♥s..

I'm full of fail. I knew my self-ban on buying more makeup wouldn't last a month. Work really kicked my ass the last couple of weeks. I needed the retail therapy super badly. No vacation left this year to get away for a bit, so.. shopping! It's never a good idea to blow steam by spending cash (it's not like I have that much cash to spend lol), but it makes me happy. I did some damage this weekend (but I said no to Dior AND Bobbi Brown holiday palettes! patting self on back), which I will post about soon! (Maybe after I can get my damn MAC FF haul post out..)

I haven't done my Sephora F&F purchase yet because I'm still mulling over what to buy. Friday night I added a crap ton of stuff to my Shopping List thinking I was going to do a massive haul. Yesterday, I went to a Sephora just to see if the things I had my eye on were must-haves. Sadly, I have to say that none of them were. But I did manage to find a couple things not originally on my list that I will order for the Sephora F&F!

The Illamasqua polishes surprised me. I've seen them before in Sephora, but I've never tried them out for some reason. I was intrigued by AllLaqueredUp's swatches of Scarab and Viridian, but I didn't think much about it until I passed the display on my way out of Sephora. Most of the polish tester bottles were a mangled mess (I really hate how inconsiderate some shoppers are when they leave stuff wherever or however at Sephora.. sometimes jamming lipsticks swiveled all the way up into the display holders or lids.. ugh. Sorry that's a rant for another day), but I found Scarab and Veridian surprisingly untouched. They are total stunners in the bottle. What's surprising is that I'm not a red or green polish girl! I think I own one red polish, and I only have it because it was part of a set I bought. Scarab is a gorgeous burnt burgundy: dark yet not vampy (for me anyway). Veridian is a beautiful peacock green, a color that I really didn't think I'd like. The best thing about these polishes are that they apply soooooo smoothly. No streaks, great opacity in one coat, beautiful.. These are in my cart now. ^^ (happy dance)

Swatches of the Illamasqua polishes I tried out. Please excuse my crappy polish application and photography. I was rushing to take them before my camera battery died lol.

Before I leave you all, I wanted to share a Paul & Joe freebie that came with a Japanese magazine (initially heard about the freebie from Rouge Deluxe, thanks Haru!! :D):

The girl on the cover is singer and ultra かわいい Ayumi Hamasaki ^^. I got the magazine for $14 at a bookstore inside Mitsuwa. I really like the makeup pouches, but their sizes aren't too great for me. The large one is too big to bring to work, the small one is too small (won't fit all my makeup junk). Nonetheless, the pattern is really adorable.

Monday comes too fast. Time to go back to work.. sigh.

Yup. 2009 Kanebo Lunasol holiday set. No, it's not a typo. When I purchased it last year, I didn't have a blog. Now that I do and it's getting closer to the holidays, I thought I'd share.

If there could be a brand that I can say I absolutely adored without even touching a single product, it would have been Kanebo Lunasol. My love of this brand was completely irrational. Then again, love is usually irrational and makes us do crazy things. Over a year ago, I was dying, dying, dying to get my hands on SOMETHING Lunasol. There were online stores that sold it, but I was hesitant to pay so much money for something I haven't even seen in person. What if it was just pretty colors and packaging with no substance? No soul? I looked around for a local brick and mortar store that sold it. Alas, I always came home empty-handed. So I had no choice but to purchase online. Then I had to decide which palette to get.. lol.

Isn't that cute? When you open the box, it wishes you a Merry Christmas. :D (easily amused)

After much mulling (by mulling, I mean staring at pictures for weeks), I finally decided on the Party Coffret (2009) set since it had several products. I thought that while it was kind of expensive, it was a better value than just purchasing an eyeshadow palette on its own. Not that I didn't drool over almost every single other Lunasol palette (or products in general). At $50+ per palette, I just couldn't afford to treat them like Pokemon.

This is the white sequined pouch that came with the set. As you can see, it's got little squared off sequins all over it. Usually, I dislike sequins, but I think this was done tastefully. It has a little pocket inside, and the zipper says Lunasol. I haven't used it yet because I'm afraid it will get dingy, but it's cute.

