Earlier this week I went to my sister’s place to take a look at her stash and to test some beauty stuff together. She wouldn’t let me leave without some samples to try at home of course, she even gave me a little bag full of goodies to enjoy (now who wouldn't love that?).This morning I felt like reviewing something, so I picked the Colour and Shine lipstick pencil in 04 Candy Queen & Glossy lipbalm in Berry Sorbet. They're both from Essence, which means they won't destroy your budget. The pencil is €1,79 (2,41 dollars/1,58 pounds) and the glossy lipbalm is only €0,99! (1,34 dollar/0,87 pounds).

I think both products look adorable (Well, I'm a bit of a 'pink lover' as you can see in the next picture, you'll just have to excuse my pink ish PJ bottoms). At first I thought the glossy lipbalm was a bit small, but you don't really need that much of it so it will probably last you longer than you think. All you have to do is squeeze till you get the amount of product you want, so you won't apply too much and waste product that way. They also have an delicious smell! You can get the lipbalm in different flavours like mango and cherry. The pencil has a nice scent as well, it smells a little like strawberries. I love fruity scents, so I'll be using these two a lot from now on!

On the skin it might look like they have too much glitter but on the lips it looks a lot more subtle. Both of them feel very smooth and moisturising on the lips. The lipstick pencil doesn't really give your lips a lot of colour though, it's more like a sheer gloss. It's also very creamy and won't make your lips feel all gross and sticky. (I hate when that happens). The glossy lipbalm is a little stickier but still not enough to irritate me. Just like the pencil it won't last all day on your lips, probably 2 or 3 hours, but with that kind of price I don't really think it's a huge issue. You can see what they look like below:

I really love both of them, I think the lipstick pencil really complimented my skin tone (so if your skin is on the pale side it will look great on you) and the glossy lipbalm just made my lips look 'cute & juicy'. If people can't find a store nearby that sells Essence, you might want to check out this site. I came across that one earlier today and it even sells the stampy set I adore :)

Today I looked forward to reviewing some Brazil Nut products from The Body Shop, but for some reason (and that reason was my stepdad needing water for his silly coffee) my relaxed shower became an ice cold nightmare. So unfortunately the shower gel, scrub and body butter will have to wait a little longer, I'll just have to bore you with some talk about me & shopping in stead :P

Everyone was free today, so we decided to spend the day together and do something fun. Most of the time that means shopping in our dictionary because it's me, my sister and our mum against my stepdad. (Which is why I didn't throw anything at his head this morning for ruining my shower, he has a hard life with 3 dominate ladies in the house) :p At some point we decided to take a peek at the new MAC counter that opened in one of the stores, but who did I meet there? Yes, a Clinique lady. If you read my post about my experiences with Clinique so far, you can probably guess I needed to get something off of my chest. And surprisingly, she was actually very nice. (Even though she kept repeating that they test each product on 7200 people and that my skin was very very white). She said that even though I used the mild version, my skin was so sensitive it couldn't even handle that kind of product. She couldn't really tell me more at that point, but she did suggest that I'd come back and do a skin test so she could figure out what I can and can't handle. Hopefully I'll find the opportunity to do so in the future, the lady was very friendly and honest about the products and I liked that a lot.

In another store I came across a lipstick I absolutely adore, well I've only seen them online so I was happy I could finally swatch them now! (Wish I could have made pictures too, but there was a very grumpy make-up lady keeping an eye on me). I tested the Rouge Volupté silky sensual radiant lipstick SPF 15 in different shades (I believe the names were peach passion and nude beige) and really loved them! This lipstick is so creamy and pigmented, with the right amount of gloss to make your lips look fabulous. I wish I could afford myself one, the packaging is also so nice and luxurious looking :) Here you can see a couple of swatches someone else made in case you're interested, maybe one day I can show you my own!

So today I decided to create something cute with my Essence stampy set. I still needed to test my BarryM nail paint in 272 Shocking Pink as well, so I picked that as the base colour. In the picture below you can see how it looks with a base coat and two coats of nail paint:

Some of you are probably going 'ewww, pink!' now, but I really like this colour. It's actually a bit darker than in the picture, it kinda makes me think of raspberries. A girlie colour like pink asks for a cute and feminine design, so I immediately started thinking: Cherry Blossom! (Oh, and in case some kind nail 'experts' are reading this, I'm always struggling with painting near the cuticle, does anyone have some tips for that?)

For the Cherry Blossoms I decided to use a light shade of pink, so I picked 070 Rose Pink from the Catrice 60 seconds Nail Couture line.



Now I needed to pick a flower design from my 01 Be Creative! plate from the Essence Stampy set. I decided to go with the little cute flowers (well okay, besides the butterfly they're all little cute flowers) but I thought this one would give a nice playful 'flowers blown away by wind' effect.

Here are some pictures of the results, I'm really happy with the way it turned out :) From a distance you see a colour that's pretty edgy but when you get closer you can see the soft, delicate little flowers. I can understand why the Cherry Blossoms are a symbol of female beauty in China!

