Anna's Skin Care Routine

Hello everyone! Anna here again.
This week I'm posting twice and in Tânia's place because I had all these posts planned that I needed to get done as soon as possible because next week's post is going to be a look and I figured it would make sense to post twice this weeks with the posts I have been delaying. Also, Tânia is missing one thing that she wants to include in her next post, so win win.

In this first post I will be taking about my skin care routine.
I have discovered a couple of months back that to have a skin care routine is extremely important not to constantly have breakouts.

I'll start with the basics.

The first thing you have to keep in mind is to have a makeup remover of your preference.

I prefer to use Nivea's makeup remover, but any makeup remover will do.
Removing your makeup with only water and soap may cause great damage to your skin if it dries your skin too much or doesn't correctly remove the products.
I would suggest having one that removes normal makeup and waterproof makeup because the ones that remove waterproof makeup are rather oily so they may cause a breakout.

It's also important to exfoliate. 

I use this Garnier one. This one is specifically for oily skin.
By exfoliating you will be removing the layer of dead cells that accumulate over the skin during the day. This layer of dead cells often clogs the pores and doesn't allow them to breathe, causing breakouts.
I use this one because, as it says, it is a 3 in 1 product. It works as a cleanser, an exfoliating cream and a mask, which is perfect because you don't have to buy three different products. I usually use it to exfoliate but I have also left it on for a couple of minutes as a mask and it does wonders.

It's also important to use a tonic or a cleansing cream.

I use the Nivea Aqua Effect tonic and cleansing milk.
Usually I use the tonic on a daily basis. I use it after I exfoliate to further clean my skin.
The cleansing milk I usually use once or twice a week during the bath because it's easier to remove.
These two products leave my skin so soft, I can't even begin to explain.

To finish off I use a moisturizing cream.

For this part it's extremely important to know what skin type is yours.

I have oily to combination skin. I usually get very oily in the T zone and the rest of my face has just normal skin. I used to use a moisturizing cream for sensitive skin because my skin is fairly sensitive most of the time but that didn't get me so far in getting rid of the oiliness so I decided to change to a cream for combination skin. It has been helping a bit to prevent the oiliness around my nose and forehead.

In the morning I usually use the tonic and the moisturizing cream only.

Before I go to bed I cleans, exfoliate and moisturize.

Tips for oily skin:

• If you have oily to combination skin, you will find that you often breakout around the nose, chin and forehead areas. This is because those areas have fairly thin skin. The sweat and dead cells and all those things that build up on those areas will either create pimples or blackheads if you don't start acting on them. I would suggest using nose strips or peel off masks to completely remove those sorts of things. Or at least to help.

• To control the oiliness that builds up bacteria and unpleasant shine in your face, use blotting sheets. These little sheets have the magical power of absorbing all sorts of oils and shine. Just use them throughout the day when you feel that oily feel in your face.

To freshen up during the day, I also carry in my bag a spray bottle with rose water, smells amazing and helps clean and moisturize the skin.

That's it for my skin care routine!

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I will be back with another one on Saturday.

Love,

Anna

Halloween Night

Hi! I want to apologize in advance for not posting sooner but I just got the photos now, so yeah.
These are just some photos from my Halloween night, I hope you enjoy.

the stairs in the bar were filled with candles!

  

Love,
Anna

Inexpensive Makeup Brands

Hello, everyone! HALLOWEEN'S TOMORROW! I'm super excited about it (as I always am) and I hope you have a great Halloween as well!

Today I bring you some inexpensive makeup brands. This information comes in handy to most of us, so I thought that this would be a good post. I chose brands that combine price with quality and I'll also speak about their ethical practices, related to animal cruelty and products suitable for vegans.

I'll first talk about brands that I've had personal experiences with, then about brands that I'd love to try!

ESSENCE is one of my favorite beauty brands. Everything they sell is great. Okay, maybe not the lipsticks; but Anna has said in some previous posts that she loves them, so this is only my personal opinion. My favorite products from Essence are their lip liners, which I have in five different colors, and eye pencils. Another favorite of mine is their gel eyeliner in black (01 Midnight In Paris) but, after buying it twice I can't find it anymore. I could name more of my favorite products from Essence, but these are the highlights.

Cruelty Free: YES

Vegan: Essence is not a vegan company. They use "materials such as beeswax, silk, or lanolin (wool fat from sheep) and the natural dye cochenille (CI 75470) which are indeed animal components (animal by-products), strictly speaking."

CATRICE's another German brand. For this brand, my favorite products are face products. Foundations, concealers, primers and powders. This is the only brand where I can find a foundation that matches my skin tone and is appropriate for my skin type. Their single eyeshadows are also quite good!

Cruelty Free: YES

Vegan: I couldn't find any especific information on this brand, but I can say that their nail varnishes are vegan. I couldn't be sure about the rest of the products. My advice is too stay away from their products if you're worried about this fact.

