I was totally inspired by Amo-chan’s Alice in Wonderland nails she posted on her blog a while ago. Since my nail painting skills kinda suck, I’ll walk you though what each design is meant to be!
From left to right: White teapot, Cheshire Cat stripes, Cheshire Cat disappearing smile, Ace of hearts playing card
Finally, little white tea up. The designs on the fingers were relatively basic and easy, but this one took me a good 15 minutes!
A few people have asked me whether I would do an Okarie inspired tareme (droopy eyes) makeup tutorial. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Okarie’s makeup style, but I really admire that she’s serious about her blog, isn’t afraid to show her bare face and shares all her makeup secrets with all her fans.
Start with a clean slate by applying your foundation. I used Garnier BB Cream as a base, and my favourite foundation at the moment, Chanel Aqua Lumiere water based foundation.
First up is eyebrows. Okarie keeps hers really thin and light. I used Cosmagic Brow-up eyebrow mascara to lighten my brows.
Then apply a light pink blush. I’m using Ameli Shiny Cake Blush. Apply over the apple of your cheek for the dolly cute look.
Now eye shadow. At the moment, I’m totally head over heels for this four tone smoky eye ‘the talking palette’ by Stila.
Apply like pictured. The trick is to darken up the outer edge of eye, while lightening the rest, using the mid tone (3) to define the eye socket and the darkest shade (4) to start creating the tareme effect.
The next important step is eyeliner. I’m using Dolly Wink liquid eyeliner. Resist your urge to draw out the wing by following your natural eye line. Okarie draws her wing at a downward angle, like below.
Now the false lashes. For upper lashes I’m using trusty Dolly Wink No.1. Okarie often layers up two sets of upper lashes to make them look super thick.
For lower lashes, I’m using a set of natural looking Taiwanese made lower lashes from ebay, and Dolly Wink No.7 ‘Vivid pop’. I also used No.7 in my Ageha tutorial.
Cut the lower lashes in half, as we only need them on the outer corner of the eyes.
Apply half of each of the lower lashe son the outer edges of each eye, then place Dolly Wink No.7’s over the top.
As a final touch to the eyes, use your liquid eyeliner to draw a black line right in the middle of your tear line.
Annnd, curl your hair~
Okarie always leave two strands on either side of her face uncurled. This is because she has a broad face in gyaru model terms and this helps thin her face down.
So there you have it! It’s a really easy look to create – good luck!
I’ve been tweeting recently that I’ve never home dyed my hair…literally never! My mum used to dye my hair when I was young – get this, because she dyed her hair so to make it look consistent she had to dye mine as well!! – and I remember it always turning out quite streaky and uneven. Then I just avoided dying for ages, until I started working and had enough money to go to the hairdresser. I was paying up to $350 every 3 months to get my hair dyed. But it was worth it. The colour always looked perfect.
So when Kean from Vanitybox.com.au asked me if I would like to review their new Fresh Light Blythe range of hair dyes, I had to sit on it for a week. I thought, maybe there are other girls out there who are afraid to dye their own hair, and maybe I’ll take one for the team and test it out.
Just to be safe, I picked a colour quite close to what I have now, so that if I messed it up, it wouldn’t be too obvious!
I picked ‘Melty Cherry’, a warm light brown colour. I was really interested in the ‘mochi mochi’ bubble series, especially because it promised to be really easy!
As with all Japanese hair dyes, this one has the cutest ever packaging. The colours are supposedly inspired by Blythe dolls. Personally I find Blythe dolls a bit freaky! But I like the colour range.
The pack comes with the dye liquids, a pump lid, rubber gloves and after colour treatment shampoos.
I’m not sure why it wants you to put the bottle in the box, I suppose it’s to keep it from tipping over?
The black bottle contains the colouring agent. It has a very nice fresh apple fragrance, but once mixed, the scent is completely overtaken by the chemical smell.
The foam is nice and thick and holds my hair in place without any pins while I wait.
Setting the timer for 30 minutes.
30 minutes later, I can see my colour is changing…
I did use the after colour treatment included in the pack, but I still prefer L'Oréal Professionnel Expert Serie Vitamino Color Treatment. The Schwarzkopf treatment left my hair a little heavy.
