Etude House Juicy Cocktail in Love Violet

Do you guys remember my post on Etude House Ombre nails? Well, here's another one! I really like this one but my first time applying it did not go so well. But, I found a way to fix it!

Maybelline Lipstick Review: Berry Brilliant

Join my giveaway with Hissbliss Fashion for a chance to win one out of 3 spike ring sets!

I had been looking for a plum shade ever since I saw Leighton Meester's look on Gossip Girl with pink eyes and plum lips. As you all probably know by now, my favorite color is pink! So since I saw that she could pull off the look of an all-pink face, I have accepted the challenge to do the same. Haha!

Teenage Dream Reborn

Have you joined my giveaway yet? Enter to win! Ends on Oct. 27, 2012!

It's pretty ridiculous, how most of my manicures have lately been revolving around Katy Perry. Haha. Anyway, I got pretty bored with all the glitters that I decided to make my nails even gay-er! Hehehe 

OPI Katy Perry Teenage Dream

 Time to show you guys my most favorite sparkly nail polish of all time. OPI Teenage Dream by Katy Perry!

Gradient Glitter Nail Tutorial

I really love the color of Nicole by OPI's Shell Me The Truth, but smething about it never sat well on my nails. To solve it, I put a layer (or two) of the OPI Teenage Dream, and voila! I really love how it loks on my nails now.

OPI My Address Is Hollywood Swatches and Review

I had a foam party the other day and put my outfit together at the last minute. I guess you could say that my nail polish choice of the day was what made me wear my matching pink shorts for that night. It matched so well!

L-R Sally Hansen SALON MANICURE Base Coat, OPI My Address Is Hollywood, Sally Hansen SALON MANICURE Top Coat 

One Less Lonely Girl Collection by Justin Bieber: Step 2 the Beat of my ♥ Nail Polish Review

Okay everyone, I'll say it loud and proud: I'M A BELIEBER!

Mwahaha, I'm 20 years old and at work last month I listened to nothing but Justin Bieber songs all day while doing my assigned tasks. Oh, and Katy Perry too. I have a playlist each for all of their songs. How funny, the two of them have lines for OPI, my number one nail polish brand!

So you wouldn't believe my excitement when I saw a line of Nicole by OPI in the nearest drugstore, apparently these bottles were rare!

The bottle of pink and purple hearts with glitters looked interesting to me so I just picked it up to take a better look. But when I saw that it was part of the Justin Bieber collection, with the cutest name ever I just had to get it!

Mika Ninagawa for Shu Uemura

Last summer, I had a major tan from all the beach trips that I was going to with friends and family. So all of a sudden when I had to go to a wedding, I was fixing my makeup and aaaah! My foundation wasn't my shade anymore! I survived that day with my mom's foundation, but the next weeks I searched far and wide for the perfect shade for me.

I tried Maybelline, Loreal and even Shiseido, but wasn't happy with them! Something always bothered me: some went on too thick, some made me look too yellow and even too white. People say that in love, it is when you're not looking when you find, and wow this renders true for me even when it's not about love! Haha :)

I actually fell in love with the compact before the actual powder. Yes, I am a sucker for super cute packaging. Aside from Shu's limited edition guest artist collections, I love Benefit's cheeky names for their lines and hollywood packaging. So anyway! I bought the compact case along with my mom's cleansing oil, and just carded it without asking her so that she would get me the refill! Haha. The powder itself isn't cheap, and what sucks is that you have to get the case individually as well. The case costs 700 Php at Rustan's and the refill is 1800 Php.

What I love about Shu is that it's an Asian brand, so what company would know better about Asian skin tones than ones that were based here? :) Plus because I'm one of the lighter skin tones, but with yellow as my base, it's often hard to find a powder with my exact skin tone. So yeah, this one impressed me very much!

