The Benefit of Being a Minimalist

Hi everyone,

Steve Jobs, the king of minimalism
I bow down to his awesomeness as I'm not there yet!

After years of being a beauty blogger, I have to admit I'm becoming a minimalist. Now, these two concepts usually don't mesh. After all, being a beauty blogger means having drawers and drawers and a room full of makeup that rivals the beauty department at Barney's. Well, once upon a time in a different land, I did have a makeup closet. But that feels so far away already.

Now, living in Vietnam has one thing when it comes to makeup: the lack of drugstore makeup. Even Maybelline and L'Oreal are expensive here. But who am I to complain? When I look at the pricing of makeup in the UK and the rest of Europe, a $12 bottle of foundation sounds like a steal.

This leaves me to a certain state or sparseness in my makeup drawer. Although I feel sad at the lack of having new toys, I do have to admit my makeup routine has been faster. I know what to use, where to get, and how to get them fast. There's no longer moments when I have to debate which brown I need to use, the MAC one, NYX one or (insert brand name here) one. Now, the choices are less, which leaves me more time to apply makeup than before.

On top of that, I just got a new brush set and I'm happy about it. There's something about having all your brushes laid out in a brush roll and saving time. Before, I used to fumble around just to find one brush. Now, I know where it is and I know how to use it. I am going to blog about this brush set soon and believe me, you'll definitely need it in your life.

In order to be a minimalist makeup lover, here are what you need:

1. A storage system: although I almost busted my back last year to work on this system, it was worth it. Now, I can't go back to storing everything in a bin anymore. That makes finding stuff hell. This system, or any non-bin, non-bag system, works great in saving me time.
2. Core products: the essential items you use everytime you apply makeup are your core products. They are primers, foundations (liquid, solid, gel, powder, etc), finishing powder, brow pencils, eyeliners, mascaras, brushes. You should store them separately and within arm's reach so you can get them as fast as you can.
3. Star products: these are your colored products like eye shadows, blushes and lipsticks. Sooner or later, you'll realize you use one more than the others. With these star products, you should put them in prime spots within their own categories/groups.
4. The will to weed out products you don't use: Expired products? Throw them away. Bad formula? Either throw or give away. Unsuitable products to your skin/hair type? Give away. You'll be surprised of how much more space you are going to have once these products are out of the way.

That's all for today, folks. I hope you'll have more time to work on your makeup this year.

With love,

Dao xoxo

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Antagonizing over Maybelline Clear Smooth BB Cream

Hi everyone,

Last Friday, I mentioned BB Cream as something trendy in this year. I had no idea I would write a follow up about something closer to home: I have been using Maybelline Clear Smooth BB Cream for a while now. After having various degrees of success with Maybelline Clear Smooth BB Silk Shine Free Two Way Cake Powder, I pushed my own button and bought the BB Cream itself. Maybelline is available here in Vietnam and the prices are affordable. On top of that, the cream was 10% off and I received Baby Lips as a gift with purchase.

 I believe this Clear Smooth BB Cream is available in the Asian market only. Outside of Asia, Dream Fresh is the BB Cream Maybelline sells. Since I don't have the later one, I don't know whether the formulas are different but based on past experience between Maybelline products in the U.S, U.K, and Japan, I believe the formula varies if the name is different.

Unlike many other makeup products, this BB Cream comes in a small tube with only 18ml of cream. To put into perspective, a deluxe foundation sample contains around 5-7.5ml. Which means there's not a lot of products to slosh around. The reason people think it's big is because of the packaging. There's simply too much plastic and paper involved in this product. I wish Maybelline to simplify its packaging in the future.

This BB Cream comes in 2 colors: Fresh and Natural. Mine is Fresh, which is a tad too light for my skin. Natural, however, is too dark but has more yellow pigments in it, which makes it more flattering on Asian skins. Fresh, on the other hand, is your typical Asian BB Cream shade: it has this beige color that does not fare well with any skin tones. Once applied, I looked white. Like Michael Jackson white. Like unhealthy ghostly white. Like really, really white.

