Have you seen so many samples squashed into one tiny box? No? Neither have I! I was so excited when I opened this beauty box and it was squashed full of samples – a total of 15 items! This whole box cost USD25; I paid international shipping of USD15.50 in total for this with another box. Let’s jump in and see what we have in this box!

Unboxing: Beauty Bar Sample Society Beauty Box – 10 Samples

I’m addicted to beauty boxes. Can you tell? Beauty Bar’s regular sample society beauty box doesn’t ship to Singapore, but awhile back while I was stalking their website, I saw these 5 samples, 10 samples and 15 samples beauty boxes popping up for sale and they were available internationally; so needless to say I snatched them right up in a blink! This whole box cost USD18; I paid international shipping of USD15.50 in total for this with another box.

Review: Chanel Harmonie Levres Lip Palette in Arabesque

Hi everyone! Just wanted to come and give a quick little review of my recent haul – the Chanel Harmonie Levres Lip Palette in Arabesque. At $86 for a palette with 5.5g of product, it is quite an expensive splurge so for anyone looking to add this to your collection, I’m hoping that this review will be useful in helping you see if you want to spend that amount of money!

Haul: Don’t Brush off these Cheap Brushes

Over the weekend, I walked past *SCAPE Bazaar, which is kind of like an open-air flea-market beside Cineleisure in Orchard, Singapore, and I thought that I’d just pop in for a quick look – as I love flea markets – to see if there was anything interesting… and lo-and-behold, I saw these amazing brushes! They were just selling for S$28, for the whole set of 10 brushes!

At first I kind of brushed them off – because I thought, what kind of quality would it have at S$3 a piece – and walked off. But since our car was parked on the other side, I had to walk back and decided to touch them this time… and they were so soft! They remind me of Sigma’s and 13rushes’ or Real Techniques’ synthetic brushes, but they just might be slightly softer! I don’t know if they have a proper brand – I tried to google the name inscribed on these brushes but couldn’t find any company.

A couple of them had 1 or 2 hairs sticking out but that was it. I think those could be solved with a little snip of the scissors. I’ve washed them last night and there were no brush hair falling out or anything. They were just as soft as before, with no smell. Really amazing brushes. Plus they are fabulously white (also comes in pink, blue, black and gold). So happy with my haul!

Haul: Chanel Harmonie Levres Lip Palette in Arabesque

Hi. Would you like to see my new toy? Enter the Chanel Harmonie Levres Lip Palette in Arabesque, from the Chanel Le Blanc 2015 collection. It’s so pretty in the packaging that I can’t even swatch it. I will, but just let me stare at it a little more. It looks way prettier in real life, but I literally just came home and it’s 8pm and I can’t wait to show it off, so I took a quick snap of it in my terribly lit room.

This cost me S$86, a big ouch, but just look at all 5 lip colours there – how could I say no?!

This is limited edition, so if you want to get it, be sure to make it down now. I don’t actually foresee it running out so quickly, as Chanel items are pricey and lip palettes are usually not that high in demand. But I just fell in love with the packaging that I had to get it right away.

Midweek Peek #19: Birthday Haul from Sephora

My birthday was actually last month, but I finally had the time for a quick sneak into Sephora last week to claim my birthday gift! This year it’s finally not a Sephora-brand item, which was what they gave over the last couple of years – but a little gift set from Benefit!

I love Benefit’s cheeky names for their products – this one is called the “Seal Turn-Ons!”, and contains a mini They’re Real! mascara and a mini Watt’s Up! highlighter. I adore their deluxe sample sizes – they’re great for a good many uses and comes in really pretty proper packaging.

Hope you like reading these midweek peeks! Short, concise and straight to the point. Do let me know if you have any comments – whether you like reading longer posts, or if you prefer them to be sandwiched with short posts like these!