Before:
I’ve been avoiding the hairdresser to try and save money, so I had some pretty bad regrowth going on!
After:
The colour I used was quite similar to my current colour, only a little lighter, so there wasn’t a huge difference ^^* but you can see how wonderfully well it covered up my unsightly regrowth! My No.1 fear about home dying is that the colour would go on unevenly, and everyone would be able to tell. But my fears have been officially dispelled. Fresh Light Blythe Bubble dye gave me a colour job that is almost as good as the hairdresser! Of course the there were things it couldn’t do, like match my original colour and regrowth.
I do have to comment that the colour started fading from my blond tips from the first wash after dying. I’m not bothered, but if I was, I would just redye because it’s so cheap!!
This review is sponsored by Vanity Box (http://vanitybox.com.au). They are based in Australia (yay!), but they ship internationally as well! They are still quite new, having only been around since 2010, but with their amazing products, excellent customer service and super fast shipping, I can tell they are going to be the next big thing. But there’s definitely something special about this retailer that gives them an edge against other more established online stores. Unlike some Asian fashion retailers, Vanity Box doesn’t ‘cattle drive’ their stock. You get a feeling from the effort they put into their well built website and excellent product descriptions that they are passionate about everything they sell. Also I might mention that the store owner is a dear!
This description on their website:
Beginning in mid 2010, Vanity Box is an online boutique store focusing on chic and trendy Korean fashion wear and Korean cosmetics. At Vanity Box, we aim to provide a pleasant shopping experience. Our motto is to provide quality yet affordable products without compromising our service. Vanity Box is the only foreign supplier of Ameli cosmetics, a new contender in the Korean market with a strong following online.
Good news – use discount “HNY” to get 20% off everything in store!
After taking pictures in my backyard for the past few weeks, I’ve decided it’s totally past due for me to change up the background! Fortunately, over the spring, all this wonderful tall grass has sprung up in the nature strip behind my neighbourhood. Shooting with a remote among the grass was a little challenging, and not to mention, damn prickly, but I’m happy I got some depth into my photos for once.
Anna from http://fenuabeaute.blogspot.com/ was telling me that my blog is somewhat like a photography blog, because of all the high res photos I upload. I think she’s right. I kept on upgrading my skills and gear to get better quality pics for my blog, but in the mean time I actually developed a real passion for photography. Especially after getting the opportunity to do some commercial shoots for material pleasures, I felt like it’s probably time for me to submit myself to some formal training, rather than just messing around with this trial and error bs. I remember when I took drawing lessons my illustration skills improved more in two weeks than it had in two years!
Wearing: Shirt, thrifted; belt by Country Road (I love Country Road belts!); Skirt from ebay.com; Jeffrey Campbell Litas.
Moving on to other business…
A while ago when Jen from http://nynb.blogspot.com/ commented on my Bambi Almond Brown review that she really wanted a pair – so I sent her one! I didn’t expect anything back, but a pleasant surprise package from Jen was waiting for me earlier this week! This is officially the first thing a blogger friend has sent me something in the mail since I published my first post back in April last year.
How cute is the stationary!
So many masks to try – thanks so much Jen!
Oh a side note. Those of you who read my random and sporadic twitter rantings have been kept up to date with my break up from my boyfriend of 7 years in November last year. This inevitably lead to me being absent from the blogsphere for the next couple of months while I got my life back in order. Luckily, or perhaps unwisely, I have someone new in my life :)
You always hear those stories about people suddenly taking up uncharacteristic hobbies after a breakup. Well I’m no exception to that stereotype, as it turns out. I thought I might share with you, via self indulgent photos, what random things I’ve been up to the past few months.
Cooking!
Like…what?? Yeah the fact that I’d never set foot in the kitchen before was clear to everyone when I kept on asking where the salt was kept!
Gardening?!!
This is even lower on the scale of likely things Jiawa would do. You know, because I hate dirt, and bugs, and being damp…oh and I’ve killed more plants than I have grown. But my boyfriend’s been the one out watering the little shoots everyday…still haven’t quite figured that part out yet!
On that note, I’ll end this unnecessarily long post with a random camwhore flash!!
