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The "2-2 tutu birthday" - JJ. Thank you Haejun for taking me out to Bailey's Chocolate Bar (1915 Park Avenue St. Louis, MO 63104) for a secret surprise early birthday dinner! The atmosphere was super sleek and filled with chocolate lust. Deep red walls, dim mood lighting, hand-painted naked people on the walls haha. We had memorable conversations and serious girl chill time, giggling with desserts and the signature Chocolate Martini - you heard me right. M-azing! It was like liquid paradise. Don't get me started on the "Chocolate Inebriation" - chocolate fudgey cake with cinnamon ice cream and crystallized honey. Excuse my crappy phone pics. It did pretty good for being nearly dark.

Then Haejun surprised me with so many presents! Firstly and mostly, spending time comforting me and inspiring me to think about things different, being a good friend and patient listener. An ultra heartfelt card with sparkles (!!), a chic real leather roll-up pencil case (coolest concept ever and much needed), adorable bear/mole? wearing a watermelon on his head hahaha, and last but not least a storybook! It's called Cloudette and it tells the story of a small but mighty cloud ... so cute and full of puns :) I have JJ read it to me at night lol am I 22 or 2?

What I did today: shameless shameful amounts of shopping (basically my arms nearly fell off). Super excited to share my haul/fitting room review!

Readers - what did you do for your last birthday?

Nikki's Love Package + Michael Todd Creme Glace Disco Lipgloss Review

Happy end-of-weekend! The lovely Nikki reviewed a Michael Todd lipgloss a while back and found that she didn't really like the colour. Being the weird person I am, I take random risks with non-conventional lip shades, using black eyeliner for makeshift high-fashion lips and usually avoiding the classically beautiful red lip. Turns out that with my growing comfort and confidence with fashion and makeup in college, no matter how crazy the colour, the more I try being a daredevil, the better the payoff. When I asked her about it, Nikki so sweetly replied that she would gladly let me try it out and sent an awesome love package. Thank you so much, beautiful girl!

She included a cute card letter that made me smile so big, a Laneige makeup remover, matte black shadow with the cutest bow on it, and the Disco lipgloss. I use the Laneige mini bottle for eyeliner removal and it's great. I heard from a MUA somewhere that you shouldn't use cleansers that foam a lot. This one doesn't so I guess that's good!

Disco has a gorgeous vampy feel that's not too Halloween, so I would wear this every day for fall. I can imagine it contrasts well with a fading summer tan, lots of slimming dark clothing and thigh high boots, and smokey/neutral eyes. I absolutely adore the packaging - I like all the purple that Michael Todd Cosmetics have and the square glass tube that reminds me of Twilight Beauty. When you look at the bottle, there are small red sparkles but on the lips, they don't show up. For me, I don't like a lot of frost and shimmer in lip products - I'm more into opaque, vibrant matte textures.

There are two ways I wear Disco:
- Method 1: Dab a few times on my upper and lower lips and blend out with fingers. This gives a beautiful rosy colour that is matte, doesn't catch hair on a windy day, and stays forever! I can eat, drink, make out with a wall, and it will not come off. This is probably the best unexpected lip stain I have ever tried or seen. See a FOTD using this method here.
- Method 2: Fully apply it all over lips. This will take just a bit more product and the colour deepens into a richer vampy red/violet. There is more sheen involved in this method - perfect fall look.

The only real downside I see to this lipgloss is that it does stain dried lips, so make sure your lips are super exfoliated before you apply this. Some people may feel this is too dark on them but I think if you use Method 1, it is extremely wearable on any skintone. This lipgloss is definitely a buildable one.

The Goods

 

Aww Nikki you made me smile so much with your panda drawing :D The end of my summer has been super awesome and I am pumped to dive right into fall with these beautiful gifts you sent me ♥ Love your handwriting - so girly and neat!

My Beauty Diary Yogurt Facial Mask (read about my experience with it here)

Laneige makeup remover

The most adorable pan of eyeshadow I have ever seen. Such an adorable bow!

Swatch

Now, let's go to the Disco! The bottle looks all beat up because I've been throwing this into my makeup bag a lot - it's getting its fair share of usage ; )

On-the-lip swatches

Method 1: blended out

 See how it stains all my dried parts D: ?

Method 2: fully applied

Lamplight

Product Description (credit site): This Michael Todd favorite has the coverage of a lipstick and the shine of a gloss that adds sensual glow and a flawless texture. Our Creme Glace wears beautifully at night and protects during the day with SPF 15.

Pros:
- Rich, beautiful colour
- Buildable
- Lip stain power!
- Matte finish if use a tiny bit of product
- Stylish packaging
- Didn't know it had SPF15 good stuff
Cons:
- Stains dried lips
- Colour may be too dark for some
- Price? This retails for $17.00 USD

Verdict: This is one of my favourite lipglosses/lip products of all time simply because of its unique colour. I prefer using Method 1 because it's more wearable and I can't wait to proudly show off my autumn-stained lips this fall!