My shade is no. 764-described as a warm undertone. Since this is a powder foundation, I pat it on lightly with the sponge and it gives me minimal coverage. Just what I need for sunny hawaii! And a good plus is that it's SPF 26++! So yay for that! I still put on sunscreen moisturizer daily though. :)

Greetings from sunny Hawaii, by the way! Will get back to blogging very soon. I apologize for the huge, unannounced hiatus as to I was a working girl for the whole month of April! But now that that's over, I've been able to settle down and relax. Back to la dolce vita! :)

Will keep you posted!

xx Saira

Kindle post

I'm on a short break from school (finally!), so now I can't believe it, I can actually choose what I read!

Hi everybody, meet my Kindle reading device! With all the talk going out and about with the iPad 2, I must say I am tempted to get one for reading my architectural reference books and HD apps, but I'm still an original Kindle girl. It's strictly for black and white text reading only. I love reading from it because it really looks like a printed page.

I received this Kindle for Christmas from my parents, and from my godfather I got its Kate Spade cover. I love my case! It's made of patent leather with canvas inside. It's plain but pretty and makes a statement every time I pull my Kindle out. :)

This is my favorite screensaver. One amazing thing about the Kindle is that its battery can last up to 30 days! Also, anywhere I go that has 3G, I can surf for free! But of course it's black and white and navigation is not so good. It works though, and is very handy especially when you need to Google something quickly for reference.

The back has speakers, in which you can use the text-to-speech function that it offers for most books downloaded from Amazon. It's pretty cool if you ask me, but audiobooks don't work for me because they put me to sleep. Haha! I chose the white over graphite because it looks more clean-cut and futuristic. :)

If you ask me, the Kindle is a great buy if you love reading novels and printed books! Imagine not worrying about messing up the cover or spines of your books, tearing or folding any pages and lugging around heavy hardbound books? Up to 4 GB worth of books can be stored in your device, and one book is just 125 KB, more or less! But don't expect much out of this device if you want to use it to surf or play games. It's really just for reading. But it's really amazing, how it looks like a printed page. The eyes don't strain at all :)

And I leave you with this photo. Spot the odd one out? :P

Essie Matte About You

...and the quest for unique nail polish continues! Look at what I finally got in the mail today:

Essie matte finisher! I had seen matte polish before on Tumblr, and ever since I saw it in black, I knew I had to at least try it, though we've already established that my color isn't black. Haha! So i looked around online, placed an order for my polish and waited patiently for it to arrive.

I was a little disappointed though, because as you can see in the photo above, it leaked around the container! Boooo. But I didn't get discouraged, I peeled it off and went straight to my mom's parlor bag to look for a shade that I was feeling today.

This is what I came up with. (L-R) OPI two-way base coat, OPI Red, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails, Essie Matte About You. The Didgeridoo Your Nails is actually my very own shade, it's the shade I usually have one when I'm not feeling very loud or red.

This is how it looked on my nails. (L-R) OPI Red, OPI Red with Essie Matte About You topcoat, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails with Essie Matte about You topcoat. Huh, they look so good in photos! I didn't like the look of the red so much in person, but instantly fell in love with the pink! :) So pink it was.

It's very important to always follow directions, especially with a new product. I learned that if you apply too many coats, and thick ones at that, the colored polish sticks to the brush of the Matte About You. So I learned to remember where I painted already and to make nice, even strokes.

So, here's the look! Without flash:

And now here with flash:

The downside of matte nail polish is that it works exactly like matte lipstick, that if you have cracked or chapped lips, it will definitely show! I must admit that I removed this right away because even though it's not so evident in my photos, I didn't apply the polish very well. Since I'm in a course that requires a lot of hand-work (Architecture), I'm always looking at my nails and am often OC with them. So I'm sorry, I just had to remove this manicure. Haha!

So the final verdict: do I like it? I love it! BUT I won't ever apply it myself. So I'll have to wait for my next manicure at the parlor to have this done again, even though it's my polishes they'll be using. :)

'til my next find! xx