holiday essentials guide

After being on the road for five days in New Zealand, sleeping in a different bed every night & soon realising how incredibly tiresome it can be having to haul all of your things with you, I've come to appreciate the lessons I have learnt, and the little things I had with me that totally saved my bacon on the road.

1. Protecting yourself is paramount

I know this might sound a little obvious, but doing something as simple as putting on suncream or wearing a shady hat can be easily forgotten when you're in the midst of holiday endorphins. I've learnt (or rather the man friend has) the hard way of being in the sun. Whilst NZ's sun isn't nearly as harsh as Australia's sun, it's something to always be aware of. One minute you're sitting in the car enjoying the breeze, next thing you're gawking at red, sore skin.

For me, it's more about the sun protection on my face underneath my make up. In Australia, we easily need 30+ SPF sun protection at any given time, and trying to find a make up friendly sunscreen is difficult, as typically it's very oily and makes your skin greasy - which is fine for at the beach but not when you're trying to put your foundation on and it's sliding down your chin!

The Clinique Super City Block has been fantastic for my holiday, where I'm not wearing as much make up on the road, but still need some protection. This cream is great for wearing under make up and leaves no greasy residue, which is a huge bonus.

2. Get a decent pair of sunglasses

Again, living in a country where skin cancer and sun damage is high, it's a necessity to protect yourself from the elements. The last pair of good quality sunglasses I had were a pair of Le Specs, and they lasted me a good few years before I bought some cheap pairs. Of course they were fine for fashionable use, but they weren't doing my eyes any favours. Before I went away, I stopped by Sunglass Hut and picked up a pair of Rayban Clubmasters and I love them. 

Good quality shades will pay themselves back in spades - despite their cost, they will last you years, protect you from sun damage, and most importantly, protect your eyes. 

3. Be comfortable - in everything

I'm the kind of person that brings everything but the kitchen sink when I go travelling - I always have this moment of panic where I think 'but what if I need that??' to them promptly pack it, and then regret it later for taking up space. In theory I try to be space conscious, but in reality I overpack on clothes and shoes all the time. Being on the road for 5 days straight showed me how important it is to dress comfortably, especially when you're sitting in a confined space - whether it's a bus, plane, train, or car - be comfortable. I've been favouring loose tank tops (as shown from Supre) and my favourite jeans for those long periods of time sitting.

4. Wear good shoes

Getting blisters & sore feet are the bane of my existence, and yet I am so picky with my shoes that it's no wonder I get sore feet. 

I came across the Nike Rosheruns & loved them, not to mention I can wear socks with them and can be considerably more comfortable. These are great for casual wear - wear them with a cute long maxi dress or tshirt dress, or black jeans & easy top.

5. Keep it simple & keep it easy to reach

Being crammed in a car means a limited amount of space to spread yourself out in. I've found keeping the essentials in an easy case, like sunscreen, lip balm, phone chargers, bobby pins, etc. This quilted make up case from ASOS is perfectly sized to keep you from putting unnecessary things inside. 

Keeping in theme with cases and storage, I am loving this new Mimco Packable Weekender. I love all things Mimco, and this weekender bag is the most perfect size - it fits my laptop, magazines, my clutch and other bits and pieces that I'll readily need compared to all the stuff in my bigger suitcase. 

I hope this holiday essentials guide has come in handy & some pearls of travelling wisdom have been taken away.

x

first impressions: clinique make up & moisturiser

Clinique's SuperPrimer, Clinique Super Balanced Liquid Foundation in Beige Chiffon, and Clinique Moisture Surge Intense

I've been looking forward to doing a first impressions post with Clinique products, particularly their make up range. In the past few months I have tried both high end and drug store make up pieces, ranging from make up lines such as MAC, Napoleon Perdis, and Illamasqua, to Maybelline, Covergirl, and Revlon. And whilst I have loved brands like Illamasqua and have always felt its quality is worth the price tag, my biggest issue with everyday make up is that I want plenty of coverage and the closest colour match to my natural skin. 

I've found I've always been either matched too light and way too dark- I am naturally olive skinned but still lighter than the typical 'olive' undertones. I decided to go to Clinique and have them colour match me- I favour Clinique skin care products for my combination skin and it made sense to see if the good match extends to their make up range. I opted to try a primer and liquid foundation, (1 + 2) and was recommended for the dry skin I do get during winter the Moisture Surge moisturiser (3). 