As you can see, the set comes with Lighting for Eyes EX05 White Lighting, Germinate Liner EX03 White Lighting, Full Glamour Gloss EX11 White Lighting, and Shining Powder EX03 White Lighting. I'm not really sure if the eyeliner, lip gloss, and face powder are full sized since I don't have anything for reference.

The centerpiece of the set: the Lighting for Eyes EX05 White Lighting palette. Typically, Lunasol's packaging is a metallic bronze, but for this set the packaging is a shimmery white. I like the normal packaging a little more, but this is nice as well. Am I the only one who finds it amusing that they have diagrams for suggested use? They probably made it with makeup n00bs just like me in mind.. lol. The diagram was found on the bottom of the box set. I translated the Katakana for you so sorry if I got it wrong lol. My Japanese is super rusty and terribad in general.

It's not as obvious looking at the photo of the palette, but you can see from the swatches that these shadows are rather shimmery. The most being the lighting powder shade. I mostly avoid this one and use the rest due to how crazy glittery/shimmery it is. The shadows apply very smoothly, and are nicely pigmented. I experienced a tiny bit of fallout from the shadows (especially the dark grey one), but it's not a deal-breaker. They crease over time for me (no surprise there.. stupid oily lids), but a good eyeshadow primer fixes that. Overall, I think it's a very cute color combination although maybe not for everyday use. It holds a special place in my heart because it's my first Lunasol eyeshadow palette. ♥

The Germinate Liner EX03 White Lighting (liquid eyeliner) and Full Glamour Gloss EX11 White Lighting (lip gloss).

The Germinate Liner and Full Glamour Gloss included in the set are little beyond a clear substance acting as the vehicle for tons of glitter. I have found them to be extremely limited in normal use, but it's a matter of preference (and occasion). I'm not sure if they are full-sized items, but no matter because I use them so rarely that they will probably last me for the rest of my life lol.

The Shining Powder EX03 White Lighting is for face highlight. Well, I think so anyway.. I can't imagine using such a sparkly white powder all over your face :x.

Before I took these pictures, I've never even opened this face powder. It seems too sparkly for me, but I might be able to use for special occasions.. lol. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think that little puff is so cute! ^^ It's really soft, and I'm going to keep it to use for other things.

Overall Thoughts

If you can really use every single product in the set, I'd say yes this would be a good value. For me, I only use the eyeshadow palette and only rarely the Germinate Liner (under normal circumstances I don't think I can use a glitter laced eyeliner.. just not my style) so I don't think this set was worth the price I paid for it so I kind of regret choosing it over getting a standalone eyeshadow palette. However, this set does reaffirm for me that Lunasol products are good quality, but it's not as high on my list as say Chanel or Dior in a similar price range. The markup really reflects how much shipping from Japan affects the price. So I think that if you can get Lunasol products close to what they actually retail for in Japan, they would be amazing (and I SOOO envy youuu!). Unfortunately for myself, I don't have any female friends (or COOL guy friends.. cough) visiting Japan to help me out. That being said, would I still buy Lunasol at the higher price?? Hellz ya! lol. I'm still in love with Lunasol, and totally drooling over this year's Coffret set. :P I think you can still buy the 2009 set online somewhere if you so desire. I might have seen it on Imomoko or mihokofamily. I bought mine for around $75-80 @ Imomoko(? I forget). It might be cheaper now, but limited in quantity. Personally, I'd skip it and get this year's. It looks like it has more usable items this time around!

Sorry this post was maybe a little too picture heavy; I was being lazy and didn't want to crop several together. :x

I've been having such GREAT AMAZING FUN TIMES at work lately. I hope you can detect my sarcasm. I need some serious retail therapy. The holiday collections for so many brands this year are so gorgeous (Guerlain, I'm looking at you!!). So are a couple non-holiday things.. >> Ya, I knew my self-ban on new makeup purchases wouldn't last (due to my ever-wavering willpower lol).

The picture above turned out kinda cool.. or maybe I'm just easily amused. Ya, that sounds about right. These polishes are not cutting news any longer in the beauty blogging world, but eh why not share anyway?! This is a teeny-tiny mini post. :)


As you probably know already, Glitzerland came out as part of OPI's Swiss Collection for this fall season. I went to many stores looking for it, but since it had just come out it was sold out everywhere. When I finally found it, I saw it everywhere. Sigh~.. Sephora by OPI's Only Gold For Me came out earlier this year (maybe April/May~?). I had similar issues tracking this one down. I gave up eventually and just bought it online, then every Sephora I went to had boatloads of it in stock! Wildly unlucky perhaps??

