Tag Archives: Friday Round-up

Nov 28 2010

Round-up

This week has been full of holidays. We had a national holiday on Tuesday and on Friday there was another. I have been going to view all the autumn leaves in Kyoto; I still have more to get through but not much time left!

monkeys

Arashiyama monkeys!

With regards to make-up, I have been shamefully minimal over the past few weeks. Firstly I’m lazy and my room is cold so I’d rather have those extra minutes in bed, secondly now that I am universally considered an adult (at the ripe old age of 21) the primitive instinct to search for eternal youth has kicked in. I’m pretty sure this is primitive, I can imagine lots of Neanderthal ladies ran around rubbing bird droppings on their faces to preserve their skin. I, on the other hand, have taken the high ground and resorted to wearing dungarees, talking with a lisp, and tying my hair in pigtails.

Me having had one too many

Ok perhaps not, but basically make-up gives me lines I don’t actually have and that’s not cool so I have been sparing with it recently.

news

This week we’ve been talking about girl crushes. I’m not really sure I get crushes, instead I kind of get this urge to…collect awesome people. It’s a bit like when I play pokemon, I don’t have to catch them all (I am far more discerning) but I do have to catch the cool ones. Even if I never play with them, just having them suits me fine. In the same way, I often feel the need to create an awesome person menagerie. Naturally these awesome people would have to be let out now and then to continue doing the awesome things that made them awesome. Also they would most likely object to being in my awesome person menagerie and I’d probably get sued or something. So I have to settle with having an imaginary menagerie. An Imaginagerie.

Off the top of my head, these people would be part of my Awesome Imaginagerie.Awesome people

Clockwise from left: Emma Stone, Taylor Swift, Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and Maggie Gyllenhaal

I noticed while putting all these images together, my Awesome Imaginagerie seems to consist exclusively of pale people. Perhaps I feel like they’re kindred spirits and that together we could talk about being paper white and hiss at any errant rays of sun streaming through the windows of my castle.

Taylor Swift is the only musician on the list, but try as I might, I just can’t like her music. I would really like nothing more than to be a Taylor Swift fan, I could go to actual concerts which aren’t those weird reunion ones where everyone’s a bit aged and…rotund and they have to have a little rest in the middle of songs. Alas alack, it cannot be. But Taylor Swift has awesome hair and awesome make-up and seems like a genuinely awesome person. Awesome.

Most of these ladies usually have great make-up looks as well, and I’ve found myself poring over their pictures and scrutinising their make-up many times. Tilda Swinton is the exception to this. She wears very minimal make-up, if any, and yet she cannot help but look magnificent. I don’t ever use that word (but perhaps I should start) but to me it perfectly describes Tilda Swinton. Magnificent and Majestic.

purchases

This round-up has not been very make-up related. I suppose that’s because I haven’t been wearing much. To placate you, here are products with which I am currently not 100% satisfied.

Concealer for blemishes: None of them seem to do their job. I have been having better luck with using Estee Lauder Doublewear (though the lightest shade is a little dark for me), or the Shu Uemura Nobara cover stick but I’m still miffed that no one has yet to create a perfect concealer. I don’t expect total miracles, but everything seems so unsatisfactory.

Mascara: I am still using Fiberwig extra long, and I still like it very much but the disadvantages I mentioned in my review still irk me a little. I would like something a little more separating or volumising or both! I have my eye on Cezanne Volume Comb Mascara: it has good reviews on cosme.net and is really cheap. If I get it I’ll be sure to report back!

Nov 14 2010

Birthday Round-Up!

This is like a Friday Round-Up except it’s on my Birthday (okay well actually the day after)! Smart huh?

purchases

Ok so as I’m alone in Japan for my Birthday, I took it upon myself to buy a few presents, as you do. I am ridiculously good at buying presents for myself, I loved all of them!

So first off I bought a few pretty things from the drugstore.

products

Lavshuca Moist Melting Rouge in 3 colours: RD-4, RD-3, and PK-5. So far I love these (and I will review them!). They are great MLBB colours with a formula that’s really easy to wear. They feel like a really pigmented balm. Their lasting power is better than I had expected as well.

Kate Gel Eyeliner in BK-2. I talked in my November Round-up about Kate Eyeliners but at that point I didn’t love them. This one has converted me though. Lasting power is incredible but the thing I love most about this eyeliner is its colour. It is brown but it has very little redness in it, unlike MAC Dipdown (I’ll post comparison swatches). Because of this it doesn’t bring out as much redness in and around my eyes, so I love it!