So here are my first impressions:

1. SuperPrimer

The first thing I noticed about this creme primer is how light it is on my skin and how it changes the texture of my skin- it makes it so baby soft, and doesn't leave behind a glittery or shiny residue. It's absorbed in very quickly, and found it evens out my skin tone before I apply the foundation. It's more expensive than any other primer I have tried, but my skin doesn't feel greasy and it makes a difference to the rest of my make up.

2. Superbalanced Liquid Foundation

When I first tried this, it was for a typical work day- a simple look with natural eyes, nothing too heavy. The lightness of the colour took me a little by surprise because I'm used to being darker, but in the artificial indoor light and natural light, it's very close to my neck colour. I'm still experimenting with brushes and which ones to use, but the product blends well, and has enough coverage for my skin. I'm still experimenting with the right brush to use, but so far blending with my fingers has worked fine for me,

3. Moisture Surge 

Usually I'm not one to gravitate towards heavy moisturisers as they often leave my skin very greasy and like I'm walking around with a thick layer on my skin, but this Moisture Surge, whilst being quite dense, absorbs into the skin very quickly and stops the flaky appearance of skin around my nose. It's great for the cold winds in the morning and does more for my skin than I originally thought.

That's my first impressions of the Clinique make up and moisturise. I found that these products work very well and compliment my skin type and everyday requirements.

| Mid week beauty haul | 06.09.2013 |

Spring is well and truly here, friends! I was walking around campus earlier in the week & it's so nice to see all the flowers blooming finally; my groups of friends and I got to have lunch in the sun before class & it was so great to not be cold.

In light of the new season, I stopped by at the shops to grab a few bits & pieces:

My haul!

Okay so this one isn't strictly beauty related, but I've been wanting a pair of earrings I can just wear every day & not have to worry about changing & that go with my other jewellery. These are Silver Beaten studs from Witchery & this is my first purchase from Witchery, which I feel a little bit excited about. Their accessories & handbags are amazing.

Funny story about this- a few weeks ago when Emily-May and I were doing a photoshoot in Richmond, we were waiting in line to get lunch, & we saw a girl with this water bottle which looks like a mason jar, & we both kinda looked at each other in awe of it. So after some searching I managed to find it at Target & they are the cutest things. This is Emily-May's one, & I got the same one but in purple. 

Okay confession time: I am useless when it comes to taking care of skin that is not on my face. Of course I bathe regularly like a decent human being, but I always tend to neglect some part of my body that needs attention, example, my legs. Because I usually wear long jeans or pants, my legs don't ever see the light of day, which in turn makes them ghostly white & scarily dry. Literally, I put some workout pants on before leaving my house for uni the other day, and these are the basic 3/4 pants, so there was some skin showing from the end of the pants to my socks, & my god I was shocked at how white & dry my skin was.

So I high tailed it to Priceline & got this cream (Rosken Skin Repair Dry Skin Cream) before high tailing it to my train, & managed to put some of this stuff on the small patch of skin blinding the world. Seriously, this stuff is amazing. It is so moisturising, my skin drank it in like it was dying (which might be true considering how scary dry it was!) I would highly recommend this for those of you who have very dry skin. It's great for the face, arms, legs, everywhere.

Words cannot express how glad I am to have acquired some more of this miracle. 

For those of you who don't know, I have a significant amount of acne scarring & pigmentation on my skin from years of mistreatment, & because of this I have a lot of dark spots on my face. Take into account the fact that I have very sensitive and combination skin, finding a dark spot corrector that didn't cause break outs & actually did what it promised was hard. I've been using Clinique for about a year now & even though my skin isn't perfect, it's far more manageable. Clinique's 'Even Better Clinical Dark Spot Corrector' is amazing for lightening my pigmentation and scars, & takes about a month to see results. I use this every day as part of my skin care routine, & even though it is expensive, to me it's definitely worth the money.

On my way out of Priceline I spotted a whole bunch of make up cases & bags on special, & this one struck me first because it is the perfect size for me for my every day make up. As posted in previous blogs, I got a make up case which was much larger, & better suited to travelling, whereas this one forces me to pick only the essentials so my bag isn't weighed down any more than it has to be. I love the simplicity, & the colour.

I love shopping so much- as I'm sure you all can tell. 

