Bad day

Today I probably had one of the most terrible days in a couple of months. While having a dinner at a Greek restaurant, my wallet was stolen from my purse. It contained only 40 bucks, but I had my ID and cards in there, and the thieves have already taken nearly $1000 CAD from my account. Hope that my crappy Polish bank acknowledges the loss and refunds me. So tomorrow morning I am heading to the police to get a copy of my report and fax it to the bank in Poland.

Oh, and just to make it worse, I burned my shoulders and chest. They're hot pink right now.

Yeah, woe is me.

Midnight update

Hello my lovelies, I just wanted to update you very quickly on how I am doing :) 

So my parents arrived two days ago and since we have seen and walked a lot, so I didn't have too much time on my hands for any blogging. Today we went to the Grouse Mountain and attempted climbing Grouse Grind trail, which is only 2.9 km long but climbs up for 800m, which means it is extremely steep. My mum was really short of breath, but we managed to go all the way up! Here I am on the path.

Yes, the boots are the latest fashion, I suggest you go pick a pair yourselves!

Afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with a great dinner at a Mexican place and had a drop of Canadian whiskey to celebrate my mother's name day. As a result of the eventful day, I am dog tired right now and I am going to bed in a moment!

On a different note, my parents brought some awesome gifts for me and fiance, which I definitely want to share with you, and they also brought in their luggage some of the make-up stuff I ordered online and sent to my brother to NYC to save on shipping and customs. I played with some of it this morning and there're some really great bits and pieces! Watch out for my haul, I'll try to post it as soon as possible.

That's all for now, I guess :) I also wanted to thank all of my new followers for joining my blog and my older followers for their lovely comments and support, with special thanks going to Sarah from If the shoe fits... and Stephanie from Steph Stuph; you rock, girlies!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great one! xxx

My make-up breakthroughs

I'm into a bit of nostalgic mood today (maybe it's because yesterday I watched my brother's graduation day at Columbia Law School through live streaming; the internet really is amazing...) and I started thinking about my earliest experiences with make-up and what were my favorite looks and products... So I thought it might be interesting/ funny to share it with you, guys :)

I think my make-up experiments actually started in the secondary school. I was in a theatre troupe and often played main parts in our performances, so I really wanted my costumes and make-up to match the character. I remember playing a young girl who went mad because of her unrequited love for a handsome knight; I had a long, white gown and I thought my make-up should look otherworldly. This is why I purchased some absolutely crazy products back then, like a metallic, silver/beige lipgloss which I never used, I think not even for the play :)

At that time I also got some other extreme (at least for a 13 year old) products, like a super dark, brownish cherry lipstick from Lumene. Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. I'd have problems to pull it off even now, and then... I remember it was very pigmented and I think it was actually a good lipstick, after all, I just went crazy with the shade :)

Then my preferences did a complete 180 thanks to some article posted in a teenage magazine. It was a praise to natural looking girls and natural make-up: using only clear mascara (hell, what's the point of using a clear mascara on your lashes, I don't know the secret till today, it does absolutely nothing), clear gloss and some transparent powder. Not that this is a harmful approach, just totally not me...

In high school I started experimenting more and more again. My main issue was acne and I did everything to cover it, but at times it would get worse and I would feel absolutely down and ugly and refuse to leave the house. I guess everyone who has had similar skin problems knows what I am talking about. So I tried countless concealers and color correctors, none of them really working to my advantage, I guess. I also remember ordering some make-up from Avon, because my class mate was a representative, and this is how I came into possession of a ridiculous, glitter-ball lipgloss, just because it smelled of artificial peaches. This is also when I discovered some good stuff, though, like make-up application techniques, brushes, loose face powder from Bourjois (love the smell!). My biggest breakthrough was using highlighting shades on the inner corner of my eye and up to the brow bone as well as blending colors together. One of my favorite color combos was true gold eyeshadow on the first half of the lid and shimmery pink on the other half. You see, I was way into shimmer :)

During uni, I started using more eyeshadow colors thanks to my cousin, who got me my first eyeshadow palette. It IS crap; the quality of the eyeshadows is just terrible now that I can compare it to some decent eyeshadows, but I still owe her :) I also ventured into the world of blusher, which I skipped earlier since I thought my skin was too pinky on itself, and I perfected my winged eyeliner. When I got my first, long-term job as an English teacher in a private language school, I started putting more and more effort into my make-up looks and settled on using liquid foundation to even my skin out, which I had never done before except for the nights out.

And then, finally, around December last year, I discovered the online make-up community. My very first and favorite make-up guru was Amy from Ask Me Make-up; unfortunately, she doesn't do videos any more... Then I started watching other people on YT and then I discovered beauty blogs and then I decided to start my own :) I have learnt A LOT since then, for which I am really grateful :) You people are fantastic!!!

What is your make-up story? I'd love to know what were your make-up breakthroughs! Please drop me a line in the comments. Also, I wanted to let you know that for the next two weeks I won't be able to post so often, however expect some haulage very soon! Take care, my beauties. xxx

Animal Instinct Contest Entry: Exotic Bird

This is my final contest entry for this month; parents arrive tomorrow and I will be really busy from then on, so here's the last one... I'm very sorry, Sarah, that I won't manage to participate in your Disney contest like I promised, but I genuinely lacked inspiration and now, well, time. Good luck with your entries though!