Integrate Gracy Cheek Colour in Rose 300. I was on the look out for a matte blush and stumbled across this one. This shade is exactly the colour of my natural blush so I use it for a really natural look. It blends out really easily but this compromises staying power. I have still been wearing it every day since I got it though.

I also caved and bought the new Majolica Majorca perfume. It took me a while to decide because I didn’t LOVE the scent, I just thought it was pleasant. In the end I bought it because the scent lasts so long, it’s easy to apply and on the day I tested it, I got nothing but compliments.

The night before my Birthday my Fyrinnae order arrived! I think their impeccable timing proves, as we all suspected, that Fyrinnae are indeed magic. Not only that, the order was in a parcel that was thin enough to fit into the dorm mailbox which meant I didn’t have to arrange redelivery or anything! Yay!

Fyrinnae

Obviously there are swatches to come but I just had to take a photo when I got them all. Fyrinnae enthusiasts will probably notice I chose very safe colours: neutrals and a few golds thrown in. La Noche, however, is bright blue: I couldn’t just order neutrals from a company with such special bright shades.

I am really excited to try Damn Paladins as it looks like a lovely grey-taupe. And of course Ashes will be one of the first I try because it is such a nice grey shade. Can you tell I like grey?

Recently I have been buying bath salts to try. In Japan there is a huge range of bath salts so my choice pretty much depended on which packaging was prettiest and which ones didn’t smell like ginger (I hate that smell). Luckily, Yu Ming just posted about Japanese Bath Salts on Beauty Box so I now have some idea of what to buy. In fact today I went out to get the Kikiyu bath salts so I’m excited to use them tonight!

A guide to getting Mad Men’s Joan Holloway look? Yes please!

Spiders are scary and Allie’s post tells me my fear makes sense.

And to finish, here is my birthday cake! It may look like ice cream to you, but I was pretending it was cake! Yummy.Ice cream

Oct 16 2010

Not So Friday Round-Up

So I googled and in some countries it’s still Friday, so this is still kind of a Friday round-up in spite of it being 11am on Saturday for me.

news

I’ve joined twitter! I am now a twit. Or tweeter. Or whatever the term is. So far it’s been invaluable in keeping up with everyone’s blogs, but I’m still kind of scared to post…Ah well! So if you’re on twitter, follow me (GlossedTweets) for daily inane ramblings. Woo.

It is getting cooler here! Yay! Recently the temp has been peaking at 24 degrees C – not quite in the lovely teens yet, but it’s getting there. People look at me weirdly when I say I like cold weather but really, what’s not to like?

5 things I like about cold weather:

  • Clothes! Chunky knits, coats, boots, tights, hats and gloves! There’s so much more you can DO with clothes in cold weather, in Summer everything is so gross that eventually you take to hiding in your room wearing pyjamas and hissing at the light coming from your window (…other people do that too, right?). Like a vampire. But not a sparkly one.
  • Hot drinks. There is something so…unbalanced about drinking hot drinks in t-shirt weather, but the hot drinks are the best drinks! Cold hot chocolate is just chocolate milk; cold tea, while popular in Japan, has nothing on hot tea; and iced coffee is awesome but doesn’t share the bohemian decadence of its heated brother.
  • Make-up doesn’t melt. Even the best primers have difficulty holding make-up on my face when it’s hot. Combined with cycle rides every day make-up doesn’t stand a chance. Because of this, and also because make-up is an extra layer on my face (therefore making it hotter…obviously) I often forego it in Summer and that makes me sad :(.
  • Make-up gets awesome. In Autumn and Winter any look works: dramatic eyes, dramatic lips, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, and even bronzed summer skin look incredible.
  • Leaves! I’m lucky to be in Kyoto because it’s famous for its autumn leaves; people come here especially to see them. But even at home autumn colours transform dull road-side vegetation into works of art.

In make-up news, Shu Uemura’s Christmas Collection is out in Japan and the US already and NARS holiday is now available on the NARS website.

purchases

Okay so this week I’ve been a little boring and have only bought a sunscreen. There are a lot of things I want to buy though, especially because I’m going through a ‘none of my eyeshadows suit me’ phase at the moment. It seems that when I try to do something on my eyes which isn’t tightlining and slight contouring, I look about 30 years older: tired and overwhelmed.