KIKO is a little bit more expensive than Essence and Catrice, but still is less expensive than most. My favorite product from Kiko is their nail varnishes. I also love their eyeshadows and lip products. Kiko also sells skin care products; my mother has used some anti-aging products and only has positive things to say about them.

Cruelty Free: YES

Vegan: Just like Essence, they're not vegan. On their website they have a section dedicated to this issue. You can check it here. They do not test on animals but they use "raw material produced by the animal itself (for example, beeswax) or by external processes that do not rule out health and safety (for example: the wool shearing process)."

Now, for the final section of this post I've chosen some brands that are low cost and that I'm curious about.

SLEEK is the first booth that I check when I go to my local Sephora. Maybe because they're the least expensive brand inside, but also because they have some of the loveliest eyeshadow palettes I've ever seen (they retail for €9,99). I'd also love to try their True Colour lipsticks, all of them actually.

Cruelty Free: YES

Vegan: Some of their products are vegan! They have a list of the products that can be used by people with a vegan lifestyle. You can check the list here and here.

E.L.F stands for eyes lips face and this brand has been such a strong presence on YouTube that the curiousity to try it only seems to grow! 

Cruelty Free: YES

Vegan: YES


Before I end this post I wanted to add that I'm not an authority. I say these brands are cruelty free acording to the brand's own websites and lists made by bloggers and organization that support animal rights.
I hope this post is somehow useful! As always, thanks for reading.

LOTS OF LOVE,

Tânia

Halloween Special: Mz. Hyde

Hello! So I'm back and this week I bring you a Halloween look.
I'm really excited about this one because it is very special. This look is inspired in a song by Halestorm called Mz. Hyde. This song is about a hidden side of Lzzy, the vocalist, a much darker and evil side.
I figured I would do this look to show the appearance of my darker side, sort of like to show what is hidden inside of me.
Turns out that this look is way more on the punk side than I anticipated, nevertheless I love how it turned out.
This is the look I'm going to do for my Halloween night only with a few changes, so I hope you enjoy it!

"Welcome to the nightmare in my head,
Say hello to something scary,
The monster in your bed,
Just give in and you won’t be sorry,
Welcome to my other side,
Hello it’s Mz. Hyde!"

Meet Mz Hyde.

I imagine Mz Hyde as a "browless" all pierced character.
I didn't, although, picture her as someone so punk but I love how it turned out!

I suppose that the hardest part about this character is the concealing of the eyebrows.

That can be considered FX makeup because it changes your face to something that is not considered "normal" or "regular".
I used a glue stick over my brows several times until I achieved a minimally smooth finish. You can find videos on how to cover your eyebrows on youtube.
I then powdered them to get rid of the stickiness of the glue. Then I would suggest using a warm concealer color to conceal the color of the brows. I used my eyeshadow primer and it worked very well.
After you have finished the rest of your makeup, you will want to use concealer in the same shade as your skin to further erase your eyebrows.

For the actual makeup I did something very simple.
I used a dark blue eyeshadow all over the lid and just a bit of black eyeshadow in the crease. After I did the eyeliner on the top lash line, extending it quite far, I brought the blue eyeshadow together with the liner, blending it in in a triangular shape.
On the bottom lash line I also drew a little flick, pointing downwards and blended some black eyeshadow, again, in a triangular shape, leaving a space between the top and bottom flicks.
On the inner corners I extended the eyeliner on the top part of the eye as well as on the bottom, leaving a blank space between where I placed a white sparkly eyeshadow.

 Under the place where my eyebrows used to be, I drew a sharp line with black eyeshadow, which I blended down just to create some shape.

On my cheeks I used a black eyeshadow to contour and a black lipstick on my lips.

I drew a line down my chin and down my neck till my chest because I wanted to give the character a bit more of a personality.

When it comes to piercings, I used little silver beads that I placed in my cheeks to make dimple piercing, in the bridge of my nose and in the center of my lip. For the septum piercing I used a silver ring. I also added some silver rings to my ears.

In the pictures it is not very visible what I did to my hair but I basically pulled it up, very tight on the sides to simulate side cuts and teased it down the center of my head to create a hawk.

The look wouldn't be complete without a leather jacket and black clothes.

And the look is complete!
This is how I believe my inner darker self to be.
Apart from the song, one of my biggest inspirations for this was Nicole Greenleaf.

Little note: I would just like to thank my girlfriend for taking the photos. She's always in charge of all the photos in my looks, so thank you, babe.

That's all for this week's post, I hope you have enjoyed!
If I don't post anything before Halloween, my next post will be full of photos of my Halloween night and photos of everyone's costumes!

"There’s no way to be sure,

Which girl you’ll get to know."

Love,
Anna

Halloween Special: Little Evil Riding Hood

Hello! Today I bring you the look I'll be using for my own Halloween celebrations.

Since childhood I've felt this extreme fondness for fairytales. Some of my favorites are Beauty & The Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel. I believe this love for storytelling that I feel to this day comes from these tales that we all know.

