Etude House Flagship Store

Hellooooooo! I'm fairly excited to share this entry because only then will I be able to move on to my haul entry xD

So approx. 3 weekends ago, after finishing my last Mamacita dance class, the bff and I headed down to Wisma Atria because I wanted to go to the new Etude House Flagship store.

But first, horrible selfies after dance class!

 

See the glistening sweat lol

Lee Donghae pose xD

Here's the new Etude House flagship store that opened a couple of weeks back at Wisma Atria # B1-20/21/22.

Frankly speaking, I am not a major fan of their products because my past experiences have left me more disappointed than excited really (their lipsticks were drying and the nail polishes cheap but so hard to work with! UGH. Oh and their BB/CC creams just...).

Used to buy them because SHINee and Dara were their endorsers and I wanted to collect their merchandise (HEH.) but ever since they've switched endorsers to Sulli and Krystal, I've stopped being interested in their new collections. Sorry Etude House!

Anyway, Instagram was abuzz with the new opening of this flagship store and I was quite blown away by the sheer size of the entire store!!

It's occupying what used to be GAP (GAP kept their level 1 store) at the basement of the mall, towards the entrance to the MRT station.

And this was what really drew me to the store: Etude House x Disney Princesses Collection.

HOLY KAMOLEYYYYYYYY!! I WANT THEM ALL!!

Display of the entire range from this collection

Just how cute is the marketing stuff for this collection

Here's a quick look of the products launched for this collection.

Pics credit to Etude House.

They picked 4 Disney Princesses and came up with products after each Princess' character. I particularly love the rose blush from Belle's Happy Ending and of course the nail polish sets are just so fitting of each Princess' character!! *insert heart eyes*.

I liked that Etude House put in a ton of effort into the packaging this time around, especially with the nail polish bottle caps haha!

A closer look at the entire product range available.

Snow White Collection

For Snow White's collection, they included a red lipstick, 1 BB cream and the nail polish duo. Everything about Snow White screams red because of her red luscious lips and love for red apples (I made this up haha!).  

Cinderella Collection

Our favourite blue princess who needs to return home at the stroke of midnight had 3 single eyeshadows named after her along with the nail polish duo.

Here you can see how they packaged each nail polish set into a book because.... fairytales came from books first right? LOL.

Belle Collection

Now I was most excited about Belle's collection because of the blushes!! Gosh, that rose embossing is really to die for (Side note: Milani how about making those rose blushes that you have too permanent?). I picked up everything in this collection save for the pink blush because it was too blue toned for my liking.

Jasmine Collection

The bff was majorly excited for the Jasmine collection because her name is Jasmine too xD

A mascara was part of this collection together with the nail polish duo.

The paper packaging were quite easily bent. Wished it was sturdier. 

After paying for all the stuff I picked out in this collection, we went around taking pics of the store. It's really girly and princessy so if you're a huge fan of pink, this should be one of your favourite places to go too hahaha.

Highlight of the decor is the pink pumpkin carriage at the back of the store.

The interior of this carriage really screams pink and all things frilly/girly.

Inside the pumpkin carriage

Fake macarons anyone?

See what I mean when I said they went full out princess mode on the decor

There was also a small section at the back of the store that came with a makeover area. This is not available in other Etude House stores from what I noticed. Pretty impressive on how much though they put into this flagship store. 2 thumbs up!!

There is also a instant photo machine inside the store. Every $20 earns you a pink token that you can use for the gacha machines or take a photo inside the booth.

The bff and I had 4 tokens between us so we decided to just take the pictures as the bracelets were not really to our fancy.

Photos instantly printed out

These are $80 photos okay! HAHAHA bloody expensive but oh wells. At least the machine had the decency to add filters onto our face lol. Would have been nice if we could decorate them like in neoprint machines but I think this would really add on to the waiting time.

All 4 nail polish sets

Between the 2 of us, we both brought home 2 sets each. I bought Snow White and Belle while the bff bought Jasmine and Cinderalla.

Borrowed her 2 sets for review but I kinda like messed up the packaging on the Jasmine one so I bought another brand new one for her since she was keeping it for collection purposes and kept the Jasmine set with crappy box. Also partly because I liked the colours upon swatching them :D.

Books or nail polishes? ^^

Lighting in the store is damn good lol!

Annnnnd.... that's all for a short review of the Etude House flagship store. Do drop by if you're in the area to take a look at the store's deco and items.

I do have to say that when they first landed on our sunny shores I wasn't very into their products but as time went by, they improved several products and especially for this Disney collaboration, I really liked most of the items I picked.

The review of all the stuff I bought will be up next so do stay tuned for that.

Till then, byeeeee!

