Garnier Oil Beauty Nourishing Lotion £4.99
Summer in Tokyo is hell. The heat radiating off asphalt and the humidity level is really high. But the skin gets dry because of the air conditioning in the stores, restaurants and among others, in the trains. It's ridiculously cold and freezing, I feel that I am frozen to the bone after getting off the train. I'm in the train for 2-3 hours a day, and in the office for like 10 hours or so, which makes it easy to imagine my skin is completely dehydrated.
But at the same time, I cannot use my favourite body butters from The Body Shop and Rituals, because they make my skin greasy and sticky mostly because of the humidity I guess. So I was looking for a light body lotion that sinks in quickly and hydrates my skin without that annoying feeling.
Then I found it. Well done Garnier, it's such a lovely body lotion. It contains Argan oil, Macademia oil, Almond oil and Rose oil that help improve the skin condition. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Though it's called "lotion", it looks pretty thick. But don't worry, it just absorbs into the skin quickly, and leaves a subtle moisturising feeling on the surface. I still can feel it after 5 minutes, but not in a bad way at all. This was the only body lotion I can apply in the morning before heading to work during the summer.
I also love how it smells. First I thought it was too sweet and perfumy, but now I'm used to it and am kind of addicted to it. I don't know how too describe this scent, but it's pretty feminine, floral scent that some people might not like. On the website it's described as "
subtly fragranced" but trust me, the scent is NOT subtle. I like the scent so I am happy that it lingers on my skin, but it's quite misleading in my opinion.
Garnier is definitely one of my favourite drugstore brands, now I'm eying on their hair care products that feelunique started to carry a while ago. I don't know which one smells good (a scent is the most important for me when it comes to toiletries) and which works for my hair, but I would love to try them out someday in the near future.
I am also curious about their body scrub from the same range of this body lotion. It must smell the same, and I like the fact it's in the tube bottle rather than a pod. Let me know if you've tried it before, and what your favourite Garnier products are!
ZOYA / Bar
I'm a big fan of Zoya's Pixie Dust Collection. I have Tomoko, which is a gorgeous golden shade with loads of matte glitter particles. I love how matte it looks when dried, even when I apply the top coat on top. I instantly fell in love with this new shade came out as a part of their 2014 spring / summer collection when I saw the photos as well as reading the description : Bar by Zoya can be best described as a glittery nude topaz in the
best-selling ultra textured, matte, holographic Magical Pixie formula.
I'm sold.
Look how glittery it looks. It looked a bit paler in their official photos, and is more like pinky gold in person. It's a little harder to apply than normal Pixie Dust as it has bigger chunks of holograms. And it chips very very easily, it doesn't even last for a day on my nails. It's so annoying because as you can imagine, it's pain in the butt to remove. Having to remove and repaint my nails every day or two with this nail polish is not ideal, but I cannot resist wearing this shade as it looks insanely sparkly and beautiful.
Have you tried their Pixie Dust Nail Polish? What's your favourite shade?
Makeup Revolution Eye Foils / Rose Gold £4.00
I might have forgotten to tell you, but I did a pretty big Boots / Superdrug shopping back in July. My husband was in England taking care of his family, and I took the opportunity to order as many drugstore products as possible, had them shipped to his house, and asked him to bring them back to Japan. He also got me my favourite magazines (Look, Grazia and Boots mag along with Stylist mags that I ordered online) which ended up to weigh 12kg in total. Anyway cut the long story short, I've got quite a few UK products to review. I've been writing reviews on them on my Japanese blog but am trying to focus on Japanese products here as a lot of my lovely readers here must be interested in Japanese products rather than the UK ones, as there are tons of great UK bloggers here. So I decided to write reviews of the products that stood out here, to share my thoughts with you.
Phew, the longest intro ever.
So, I got this eyeshadow only because I wanted the Stila one so bad when it came out. The idea of it is that you mix the liquid primer with the eyeshadow to create this "foil" look which is not too glittery but more intense than a normal shimmery eyeshadow. But the Stila one was ridiculously expensive. When I found this Makeup Forever version, I didn't even hesitate to purchase it. I picked the shade Rose Gold, as it seemed to be the most wearable.
The eyeshadow has this very unique texture. It's in between cream and powder. I take a little bit of it and...
...place it on the tray, and add a drop or two of the liquid primer. I used the brush to mix and apply when I tried it for the first time, but it made a huge mess so I wouldn't recommend it. You need to be really careful how much of the eyeshadow and primer you mix together, because when it's too hard, it literally makes you look like putting a piece of aluminum foil on your eyelids, and you cannot even blink. I realised a lot more of the primer than I expected is required to create the perfect consistency.
The bottom swatch is the eyeshadow alone, without the primer. The middle is the eyeshadow + primer applied with a brush. Then the top is the eyeshadow + primer applied with a finger.
When applied correctly, this eyeshadow looks really beautiful reflecting the light and making the eyes pop. I needed to practice a couple of times, and it was absolutely pain in the butt to remove it with a cotton pad with Bioderma. You need a good cleansing balm or oil to remove it completely from your face. But now that I learnt how to make the perfect formula, and how to apply, I am enjoying wearing it with Maybelline ColorTatoo in On and On Bronze on the outer corner to give a little bit of umph to the look.
I wish they had more unique shades such as taupe, grey, burgundy, khaki etc...hopefully they will come up with new shades in the autumn / winter! Have you tried this product? What do you think of it?
