LiLash Eyelash Growth Enhancer Review

Dear eyelash gods, please hear my prayer…I want longer and more luxurious eyelashes!

But since there are no eyelash gods, or even demi-gods, how does one accomplish this on their own? LiLash to the rescue! I’ve used LiLash in the past and had wonderful results so I thought I would try this again and post my results for everyone to see. Last time around I didn’t see any noticeable difference until about 4 weeks in so we’ll have to learn how to be patient all over again. LiLash claims to give you longer and thicker eyelashes fast, and helps to strengthen what you already have, if you ask me that’s a pretty bold claim so let’s put LiLash to the test! I’ll do weekly updates w/ pictures until I run out of the tube and see if it’s worth the hefty price tag it comes with. LiLash can be purchased directly from the website (http://www.lilash.com/pages/LiLash) for $140 USD and is supposed to last 5 months (so roughly $30 a month), I purchased mine off ebay and saved about $40, mind you I don’t get the 90-day guarantee with that savings, but hey, $40 saved means I get to spend $40 on some other beauty product, and to me…that’s worth it! ;)

On to the product…LiLash comes in a silver tube, similar to the look of a regular mascara, but instead of a mascara brush, at the end of the applicator wand is a fine brush. You would apply to your lid as if you were applying liquid eyeliner. Anyways, more about application and user experience to come! So here’s a few shots of my wimpy Asian lashes before using LiLash. Stay tuned for the gloriousness of LiLash (I hope!).

Cool makeup brush holder!

Makeup brushes rolling on my vanity table left, right and centre, MAC shadow pots astray and loose powder skimming the surface of every product left out on the counter...you get the visual! I was desperately trying to find a way to organize/tidy up my vanity because it was getting so messy and difficult to find the products that I use on a daily basis.

So where do I turn for inspiration? YouTube! My new favorite venue for wasting time (and to learn to things too...). I stumbled across this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HY3xrH7pOc and thought it was just about the coolest thing in the world! Being a crafty DIYer myself I had to give it a try :)

You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to source out toe separators and an inexpensive frame! For the toe separators I visited Shoppers Drug Mart, The Body Shop, 5 different dollar stores and finally stumbled across a 6 pack at a Chatters store *whew* I was about ready to give up or just create my own somehow. Anyways, this project was super easy, and instead of printing a background for the frame, I picked up a few different pieces of scrapbooking paper from Michaels and cut to size, and voila! A beautiful piece of work.

Organizing my brushes inspired me to organize my entire vanity. I wanted to keep the top of my vanity clean and clutter-free, so all of the beauty items I use on a daily basis got tucked away into organizers in my drawers.

I picked up the little mesh tray from Staples and I lucked out because it actually fit perfect in my small drawer, for my large drawer I picked up a felted compartment organizer from Ikea (for about $5), this one is great because it can fit snug into most drawers, it's very deep too and can also be cut to fit.

Anyways, long story short, my brushes and vanity are clutter-free and I'm a happy camper! Check out the before and after pictures.

BEFORE

AFTER

Wart Remover Pads - Part 2

Ugh, so after having my pedicure and my foot looking oh-so-beautiful, after about a week Ed is rearing his ugliness again and making my soft skin callused. WHY!? So Ed is still definitely rooted in my foot and his mission in life is to make my foot ugly! So I decided to buy another brand of wart remover pads to see if I would have any different results, went with Dr. Scholls and it contains 24 treatments. These pads aren’t waterproof this time, which is a shame, but I find that they stay in place on my feet MUCH better than the Compound W ones. With the Compound W I found that after about a half day of walking and whatnot, the pad would shift to other parts of my foot moving the salicylic acid pad around too…not good! These new pads stay in place. I placed one wee salicylic pad on Ed, and then covered it with the larger cushy pad. Same instructions, leave on for 48 hours and then remove. I was impatient to see if the new pads were working so I ripped it off after the first day and yep, they’re working! It’s pretty gruesome, but here’s a pic so you know the epic battle I’m fighting. For some reason Ed is having a party with 5 of his friends (notice the 5 dots + 1 to the side? Wth). Pumice stones just aren’t cutting it to remove the dead skin so I bought one of those mini cheese-graters for your foot, that works like a charm! Dead skin flaking off left, right and centre! My new routine will be to leave the pad on for 2 days, remove, soak, dry and grate off the dead skin in hopes that eventually I’ll be placing a salicylic pad directly on Ed and be rid of him once and for all. If there’s any more progress on Ed as I move throughout the package of pads I’ll post some updates. In the meantime, try to get the picture of my foot out of your head and we’ll see you kiddies soon :)

Compound W Wart Remover Pads

Let’s face it, the things we must do for beauty aren’t always pretty.

