My Top 5 Eyeshadows

I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING planned this week aside from enrolment this Wednesday, so I'm stuck wandering aimlessly around the house and the neighborhood until school starts next Tuesday. Perfect timing for tagging me, Trizh! Thank you for saving me from the BOREDOM! :))

1. Elf Golden Glow
    I like this because it gives my eyes a nice   golden glow! (How creative. :P)

2. The Body Shop Golden Khaki
    This looks a bit greenish in the picture, but it actually blends very well with my skintone and gives me a polished look good for smart casual occasions. (Eek! Job interviews! >_<)

3. Etude House matte brown
   This one makes my eyes look more wide open and draws attention AWAY from eyebags. Perfect for post-cramming days nyahaha!

4. The Face Shop Lovely:Me Ex Eyes OR204
    This gives a polished effect like Golden Khaki, but is better for more informal settings.

5. Elianto matte purple
    For giving my eyes a nice, funky POP without being too over-the-top!

Doing this made me realize that I haven't posted reviews for shadows 3 and 5 yet. Yay, now I have something to work on for the week!

I tag everyone!

Etude House Fresh Cherry Tint #2 Pink

To be honest, I don't really like this tint as much as the red and peach ones.

Price: P328.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: February 2010

Packaging: I won't go into this anymore, because I already mentioned it twice.
Colors: a nice medium pink

Pigmentation: as always, very very strong

Actual Usage: It does make my lips look nicer, but I find it lacks the "oomph" that Red and Peach have. I suppose it's okay for when you want to be REALLY subtle.

 

(Left: without the product; Right: with the product)

I love playing up my lips more than I love light makeup, so a product that doesn't add anything interesting to my lips is only so-so for me.

Etude House Fresh Cherry Tint #3 Peach

I was lucky enough to be able to shoot this product in bright, clear daylight. Natural light is the best kind of photo-taking light ever! <3

Price: P328.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: February 2010

Packaging: same as the Red Fresh Cherry tint. Like some bloggers have mentioned, it looks a lot like nail polish. I have quite a number of nail polish bottles out on my dresser, and this often gets lost among them! :))
Color: It's a peach, but it actually appears more pink when concentrated. Look at how the rest of the applicator (which is saturated in the product) differs from the tip.

Pigmentation: It appears peach initially, but leaves a pink tinge when wiped off.

Actual Usage: The peach FCT gives my lips a healthy boost of slightly glossy color that is more pink than peach. It actually makes my lips look the way they do after they've been freshly exfoliated with a gentle toothbrush.

(Left: lips without product; Right: lips with product)

Etude House Dr. Oil Shine Free Finish Pact

Price: P378.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: 2-3 weeks ago

Packaging: This pebble-smooth turquoise blue thing is Etude House Philippines' smallest powder compact. It's even smaller than their Baby Skin Veiling Pact. It's nice that despite its very small size, they managed to include a mirror.

Actual Usage: The Shine Free Finish Pact is a translucent powder that aims to reduce shine. It works very well for me and performs just as well as Pigeon powders. For some reason, I prefer using a brush to apply this instead of the supplied sponge.

The Body Shop Satsuma Body Butter

Orange is my favorite color, and orange is also my favorite scent. Smelling citrus scents makes me feel happier, and it's not just my personal opinion - it's a scientifically proven fact. Citrus fruits like the satsuma are high in folate, which is responsible for the creation of serotonin (the "happy" chemical) in the brain.

A dear friend gave me a gift certificate to The Body Shop as thanks for helping with her internship assignment, and what better thing to get than something from their deliciously scented Satsuma line? :P

Price: P217.00. (Originally P625.00, but it was marked down to P417.00 because of the ongoing TBS sale, which I lowered even further with the GC. Awesome deal is awesome!)
Location Bought: The Body Shop Greenhills
Approximate Date Bought: Today

EEE! Citrus love!! ♥ ♥ ♥

Since the Grapefruit is long gone, I have something to alternate with my Raspberry again!

10 Questions

Good morning! Summer officially starts for me today. Internship is over, yay! This meme was borrowed from Jing! :D

1) A vampire or a wizard (and why)???
Wizard. Harry Potter > Edward Cullen ANY DAY. Spellcasting is infinitely more useful than sucking blood and disintegrating into ashes come morning. (Or sparkling.)

