asian beauty Archives - Curiously Carmen

Etude House Lip Mask Review

January 16, 2017

I love trying Asian beauty products, but I don’t get to try Asian products as much as I want due to lack of Asian beauty stores in Canada. I also hate waiting for products to ship, and rather have the instant gratification of buying in person! Luckily, Maki loves to purchase Asian products and I was able to try this product out as a gift.
Etude House is pretty much a staple in Asia. Although it is Korean, you can find it in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, pretty much in any big Asian metropolis. Think of Etude House as the Covergirl or Maybelline equivalent, in terms of availability and price-wise.

Initially, when I first heard of lip masks, I wasn’t sure what the point of them was. I mean, don’t lip balms pretty much do the same thing? But after reading a few reviews on lip masks, I was curious to try them out.

On this particular day, I had just returned home from a weekend getaway in Victoria, where I sadly caught a nasty cold. Whenever I get sick, my lips get really dry and cracked because I have to breathe through my mouth. Even my normally trusty ol’ Burt’s Bees lip balm wasn’t helping! It was the perfect opportunity to try out this lip mask.
Etude House is so popular that even though it is a Korean brand, they have English for their non-Korean customers. There are instructions on the back that were quite easy to follow, along with a cute picture!

I tried the cherry flavour, which had a pleasant and nice scent to it. Even though it is a lip product, I didn’t want to exactly taste or eat the product to taste whether there was a cherry taste LOL. But, the scent was definitely there!

The mask is a gel texture and moderately soaked in product. Compared to face masks where the product juices are known to spill out and drip everywhere, the lip gel mask was definitely a LOT cleaner to use. Because it was a gel texture, it also had a bit of a cooling effect!
I found that the mask did not stick well to my skin, so I ended up lying down when using it. Part of the reason is because the mouth sticks out from your face and isn’t a flat surface, so it’s harder for the mask to cling on to (I suck at explaining but hope that made sense!).

I would also recommend that your lips be slightly opened, so that more product can be absorbed.

I also mentioned above that the reason why I decided to try this out was because I was sick with a cold, and my lips were very cracked and dry. Well, I should have thought of this idea more thoroughly because it was so hard to breathe! Actually, scratch that- I couldn’t breathe due to my stuffed nose. I ended up poking a hole in the middle of the mask for air LOL!

After taking off the mask, my lips were noticeably a lot softer and smoother. Because I was sick, the softness only lasted about 3 hours. But, I have full confidence that it would have lasted longer should I not had to breathe through my mouth and lips.

Mess free, product does not drip everywhere
Has a nice scent
Leaves lips soft and smooth

Hard for mask to stick on your lips unless you lie down
If you’re sick with a stuffed nose like I was, make sure you poke a hole in the middle so you can breathe LOL!

Yay!

Product received as a gift.

Kose Sekkisei Facial Powder Wash

April 15, 2016

Last year, I was introduced to Sekkisei, a Japanese beauty company that had just launched in Canada. Sekkisei has a beautiful, royal blue packaging for all of its products. Being the communications and marketing nerd that I am, I love design consistency!

I received a number of Sekkisei products for review. However, I don’t like having super long posts so I will be dividing my Sekkisei reviews up as I try and use them more. Today, I will be focusing on the Sekkisei facial powder wash.
One of Sekkisei’s main selling points is that it claims to whiten skin, and make it more translucent. Fair, white skin is considered one of the most beautiful features a woman could have in the Asian culture. There are so many Asian products out there that are marketed towards whitening your skin.

In fact, if you can read Chinese characters, you will see that the first character means ‘snow’ in Chinese.

As Sekkisei is a Japanese based company as mentioned earlier, Sekkisei products are derived from both high quality Chinese and Japanese herbal extracts.

You may be wondering why a Japanese company uses Chinese characters instead of Japanese characters? The Japanese actually have three alphabets, one which is called ‘Kanji’ and uses Chinese characters on writing mixed with the other two Japanese alphabets. The meaning on paper/writing is the same, but pronunciation is completely different.

Anyways, back to the review. The powder wash comes in a sturdy bottle with one small opening, so that the powder does not spill everywhere. The powder is very fine, and very light. One small sneeze can send the product falling everywhere! =P

It reminded me of baby powder, but even softer. Sekkisei describes this product as a ‘skin-clarifying powder wash that leaves skin brighter than and as fine as freshly fallen snow’.

After putting the powder on your hand, lather it up by adding water. You may want to experiment with the amount of water you add to reach your desired consistency. For myself, I added a few drops of water and washed it on my face in a circular motion.

My first impression was that it lathered pretty quickly, and I loved how gentle it was on my skin. It was very smooth, yet did a decent job in making my skin feel very clean and fresh.

You can purchase Sekkisei products online or at select Shoppers Drug Mart stores in Canada!

Yay!