I’ve had a wart of some sort on the bottom pad of my right foot for as long as I can remember, it was only this year that I decided to “improve” the area so it looked like a normal foot. No, my right foot was by no means hideous or unhuman-like, but over top of my wart (let’s call him Ed from this point on) was a mound of callused skin that protruded ever so slightly (and by ever so slightly I mean big and hideous). Unfortunately, I don’t have the gory pictures that I had meant to take during my journey to normal-footted-dom, but I think this review on the Compound W Wart Remover Pads will do.

So the callused area was approximately ¾ of a centimetre long and then more thick, callused skin surrounding it. I’ve tried soaking my feet then filing off the dead skin but the skin was so tough that all my efforts were thWARTED (get it? Haha). I ended up going to a podiatrist and he sliced off the callused skin covering Ed, then stabbed Ed with a q-tip soaked in liquid nitrogen. Apparently my body doesn’t take pain all that well decided it would be better to pass out three times (not even joking! I wish!). Anyways, I ended up limping around for about a week and a half, and it was suggested that I come in every 2 weeks for a treatment…riiiight. I decided that the insanely painful route just wouldn’t cut it for me, and on top of that, it’s not even guaranteed that I would be completely Ed-free after however many treatments!

Thus my quest for a non-painful way to remove Ed. I settled on these pads as it’s non-invasive and had a high concentration of salicylic acid...40% to be exact. Twenty pads, one pad per two days. It was actually neat seeing the havoc that these little pads had cause my feet. After removing the pads, soaking my feet and then scrubbing the area, you could tell that the acid was eating away at my dead skin, let’s face it…it was actually pretty gross. At one point (I must have been through at least 12 pads) the skin area was all white and flaking off, I decided to peel at my dead skin (no I don’t condone this as I’m sure it could cause damage…but I’m impatient!) and then eventually peeled off a giant piece of thick thick thick dead, white skin (seriously, the skin was at least 3mm thick, gag)…showed it to my hubby…he was not impressed :p

I got down to two pads and decided that my foot was almost home-free of Ed! Decided to celebrate with a pedicure and was informed that the wart may still be under my almost-normal-foot-skin *sigh*. Which makes sense because apparently the roots are black and would fall out had I gotten the whole wart. Anyways, long story short, I’m going to buy another box of pads and continue on in my quest to completely rid myself of Ed. Here is a picture after my pedicure, looks meh, but trust me, it’s a HUGE difference from when I started! I would imagine that these pads would be more effective on someone with a wart that doesn’t have a bajillion layers of callused skin on top.

If you’re in the market to rid yourself of Ed’s family members, do give these a try, cheap and pain-free! Will write an update after I complete another box. Happy Ed hunting!

Review on Circle Lenses

Well I’ve realised that this beauty blogging stuff is more work than I originally thought. Especially when it comes to posting videos on YouTube! There’s the initial filming, then watching and editing and cutting, then uploading, then adding annotations, then reviewing…OI. But if people watch it and it actually helps them with any decisions…I suppose it’s worth it then :)

So on to another review…circle lenses! After countless hours of watching YouTube videos, I noticed the eyes (particularly those of the Asian beauties blogging) of some bloggers and became intrigued. Found out that the contact lenses they are wearing are called circle lenses, basically contacts that are larger than normal to enhance the “doll-eyed” look or “anime” look. I WANT! So after reading some recommendations I decided to place an order at Lenscircle.com. They have a special where you get an Anna Sui inspired lens case with the purchase of two lenses so of course…I bought two lenses! Totally worth it in my opinion :)

The order itself arrived roughly a week and a half after I placed my order, here’s a picture of everything after I tore through the package.

Because my order was late by a few days, they ended up including a second Anna sui lens case, woo hoo! Anyways, this is the first type of contact lens of any type that I’ve ever ordered/worn so the install was interesting, took about an hour and a half, I’m sure it would take a personal with normal sized eyes a lot less time, but I’ve come to realise that I have fairly squinty eyes and the lens is bigger than my normal eye opening, took a lot of manoeuvring but finally got the suckers in! I ended up googling a bunch of videos and instructions on how to insert contacts which were semi-helpful, just so you know, care instructions are also included with the lenses for us newbs :)

The lenses are very soft and didn’t feel uncomfortable at all (unless of course you manage to get some debris on the lens when inserting, OUCH!), wore then for about 2 hours so my eyes could get adjusted. I found that they felt a little dry after the first hour or so, put in a drop of solution in each eye and I was fine afterwards. Taking the lenses out were a little challenge because a) I have long nails and b) did I mention my eyes are really tiny?? Thankfully in the Anna Sui lens kit they included some plastic tweezers, used those to prod the lenses out…otherwise I would probably still be wearing them to this day!

