Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear all,


Happy Thanksgiving!

Besides Christmas, Thanksgiving probably is the best day of the year for me. It's a unique holidays for those who live in the United States and Canada. In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October while in the United States, it is on the fourth Thursday of November. Usually, people gather around to give thanks to the harvest and express gratitude.

This year, there are several things that I am thankful for. After several months of debating whether I should open another blog, my friend NH told me "if it makes you happy then go for it!" I registered an account here in May but did not blog until the end of June. The rest became history: my blog got readers (you guys), and I get to know a lot of other wonderful beauty bloggers online.

Also, I would like to thank the individuals who have contributed to the outlook and nifty widgets to this blog. Without them, My Makeup Blog would be really boring!

Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends and family members who have always been there for me during my ups and downs as well as my readers who have given me the most wonderful feedback. They are my rewards and the fuel to keep me moving!

Now, I can't just leave without giving you something to prepare for Black Friday (aka the day after Thanksgiving when lots of things are going to be on sale!) If you'd like to shop online, I gathered some coupon codes and sales information for ya:
  • Lisa Hoffman (wife of Dustin, the Academy Awards winner) gives a 25% discount when you buy her stuff at her online website: use code LHBBDB, good until 11/30
  • Shu Uemura gives 20% off + free shipping: use code SHUFRIENDS, good until 12/01
  • Smashbox also gives 20% off as a part of their Friends and Family Sales: use code SBFF08, (expiration date unknown)
  • DuWop has a 25% off for you purchase as a part of their F&F Sales: use code HOLIDAY25, expired on 12/01
  • TooFaced has free shipping for now
  • Stila gives a 20% discount on your total purchase of $30 USD or more + free shipping: use code ECYX12, good until 12/16!
  • Eyeko will give you a free minty lip balm with any purchase when you use code FREEMINTY, plus a surprise full-size item when you use code E129.
  • Adorned with Grace Minerals (my favorite MMU store) is having a 15% off sales on their mineral makeup sets. Plus, you'll get 7 new eyeshadow samples with purchase of 20 dollars or more. (It's a dollar per sample, so you get 7 dollars worth of free stuff, sistas!) The deal is good until 12/01.
  • Silk Naturals also offer gifts and free stuff if you spend more than 10 dollars at their website.
Again, happy Thanksgiving and I'll see you again next Monday!

Love,
Dao

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Face Contouring and Highligting: Slimmer and Shimmer

Hi ladies,

How are we doing today? It's T-1 to Thanksgiving, aka Turkey Day, in the United States and I'm excited! Tonight I'm heading up to get the last few items for tomorrow's big dinner as the prices are always significantly cheaper on the night before. That way I can save a little bit more cash for Black Friday, aha!

Yesterday I posted the first part of the contouring technique where it concentrated more on the nose and today it's for the rest of the face. Also, I would like to touch base a little bit on the highlighting technique as these two are intertwined to each other.

For the rest of the face, there are two things to do: hollowing the cheek area for a sculpted and chiseled look, and shading the perimeter of the face to make it look slimmer. Using the same brush and powder as the previous part, let's get started, shall we?

Cheek Contouring

Making a fish face and find the hollow area just below the cheek, then apply the powder from the hairline towards your mouth.
  • If you can't find where it is, the safe bet is to apply the contouring powder a little bit below your blush.
  • When others like to have a contouring line, I prefer to have things looking soft and blended. Therefore, I use the same brush to blend it up toward the blush and down toward my chin.
Face Perimeter Shading

The proper caption for this picture is: "Why so serious?"
and the answer is: "I don't know why!"

This step is really simple: you just dip your brush to the contouring powder then brush it all around the hairline and jawline of your face
  • I always concentrate more on the jawline and if you want to look slim, a little bit of dark contouring powder will make your face look much thinner. Try it!
  • Again, blend blend blend! Unless you want everybody to see those dark lines and wonder what happened, blending is the way to go. I advocate for the natural-looking makeup, not clownish makeup, btw.
Highlighting

The highlighting chart for your face
NFL players: feel free to replace gold or white highlighting powder with your black powder

Seriously, after drawing the points for highlighting, I wonder if the first NFL player who ever painted his face was born in a family with a lot of sisters! So if you're in doubt of where to highlight your face, you can just take a look at your favorite football player.