IOPE Air Cushion XP SPF50+/PA+++ in N21 (Review/Swatch)

Hey all! Sorry that this post has taken some time to go up because I was actually in Bangkok over the weekend lol. 

To continue on with my 'BB cushion challenge', here's the second BB cushion pact I used everyday for an entire week - IOPE Air Cushion XP in N21. You can read about my review on the Innisfree Long Wear Cushion BB here.

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IOPE Air Cushion XP BB cushion comes in 3 different ranges - Natural, Shimmer and Cover. You can decide what sort of coverage you'd like the BB to do and purchase accordingly. I bought No. 21 from the Natural series or N21 as indicated on the packaging because I didn't want to look overly shimmery like Edward Cullen nor have too thick of a coverage (my guess is that the Cover ones have very high coverage - don't quote me on that lol). I went for the safest option obviously haha!

IOPE does not have a physical counter/store in Singapore so I bought mine off Qoo10 during a sale. It was a bundle option of SGD$49.80 for the BB with a lipstick. I'm not too sure how much this retails in Korea so if anyone knows do let me know in the comments below. I will also review the lipsticks that I bought from IOPE in another entry so stay tuned for it! :)

The BB cushion comes in the standard white packaging as you can see and when you purchase, it comes with a refill hence you're paying for 2 cushions basically but with 1 cushion holder/cover.

When you open the new BB cushion, there is a seal over the cushion as seen below. I actually had to snap these pictures with my phone before proceeding to use the BB cream xD

If the seal is not there, highly possible that the item is not brand new so make sure it is there!

The puff provided is the typical BB cushion flat puff which... in my opinion should be more durable. I tried to wash my old Laneige old but it completely disintegrated so I had to throw it away and buy a new one. Pfffft!

Hand swatch

As you can see, the coverage is very decent and natural looking. It doesn't give me the typical 'white' sheen that BB creams normally do and unlike the Innisfree one, I could go out of the house looking fairly normal and not have to use another powder so in this sense, I prefer the IOPE one over the Innisfree one.

Here I used the BB cream all over my face, using a patting motion FYI - please do not slide the puff all over your face as you would using a sponge to apply your foundation. Staying power is fairly decent and I surprisingly didn't blot my face throughout the week I used this.

Which do I like better? IOPE actually. Simply because the lasting power is better plus the colour matches my skin wayyyyyy better. That being said, you can go for the Innisfree one if you're budget conscious because it only comes with one BB cushion so you pay lesser for it as opposed to paying for the BB cushion with a refill for the IOPE one.
I liked that the IOPE suited our local weather much more than the Innisfree one because I noticed the colour fading off much faster from my face when I used the Innisfree BB cushion. So even if I mentioned that I liked the Innisfree one in my previous entry, I'd prefer the IOPE one over that now that I've tried both versions.

Alrights, that's all for this entry. I hope it's useful for you guys reading this.
I will be testing the newer version of the Laniege BB cushion next so stay tuned.
Till then, bye!

Laneige Birthday Treat!

Hello! I'm here to blog about the Laneige Birthday treat that I won last month hahaha.

 

We appeared on the Laneige SG's Instagram that night lol! Thanks for beautifying my face hahahaha!

Really glad to have actually won this because frankly speaking I wasn't expecting to win #sonegative

But my birthday month always seems to hold a lot of surprises for me (July babies FTW!!) and... yeah I won it despite the overwhelming response from many of the Club Laneige members born in July.

You can read about the birthday treat here or keep a lookout on Laneige SG's Facebook page where they will announce the registration for the birthday treat. Good luck to the August - December babies yeah ;)

FYI this is only available this year because it is Laneige's 20th anniversary so probably won't have such events from next year onwards!

Ok, let's move on with the entry! Eggcited much to be primped and pampered so well by the team of makeup artists from Laniege and hairstylists from Blow+Bar.

I invited the bff, Jace and Wanjun along for this treat because they were the ones I had in mind when I submitted the entry. So that Saturday after our Last Romeo class, we had lunch at Plaza Singapura before heading down to Raffles Place to get to Blow+ Bar.

We were gonna have a beauty makeover, express manicure and hairstyling as part of the birthday treat.

Oh and the cool thing about Blow+ Bar is that they actually have a bar concept where they serve alcoholic drinks to their customers. We all had either cider (Somersby!) or champagne (I was the only one drinking it).

Blow+ Bar
One Raffles Place
One Raffles Place Shopping Podium #05-18
Singapore 048616
Tel: 64387005

Jacelyn and I did our makeup first while Sinhui and Wanjun did their hair first and then we switched places afterwards. Pretty fun to actually be getting makeovers from professional makeup artists despite me being a makeup addict because the techniques they used are pretty different from us mundane humans LOL!

