Weekly purchase 13/01/2014- 19/01/2014

Hello my beautiful shopaholics!! Sorry for the delay of my weekly purchase. I thought about many excuses as to why I haven't put a new post up on Sunday as I said before but the reason is really just because I was caught up with other things in life...Anyways I am back now <3 

Presenting to you all~~ my weekly purchase TA DAAAAA

(1) Barry M matte nail paints (from left to right) in Burgundy crush, Espresso and Vanilla.

The colours look amazing on the nails and they work best with two coats. However, because of the matte formula I couldn't put some of my normal top coat on and so they chipped quite severely in about two days. 

(2) Ren Glycolactic Radiance Renewal Mask

After watching many many 2013 favorites and top 10 masks tags on Youtube, I decided that I have to try out the Ren Glycolactic Radiance Renewal Mask. Many people who have used this said it was like a miracle product and their skin felt so soft and 'renewed' after using it. I have been suffering from acne problems since puberty and although I am lucky enough to not very deep scarings, I still suffer from hyper- pigmentation (red/ purple marks left after the spots are healed). So I really hoped this mask would lift up those marks and give my skin another chance. So far I have only used this twice so I will review how it helps my acne marks in a later time. All I know at the moment is that the mask smells amazing like apricot jam and it didn’t feel irritating on the skin.

(3) Nuxe Reve de Miel lip balm. 

Again another purchase triggered by many 2013 favourites videos. There seemed to be a bit of controversy as to whether this product is worth the hype. To me, this product was not a miracle product. My lips are not very dry anyway but sometimes when I wear matte lipsticks the colours can appear a bit patchy on the lips. This lip balm did not help with that (even after scrubbing my lips and then used this lip balm). However, it felt so velvety on the lips which I really enjoyed and I have not experienced any drug store product with this texture. In conclusion I found it a nice product to have but in terms of moisturising my lips I believe drug store lip balms should do just as well.

(4) Topshop Lip Bullet (in Bewitched)

I have always enjoyed make up products from Topshop. Recently I have been enjoying very dark lip colours and so far this lip bullet from Topshop is the darkest one. I was quite surprised because the colour appeared quite sheer on the lips and it required at least two layers to develop an opaque dark purple colour. I guess it will work better with a lip liner which I don't actually own any and am currently looking into them.

(5) Revlon colourburst matte balm (in 210 unapologetic) and lacquer balm (in 135 provocateur)

                           

My favourite drug store lip products have always been those made by Revlon. I fell in love with their lip butter, super lustrous lip gloss and colourburst balm stain. Since I have known about the matte balm and lacquer balm being released in the states, I have been dying to get my hands on them. As I moved to Hong Kong I have been really into korean make up and the poor Revlon balms have been forgotten. Now that I am in the UK again, I am back to my routine visits to Boots and Superdrug weekly and my cravings for Revlon lip products reminded me about the balms!  I was so close to paying extra to get them online and then the magic happened, they finally appeared in the UK!! (Somehow I never thought about finding out when they were gonna be released in the UK…). I had no idea when they were actually released in the UK but it was the first time I found them in my local area last Saturday (18/01/2014). I bought one matte and one lacquer balm just to try out for now. 

(6) Love and Toast Persimmon Plum body lotion

                                             

To me there is never too many body lotions and perfumes. Smelling nice should be the goal for life for all girls!! I have first heard about the Love and Toast brand on facebook through a famous Taiwanese model. At the time it looked like something I could only get online so I left it. Then one day when I went ‘treasure hunting’ in TK Maxx I found a few Love and Toast products including this body lotion I bought. This body lotion smells fantastic. It has a fresh floral scent. When applying it to the skin, it appeared very thick at first but as I rubbed it in it was absorbed very quickly leaving the skin moisturised and smooth. I would really recommend this product to those who hate the sticky feeling some lotions can leave on the skin. Looking at the ingredients in this product made me love it even more. This product is full of plant goodness such as sunflower seed oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, soyabean oil, shea butter, green tea leaf extract and Kumquat extract. It is a blend of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants specially for those with dry skin. On top of that, it contains no nasty chemicals such as parabens, mineral oils, sulphates etc. And finally it was reduced from its retail price of £12.99 to £3.99!! The only problem was that it was hard to squeeze the lotion out of the packaging, but that didn't really bother me. Love and Toasts products are also available from Debenhams, so I guess I will be going there next...

Hope you have enjoyed my weekly purchase post and have been inspired to do some more shopping. See you next week (more like this week...)