Thanks for reading,

Carmen

Press samples featured. Opinions are own.

My Melody Face Mask

October 4, 2015

When Maki went to Taiwan and Hong Kong last month, she came back with an assortments of gifts and souvenirs for me! Thank you, Maki, if you’re reading this! I don’t buy many Asian beauty brands, but to my knowledge, I believe that they are a lot cheaper in Asia so it is a good time to stock up on them while you are there.

I received a bunch of facial masks from her, which I am slowly trying out.. as well as an liquid eyeliner that I really love! One of the facial masks that she got me was the My Melody face mask.

For those of you that don’t know, My Melody is one of the Sanrio characters. You can think of Sanrio as the Disney of Japan… their characters are very popular and everywhere in Asia! The most popular Sanrio character is probably Hello Kitty.

I grew up with a lot of Sanrio characters in my life, my favourite characters would have to be Hello Kitty, Keroppi, Little Twin Stars, My Melody… and the list goes on. I’m feeling so nostalic as I type this, I had Keroppi stickers all over my room and door when I was a kid!
This is what the packaging looks like – simple and minimalist, yet still very cute!
Although I took a Japanese beginners class three years ago, sadly I did not continue with it although I hope to be able to read fluent Japanese one day. That, or be able to travel to Japan and understand or get around!

With that said, clearly I can’t tell you what the ingredients are or what this mask claims to do. I’ll just leave it up here for you all to see and if you can translate the back, please leave a comment down below =D
I was very surprised when I took out the mask, and saw that it was an actual My Melody face! How cute is that?! Seriously, Japanese products are amazing and are so detailed. It also smelled like strawberries, which was an excellent delight.

At first, my skin reacted a bit with the mask as it stung a little, which went away in less than 30 seconds. I left it on my face for 15 minutes, and I thoroughly enjoyed the scent of strawberries the whole time. I am a big fan of strawberries, if you didn’t know 😛

I was a bit confused as to if this mask would fit my entire face, since it is more horizontal than vertical. It actually covered my whole face area, except for the tip of my nose because the nose flap was a bit too short for me.

Overall, I thought that this mask was very cute and I enjoyed using it. I really loved the packaging and design of this. The mask felt very moisturizing, although I wish I could read Japanese so I can tell what this mask targets.

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

GUEST POST: Sasa.com Makeup & Skincare Haul!

April 16, 2015

Hi everyone!

Special blog post today- everyone, virtually meet one of my good friends, Pauline (She’s super awesome)! She has agreed to write a guest post for me and I’m excited to share it with you all today. See what type of Asian cosmetics Pauline bought from Sasa.com and how she wore them to the Japanese cherry blossom festival.

Happy reading everyone!

Carmen

~~~~~

Hello everybody! I am doing this for my friend, Carmen, as a guest post, and will be the very first time doing this! So, hopefully this goes well… haha!

I recently bought some makeup and face products from this super famous Hong Kong make up store: Sasa. I usually purchase my makeup and face products from here because it’s cheap and my skin seems like to like Asian brands of makeup/skin products. They also often do free shipping once in a while!

The first product I’m going to introduce is an eyeliner by Majorlica Majorca: the cream pencil liner.

I must say, this cream liner is super smooth to line your eyes with, and it’s super creamy. Usually with creamy eyeliner, it smudges easily, but this eyeliner didn’t smudge and actually stayed on my eyes for the whole day! Especially when I tight lined with this eyeliner, I was ready for this to smudge all over my eyes by the end of the day. I was so surprised at how it stayed on so well! 5/5 for this product! =)
The second product is: Majorlica Majorca’s jeweling pencil. This product is basically a white eyeliner to put on your eye corners to brightening up your eye as well as giving an illusion of having bigger eyes!

Nothing really special about this eyeliner, as I think all white eyeliners can do the same as this one can. 😛

Third product: Majorlica Marjoca’s perfect automatic liner: This product was kind of weird to use at first. So, the first thing you do is twist the bottom of this eyeliner until the ink comes out from the tip. The con of this is that if you twist too much, the ink will splat out and comes into a big mess.

However, after you clean that up, you can just apply that on your eyes just like any other eyeliner would … If you do not want to clean up the mess, this might not be the best product for you, because you will have to twist the bottom every time you want to use this product.

This eyeliner also stayed on really well on my eyes, and was pretty easy to apply as well. So, other than the whole twisting thing, I would rate this 4.5/5 ☺
Hehe … I have combined the three eyeliners mentioned above today, for my makeup look of the day! I went to the cherry blossom Japanese festival with a couple of my friends today, so I thought “hey, why not try out these products if I am going to blog about them anyway!”

I used the cream eyeliner to tight line my upper line as well as my water line. Like I mentioned, it stayed on without smudging the entire day. I then used the perfect liner to line across my eye and winged it out just a tiny bit, facing downwards, to give an illusion of a cute round eye. (…or eyes…)

Finally, I used the white eyeliner to put on my eye corners to brighten up my eyes. ☺

And here’s me in a Yukata ☺ .. To protect my friends’ privacy, I have turned them into Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma.

Okay, on with the other products!
Fourth product: Shu Uemura Skin purifier (in premium A/I) This product … is godly. Although this is a “cleansing oil”, this will not clog your pores nor will you have a disgusting oily feeling left on your skin after. Honestly, I can say it is like rubbing pearls on your face. There are 4 easy steps to using this purifier:

1.) Pump 4 pumps on your hand (hand and face dry)
2.) Rub the oil all over your face (and eyes if you have eye make up on)
3.) Add water to the oil until it turns into a milky foamy wash
4.) Rinse and wipe your face

Your makeup is literally all gone, and you do not have to go through a second cleanser to clean your face. The oil also leaves you with smooth skin and feeling hydrated.

The best part about this product is : THIS IS FOR SENSITIVE & DRY SKIN!!! Which is a big problem for me, because sadly, I have super sensitive skin … So now that I have found this, I rate it 10/5!
Last product I’m going to talk about is: Laniege Multiberry Yogurt Pack. I have mentioned above that my face is super sensitive … and this mask did not go well with my skin. I gave this mask a try because of all the good things I have heard about it.

It also says that it is for “all skin types” – and let me tell you … It’s not. If you have sensitive skin, do not go for this product. My face reacted one minute after I put this on … The burning sensation and my face was literally all red like a cherry.

I must say, though, this mask smells like as if you are in a strawberry land … So the pro I can only say about this is that it smells super yummy.

That’s it to my guest post! I hope all of you enjoyed reading about these Asian products and maybe try some out on your own as well!

-Pauline