Glitzerland is a really nice gold. It's more of a champagne-toned gold rather than a yellow gold. I think I only used one coat of it here. Then I did one pass over with Only Gold For Me. As you can see, it's a clear top coat with large hexagonal shaped gold glitter along with much smaller gold glitters. It's really gorgeous, but I'm really terrible at using it. I tried not to glop it on, but the big glitter wouldn't go where I wanted. But if I glop it on, it will look.. gloppy lol. So that's why there are so few large glitters, and they all ended up wherever THEY wanted to be. Ah well, it's not the most exciting mani ever, but I like this combo.

I meant to get my MAC Fabulous Felines haul post done before I did my Venomous Villains, but I haven't gotten around to taking pictures and swatching. So on VV release day (because I wasn't special enough to get an invite to a pre-release party and I was trying to avoid ordering online), I went to the Macy's near work thinking it would be "safer" from the hordes of rabid makeup-collecting women. Delusional.. No store is safe when something like Bad Fairy is on the shelves. MAC, why did you only send tiny stocks to stores?? I went to two stores total and both told me that they only received shipments of less than 10. Am I the only one not loving it when they do that? It's in my blood to be attracted to "limited edition" things, but this is ridiculous. Sigh~ I tell myself, "Get over it, it's just makeup!" But my heart cries, "But but.. it's so purty! ;-;" -_-.

I really like the packaging of this collection with the sketchy character art on the boxes. I kind of wish that was on the actual product itself instead of the colorful print. It's not really my taste, but eh to each their own. So here is what I managed to snag.

From the Evil Queen collection, Bite of an Apple Blush is a bright coral with a matte finish. My coworker flipped out at this blush because it was so bright in the pan. She thought I was insane for buying it lol. Truthfully, it is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I wanted to try something different.

From the Evil Queen collection, Oh So Fair Beauty Powder is soft pink with a slight satin finish.

Sigh I suck at swatches. Light was fading when I got to them so sorry about that. I haven't worn Bite of an Apple yet, but I have worn Oh So Fair as a blush. Worn sheerly, it gave my cheeks a healthy "glow from within" quality that doesn't scream "I'M WEARING BLUSH!".

The SA forgot to ring up My Dark Magic too even though they had it. :( I got She Who Dares at least, but I wanted My Dark Magic more because the purple color seemed amazing.

From the Maleficent collection, She Who Dares Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo. Blue side has blue shimmer over a black-blue base. Green side has green shimmer over a black-green base. So beautiful in the pan..

From the Dr. Facilier collection, French Quarter Greasepaint Stick is a brown-taupe with bronze glitter.

I forgot to apply a base on first so She Who Dares looks more sheer in the swatch. One of my favorite items I got is the French Quarter Greasepaint Stick. I know the tips of Greasepaint Sticks are a bit thick for use as an eye liner, but I prefer it as an eye liner. As a dark base or overall eye shadow color, they are.. well too dark for me for day. I adore this color, and it lasted all day with no smearing (amazing for my oily lids.. lol)! My only complaint is that I get a bit of fallout after initial application (little dark crumbles of product plus some stray shimmers). Not a big deal as long as I don't accidentally smear them before the product sets.

I was undecided on whether I should get any of the lip products. Originally, I had decided not to, but these looked so pretty in the tube.. lol. I couldn't resist. These are my first MAC lipglosses!

From the Cruella de Vil collection, Devilishly Stylish Lipglass, and from the Evil Queen collection, Strange Potion Lipglass. Temptalia's swatch of Strange Potion was so gorgeous on her I was hoping it would do something similar on my own, but alas I think my lips are too pigmented. The texture of these glosses is stickier than I'd like, but it's still wearable.

Sorry about the pictures. I tried to take them as soon as I got home, but my camera battery decided to die part way through swatching.. -_- You can probably see the huge difference in coloring since I finished up with my iPhone camera as the last rays of sunlight disappeared (my arm looks pink lol). Anyway, I'm working on more posts! Hoping to get them done before the weekend is over. ^^ Okay I'm dead tired. Thanks for visiting!