Areas to consider:
  • Underneath the eyebrows: this will make you look like you just had an eye lift. Seriously, if you're brave enough, do it to your mom. She'll be really surprised!
  • The inner corners of your eyes: take a lot at any of Beyonce's photos and you'll see this trick used many many times. It opens up your eyes and especially on those tired days, it makes your eyes look much brighter.
  • On top of your cheek bones: who wants higher cheekbones? I do! Just smile it and apply it above the apple of your cheeks. Coupled with cheek contouring and you have the killah cheekbones, I'm telling you!
  • The bridge of the nose: the oldest trick on the book, period. If you want a high bridge nose, it's the way to go. But a word of warning: too much of it and your nose is going to be really shiny!
  • The cupid bow of your lips: who wants luscious lips? Then get your brush in there, girl!
The "Before" picture

The final result, tada!
It didn't take me that long to apply the makeup but in between putting my makeup on and taking pictures, I was doggone tired. Hence the tight lips.
Beside the blush, highlighting and contouring powder, I had no other makeup on my face.

That's all for today, folks! Have a happy pre-Turkey Day!

Take care,
Your Makeup Blogger

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Face Contouring: Getting a Nose Job without Surgery!

Hi y'all!

How are you doing? I hope you're having a good day so far. This is a way-overdue post and my shameless self decided to spit it into multi-parts just because it's more convenient that way :] I'm a fan of face contouring as it does make a big difference on how my face looks. Many moons ago when I just started wearing makeup, one fine day I decided to have some fun and put some makeup on. Then I realized I had a lot of time on my hand and contoured my face. After that, my camwhore self took over and I snapped some pictures away and put it online. A friend of mine saw it and asked me if I "had any work done!" That was a moment that I would never forget because I realized I finally get the contouring technique down!

Perhaps face contouring and highlighting are the oldes makeup skills in the book. In fact, Chinese opera actors have been using this technique for centuries.

Image from Photobucket

The contouring technique has changed dramatically from the early days when people actually looked like the above's picture. Now, it is much softer and natural-looking. When contouring your face, you are walking a fine line between looking ridiculous and chiseled. Just think the difference between a drag queen on Mardi Gras and Tyra Banks and you'll get the idea.

The first part of the face contouring series is all about the nose. For those who are blessed with a high bridge nose, you can skip this post and read something else more interesting. However, for the rest of us, a little bit of dark powder can really change how you look and since we're near Thanksgiving, I just think it'd be nice to share some tricks with you.

What you need:
  • a medium-size brush: if it's the size of a small strawberry, it's good enough to use;
  • some dark powder: MAC has their sculpt and shape powder which is quite nice. However, if you have a foundation that's one or two shades darker, you can use that.
I started with a fresh face, only foundation was applied

Then I apply some blushes to the apple of my cheeks
I find it easier to locate the contours of my face this way


Using the contouring brush, apply the powder as above:
From the inner corner to the eye to the side of the brush (both sides), and the tip of the nose.

Darkening those areas do two things: make your nose look slimmer and make it look taller. If you still don't believe me, take a look at this picture:

The nose looks different, see!

If you really want to go the distance, you can apply some highlighting powder on the bridge of your nose. It will make your nose look a lot taller as if you just had a nose job. This is a powerful technique that I think everybody should know. The first time I did it, I could not stop staring at my reflection in the mirror. My nose and the rest of my face looked completely different.

Since I took a whole lot of pictures, it's much easier for me to break it into different parts. So stay tuned for the rest of them as I'm going to post them up soon!

Enjoy your day,
Your Makeup Blogger


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Monday, November 24, 2008

Happy Monday and a Healthy Living Tip for You!