Stay tuned! x

Shopping day with Clarissa & mini skin care & Typo haul!

On Friday, I spent the day with my best girlfriend Clarissa at our local Westfields & it was the best thing to do after a long week.

We always do well when we go shopping together- she's one of the few people I genuinely love going shopping with- we like going to similar shops even though our styles are quite different. Here's a few snippets from the day's adventures:

The displays at Lush are so amazing. These are the soaps near the front of the shop, & it smells so good you want to eat it.

Purchases from Lush & the Clinique counter at Myer. Itching to test out the sea salt spray & rose water!

I got this 'Fly Fly Away' Travel Journal from Typo- I've been eyeing this off online for a while & I am a sucker for anything pretty that's been printed- magazines, books, cards, stationary, you name it. This was $25 from Typo & it can be found here!

Me & Clarissa- she's super pretteh.

Stay tuned!

✿ Skin care routine ✿

Today I thought it would be fun to blog about my current skin care routine!

My skin story:

Now, I'm actually quite naughty when it comes to my skin- I only recently started to take serious care of my skin due to the fact that as soon as I hit 21, my skin began to act as if I was going through puberty all over again! During my teenage years I was very lucky and had a relatively acne and breakout free time, and only used minimal make up such as mascara and lip balms. I never really felt the need for make up as my skin was blemish and break out free, whereas now I deal with acne scarring, pigmentation, very dark circles under my eyes, break outs, uneven skin tone, dryness, & oiliness. It's only been a serious problem in the last two years, so of course I tried to find skin care solutions to combat these problems- I tried Nivea, Clean and Clear, and Ten-O-Six and nothing I tried seemed to work. I have high combination skin, so finding a skin care routine that dealt with all the issues I was experiencing was very hard to come by. Not only did I need to resolve the issues of my skin but to also find make up that didn't exacerbate my skin situation further.

Finding a solution:

After many products being tested, I came to the conclusion that I would have to only deal with some issues and have to endure the others. With the amount of break outs & oil spots I would have, I would have very deep set acne & often attack my face (yes, I admit to squeezing my face, and it's the biggest sin when it comes to having healthy skin.) These attacks would lead to redness, swelling, & most horribly, bruising of the skin & underlying tissue, which resulted in skin pigmentation and scarring. As you can see, I have quite the list of skin issues to deal with.

I was close to giving up- I had gone to doctors and dermatologists and skin specialists, some had recommended I go on medication, which I didn't want to do because of potential side effects, & the creams and routines suggested to me were so expensive I couldn't afford to buy them (we're talking $200+ for some magic juu juu potion, & that didn't even seem remotely economic or sustainable.)

I was going through Myer one day & stopped by at the Clinique counter, & the woman looking after the counter sat me down & talked me through the issues I was experiencing. In the beginning I felt skeptical because all the products I had tried promised to fix things which never happened- the Clinique consultant gave me a few samples of their 3 Step Skin Care regimes to try for free. I had nothing to lose. I gave it a month for the new regime to work, & I was amazed at the transformation my skin took. 


Breaking it down:

These are the products I use from the Clinique 3 Step range:

The shown products are the Liquid Facial Soap in Mild, the Clarifying Lotion, & lastly, the Dramatically Different Moisturising Lotion. Each of these products are very gentle, and won't cause redness and skin inflammation (I know some skin care products such as cleansers and toners can be quite harsh on the skin & can cause some reactions, so please do a swatch on another part of your skin before using it on your face.)

This 3 Step regime hasn't made my issues go away, but it dramatically reduced them and made them far more manageable. I used to have constant break outs & deep set acne, and now the break outs are only once in a while & the acne is no longer nearly as bad. My skin tone is more smooth, & my pigmentation has lessened. I do have some scars left but they will fade over a long period of time. 

In addition to these products, I also use these on a daily basis:

This is the St. Ives Apricot Scrub, and I use this 3 times a week as an exfoliating mask. This stuff is so great- it's got these granules which do an amazing job as getting rid of the dead set & making my skin feel squeaky clean.

To remove my make up I use the Simple Kind to Skin Cleansing facial wipes, & again these are great for sensitive skin or those who are prone to redness and inflammation. However I find that I have to then blot my skin after using these wipes as it makes my skin a bit oily afterwards, but all wipes can be like that sometimes.

Stay tuned!