It freaked me out a little. So I waited for it to oxidize, which it did for a moment to make my skin look kinda pumpkin like before I looked less white again. But still, my face was lighter than my neck unless I applied some bronzers to even things out around the jaw line.

Texture-wise, it is creamy in the way of a strong non-oil free moisturizer. My face felt very comfortable for the first few minutes before it looks greasy. And greasy it is! This BB Cream creates the greasiest mess on my face since I started puberty. I've come to learn that using silica microspheres as a finishing powder would eliminate this problem. Yes, that's the stuff in Make Up For Ever HD Powder, ELF HD Powder and the like.

To fix the weird whiteness problem, I mixed this BB Cream with my MAC NC25 foundation and it looked less pale, more human. Also, since my MAC foundation has lots of oil-controlling properties, the mix created a dewy look that was so beautiful! Reader Laura Humphries mentioned using her new CoverGirl Outlast Stay Fabulous Foundation on top of her Two Faced BB cream and had a dewy finish as well. You should give that a try, too.

Here is a list of pros and cons:

Pros:

• Affordable: cost me around 4 USD and I had a free lip balm
• Can be applied with fingers, although a dual-fiber brush provides much better texture
• Can conceal dark circles to a certain extend
• Feels very comfortable on skin

Cons:

• Has only 2 shades: therefore, those with darker skins or are in between shades can't use it
• Light shade has weird alien white color
• Is greasy!
• Packaging is bulky!
• Needs a lot of creative energy to make it more wearable

While I love this BB Cream, I don't think it's for me. Those with dry skin can benefit greatly from it as it moisturizes well. However, those with oily skin can move a continent away from this thing. The finish is fabulous, which makes this a regret for me. I truly hope the Dream Fresh BB Cream to be better as Maybelline seems to have many great products lately.

Here are some extra pictures:

The promises: surprisingly, it does all of those,
especially the brightening part to the point of whiteness!

Ingredient list

Ok, here are two interesting pictures: unblended BB Cream on the left and blended on the right. Look how much brighter the skin on the right hand picture looks :)

Last but not least: would I buy it again? Hell to the no! Or maybe when I reach my 40s and my skin gets much drier. Maybe.

With love,
Dao xoxo

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Trendy in 2013: BB Creams

Hi everyone,

BB Cream is not exactly new in the makeup world. Fans of Korean makeup have been exposed to this type of face cream-slash-foundation for ages. In the Asian market, Maybelline has its own BB Cream for a while now. Yet, at the end of 2013, beginning of 2013, BB Cream finally becomes popular to the rest of the world. And by popular, I mean everybody does BB Cream these days. Not only mass-market brands such as Garnier, L'Oreal, and Physicians Formula have their own versions of this cream but also the big brothers like Armani and Dior do, too. This sends a chill to my spine. Finally, BB Cream has taken off the same way as mineral makeup did back in 2008.

Contrary to popular belief, BB Creams are not that miraculous. Sure, they have more moisturizing properties and make your skin look and feel better than foundation but still, BB Creams are makeup. Therefore, proper cares should be partaken the same way as when wearing liquid foundation.

The one thing I am glad to happen within this wave of Western BB Creams is the color selection. Korean BB Creams are notoriously bad in term of color: in certain brands, you can only find 1 (yes, one!) shade and often times, it is in a weird pale greige (grey+beige) color that in no way flatters Asian skins at all! On top of that, the shades - if more than 1 shade is available at all - tend to run really, really ghostly white, so white that white girls have problem wearing them as well. Moreover, they almost always oxidize to some other weird pumpkin colors. And when you find a shade that matches your skin, it would oil up after some use.

Yes, a lot of Asian BB Creams are tres weird. With this new crop of BB Creams coming from the West, they seem to be better in term of everything: color selection, texture, lasting power, and especially oil control property. If you haven't tried BB Creams yet, you should jump onto this bandwagon. I've heard lots of nice things about Rimmel London and Physicians Formula. Please give it a try and tell me what you think!

