The cutest glosses ever...

....was what I thought the first time I saw the Balmshell glosses last year at Shoppers Drug Mart. Balmshell is a Canadian company, best known for their glosses that have a unique key chain illustration at the end. They are also sold online on Sephora and ship internationally from their own website Balmshell.com.

Anyway last summer I was looking for some items to complete a swap and came across these glosses. Since they were Canadian I couldn't resist picking them up and also got one for myself, in the shade named Darling You Look Fabulous:




The gloss is super slim, about the width of a slim Sharpie or a thick pen. The gloss end is on one side, and the illustration on the other. There is a key chain ring attachment provided so that when the gloss is finished, you can unscrew the illustration part and attach it to the key ring:




The gloss format is a doe foot style applicator:




Darling You Look Fabulous is one of the brighter colours in the range, and shows up as a semi-sheer hot pink:





The colour shows up relatively true to the tube, which is pretty good considering my lips are quite pigmented naturally. The texture is for the most part non-sticky (just very slightly sticky). These are also mildly scented (nothing crazy strong), for this shade Darling You Look Fabulous the scent is slightly sweet.


Here's the fun part: the illustration! There is a slider inside that moves to tell the story, changing the picture depending on how you hold it.

First you see this girl wrapped in her towel as if after a shower:


She's going behind the changing screen:


Hidden behind the screen:


And now revealed looking super fabulous! Haha :D



Each gloss shade has a different illustration which brings out the collector in me...

By the way, I've had these pictures in my Photobucket account for erm, 6 months now? I decided I should stop procrastinating and post about these since Balmshell is having a 40-65% off sale for some of their existing shades to make way for new ones.

These are the discounted shades:
Beach Patrol $12
Today's The Day $8
That's So 80's $8
Confessions of a Call Girl $8
Wilderness Girl $7

Regular retail is $20, so it looks like a pretty good deal! So what do you think? Cutest glosses ever or is it just me?

EOS Adult Grey contact lenses

I've been looking for new contacts since my supply of Freshlook Colorblends and regular contacts were almost depleted. Since the EOS lenses looked great on Jen (Frmheadtotoe), I decided to give them a try.



The colour I got was EOS Grey, but it tends to be more of a blue-gray colour in real life. Here are some comparisons:

Daylight - less blue and more grey in colour, which is what I want.



Daylight - the blue tones of the colour seem slightly more obvious because I was wearing a sheer wash of blue eyeshadow.



With flash the blue tones come out as well:




These are definitely less subtle than the Freshlook Amethyst contacts I was used to wearing:





The EOS lenses have a slightly smaller diameter (14.0mm) than the Freshlooks (14.2mm), meaning they give your eyes slightly more area to breathe. These lenses enlarge the iris slightly, though not as much as other circle lenses like Acuvue Define.

Surprisingly I find the EOS less comfortable to wear for prolonged periods compared with Freshlook, even though the EOS lenses have a smaller diameter. It must be something to do with the lens material. After about 3 hours of wear my eyes feel tired, sometimes sooner than 3 hours if I'm watching a movie. With Freshlooks my eyes would get tired only after 4-5 hours.

A complaint I have with Freshlooks is that the coloured dots tend to be rather close to the pupil of the eye since they are regular sized lenses (not circle lenses with big irises). EOS does not have that problem.

However the EOS power seems to be slightly off (or poorer quality perhaps?). It could just be my imagination but I find that my left lens feels lower in power than the equivalent power of my regular clear contacts. Basically if I wear a 3.25 clear lens, things look clearer with my left eye than if I wear a 3.25 EOS lens.

I only have this problem with one side, so maybe it is a manufacturing quality issue. The problem may also be related to the curvature of the lens. I have slight astigmatism so perhaps the curvature of Freshlooks suits my left eye better than the EOS lens.

I purchased these off Prettyandcute.com but shortly after that she stopped selling circle lenses unfortunately. Pity because I still want to try the brown...perhaps when I go to Asia this year.

Annabelle Cosmetics: New Trio Eyeshadows

As promised yesterday here's a look at the eyeshadow trios from Annabelle. I should mention that the company is discontinuing 2 trios from the current lineup - Amazon Green and Holy Smoke, which will be replaced by the below new colours.

If you have wanted to try Amazon Green and Holy Smoke you should stock up before they are gone from the shelves. I will also have two Holy Smoke trios for an upcoming giveaway, so stay tuned!

On to the new colours:



The two new shades that will be released are Blue Hue on the left, and Grafix on the right.

The colours are much more vibrant than the current lineup of trios, which I think is a good improvement since a lot of the shades in the current lineup looked very similar and consisted mostly of neutrals.

Blue Hue:



The colours are just as vibrant when swatched, almost as intense they look in the pan. They have a nice smooth texture, and go on like butter.




Grafix:



The quality of Grafix is consistent with Blue Hue - smooth texture and nicely pigmented.



The trios are also conveniently sized for travel, and perfect for people like me since I have never finished an eyeshadow. They're slightly larger than a Bourjois blush, and the packaging is sturdy enough to carry around.



Will be posting some looks with these in the near future! Pretty excited about the blue colour since thats very me :D

New releases from Annabelle Cosmetics!

Reviews will coming up for these! If you are impatient though, these new colours should be in Canadian stores this week, and are also up for viewing on their website.

OPI Absolutely Alice

When I first heard about the OPI Alice in Wonderland collection from British Beauty Blogger I knew I was going to be buying this shade. I love glitters, and the fact that this was going to be an intense blue made it more desirable.

Here's 3 coats of Absolutely Alice, and 1 coat Seche Vite. The colour is basically blue + silver glitter in a clear base.



(pardon the crappy cuticles. Good thing I don't run a nailpolish blog!)



Closeup of the colour opacity with 3 coats - gorgeous right? I should note though that the colour is not as blue as it appears in the pictures. It leans a but more turquoise than the pictures suggest.



Glitters are awesome because they dry so quickly. I'm so tempted to get rid of my regular creme polishes. They take too long to dry, and chip more easily compared with most glitters. The only drawback to glitters is that they are harder to remove.

I did more spring cleaning and updated my blog sale with more items, so please take a look! :)

Happy Lunar New Year!

Hope you had a great new year with lots of red packets, if you celebrate it! I had a 3 day weekend which was nice, but somehow didn't get much done.

I apologize for being away from the blog for so long. I've been focusing on grad school applications so I basically spent the last few weeks studying for the tests or lurking around blogs via Google Reader.

Saturday (just before New Year) I finally managed to get my hair cut. I kinda didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted so the end result wasn't quite to my liking. The length was what I wanted but I think next time I would ask for the back to be shorter relative to the sides.



Used Too Faced Smurfette lip gloss and Bourjois Ambre d'Or blush that day.





Sunday for Chinese New Year we had hotpot at home. I decided to wear gold themed eyeshadow in line with the occasion:







All colours were from the Maybelline Amber Adventure quad, one of my first ever quads when I started getting into makeup. Haven't used it in ages so it was nice to find it again in my stash. The bottom lashline (very faint, I know) had a little bit of gold liner on the outer 1/2 (MAC Brassy Fluidline).

Anyway next weekend is the beauty blogger meetup in Toronto hosted by the lovely Farah, and I'm super excited for it! Hope your week goes well :)