Love you all

Mwah Mwah Mwah

Review: ColourB4 Hair Colour Remover (Extra Strength)

Hello my beautiful shopaholics!! Since we are all smart shopaholics, it is important to spend our money wisely on products that work.

So today I am gonna review the ColourB4 Hair Colour Remover for you guys.

A bit of background on why I wanted to remove my hair colour. I naturally have very dark brown hair (I am Chinese) and I have been colouring it to a lighter brown for about 6 years (in a salon or at home using the Liese bubble hair colour). Recently, I have been wanting to be slightly more adventurous and dying my hair different colour like a dark red/ purple etc. I know many people have told me because my hair is too dark I have to bleach it in order for those colours to show up, however we all know how damaging that is to our hair. So I kinda ignored it and dyed it anyway. First time I went for a dark plumy red (by John Frieda). The result was that the colour did show up in my roots but it was very faint on the dyed part of my hair. After a few washes the purple in my roots was more obvious and I loved that colour. However the dyed part of my hair had gone back to the light brown as it was. Then I have also tried some other hair dye in similar colour but the light brown part of my hair have always failed to take up the red dye

So I thought if I could remove the light brown dye on my hair and then dye it dark red, the red dye should work like how it did on my roots. I started doing some research on the internet and found that there is a product that can remove hair dye and that is the ColourB4 hair colour remover. Before buying it, I watched some review videos and it seemed to work quite well. Still there were a few problems that I thought about. First it was meant for people with naturally light hair colour e.g. blonde, who have dyed it to a darker colour e.g. brown. However, in my case I was trying to remove brown hair dye from my naturally dark brown hair. Secondly, I have dyed my hair so many times, the dye build up is probably impossible to remove? I could not find any reviews of the product on those who were removing a dye lighter than their natural hair colour (but that could only be it’s not meant to be for that purpose…). The theory behind how this product work:

‘Colour B4 shrinks the artificial dye molecules embedded within the hair, enabling you to simply wash them away. Colour B4 does not affect your natural hair colour, meaning the result following use is the shade which lay beneath your artificial colour.’

This told me it should work regardless to the original colour of your hair? Please comment below and let me know if I have completely misunderstood that lol. And also I went for the extra strength one because I believe the dye build up in my hair must be pretty bad...However, there was a normal strength one, another one for those who frequently uses hair colourant at home and also one for removing more vibrant colours like red. 

So I thought I would give it a go. It was retailed for £11.99 but it was on offer from SuperDrug for £9.99 (after Christmas), BARGAIN!

Inside the box there were three bottles labeled A, B and C 

Here is how I used it (I just followed the instructions given in the box)

Step1: Pour A into B.

Step2: Apply to dry hair then wrap the hair in cling film as demonstrated below…That’s because it is very important to keep the hair warm in order to let the product works on the hair.

Step3: Spend 60 minutes of your life with cling film on your head lol (30 minutes for the normal strength)

Step4: Rinse off the product with warm water for 5- 10 minutes (It’s important to rinse thoroughly to allow the shrunken dye particles to leave your hair)

Step5: Apply half of the contents in bottle C, lather up and leave in for a minute

Step6: Rinse it off for 5- 10 minutes

Step7: Apply the other half of bottle C and shampoo how you normally would.

The hair colour removing process can be repeated up to three times.

Here is the final result…it became slightly less obvious at where the darker roots meet the lighter hair? However it was not a miracle product for me.

I would not repeat the process because it smells so so so so bad like rotten eggs!! And that smell stayed in my hair for at least two days…The process was quite complicated and the recommended rinsing time was actually very long that I ran out of hot water in the shower. It’s like 10 degrees in England so I did not enjoy the cold shower. The good things were that it didn’t damage my hair at all as it claimed (no bleach no ammonia) and it was so fun wearing a Sainsbury’s bag cape and having cling film wrapped around my head.

Overall it’s like I didn’t do anything to my hair except made it smelled like rotten eggs for two days. However, this could just be because it's not meant for people with naturally dark hair trying to remove a lighter coloured dye or the dye build up in my hair was just way too much. Hope you found this review useful. Please comment below or chat to me about this product or anything else.

Love you all

Mwah Mwah Mwah~~

Hello~~~

Hello my beautiful shopaholics!!
My name is Shelly. Welcome to my blog page :D 
Every Sunday I will share with you guys my weekly purchases and I will also do reviews on products I have tried out. 

Love you all! Mwah Mwah Mwah~~