Effectiveness: 

- Pigmentation: 5/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

- Moisturizing: 2/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

- Texture: 4/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

- Non-sticky: 3/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

Packaging: 5/5 ♥♥♥♥♥

Price: 3/5 ♥♥♥♥♥


Would I (re)purchase?
If I run out, maybe. This tube will last me forever though : )

Thank you for all the comments and tips on my last post about the funky photo colour wash-out business. When I head back to campus, I'm going to ask some photographer friends to help me figure this out. For now, at least Mac users on Firefox can enjoy what seems to be true-to-colour photos xD I uploaded a lot of the swatches using Imageshack again. Leave some love for Nikki and get excited for an outfit post tomorrow :D !

I was not paid in any way for this review; these are my opinions after use. This product was given to me as a gift from a friend. Results may vary from person to person.

FOTD: Parisienne Chic + My Beauty Diary Facial Mask

Traditionally, I am not a "red lip" girl. Bright warm colours tend to make me look more sallow and yellow so I usually avoid reds and corals. However, recently with a slight tan at the beach and lighter hair colour, it turns out that the perfect red lip complements a Parisian outfit. I was so excited when I found all my bags full of makeup nice and unmelted from the drive from Oklahoma and the year-long storage. I was so sad without all my lippies and nail polishes and now I have finally been reunited with them :D

This is the brightest red lipstick I have - Lancome Rouge Baroque that I stole from my mom a long time ago. She has such amazing skin - no acne, never dry, never oily, goes with absolutely any shade. I unfortunately only look good in certain shades but I find that over the years I have become more daring, and for me, daring is good. The consistency of Lancome lipsticks is very nice - not too creamy, not too dry, perfect pigmentation.

I dug out a Clinique shadow that I had handy in my rediscovered box - Foxy. It's a nice taupe-silver good for slightly smokey eyes. Complete with eyeliner and a cute beret recycled from my last Parisian chic outfit, I was ready to head out the door for my outfit photos. I have been using Revlon Photo Ready for all my photoshoots lately and it holds up pretty well. However in person, it's not the prettiest -looking foundation and I glitter disgustingly. I will write a review of it soon.

A few hours before the shoot, I did my first facial mask ever. Sweet Nikki sent me a My Beauty Diary facial mask in her love package and I finally let my skin be pampered with some serious TLC. It is the Yogurt one and is slightly soapy to the touch but not in a gross way. I am such a mask nub that when I took it out and unfolded it I wasn't really sure what to do about the plastic thing haha. I just put the unplastic side on and later peeled off the protecting layer, but not before having some fun with photos xD I let the mask soak for about 10 minutes and then peeled it off and washed my face. Afterwards my skin felt a little hard and dried actually but to my delight, I found that my pimples on my forehead had dried yay! I still have to experiment with different masks I guess but this was a fun first time!

I found that the bathroom in my new place is a great makeup photo-taking place. The wall is a nice green colour and if I open the door but don't turn on the light and use flash, it creates a great flash lighting result. Yay! Additionally, there's lots of nice white counterspace for product reviews : ) Lighting is slightly yellow but liveable.

Products used:

Anastasia Brow Wiz in Medium Ash

Clinique Eyeshadow in Foxy

ELF Studio Creme Eyeliner in Black

ELF Studio Blushing and Bronzing Powder -
blush on apples of cheeks, bronzer along hairline, under jawbone, on cheekbones

Revlon Photo Ready Foundation in 04 Nude

Lancome Lipstick in Rouge Baroque

Geo Angel Violet contact lenses

Flash:

 I'm terribly awesome I wore this bright red lipstick on my teeth for half the day. There was a stain about 2 inches across. When my dad came home he asked if I had eaten something alive HAHA fail xD

Lancome Rouge Baroque swatches (btw uploaded these to Imageshack because Blogger is the WORST at washing out photos!)

Just for comparison, this is what Blogger did to these photos T__T (Update: my bf just told me that these look exactly the same to him. He uses Opera on Windows 7. Will you lovelies tell me if the colours look the same below compared to the above photos and include your browser and computer operating system in a comment? Is it a super vibrant red or just kind of? That would be so sweet of you! ♥ I am using Firefox/Safari on Mac OS)

Bathroom lighting: No matter what hosting site I use, it won't keep the brightness of the lipstick. This is extremely frustrating. Perhaps this is my internet browser's issue? The swatches above are super vibrant as they should be but these photos below are washed out. Any techies/photography aficionados - I would love your help!

Onto the facial mask!

I'm a Jabberwocky! Hahaha I borrowed one of my brother's hats and pranced around like an idiot. It was the hardest 10 minutes ever because I kept laughing every time I tried to say something serious while wearing this mask

So, maybe bright red lips aren't totally out of the question for me. I think that fact that I was wearing a beret made it all appropriate :D Today was a pretty uneventful day - I woke up abysmally late and spent most of my evening moving boxes from the apartment. I did manage to cut up my DIY shorts pretty well and tomorrow I will throw some bleach on it before styling my outfit yay! I can't believe I only have 6 days left in Cali! When I head back to school, my friend and I vowed to dress to strut style because life is too short to melt into the background. This is going to be crazy, but I'm going to finally let my inner fashion geek out to play on campus *fingers crossed* I also wonder, where the heck am I going to take outfit photos outside without gathering a crowd of onlookers? I always get embarrassed when my "irl" friends point out that they've been following my blog :3 "So this is how you spend your time..." Wahhh! Give me courage lovelies to come out of my fashion closet this fall xD