Weekly Purchase 3rd Feb 2014- 13th Feb 2014

HELLO shopaholics!! Late again I know... to be honest I was having one of those moments thinking why am I writing when there's no one is reading really...but that's of course silly so I am doing this now lol

Here is all I bought:

At the background it is the alphabet primark bags and I picked the letter 'S' for my name Shelly and also this blog Shopaholic anonymous *excitment* It was £1.50 

Then from left to right:

(1) Pukka vanilla chai tea

I fell in love with the spiciness of chai tea and this is AMAZING. It was around £2.50 from Wholefoods.

(2) Jewelry stand

Doesn't this look beautiful. I have been searching for some kind of cake stand thingy to store/ present my jewelries. I found one from Next Home for £24.99. It was so pretty but I refused to pay that money for something I didn't really need. So I kept searching and found this amazing one from TK Maxx for £ 6.99. Although it is smaller than the one from Next, for the price and quality it was just a BARGAIN! They also have other similar designs for the same price, if you are interested you should really go check them out before they are all gone!

(3) Hawaiian Ruby Guava perfume roll- on by Pacifica 

Ages ago I watched a video and heard about roll- on perfumes from Wholefoods. So I went to check them out and bought this one for £12.99. This smells very sweet and like guava as it's named. Roll- on perfumes are so handy to store in handbags for touch- ups.

(4) Batiste mini dry shampoo in sassy and darling Wild

Just thought I needed a travel size one to go into my bag. Thing about my Korean and somtimes Chinese cuisines is sometimes after the meal your clothes and hair can smell like the food you have just eaten and your hair can become quite greasy. So dry shampoo can be useful then.

I didn't buy very much recently and that's because I have checked my bank account. It looked horrible!! No income but lots of spending!! So that's why I have become a lot more 'controlled'. But don't worry guys, I will find a job and money to bring you better and more interesting weekly purchase. 

Hope that wasn't too boring. By the way I am going to PARIS for Valentines day woohoooooo!! Trust me I have had so many horrible Valentines days, single or not. And finally I can have this day celebrated in the most romantic city in the world. I will let you guys know what I bought from Paris when I am back!!

Love you all, 

Mwah Mwah Mwah

Ombre hair time!!! Review: Loreal Paris Preference wild ombre (brush on dip dye) colour No. 3

Hello my lovely shopaholics!! I dip dyed my hair!! Actually it's not that exciting I have done this before...with the same Loreal kit (Loreal Paris Preference wild ombre)...but I am doing it again. This is because I bought the shade number 1 for brown hair last time I ombre/ dip dyed it and it turned out quite ginger so I wanted to try it again with a lighter shade number 3 which is meant to be for those with dark blonde hair. So I hoped it would turn out lighter. By the way I purchased my kit from Savers which costed a fiver.

So here it is. The kit contains:
The followings were labelled with the number on the packaging
(1) Lightening powder
(2) Developer cream
(3) Lightening cream
(4) Conditioning shampoo
Also contains a pair of black plastic gloves, a brush to brush on the dye and instructions to use the product.

So the way I used it was I poured powder (1) into developer cream (2) and then squeezed the lightening cream (3) into (2) as well. Then give it a good shake to mix well. After that, gloves on and apply the mixed dye onto the brush. I divided my hair into two with a middle parting in the front and back (see picture below). The instructions suggested to start brushing on the hair from behind at ear level all the way down. Since my hair is quite long and I didn't want to have so much blonde, I started on the last 3-4 inches on my hair and kind of worked my way up instead of down.

Here is what my hair was like when I was dying it. And if you have long hair like mine, an old t-shirt is necessary. Do not try the sainsburys bag method I've shown in my earlier blog (if you don't know what this is it is basically me creating a cape with sainsburys bags to stop hair dye getting onto my clothes. Pathetic I know lol)

I reapplied the dye as they dry out and I also checked whether my desired colour has developed by washing off the dye on a small strand of hair. I waited for about 40 minutes but the dyed parts still look gingery. Then my sister said 'they said it works better if you keep it moist, so maybe cover it with foil or something?'. So I went to my beloved cling film again (again you can see why I love cling film in my first post). I waited for another 10- 15 minutes or so and went to rinse off the dye and washed my hair with the conditioning shampoo (4) provided in the kit. According to the instructions this is how you should look when you rinse your hair...

And the cling film managed to keep the hair moist with the dye but maybe the dye has been applied for too long and it stopped working. I ended up with quite gingery hair but less so comparing to when I used a darker shade before. Also the ombre/ dip dye effect was much more obvious. 

I was pleased with the results. A few problems were that a few strands of my hair was a lot lighter but that could be because I used cling film at the end and some the dye worked better at some parts. Also my ends are quite dry after that. I want to repeat this process to achieve a lighter colour so that I can play with the wash off dye from Bleach London. Work/ job interviews shall start soon and in Hong Kong light hair colour means I won't get a job I want. But I am planning to hide the light part of my hair with a hair donut (twist it all into the donut so that only the darker hair shows on the bun). This is also why ombre/ dip dye is fun!! We all like to hide some secrets..

Overall Loreal Paris ombre kits are so easy to use, they come so many different shades of blonde and colours ( red, purple etc). I highly recommend them to those who want to achieve an ombre/ dip dye effect at home.

That's it for this review, hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. See y' all soon.

Love you all

Mwah Mwah Mwah

Weekly Purchase 27th Jan 2014- 2nd Feb 2014

Hello my beautiful shopaholics!!! Happy lunar/ Chinese new year!! So far I have almost never been on time for my weekly purchase, however I really enjoy sharing with you guys what I have bought and it makes me so happy to just put a blog post up…I’m weird I know lol. I actually have to do my job applications but I’d rather do a blog post. It feels like I am talking to you guys even though I haven’t had a single comment yet but I know you are reading and that makes me so happy. Thank you so much for reading my blog guys. Love you all <3

Okay let’s see how naughty I have been this week. (the two envelopes are 'red pockets'. In Chinese New Year, relatives who are married would give these out to those who are not married and this is how it can get very embarrassing when you stay unmarried for a LONG time...and it has money inside!!) 