Happy Monday, everyone! How was your weekend? Mine was full of good tea and furious writing. This week is very exciting for all of us in the U.S of A because Thanksgiving is coming! I actually love Thanksgiving more than Christmas and this year I get to cook a turkey ;)

Since the weather got colder, I found myself drinking less and less water. One day I only drank two glasses of water for the whole day and that was not so good. Water is the best moisturizer for our bodies and dehydration can lead to a lot of things. One year I did not drink enough liquids for a long period of time and ended up at the hospital with a kidney stone! It was an eye-opening experience for me and after that, I made a pact to self-monitor my liquid intact. However, within the past week or two, it became harder and harder for me to drink plain water. Even water with a piece of lemon was not that enticing anymore.

Turned out I was not the only one who had the problem. I talked to my roommate and found out she was not that interested in the pure and crispy taste of water either. How strange, right?

But I searched high and low for the solution of making myself drink more water and voila, here it is: juice-infused water! If I have time, I can cut up fruits and pour water over to infuse it with the flavors, minerals, and vitamins from the fruits. However, as much as I want to make my water to be spa-like, I don't really have time so I resort to a much sorter cut. It is simple and I get to drink water a lot more again. Moreover, I also get a part of my daily vitamin C and antioxidants in every glass of water.

What you need:

  • Juice of your choice: I love cranberry juice and yeah, that's a gallon-size bottle of juice!
  • A glass and some ice (optional)
  • Some water to dilute your fruit juice: filtered water is fine.

Pour some juice to the glass: don't go too crazy with the juice. You're not supposed to drink lots of juices though, it's there to spice your water to make it more flavorful. I usually add 1/4 to 1/3 juice to the glass


Pour water to the glass until it's full. Then swirl the glass around a little bit to make sure the juice and water mix well together.

Drink up!
Without makeup, I look like a kid, haha! I find the juice-infused water very tasty and get my water intake this way. If you want to give this method a try, here are some things you should be aware:
  • I make sure the total amount of juice I drink is not more than a glass a day as some fruit juices may contain a high concentration of sugar.
  • I always check the label to make sure the juice I bought is 100% juice and do not contain high fructose corn syrup. The syrup is really cheap and is a sweetener to fruit juices. However, fructose is a simple sugar molecule that does not require any breaking down once inside our bodies. It's just empty calories and spikes the blood sugar up very quickly. So by all means, make sure your juices do not contain this ingredient.
  • Once opened, I try to consume the juice within a week: some vitamins like vitamin C will lose its potency within a short amount of time. Also, an opened container is prone to unwanted bacterial growth. So if you buy a big bottle of juice, either share it with people or divide it into smaller containers and freeze the unused portions.
That's all, folks! I hope you're having a wonderful week ahead and stay healthy!

With love,
Your Makeup Blogger

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Obsessed with Johnson's Softwash Gentle Exfoliating 24 Hour Moisturizing Wash

As they said, "Enjoy it while it last." Unfortunately, I did not realize how long it would last and now freezing my behind up. If you guess "it" is the warm weather, you are absolutely right, my friend. While last week I was prancing around wearing short sleeve t-shirt, this time 'round I'm bundling up from head to toes. The cold weather brings with it a different set of problems and perhaps the one that everyone really complains about is dry and scaly skin.

When it gets colder, the skin also becomes drier as there's less moisture in the air. Also, those who have dry skin tend to experience a more severe level of dryness. This year, I anticipated this and did some preventive work before the temperature dropped. While the creme cleanser from Bath and Body Works has been my cure-all for the cold season, it does not seem to rinse clean and leaves my skin feeling a little bit balmy. Like my body lotion, I am very particular about my body wash: it has to be gentle, moisturizing, and rinses clean. Anything that makes my skin feeling strange is a big no-no.