I got really excited when I learnt about wonderful Rebecca's (Panda Does Makeup) Animal Instinct Contest! I'd instantly started browsing Google for inspirational images, and my first idea was for a cat-like look. Not very original, I know, but I sort of wanted something to translate well into make-up; as much as I love squirrels, that wouldn't be easy to pull off. But then! I changed my mind...

and went for something fun, exotic and colorful, which is embodied by this lovely bird (don't know the species, by the way). I just love the vibrant colors of its plumage! I recently did some more wearable looks, so I wanted this one to be as crazy as possible (but no full on face paints, Rebecca!:). Here's how it turned out:

The last one's a bit scarry; it was taken in the sunlight, sorry for the uneven skin... But at least you can see these are not photoshopped ;)

List of products used:

Face

MAC Studio Finish concealer in NW20

CS Honey Fair 1.2 mineral foundation

CS Sheer Radiance blusher as contour/bronzer

CS Dare blusher on the apples of the cheeks

CS Light Veil

Dyed feathers from a craftstore glued on with Ardell's lash glue (hate the smell of this!)

Eyes

Revlon cream eyeshadow quad in Seashells: white shade as a base

CS 78 eyeshadow and blush palette: (from inner to outer corner) matte white, yellow, light blue, intensive turquoise, blue-based purples and more of a reddish purple, plus brownish shade to blend into the crease and matte white as a highlight

GOSH Extreme Art eyeliners in 15 (purple) and 13 (gold) to draw feather shaped lines in the outer corners

GOSH pen eyeliner in black

Covergirl Lash Blast mascara

Ardell 110 false eyelashes

Lips

Inglot Fruits in Ice Blackberry Duo (berry shade)

Hope you like it, Rebecca, and thanks for running the contest! Check out her blog (link at the beginning of the post), she's such a sweet girl and does some amazing reviews! Have a lovely evening, everyone :)

Body art at the Chelsea Flower Show 2009

I bet all of you Brits are sick and tired of the Flower Show, but to me that's quite refreshing, actually. Anyhow, I was browsing through the photos of the show gardens when I came across The Quilted Velvet Garden designed by Tony Smith. Telegraph says that "The garden is based on a dream, taking the form of a long, arduous journey through the everyday world of work and domestic chores, eventually arriving at a place of comfort and luxury.". I don't know about arduous journey, but when I saw these pics, I totally sank in.

This amazing body art was created by Emma Cammack on the model Gemma Rhodes. How awesome is that?! 

There were also some celebrities present at the VIP Preview Day, including Helen Mirren, Sienna Miller, Ringo Starr and Claudia Leigh, wearing a hat designed by Cozmo Jenks.

For those interested in the show, visit Daily Telegraph pages here. 

Silver FOTD

Just a quick post to show you what I came up with in the subject of silver eye look which I talked about in my post about self-tanners and bronzer. I feel like you must be utterly bored with seeing my face again, but there's not much else I can post about make-up right now, so bear with me.

I just used some silver shades from my 78 palette and then a bit of darker grey on a fluffy brush to softly define the crease. Then I blended it out with matte white eyeshadow up to the brow bone. I also smudged some black kohl eyeliner on the upper and lower lashline, and finished the look with black mascara on top and bottom lashes.

On my cheeks I am wearing Coastal Scents Essence mineral blush, which is a beautiful rosey/ mauve shade with matte finish. On the lips I have GOSH 0054 lipgloss, a Barbie pink with fine silver shimmer.

I'm feeling a bit low today and I sort of lack some inspiration for my blog. I don't know what would you guys be interested in seeing/ reading about here. If anyone has any suggestions/ requests, please let me know.

Thanks for stopping by.

Celebrity look contest entry

I know I'm bordering on a mass production with my contest entries lately, but it's all because my parents are coming to Vancouver this Saturday for two weeks, so I won't have a chance to do much blogging then, and certainly no contests for me!

So, here's my entry for Angela's celebrity contest at Everything Superficial. I tried to recreate a smokey eye look worn by Scarlett Johansson for one of her photoshoots. She's one of my favorite actresses and from what I remember, she's also a fellow make-up addict :)

This is the inspirational photo:

And my attempt at recreating the look:

List of products used:

Face

CS Honey Fair 1.2 mineral foundation

MAC Studio Finish concealer in NW20

CS Sheer Radiance blush to contour/bronze

CS Dare blusher on the apples of the cheeks

Wet n' Wild Mega Glo Face Illuminator in Blushing

CS Light Veil

Eyes

CS Eye Poxy primer

Margaret Astor black kohl eyepencil as a base

CS 78 eyeshadow and blush palette: matte black and grey, matte deep brown, matte cream eyeshadows

Avon Smokey Eye quad: the darkest, shimmery grey color

Inglot highlighting eyeshadow

Covergirl Lash Blast mascara

Lips

GOSH Darling lipstick

generic clear, shimmery gloss

Well, I look nothing like Scarlett, but it was fun recreating this look! Thanks to Angela for hosting the contest, I hope you get a ton of entries (that's a bit unwise for me... whatever).

Thanks for stopping by, my lovely bloggers! xxx