2) If you could change one thing about you, what would it be - if anything???
Self-confidence in speaking. I can write up a storm and run marathon YM sessions, but in conversations, especially ones with people I don't know much...

3) Would you rather live like a rock star or like a president? (in other words: fun or power?)
Presidents don't really make all that much money. It's their side businesses and shady dealings, if they're that sort of President, that give them all their funds. Plus, they have WAY TOO MUCH responsibility on their hands. Presidents are also more likely to be hated than rock stars! So, I would rather live like a rock star, but I would live like a responsible rock star with charities and social welfare events.

4) What's your favorite cartoon character???
This little guy. Egocentric anti-heros that make fools of themselves are entertaining to watch. :P

5) What's your (most) guilty pleasure?
Shopping. I already have enough things, and yet I still keep buying more and more and more...

6) If you were a song, what would it be???
The happy me:

 

I am the lady from Mars

And I can unscrew the stars

I can be

Anything I see

I can be

Anything that I, anything that I see

The sad me:

 

I don't love you I'm just passing the time

You could love me if I knew how to lie

But who could love me? I am out of my mind

Throwing a line out to sea

To see if I can catch a dream

7) What's your biggest dream?
Make enough money to support myself (and my frivolous interests LOL), and also a little extra to buy nice things for my future children.

8) Do you prefer to be the one who asks questions or the one who answers them, and why???
Sometimes I like being the question-answerer because I'll be able to help people. Other times, I like being the question-asker because I can learn new things.

9) What is your biggest turn off and turn on???
Turn-off: Arrogance. You may be cute and all, but if you're high and mighty, NO THANK YOU. (And overly huge noses. And jejemon-level fashion sense. And trying hard grammar.)
Turn-on: Being maasikaso and genuinely concerned for people's welfare. (And glasses. And spiky hair. Plus points if you look cuddly too ahahahahaha)

10) Have you ever broken any law?
I turned where I wasn't supposed to turn once before. (You know that "inner lane must turn left"area near Megamall? That's the one.) But when the traffic officer looked at my license and saw that I was a new driver, he only let me off with a warning. Phew.

Feel free to answer this too! <3

The Face Shop Lovely Me:Ex Eyes in OR204

This was an unplanned purchase that turned out really well! I was in a BIG HURRY to return home, but then I realized I had no spare change to pay for parking. My parking space was near The Face Shop, soo...

Price: P255.00
Location Bought: The Face Shop SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: two days ago

Packaging: The adorable small round container caught my eye, and for only a little over P200, I decided it would be the perfect thing to break up my money with. My wallet is very disappointed in me. :))

The eyeshadow pan can be popped out of the container and replaced with the other single eyeshadows that The Face Shop sells. Plus points for reusability!

Colors: OR204 is a shimmery orange that actually works for everyday wear. The other colors were a matte fluorescent pink (pretty weird, IMO), and a shimmery forest green.

Pigmentation: Weak, but it's the good, buildable kind of weak unlike Etude's craptastic Cute & Sexy quad. No fallout here either.

Actual Usage: The shadow gives my lids a really pretty glow. The effect from a distance is a polished look that doesn't look heavily made up.

Etude House Cute & Sexy Eyes No. 2 Peach Pink

So much for my Etude House winning streak.

Price: P428.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: January 2010

Packaging: It's Etude House's usual princessy pink. I really like the quality of plastic that they use in all their products.
Colors: A pale peach highlighting shade (top left), a peach lid shade (top right), a pink lid shade  (bottom left), and a brown crease shade (bottom right). There were application instructions on the box, but they were in Korean and  had no diagram. All shades are shimmery, btw.

Pigmentation: horrendously weak. Normally I'm very forgiving with how pigmented products are, but this is just BAD.

There's almost no difference between the highlighting shade, the peach shade and the pink shade!

Actual Usage: This quad barely shows up on my lids, even with primer. It just looks like I put a ton of sparkles on them. Maybe fairer skinned people will have better luck with this? But even then, look at the fallout on the lower left corner of my eye. Ick! I don't like shadows that do that!

 

The brown is the only shade worth using.

Kathi from Lotus Palace said that the other two quads in this product line have better pigmentation, so I might try them out in the future.

Etude House Peach Skin Pact

AT LAST! A good highlighting powder at a pretty good price! (Totally not like these two failures!)

Price: P678.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: January 2010

Packaging: Smooth durable plastic, the curviness of the compact makes it fun to hold. Actually, it sort of reminds me of mochi. The metal ring supporting the inside adds to its overall sleekness.