While alligator bags are cute, alligator skin definitely is not. When the skin looks flaky, the only way to cure the flakes is to exfoliate. Unfortunately, most exfoliators I have experienced either felt like sand paper on my skin or were oil-based, which made my skin feeling really funky after the wash (again, I'm very particular on what's I use to wash my body!) So I was very delighted to find this during one of my shopping trips:

Introducing Johnson's Softwash Gentle Exfoliating
24 Hour Moisturizing Wash

I remember when Johnson's Softwash came out maybe 2 years ago, one of my friends deliberately jammed her arm to my nose to show me how wonderful her new lavender body wash smelled (it smelled wonderful, by the way!) However, I never seemed to pay any attention to Johnson's adult line of body care. After all, I am too grown up for Baby Johnson, I guess.

Wrong! You can run, you can hide, but you can't escape what your mom used to wash you when you were a baby. Except now the thing is developed for adult folks, except it still feels and smells as comfortable as I remember.

My hand holding the bottle just for size preference

At less than 5 dollars, this product is quite a steal. Just look how huge it is! The bottle is 18 fl oz (532 ml) and that's a lot of body wash to go around. I hesitated to buy it because knowing myself, it will take many moons to finally finish a bottle of body wash that big. However, I took a sniff and I was hooked. The thing does not smell like baby shampoo at all but kind of sensual to me. Very grown up, indeed!

As they advertised, this body wash is gentle enough to use on sensitive skin and the beads are dissolving, which is a big factor for me. Since most of the beads in scrubs are made from tiny polymer particles, they do not feel rough on your skin. However, once washed away they may become an environmental hazard as fish and other aquatic animals may ingest them and develop tumors. While I fully expected the sand paper scrubs, I was quite happy to be proven wrong: I could not feel the beads at all as they are so tiny!

I squeezed a whole bunch of body wash just to see only one tiny bead!
Notice how dry my hand was, I already see the effect of dry and cold weather.

The body wash is quite a delight to use, beside the lack of beads. It feels pretty much like whipped cream once lathered up. The wash rinses clean and I was afraid that it would not moisturize enough. However, the surprise came after I toweled my body dry: it felt smooth like a baby's bottom! I've been using it for about three weeks and am very delighted to tell you that my legs are smooth, not alligator-y looking!

A snap shot of the ingredients for those who can read it sideway
(Thank you, Picassa!)

Ingredients (for those who prefer to read horizontally):
Water, acrylates copolymer, sodium laureth sulfate, glycerin, sodium cocoyl isethionate, coco-glucoside, lauryl betaine, styrene/acrylates copolymer, fragrance, citric acid, DMDM hydantoin, sodium hydroxide, ethylhexyl palmitate, methyparaben, disodium EDTA, polyquaternium-7, mineral oil, polysorbate 20, petrolatum, polyquartenium-10, polyethylene, red 30, talc, iron oxides.

If you are as anal specific about your body wash as I am, I suggest you to give this new body wash from Johnson and Johnson. Baby Johnson finally grows up indeed!

I'm still feeling the effect of the lack of blogging. Not writing here for a week makes me feel like a sloth. Only frequent blogging can cure it, I guess.

Have a nice weekend everyone!
Your Makeup Blogger

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'm Back!

Hi pretty ladies (and gents!)

I'm back on the web again! It feels really good to be back, let me tell you that. I could have been blogging since Monday if the free internet that I use did not decide to take a short vacation. The truth is since last Sunday, I had no internet at home :( I was so ready to post and then when I dialed into the system, I only received the busy signals, bah! So the internet port at school decided to get a switcharoo to a new one without telling us and until very late last night, I could not go online at all. But now thanks to the invisible internet God (and some technicians), I'm able to check my email again!

So what happened during the internet-free period?

Let me tell you ladies it's a boring world and I wished I had more games installed in my computer. The all-mighty machine that I called my laptop all of the sudden became this most mundane instrument. For many days, I only used it for one purpose: to type my NaNoWriMo novel! So without further ado, I'm really happy to be back!

But if you're wondering what else happened besides the NaNo typing? Well, let me tell ya, a lot!

1. I got a new camera and it's a sexy beast!

About half a year ago, I broke my old camera, a very ancient Fuji Finepix. It was an accident: I was using self-timer to take a picture of myself (that's level 10 of camwhoring for those who are into "the art" hehe.) When I just turned my back away from it, the camera toppled and fell on the floor. A mechanical part inside the lens broke and since it could not retract, it decided not to let me take any pictures either. The bad thing is that's my first camera. The good thing is I got it for free since it came with my laptop.