This morning I finally tried a somewhat special shower gel: Lush Taai Taai. This one was another little gift from my sister, she originally bought it for herself (she's a sucker for exclusive stuff) but said it smelled like Atomic Fireballs candy, which she didn’t like at all. She gave me a little bit of it to try out and gave the rest to a friend who was crazy about the smell. The scent of it wasn’t the special part though, this one is a little rare because it is especially for the Dutch Lushies! It has been sold in England as well at some point as a special edition, but still known as a Dutch exclusive. You can also describe the scent as pretty spicy with a (big) hint of gingerbread. Great if you like shower gels that smell like food, but personally I’m more the flower type of girl.

In the shower the smell gets nicer though, less spicy and more like hot gingerbread. It was pretty relaxing, probably because it smells like you have something nice in the oven and can eat tons of cookies later. So even though it’s not a horrible smell (many people do and might love this one) I still wouldn’t purchase it myself. Smelling like cinnamon after using it isn’t bad, I just prefer other scents. But if you do like the spicy gingerbread/atomic fireballs smell you will definitely not regret buying this one!

Today I went to the store to get myself some more Catrice nail polsih (the 50% off sale was still going on, so how could I resist?) From right to left you can see 090 Dark Lavender, 050 Nougat Praline and 070 Rose Pink. When I was looking around in the store I noticed a cute little pink box that reminded me very much of Konad and their stamping sets: The Essence nail art stampy set! I've always wanted to try Konad so I was very excited when I found the cheaper version (it was only € 2,99 which is like 4 dollars) because now I could practice the stamping and find out if it was nice or not :)

Essence has two different sets: o1 Be Creative! and 02 Have fun! I got myself the 01 set and I couldn't wait to try it out. The set contains a stamper, a scraper and a very cute image plate. Some girls call it boring but I really love the floral theme and the butterfly. I was still a little worried that it would end up as a failure because it's considered to be the 'fake konad' but when I was testing it I felt really happy. It worked exactly how I wanted it to work: it was easy, fast and it stamped perfectly. I feared the nail polish wouldn't work with the stamper (I used the new Catrice ones) or that I'd get messy flowers on my nails but it went fine! I was so relieved and really happy I bought this set today, this one is perfect if you can't get your hands on Konad or want to try a cheaper version first. Or maybe you want to give someone a cute little gift (My little sister had her eyes on me the whole time I was stamping) :P

One thing you might dislike about this set: The scraper does leave scratches on the image plate. It makes your plate look a little messed up but it doesn't effect the stamping at all, which is good. I also wish Essence would offer more plates, they have a different one in each set but I'd like to buy separated ones. When my other sister heard about my Essence set, she told me she had the Konad one (and she never used it, that bad girl!) Anyway, next week we're going to compare the two :) I'm curious what the differences between them are and I also want to find out if the Konad plates work for this one. I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun with this set though! After I was done with my nails today it was a bit too dark to take decent pictures but hopefully I can show pictures of some cute & creative looking nails soon.

By the way, the Catrice polish I used to paint my nails Wednesday never chipped or anything. I had it on my nails for 4 whole days and I'm really satisfied with the quality. It's such a cheap nail polish and so easy to work with, so I'm happy it looks nice for a couple of days (with the use of a good base coat and top coat)

The Essence website.

We don't have any Lush stores here, so besides Clinique (hate) and the Papaya bath/shower gel from the Body Shop (love) my sister also gave me some lush samples to try out. I guess you could say she's also part of the beauty community, so when she finds something interesting she likes to spread the love through me. Today I tested Ultra bland, although Lush likes to call it the ultimate cleanser. It's an oil-based cleanser suitable for all skin types, although it does contain peanut oil, so if you are allergic to that I'd skip trying this one.

The first thing I noticed was the strong smell, I heard it's supposed to smell nutty or like honey but I thought the smell was just horrible in a not very describable way. I'm not sure it's meant to be that way or if my sample is just a bad one (who knows what my sister did with it) but it was really smelling so awful that I didn't want to put it on my face. Well, after Clinique I'm already a bit against putting new stuff on my face so I decided to test it out on my hand in stead. The product is a thick cream and quite oily, so you don't want to use too much when you apply it. I used it to remove some eye-liner, lipstick and eye shadow from my hand and that went excellent, it really removes your make-up with ease. When you're done you can wipe the product off and that's it. I know that other people even use this to remove their water proof mascara's, it doesn't sting at all.

Even though I dislike the smell of it, I like how it leaves my skin soft and clean. This stuff is amazing for dry spots on your body (like the elbows). It makes everything super smooth, so even if you're like me and end up hating the smell a little, you can still use it for your body. Or perhaps I should try using this at night to moisturise my skin. The quality of the product is fine, I just wish it smelled like candy.

Yesterday I tried something from the Body Shop for the first time: Their Papaya Bath Shower Gel/Cream. I love sweet smelling products and this one smelled heavenly! It's a very sweet and fruity scent. Some probably dislike that, but it smells less overwhelming once it's on your skin. Unfortunately it was only in a sample size, my sister got it during her vacation (or perhaps snatched it from a hotel) and gave it to me. In the future I will definitely purchase this one myself though, it moisturised my skin very well and left me feeling clean and happy because I smelled so adorable. A little bit of this stuff goes a long way, so if you like exotic/sweet scents this one will be great. I only wish the scent would linger on my skin longer...

Here you can find more information about the product.