Colors: I have shade 1, Peach Bloom. Does this mean there are more shades somewhere in the market? Peach Bloom is a skintone shade slightly fairer than my own, but it blends very well. The shimmers in the powder are very fine and evenly distributed.

There used to be a peach engraved onto the product too, but it's gone now because I've been using this frequently ever since I got it.

Side Note: The Peach Skin Pact has a very strong peach scent. It smells good, but I find it quite irritating. Luckily, the scent doesn't linger on the skin.

Actual Usage: A brush can be used to apply this onto the bridge of the nose and the apples of the cheeks, but since the product gives such an even, natural-looking glow (no over-the-top Edward Cullen or disco ball sparkles here, TYVM!), I use it all over my face. It brightens up instantly! I never use this without concealer though, as it emphasizes my dark undereye circles.

LEFT: without concealer; RIGHT: with concealer - I use ELF's All Over Cover Stick. 

Randomly, I think I need a haircut. :|

There are tons of other reviews all over the internet for this, but off the top of my head, here are Jing's and the Muse's reviews.

Etude House Petite Darling Lipstick PK006

Price: P278.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: I seriously can't remember. Somewhere between January - today? :P

Packaging: Typical Etude House pink. Translucent pink cover, chrome pink base. Super portable - it's slightly shorter than a Chapstick tube, and about as chubby as a Nivea Caregloss tube.
Color: A nice, slightly sheer, slightly glossy hot pink.

Pigmentation: Moderate. Gives a good wash of color that stays until you eat and/or wipe it off with tissue.

Actual Usage: It's not drying! Yay!

Check out Martha's and BeautySwatch's swatches on this product too!

I hope you're not getting bored with Etude House yet, I've still got many more reviews to go!

Etude House Oh M'Eye Lash Maxi Volume Mascara

I mentioned before that I don't like using products and tools for the eyelashes, but OH M'EYE! I'm actually using mascara now! :P

Price: around P248.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: one month ago

Packaging: It's a super simple, slightly chubby mascara tube. I wasn't expecting much from the packaging anyway - this was EH's cheapest mascara variant. (Don't buy expensive mascara, remember? It expires quickly!)
Colors: Blaaaack.

Actual Usage: Why did I hold off on using mascara for so long?! I have sleepy eyes that tend to make me look masungit, and this mascara makes me look more awake (and therefore less masungit yay!). And it doesn't feel clumpy too!

Lasting power on me stays the whole day, even without eyelash curler. (I still haven't gotten over my fear of using that ahahaha) Take note that this isn't waterproof though.

Side Note: I don't like the way the mascara tends to clump at the very tip of the wand. But for "my first mascara", this is still a pretty good product.

I think I'm turning into an Etude House brand whore. :)) I can't help it tho, I've had a good track record with their products so far!

Etude House LUCIDarling Fantastic Cheek Gradation in Orange

Price: P748.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: three weeks ago

Packaging: This is actually the main reason why I got this. :)) The compact is sleek and handy, the mirror is of a good size, and the brush is very soft.
Colors: LUCIDarling Fantastic Cheek Gradations are similar, if not identical to Jill Stuart blushes in concept. Use the four colors by themselves (altho the top left one is a highlighter), or swirl your brush around them to mix. I got Orange because I already have a pink blush from Etude.

Pigmentation: Weak, but that's actually why I like it. It's very buildable, so you can never go overboard. Perfect for busy school days when you have very little time to go to the restroom and re-apply blush so that it's just right - some haphazard swipes of this blush (without looking at the mirror, even), and you're good to go!

Actual Usage: The problem with not-so-pigmented blushes is that I can't tell if I've photographed them well or not. Anyway, here it is on my cheek. I like the way it gives me a very natural flush in person.

I'm actually considering getting the pink variant of this, but maybe in the distant future. It's quite pricey for an Etude House product.

Etude House Princess Finger Food Hand Lotion in Strawberry Lollipop

Price: around P200.00
Location Bought: Etude House SM Megamall
Approximate Date Bought: January 2010

Packaging: simple flip-top bottle with a cute strawberry-print label, very portable

This lotion moisturizes my hands well, absorbs super quickly, and has a yummy strawberry scent. Other variants available are Lemon Sugar, Steamed Milk and May Rose Tea (which smells really bad, IMO).