~~~~~

Thanks for guest blogging, Pauline! You look so good in the yukata. I want to wear one too!

What are some of your favourite Asian cosmetics?

-Carmen

Estee Lauder Fall/Winter 2014 Media Preview Event (Part 2/2!)

September 16, 2014

As I was mentioning in part 1, I decided to split this post up because it would just be way too long for one post. If you’re just reading this now, these two posts are a review of the Estee Lauder Fall/Winter 2014 Media Preview Event that I went to two weeks ago. I also mentioned in the first post that these two posts will just be a simple overview of the products, as I did not get a chance to try these products well enough to formulate an opinion or review 🙂 However, I was able to bring home many of their already released products as you will see.

Out of all the products I was introduced to that day, my favourite would have to be the sculpting foundation brush on the top left, designed exclusively for Estee Lauder. I read about this brush before, but I finally got to see it in real life and hold it! The middle section of the brush is curved, and will effortlessly hug the contours of the face for effortless sculpting and definition. I feel like this brush will definitely be a saviour for beginner contourers like myself. In front of the sculpting brush, is their new perfectionist youth-infusing foundation. It contains their best selling serum, along with advanced ingredients that will create a more “youthful” appearance to the skin. There are microscopic priming beads that instantly fill lines while blurring imperfections- sounds like real life photoshop to me!

Moving on to the top right is Estee Lauder’s new Re-Nutriv Ultra Radiance Foundation. I was drawn to this one because it contains gemstones such as sapphires, rubies, and jade. To add to the elegance, it includes a blend of Gold and South Sea Pearls. These magnificent gemstones and pearls complement each other as they interact with light to create unique, vibrant colours. Unfortunately one small bottle costs $100, but a girl can dream right?

On the bottom left was the Modern Muse perfume, which smelled lovely as well. It is a blend of “sophisticated florals and succulent fruitiness juxtaposed against deep sultry woods”. Wow, I want to be able to write as beautifully as the person who wrote Estee Lauder’s PR book (which I am reading for reference right now cause I forgot what the scent was exactly, haha)
At the end of our tour, we were given an option to do the “3 minute mini makeover”, with an Estee Lauder makeup artist. There were four looks that you were able to choose from. As I mentioned in my first post, I am still trying to master the art of contouring so I opted for the contouring option.

Here is what I went home with. Thank you so much, Estee Lauder. I was in so much shock, I was definitely not expecting any gifts, let alone this many. I am super ecstatic to try all of these products out and will be doing reviews on them for sure, so keep your eyes peeled.

I am so grateful to be given this opportunity to attend such a great and organized event, thanks to Estee Lauder and the PR team. Everyone working was so kind, welcoming, and talented in what they do. I have a newfound appreciation towards this brand because of this event. Every time I walk by an Estee Lauder booth, I am reminded of the wonderful team of people behind it and I am so grateful and glad that I caught a glimpse of that at the event.

The products in this post were sent to me free of charge from Estee Lauder, and I was not paid to write this post. Everything in this post is my personal opinion and was not altered by the request of the company.

-Carmen