Anyways, for those of you looking to wear circle lenses, beware that it’s recommended to keep them in up to a maximum of 6-8 hours. These come with or without prescriptions but in my opinion, are strictly fashion lenses, these lenses aren’t as porous as regular contacts and don’t allow your eye to breathe as much so prolonged use/duration could have some negative effects on your eyes, so on a more serious note, I would advise you to do a little research on circle lenses before you consider them. That said, I LOVE mine! I have the Geo nudey blues, and the Geo angel greens. Below are some pics for comparison of my regular eyeballs with and without the lenses in. I prefer the blues, they look a bit more dramatic and I imagine that’s what I would look like if I were ever a vampire *queue Edward*…enjoy!

Here are the Geo Nudy Series in blue and a comparison with my natural eye and one contact in:

Here are the Geo Angel Series in green and a comparison with my natural eye and one contact in:

Beauty Blog kick-off!

In my never-ending hunt to find fabulous beauty buys, I find myself spending hours upon hours looking at reviews for different foundations and skincare products to help improve my natural self. What do these other bloggers have in common with moi? We are all product fiends.

As I scroll through endless pages of beauty reviews I think to myself "I have products...I also have opinions...I should start a blog!" And so, here I am. I aim to go through all the products in my arsenault and review each one on a detailed basis in hopes that my reviews will help you determine if a product is right for you. As I find more products to spend my money on, I will review those too!

To kick-off my first review, this is something tried and true and most blogs don't cover...HAIR EXTENSIONS! While I'm no expert by any means, I have done my lot of research on various methods and ended up trying two different methods for hair extensions. Read on if you dare, it's a fairly lengthy review from start to finish about my experiences.

So here's a little bit about my hair to begin with just so you have a good idea. I'm Asian (as if you couldn't tell by my profile picture), fine hair but lots of it, can't keep a good style in place without a can of hairspray (sorry environment, I need big hair!), and have never been had my hair grow out past my shoulders. I figured I needed to venture into the realm of having long, luscious hair for once and thus began my quest for hair extensions.

I'm cheap when it comes to some things and also a DIY (do-it-yourself) gal. My first experience with hair extensions was purchasing a set off 200 micro-link loop hair extensions off of ebay (yes ebay, I purchased my wedding dress off ebay and have never had a bad experience), easy to use, easy to install all with only having to pay $200 instead of $1200. The microlinks are basically metal tubes with or without a silicone lining, a small section of your hair gets pulled through and you clamp the metal tube down securing your hair and the extension hair. Install time: longer than it should have taken haha, approximately 5 hours. Sleeping on these extensions the first night HURT, being that they're metal...and also being that I installed them a little too close to my scalp. Wearing the hair the next day was awful, it felt so heavy and uncomfortable so I decided to uninstall that morning. Yup, I had hair extensions for less than a day and couldn't cut it then. I don't need metal digging into my head every night thank you very much!

On to my second experience with extensions, I did a lot of research (and my a lot, I mean at least a year) and was looking for a method that would damage my natural hair very little. I've heard horror stories about fusion, and while this seems like the best method out there, the thought of putting acetone in my hair to remove the extensions made me cringe just a bit, I can't change my precious hair falling out so I couldn't bring myself to do this method. I came across a method called Manemaxx (http://www.manemaxx.com/) and this was about the least damaging method to hair I've seen. No chemicals to install, no chemicals to remove. It turns out the bond is somewhat like a wax that just holds the hair in place without using heat to fuse it to your hair. The kit itself was cheap in comparison to going to a salon...the catch...it's a DIY process. Anyways, after all is said and done, I bought my kit and proceeded with my first install...which I might add took my 8 gruelling hours of sitting in a chair, I had the bruises to prove it!

I was a little impatient and didn't perfect the method like I should have, but had great results anyways. The color match for my hair was dead on, and after my install and after getting a quick cut to blend my hair, it looked completely natural...or so everyone had told me ;) Finally, the first time in my entire life I had long, luscious hair! I got compliments left, right and centre (and up and down too) and I knew this was the perfect method for me.

So the hair length I started with is the photo at the top of the page, this is me AFTER the Manemaxx install (rockin' some $8 ebay shades baby).

Long story short (kinda), I did an un-install of the hair after 3 months of wear and proud to report that there was absolutely no damage to my natural hair (woo hoo!). This is my natural hair after 3 months of wearing extensions. So all-in-all, I'm loving my Manemaxx hair! I did another install right after I uninstalled because I love them so much and need at least a year more to grow my hair out. And the picture to the right now is my second install using pre-curled hair instead of straight.