With love,
Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Happy New Year 2013!

Hi everyone,

2013 is here and it feels strange. I still feel like 2012 were still here simply because '12 had been a fantastic year for me. I wish you all a wonderful year ahead, so magnificent that at day 365, you are going to look back and realize it has been even better than what you have planned on day 1 (which is today!)

Here are some pictures of the food my family cooked to say good bye to 2012 and welcome 2013:

A part of the spread
We washed everything down with some vino :)

Egg rolls!
My mom made them, I fried them up :9

Honey butter chicken wings :")

My not-quite-chocolatey chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and coconut flakes

The whole spread before we devoured it!

That's all for now. I hope you are having a wonderful New Year Day. Mine has been great so far and now I've gotta catch some zzz. Tomorrow is going to be a work day again.

With love,
Dao xoxoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Appearances: ELLE November-December 2012

Hi everyone,

I've come to realize I'd better do this once a month with each magazine. Compiling them together like this means more time for me to take pictures and edit them. Together for the last 2 posts, I was shooting and editing 40+ pictures and sometimes, it's not easy to edit them to my liking at all!
/*end of rant

Now, let's take a look at what I did for ELLE Vietnam during last November and December:

The cover of ELLE's November issue, which is also their 2nd anniversary
The cover girl is Ho Ngoc Ha (the same one in F-Fashion's December issue)
She is very popular and it's hard to stop by the newsstand without seeing her face these days

I wrote an article for their bridal issue, which is about skin/hair/body care before getting hitched

Got a 4-page spread on skincare A-Z
It took me a loooong time to write and I'm glad the spread is beautiful!

An article about vitamin C I translated

ELLE December issue with Katy Perry on the cover

I wrote for ELLE for more than half a year and finally it happened:
I was on their contributor page!
This is such a huge honor for me!

The art director painted my face
Does the picture look like me?

Got a 3-page spread on makeup in major markets in Asia such as Japan, Korea, Thailand, and India

That's all for 2012, which was a great year for me in term of being in magazines. Not only did my articles get published, my face was also in the magazines twice: once in F-Fashion in October and once in ELLE in December. This has been a huge honor for me and I hope to be able to continue this winning streak in 2013. Last but not least, I would like to thank the editors who have been helping me along the way while writing these articles. Also, my sincere regards go to the art directors who have been beautifying my articles. Without them, those written words may not look as catchy.

Love,
Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Appearances: F-Fashion Magazine November-December 2012

Hi everybody,

This post was supposed to go up last year. 2012 sounded like so far away but in fact, it was still yesterday that we were in that year. The end of the year had been a busy time for me and I anticipate the same level of busy-ness until after Chinese New Year. So bear with me, alright?

Here are some snapshots of what I did for F-Fashion Magazine during November and December of 2012:

F-Fashion November 2012 issue
The cover girl was Thanh Hang, who is the #1 model in Vietnam

Most Wanted-Beauty

2 looks for I See It First: Red lips (left) and modern cat eyes (right)

Global News

Beauty Blog: I wrote about eye shadows :)

Beauty Report: Stem Cell technology in skin care

The extremely beautiful December issue with Ho Ngoc Ha on the cover
She's the hottest singer in Vietnam right now and also a coach on The Voice Vietnam

Most Wanted
I really want the Cle de Peau luminizing powder and that eye/blush set from Shu Uemura

I See It First: golden looks
I chose golden eyes (left look) and red lips-gold eyes combo (right look)

Global News with Julianne Moore, Gwyneth, Tyra, the Kardashians, and Urban Decay

The focus of this issue is about nails

Beauty Report: gold in skincare
(it's not a good thing to use if you are allergic to gold!)

And last but not least: Beauty Blog
I got a chance to interview Karen from Makeup and Beauty Blog for this issue
and it was my honor. Karen was like a sister to me when I started blogging
and this is an opportunity for me to pay her back.

That's all for now, folks! I hope you enjoy the snapshots I took from the magazines!

Take care,
Dao xoxo


P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!