Started with my bare face. I only slapped on sunblock before heading out of the house. #braverymuch

Wanjun getting her express manicure while Sinhui disappeared to wash her hair lol.

Wohoo makeup galore!

The makeup artist who did my makeup that day is Cynthia. She's actually stationed at the Laneige store in Tampines. I usually patronize the boutique store at Plaza Singapura because it's on the NEL and more convenient for me to get home lol so it was my first time meeting her that day.

After putting on BB cream and foundation and.... eyeliner I think lol. Eye pencils do not work on my lids T.T

Here's the palette I picked out for my eyes - Pure Radiant Shadow in No. 5 City Khaki

I wanted to go all full out smokey because I'm not very good at doing smokey eyes so I wanted to see how the makeup works on my eyes. Picked this palette because of that deep navy colour in the bottom right corner. Prettay! :D

But I do have to say the staying power of these shadows seem quite weak in comparison to other brands. The oils in my lids kinda made the shadows disappear after 3 hours. Boo. Maybe things will improve if an eye primer was used - Cynthia only applied a BB cream all over my lids as a base.

 

Wanjun and Sinhui's turn to put on their makeup. I actually told Sinhui to pick No. 7 Miss Twinkle (pictured below). The moss green is really lovely, very autumn de feel hahaha! You will see her eye look later below.

pic cr to Yesstyle

Totally living the taitai life here haha! One person do my hair, the other doing my nails LOL! Best.life.ever.

And we all had a hair mask done during the washing. Relax max!

  

Opted for large waves at the bottom of my hair to channel my inner Kpop star LOL!

Cynthia touching up on my makeup here after my hairstyling

Laneige also kindly prepared 4 bags of goodies for us! THANK YOU LANEIGE SINGAPORE :D

Birthday girl gets the bigger bag hehe xD

This is the bag for the 3 of them

Ta-dah! All done :)

With Doreen, brand manager from Laneige Singapore who took care of us throughout the entire time. 

Thank you dear! :)

With lovely Cynthia who did my makeup

Jace and her makeup artist

Group pictures! We all really looked quite different with the beauty makeover hahaha. Oops :P

All primped up and beautified! :)

Individual shots of the girls - minus me because I was the photographer lol.

Sinhui

See!! The green is really lovely!! 

Waterfall braids for her

Wanjun

Colored contacts really make the look looks different! Why I have astigmatism... D:

Jacelyn

She went for a softer, more pinky look

Here's a closeup of my eye look

We left at approximately 6.30pm and went to the toilet to camwhore lol. Super zi lian leh we all but.... we were all dolled up and nicely made up so why not right?

I'm contemplating perming my hair to this for the Korea trip at the end of the year

Shoo-ed everyone out because we were attracting weird stares from everyone in the toilet lol and then we went out to the area outside and the sun was still up. Great lighting = photoshoot time lol! Yup, finished camwhoring in the toilet then headed to next location to continue HAHAHA!

This girl super know how to pose for the camera hahaha

Gizibes for life *throws greasy Woohyun hearts*

We were trying to imitate Yonghwa lol! See reference below.

Sidenote: This episode of Weekly Idol with CN Blue is SUPER funny! LOL

Possibly the longest friend I've ever known heh

Spent a good 30mins to an hour trying to catch the last of the daylight before the sun set by taking OOTDs. I kinda failed very badly due to me being unable to pose naturally. Makes me salute those fashion bloggers  (You as well Carol if you're reading this lol) who can pose so naturally for the camera.

So below were the... nicer shots we took that day HAHAHAHA.

Wanjun & Jace

Le bff and I

You mei you feeling huh? LOL

I really like this picture of Jacelyn. Looks very 女神 haha

See I told you this woman can really pose lor haha!

黄金右脸 (oops don't kill me!)

黄金左脸 (don't kill me x2)

Alright, that's all for this post! Thank you Laneige Singapore for giving me and my friends this opportunity. I really enjoyed it a lot and am really grateful that we were all well taken care of by the team from Laneige and Blow+ Bar. And also to Melissa from Laneige who contacted me and telling me I was picked as the winner haha! 

I'm really interested to explore more of Laneige's makeup range. I have been a loyal user of their BB cushions - in fact I am still using the older version Laniege Snow BB Cushion - so I did pick up a Serum Intense Lipstick which I hope to review soon lol. *screams* Cheon Song Yi colour everybody!

Have also always been a loyal user of the Water Bank Gel Cream and I did pick up the eye cream and essence using my birthday discount last month so hopefully they will work wonders and make me look like Song Hye Kyo okay? xD 

Anyway, do keep a lookout for my review on Laneige's Pore Control BB Cushion coming up in the next few weeks! It's part of my "BB Cushion Challenge" that I mentioned in my previous entry haha.

Alrights, annyeong! ^^