So after half a year of pondering on what to get and where to buy, the day finally came and I got this sexiness from New Egg for a very bargain price. New Egg also threw in a 2MB SD card and a camera bag, that's really generous of them. Also, they shipped my stuff super quick and packed them really well. So yay to New Egg!

The Canon PowerShot A590 IS

I was pondering between the Ạ590 IS and the SD1100. The second one is Canon's more expensive point-and-shoot model with the ELPH technology (don't ask me what it stands for, I have no clue!) It's about 60 dollars more expensive than the A590 and has virtually the same features. The Ạ90, however, has a bigger screen, an optical view finder (which is kind of useless for me), more optical zoom, and takes wide-screen photos, all for 60 dollars cheaper!

The only complaint I heard from people who uses the A-cameras from Canon is the short battery life. This line of camera all uses AA batteries and the ones you get from dollar store won't make it. However, I use my rechargeable AA and it's doing really swell. So if you need a simple point and shoot digital camera, the Ạ90 IS is a good start. If you have more money in your pocket, as that's where I consult first, go ahead and get an SD750 and above. Canon makes really good cameras and the picture quality from this one is truly wonderful.

2. I went to some NaNo write-ins and met some really wonderful writers in my area:

After 2 weeks of just writing at home, my word count got quite a beating. While other people got to 20-30K of words within days, yours truly was lagging behind with merely 10K. The low word count was actually a week ago and since then I trippled my productivity. Now I'm comfortably in 30K and beyond zone, which pushes me to a very bright potential of completing this challenge altogether.

At the first few days, I barely made it through 1000 words per hour, which is quite slow in my opinion. Then as the word count kicked me in the butt, I madly typed like an insane person and last Friday completed my first 5K challenge (sounds like running to some of y'all!) It all went much much easier from there: 1K here, 2K there and I get around 3,000 words a day much easily. Yesterday I decided to take a break to let my creative juice flow and today I'm writing again, aiming for that elusive 35,000 words goal.

Writing with other people is much more productive than I expected. After a session, each of us stepped out of the room with three to five thousand written words under our belts, can you believe that? During this NaNo, I've learned so many things about writing and hope to one day teach people, especially science students, the whole process. It's very easy, actually, now that I realized the whole damn thing! (Please excuse mi lengua!)

3. It finally gets cold in herrre, brrrr!

This time last week I wore short sleeves t-shirt and now I'm bundling up head to toes with my heater turned on. For the past few days, it was 20-something degree Farenheit at night (that's waaaay below zero degree Celcius for folks who uses the SI.) Yesterday morning, I woke up to see nothing on my paper thermostat that had the lowest temperature at 54 degrees. The room was ice-cold and it took me and my heater a while to bring the room back to 54-and-beyond.

So everyone, let's bundle up and save some energy, ok? I actually feel fine when the room is in the low 70s now.

What else? Oh, I got a haircut and found out my hair was dry. A dose of moisturizing shampoo at Aveda and my hair shone again!

I think that's pretty much it, other stuff I won't dare to put online. But anyways, I'm glad to be back. Blogging will resume as normal as of today. Mr. Internet, don't go wonky on me again. I need you!

Take care everyone, I'm so glad to see all of y'all again!
Dao

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A Short Note to My Readers

Hi ladies,

How are you doing? Apparently life decided to catch up with me and there are things that need my immediate attention. Therefore I have to put this blog on hold until the end of this week to sort things out. Blogging will resume as scheduled next week.

Thank you for your continuing support and I wish you a good week.