I’m tempted to try out some browns but being cool-toned I’ve kind of taught myself to stay away from them… I also take this eyeshadow conundrum as a cue to place my first Fyrinnae order (something I’ve been putting off for about a year now).

www

So I’ve discovered a lot of new and great blogs this week, you’ll see them soon on my blog roll to the right-hand side.

Cosmeddicted has made me want to add a face net to my skin routine

BeautyQQ’s video channel! The make-up tutorials are cool but I mostly watch because she makes me laugh so much, she’s a lot of fun.

Ok I haven’t tried this yet because I don’t have an oven (though someone did make bread in his rice cooker the other day…) but if it works well then I will eat it for every meal: Healthy Chocolate Cake (made with beans)!

Oct 8 2010

Friday Round-up

Wow this week has gone so fast! I feel like I’ve been so busy all week, and the weekend isn’t looking much better! Ah well I guess it’s better that way…

This week I have been favouring the natural look for sure; I feel a little silly going into a classroom all made-up when everyone else is so relaxed. Then again the actual Japanese students at the university are the opposite, they must spend aaaages getting ready, and they touch-up at lunch time over noodles or onigiri. It’s actually on the weekends and the evenings when I really experiment with make-up. Then I can spend hours messing around with colours and wearing combinations I normally wouldn’t try.

Strawberry Mochi is back!

Here’s a cool guide to buying Japanese products online – the list is not exhaustive but the mini-reviews are really helpful!

A Touch of Blusher has a bunch of information on the Japanese holiday collections – I’m excited!

So I have few interesting pictures to share this week, sorry :(. Here’s something from engrish.com to keep you happy:

 

Cool things Japan has:

Hot coffee in a can. I’m not sure how widespread this is in the world, but in the UK we don’t have this. It is coffee. Hot coffee. In a can. And the can isn’t boiling hot (which is weird). I like to drink this stuff because it’s like when you’re young and you go on a school trip and get a sachet of astronaut food. And even though it tastes rubbish (although this coffee tastes good) you enjoy it because you are basically eating science. That is what it is like to drink this space age hot can coffee.

Funny toilets. Okay so most people know about Japanese toilets – they, like the coffee above, are totally high tech. You sit down and they give you advice on your love life, paint your nails, massage your brain and make you tea. I have now come to expect this of all toilets. Going back to england will be sad. They also have this awesome thing: the fake flush sound. Instead of the courtesy flush that has to suffice at home, you can push this button and it will mimic the sound of a loo flushing. Problem is, it does it for ages. I pushed it out of curiosity but then I couldn’t turn it off and so it just made this constant flushing noise. So I left. And pretended it wasn’t me. Turns out they also have this function on mobile phone straps. So if you happen to be in one of those primitive non-life-coach toilets you can still have the fake flushing noise. Just push the button on the mobile phone strap and wooosh. Or should I say, flooosh!

Reverse Cardigans. So I can’t find a picture of these on the internet but I saw them in uniqlo the other day. Basically they are cardigans. But you can wear them back-to-front, thus making them into a button-up-back jumper. It seemed like a novel idea but I didn’t realise quite how popular it is here. This week at least 3 of my teachers have been wearing these, and today my – usually undivided – attention was drawn to my teacher’s cardigan jumper (jardigan? carper?). How in the world do they do up those buttons? I went through all the possibilities – it was a long lesson – in my head.

They do them up at the front and then push them around to the back, like a bra. It would make sense. But it is totally unfeasible. Not only would they have to do the buttons up with their arms constrained (as they can’t be in the sleeves or the jardigan wouldn’t turn around), but they also wouldn’t be able to maneuver their arms up into the sleeves once the jardigan was the right way round.

Do them up while it’s not on then pull it over your head. Much more feasible but, unless Japanese cardigan button holes are chastity-belt tight, they’d probably undo as they were stretched over your head.

So, I concluded that these jardigans are a two person job. Perhaps that’s why people wear them: it’s the equivalent of those traffic light parties (where you dress up in colours which represent the status of your love life) but in everyday wear. Wearing this cardigan says ‘I’m taken, and my partner dresses me, back off’. Alternatively, Japan has another invention, a jardigan-button-do-er-upper. I imagine it to be like a back scratcher but with little nimble grips on the end to help with your buttoning. And it has a button for a flushing sound.