Friday, May 27, 2016

Wet N Wild Au Naturel Palettes | Dupe for Naked Palettes?


Last weekend, I came across the Wet N Wild Au Naturel palettes at Walmart. There was a sign on the shelf "exclusive at Walmart". That sign and the very affordable price tag of $5.62 got me hooked. There was only two options, Nude Awakening and Bare Necessities. I picked up Nude Awakening simply because it was the only one left on the shelf. I didn't think it was gonna be resemble the Naked palette at all. I was just convinced that Wet N Wild is amazing drugstore brand. It doesn't sacrifice quality for price tag. They kill it when it comes to eyeshadows. 

                                              

I fell in love in the first swatch! The next day I came back to Walmart and picked up Bare Necessities. It was that good. Especially with $5.62, you can never go wrong with that. I did a demo/tutorial/rave video on the Nude Awakening. At the time I shot that video, I still didn't realize that it could be a dupe of the Naked 3. Naked palettes have 12 shades, and Au Naturel have 10 shades on the palette.  I'm not saying that these palettes have the same exact shades of the Urban Decay most coveted palettes, but some of them are so darn similar. I'll let the pictures speak for itself. 

Nude Awakening & Naked 3 

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Smooth Lips | elf Lip Exfoliator, Elizabeth Arden Lip-Fix


I feel like I have the dryest lips ever! My lips are always dry no matter what. I used to ignore the dryness and just didn't care enough to apply lip balm or whatever. Every time I apply on lipsticks, not long after I would see the product all "feather-ed" up leaving horrid-looking residue on my lips. I used to think the lipsticks were the problem, until I realized they were not. 

These products help me. I haven't seen my lipsticks get feathery since I've used these. 


Lip Exfoliator helps to get rid of the dead skin on your lips. The idea is the same with what scrubs do to our body. This one from elf is very affordable, and it does the job well. It is pretty weird at first to put a lipstick-looking product and just rub it all over my lips. I then need to rinse it off with water. You can also get similar result by rubbing your toothbrush on your lips when you brush your teeth. It does the same effect with more efficient, since we all brush our teeth anyway. Be careful not to rub too harsh as you might hurt your lips. Lips have the most sensitive surface.

Monday, May 09, 2016

Travel Diary | San Diego in 4 Days (feat. Wizarding World of Harry Potter!)

Balboa Park, San Diego, CA

Hi everyone! Long time no blogging. Lately, I post on instagram more than I do on my blog. I honestly find it really hard to form idea long enough for a blog post. If you don't know, I have another account on instagram under @byAmadea where I post mostly 99.9% beauty related products. I share makeup of the day, beauty products I've tried and my takes on them, and many more. All the pictures are taken by yours truly. I feel like it's a quicker way to share with you guys what I'm currently enjoying -- or not enjoying.

Moving on to my most recent trip. Every year after April 15 (or April 18 this year, when tax season is over), I take a little getaway trip just to refresh myself. This year, we went to San Diego and Universal Studios in Hollywood. We took a morning flight and arrived in SD at around 10 am. The check-in time was 4 pm, so we had plenty of time to kill. Instead of renting a hotel room, we opted for small studio with kitchen and its own backyard! The place is small but just enough for two. I forgot to take the picture, so I can't show you guys.

Places we visited

Since we had hours to kill before we could check in, we made Balboa Park as our first stop. It's a signature San Diego spot with plenty of museums, a vast range of parks and great amounts of sight seeings. You haven't been to San Diego if you haven't visited Balboa Park.  We didn't really do anything there besides walking around and taking pictures. Parking was pretty difficult when we were there. It was on Tuesday afternoon. The heat also made me more exhausted than I actually was. Being in South California, San Diego is always about 5 degrees warmer than the bay area.

Botanical Park - free admission