Take care,
Dao

P.S: Please subscribe to my feed. That way you will know when I'm back! Thanks a lot!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Too Faced The Quickie Chronicles The Sure Thing

During my last trip to Marshall's to try to get a clutch, I found something very interesting and absurdly cheap: a Quickie Chronicles Palette from Too Faced Cosmetics called "The Sure Thing". Wow, that's a mouth-full for its title, isn't it? This palette was sold at Sephora for $16 USD, currently on sale at Beauty Crunch for $6.40 but wait for it... yours truly got it for $3.99 at Marshall's!
This palette looks like a small book and fits comfortably inside my palm

Inside has 2 lip glosses, 4 eye shadows, and a peachy blush
I was so tempted so I nicked a bit of the glosses to test them out, please ignore the dents :)

The swatch (top-bottom):
4 eye shadows in brown, green, pink, and yellow; plus a peachy-pink blush

While the eye shadows are sheer, they are soft and blendable. However, it takes a while to build up the color intensity to what I want. The blush is very gorgeous and super flattering.

The two lip glosses have the texture of lipsticks rather than lip glosses. I find them very moisturizing and long lasting.

The lighter color is peach-nude and very lovely

The darker color is fuchsia pink but very wearable. It's my favorite color out of the two.

Pardon for my chapped lips as I was playing with a whole bunch of lipsticks and the end result was not that pretty. The lip glosses from this set are comfortable to wear and not sticky. I think the glosses and the blush are the stars of the set whereas the eye shadows need more improvement. The Quickie Chronicle palette is small enough to stow away in a small clutch for parties or a weekend getaway. Currently Too Faced has a mini collection of 8 Quickie pallets for $59.10 USD. I think these cute makeup booklets make nice stocking stuffers or gifts for friends and colleagues.

A quick FOTD using all the stuff from this nifty palette

Eye:

  • Green e/s all over the lid, brown e/s on the outer-v and contour slightly to 1/2 the eyelid, pink e/s to contour the inner half of the eye, and yellow e/s to highlight.
  • (not shown) brown eyeliner (MAC Teddy)
Cheeks: the peachy-pink blush in the palette. It is so soft and pigmented and I just love this blush so much!

Lips: darker lipgloss all over the lips and lighter lipgloss at the middle of the lips to create the pouty looking lips.

Another look at the FOTD
"What chu lookin' at?"

That's all for today y'all! I've been super busy and there are tons of photos in my computer that need to be processed. I wish a day had 48 hours for me to finish everything I want to do. I hope you have a good day.

Take care,
Your Makeup Blogger

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Monday Money Saving Tips and a Quick Review of MAC SE Brush Sets

Hello ladies,

Happy Monday! How are we doing today? And how was your weekend? Mine completely blew just because of this thing that happens to women once a month ('nuff said, I spare you the details!) So the last two days I was a grump and all my plans for the weekend went down the drain. Thankfully it's only once a month, right?

However, being indoors most of the time was not that bad thanks to the internet and I found out some bits and bobs of information that are deemed to be useful:

1. For those who are fans of Stila, Two Faced, Lola, and DuWop, there's this website where you can get makeup from those brands for a whole lot cheaper: introducing Beauty Crunch! This website is Stila's authorized reseller and you can find things about 40-60% cheaper than at Sephora. Moreover, they also sell holiday products from last year that you can buy for cheap. I have my eyes on this brush set that originally priced at $75 USD but currently on sale for $20!


Originally priced at 75 dollars, now sold at Beauty Crunch for 20 bucks!


2. Since you know I am a fan of MAC brushes, I was tempted to get those holiday brushes at their website. However, a little bit of digging around can be profitable as I found out Nordstrom currently sells MAC Adoring Carmine brush sets at $35 USD. That's $14.50 cheaper than at MAC website! (It's like buy 2 get 1 free, y'all!)

Every year when the MAC holiday collection rolls out, I always have this temptation to take one set home. The price is much more affordable than getting the full size brushes but the only sacrifices are the shorter handles and the machine assembled and cut bristles. However, my brushes from the basic brush set I got some years ago feels almost the same as their full-size siblings. This time around, two of the sets definitely have a huge difference in term of quality.