 I went onto fragrance direct!! (they also have their own youtube channel, check it out here!) This website is O.M.G!!! If you didn’t know about it I suggest you go and check it out NOW!! It is such an amazing website. So far I have never purchased anything from any outlet websites before because I wasn’t sure whether they are safe or trustworthy. I first discovered this website from one of my favourite youtubers, Becca Rose and from her experience it felt like this is a website I can trust (she's amazing, check out her fragrance direct haul here if you are interested). Although the website is called fragrance direct, it doesn’t only sell perfumes. It sells all kind of beauty products from make up to nail polish to skin care to hair products etc. This website has crazy deals for drug store products and some high ends products. So I went onto the website to see if they had those things that I have always wanted to get but didn’t quite want to spend that much money on. And WOW they did have almost everything I wanted to get but in a much cheaper price! Check them out:

(1) Perfumes

Lolita Lempicka L’ Eau en Blanc Eau de Parfum 30mL (about £19 from£30)

First please take a look at this bottle. It is just beautiful!! And the fact that the bottle is made of frosted glass just made it even better (I like frosted glass so much but I don’t know why…). To spray the perfume you press down the stalk of the apple. I honestly haven’t seen any other perfume bottle with such an amazing design. Then the smell, hmm it didn’t smell as elegant as it looked. It smells very nice but all I could smell was baby powder. 

Burberry body Eau de Parfum 35mL (about £25 from £41)

The bottle is orgasmic. If the Lolita Lempicka perfume were a teenage girl, this perfume is a sexy, young woman. I never owned any Burberry products before and this perfume just makes me feel a million-dollars. I am so bad at describing anything and describing a scent in English makes it almost impossible to understand for other people so if you want to know what this perfume smells like please checkout this link. *apologies and bows* 

(2) Nail polish (From left to right. Revlon, 99p each; Sally Hansen £1.49)

To be honest I didn’t quite like the texture of the Revlon nail enamel. It is abit too watery and it’s never enough with a single layer. However, it was 99p each and they had colours I wanted so I bought a few. I have never had a Sally Hansen nail polish but I always hear people talking about it so I picked one up. From the shades of the nail polish I noticed I am really hoping for the sun and a warm breeze. But as we all know this ain’t gonna happen in England anytime soon! I am going to wear these nail polish and pretend it’s warm outside. The shades I got were from left to right, sweet tart, blue lagoon, minted and go bananas.

(3)       Revlon Colorstay Foundation (£6.99 from £12.99, in the shade sand beige) 

I can’t even remember how long I have been using the Bourjois Healthy mix serum foundation. It never really managed to cover my acne scars/ marks completely even right after putting on makeup but somehow I just never thought about changing it. One day I went out to London quite early and I had a birthday party/ dinner to attend to that evening. Half way through the day I realized my makeup has almost disappeared on my face. The hyper-pigmentation left by my old friend acne had been uncovered, my whole face was like a giant grease ball, my under eye areas were so dark from my revealed dark circles and also smudged mascara/ eyeliner. Then I realized I need to do something about it. First, clearly my foundation was not lasting long enough for someone with such horrible skin like myself. I needed something with better coverage and a more matte finish. I heard about this Colourstay foundation from my sister. I have never tried using hers but it always looks nice on her and she has been re- purchasing it. So I have decided to pick it up. First impression was great, it definitely has higher coverage than the healthy mix foundation and my skin seemed to stay matte for longer. I know this foundation has been out on the market for ages and many people have reviewed it but I would still love to show you guys if I like it when I have used it more, because it might be useful for those we have similar skin problems (acne scars/ marks, large pores, dark circles, oil- dripping face, pretty much anything you can think of and I can see wrinkles being on my list in about 3 years time...I wana cry now). 

The following products are from elsewhere. 

(4)       Bobbi Brown corrector (£18.50, in the shade peach bisque)

So as mentioned above, I also have problems with my dark circles. My face is just problematic in general, sigh~ Bobbi Brown is currently offering free delivery with any online purchase and when you spend over £ 50 you will get to choose 3 amazing samples. My plan was to get two lipsticks and a corrector online to get the three samples. But HA! I was a good girl I stopped myself with the lipsticks… because I got stuck with picking the right shade of the corrector. So I went in the store to get matched to the right shade. It was my first time trying on high end makeup in store and the experience was great! I highly recommend going in store to try the products on before investing your money on these high end makeup. This is because first it’s free, second you don’t want to waste your money getting something expensive if you don’t end up liking it and third it’s free…lol 

(5)       Candles

Chupa Chups candle in strawberry and cream (£1 from poundland)

This candle smells exactly like the lollie and it brings back so many childhood memories whenever I burn it. Mum used to get me Chupa Chups when I was being a ‘good girl’. As a child I used to believe strawberry was a beautiful food for girls only and pink was a colour for princesses. So my favourite flavor was strawberry and cream. What was yours? 

Yankee candles (49g, £1 each from Asda)

From left to right, the scent was white linen and lace, stony cove, vanilla frosting, sweet pea and pink honeysuckle. I have always enjoyed scents from Yankee candles and I don’t really know where I can get them in Hong Kong apart from on the internet. So I have decided to stock up. These small candles are great because they are light and they surprisingly claimed to burn for up to 15 hours. 

These are all I bought for this week. I hope you like this post and it has inspired you to go shopping. 

Love you all

Mwah Mwah Mwah