Adoring Carmine basic brush set


As I have the basic SE set, I can see a big difference between mine and the current edition: the 219 SE pencil brush is a lot thinner, the 266 SE angle brush is very poorly cut and the bristles have different colors instead of black, and the 239 SE eyeshadow brush is not as full and fluffy. Also, the bristles of these brushes are not as soft as the full-size ones. To me, the 266 SE brush looks really wrong if you compare it with the regular version: it looks nothing like a 266 at all!

However, this set is not the worst as it still has some redeeming factors of being the basic set. The eye set is a serious offender and also is the one I want to purchase this year.

Adoring Carmine eye set which I initially really wanted to purchase


The 252SE soft eyeshadow and 275SE angled eyeshadow brushes are cut in a horrific manner that resembles nothing like the regular versions! Moreover, the bristles of the 252SE is really scratchy and cheap-looking. I got some really cheap brushes from Target that are better made than this 252SE brush from MAC just to emphasize on the scratchiness and poorly assembling of this brush. While the 209 and 212 brushes are synthetic, they are not as well-made as the one I remember from Antiquitease, MAC's last year's edition. So even if you want to get a set of eye brushes, I think you should hold your horse this year and hope that next year they will improve the quality of this brush set.

Adoring Carmine face set is the redeeming factor of their brush collection

The only reason I show the picture of the face set is the brushes are very well made, which is an irony as it was the worst set of last year's collection. I guess somebody complained enough for MAC to make a difference and I always believe in the power of letting your opinion heard. The 187 SE duo fibre brush is a bit smaller than the full size but extremely full. For ages, it is my dream brush until I got a cheaper version from a mineral makeup company. The angle blush brush is really soft and the foundation brush is nice to touch as well. These three brushes are exactly the same as the full-size ones as I really spent time at MAC counter to feel each of them simultaneously. Since I don't really use liquid concealer, the concealer brush is kind of useless for me but it's also well-made. Although I have similar brushes in my set, I may end up buying this set anyways and complain a bit louder to MAC about the eye set.
3. Please visit Marshall's-the discount store- for makeup deals: last week when I stopped by the local Marshall's to look for a clutch, I found some Stila, Two Faced, and even Lancome products there for ~75% off retail price. However, most of the products were opened and some people already tested it (I saw fingerprints smudged the lip gloss pots and all!) I did not find a clutch that I wanted but I was able to bring home a cute Two Faced palette for $3.99!

So what do you think? Do you have any websites that are similar to Beauty Crunch? Please do share with us, I'd love to hear all about them :)

Have a nice Monday and a wonderful week ahead everyone!

Love,
Your Makeup Blogger

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Friday, November 7, 2008

Friday Funny: The Puppy Edition

"Who lets the dog out?" Ok, I did! I can't help it, them doggies are so cute! Last week when I did the Kitty Edition for Friday Funny, I noticed how y'all enjoyed it. As I am an equal-opportunity animal lover, I decided to do another edition for men's best friends: the gods dogs. This one is for Alyssa's cute lil' brother named Tobey. He is the most adorable big dog I've ever seen. So here it is, for all the dogs and animal lovers.

Friday Funny: The Puppy Edition

funny dog pictures with captions
Note to human: "Need caffeine to function!"

funny dog pictures with captions
Bill Gate's dog caught using an Apple computer!

funny-dog-pictures-with-captions-stop-snoring
T-shirt: 15 dollars, couch: 300 bucks, having your dog to mute your beau's snores: priceless!
(For some reasons I found this picture very funny!)

funny-dog-pictures-with-captions-yoga
Human, this is how you do the "Happy Buddha" pose!

funny dog pictures with captions
So cute!

funny dog pictures with captions
Doesn't your dog smile like that?

funny dog pictures with captions
Another cute one, but wait until he chews your shoes!

funny dog pictures with captions
This is what I call a good listener :)

cute puppy picture, puppy playing, loldog, funny dog pictures, lol dog
Coffee already wore off, can't open eyes!
Gotta go humanz, bai bai ok?

I hope you have fun with the puppy edition. All images came from I Haz a Hotdog, aka the best way to procrastinate online. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Love,
Your Makeup Blogger

P.S: If you like my blog, please subscribe to my feed. Thanks a lot!

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