The original idea comes from my sophomore year, when I decided that I was going to use my most beloved black velvet cape as part of my costume on Carnival. I wanted to invert the plot of Little Red Riding Hood. Instead of the Big Bad Wolf chasing and eating Little Red, I wanted her to chase and kill the Bad Wolf. Why? Well, I do believe in pretentious statements, so in this case I wanted to show people that even little girls can destroy big bad wolves.

I hope you enjoy this look!

Make up for this look isn't too complex because it doesn't really matter if it's messy. I used my regular foundation but skipped concealer. I contoured my face with the same medium grey eyeshadow I used all over my eyes, to make them look more sunked in. I applied a little bit of blush on my cheeks, in this case the brightest red I have. I made my eyebrows much thicker and darker than they actually are. You can choose any eye look of your choice but I do love a bold, black, smokey eye. On my lips I wore a cherry red lip liner with Essence's XXXL Longlasting Liploss in the shade 07 Silky Red, which is a matt lip product; I then applied a little bit of the same black eyeshadow I used earlier on the center of my lips.

The blood you're seeing in the pictures is fake blood from a costume store, but you can make your own! I covered my mouth, neck and chest with it. Fake blood becomes a little bit sticky after awhile on your skin and leaves a slight stain so you should wash your face thoroughly when you take all your make up off.

I took some pictures of the accessories that I chose to complete my look. A red bow that I plan using on the back of my head, a pair of lace gloves and my cape. In case you're wondering I do use my cape during Winter, usually on top of a bigger coat.

GET THE WHOLE LOOK

• Since Little Red Riding Hood is, in fact, little, try to use clothes that reminisce children wear or schoool uniforms.
• All clothes that I chose are black but you can use any colors you feel like wearing. But have in mind that the traditional color palette is red, white and black.

As always, I hope that you liked this post! 

LOTS OF LOVE,
Tânia

Makeup Haul

Hello! As Tânia referred in her last post/video, we are making posts that are not related to Halloween this week, so I decided to do a haul with some of the makeup products I bought recently.

Most of these products are drugstore products. I will add a little review about each product as well. 

Essence I Love Stage Eyeshadow Primer

This first product is something I honestly didn't need but decided to buy anyway just to try it out. It is an eyeshadow primer by Essence. All of the previous eyeshadow primers I had before were not tinted and this one is, so this one gives me a blank canvas to work with, which is fantastic for certain looks. It helps making the eyeshadows stay in place all day and I find that, for a drugstore product, it does its job perfectly.

Essence Stay Natural Concealer 

I have used this product for years now. It is a liquid concealer that comes in pen form. Now, I will have to say that this, this is not super pigmented so it doesn't provide that much coverage. I usually use this concealer when I just want to brighten up under the eyes and around the nose, since it is such a light coverage.

This is available in only four different shades, which is a shame because these four shades don't fit the needs of everyone. I use the darkest shade, which, in my opinion, is obviously too light for most people.

Catrice Camouflage Cream Concealer 

Since I was not satisfied with the coverage provided by the concealer above, I decided to buy a cream concealer. Cream concealers are usually much more pigmented and give you a lot of coverage. I found that this one by Catrice is actually very pigmented and also easy to apply and to blend into the skin. I use the shade 20 Light Beige but they have a lot more shades than Essence. They only have shades for people with light to medium skin tones though.

Essence Maximum Volume and Maximum Definition Mascaras

These two mascaras are actually very good. Combined together they give you amazing length and some volume, which, for me, is perfect.

Oh their own they are also very good but I think the Maximum Volume one works best for me.

Essence Twilight Breaking Dawn Glitter Eyeliner in 02 Jacob's Protection

 I bought this eyeliner for a Halloween look but, turns out, it is nothing like I expected it to be.

I was expecting this to be much more fluid and I thought it would have much more glitter to it, but it only has a tiny bit of blue and it all clumps together in one place, making it really hard to work with. I would not recommend this product if you want a glitter liner that actually gives you that shine. This has only proven to be good to apply, with the fingers, over eyeshadow to give it the tinniest bit of shimmer.

Essence Stay Matt Lip Cream in 03 Soft Nude

This lip product was a gift from my sister. It's a light old pink lip cream that actually has a lot of pigmentation!

Essence describes it as a matte lip products but I will have to dismiss that because it is a bit glossy.

Overall, a very good product.

Essence Lipstick in 06 Barely There

 This lipstick is awesome! The color is just amazing, it is so creamy and has a great pigmentation. It's honestly my go to lipstick right now since it is such a natural color. It's a slight bit darker than the lip cream above, so it's perfect to create a very subtle ombre lip.

Avon Lipstick in Power Plum

I ordered this lipstick thinking it was much darker, so when I first saw it when it arrived I was very disappointed. But turns out that it is very good actually! It's pigmented and has no shimmer to it. I would describe the color as a warm pink purple, perfect for Fall.

Catrice Ultimate Color Lipstick in 330 The Lips Are On Fire

 I've been looking for an orange lipstick since forever and when I thought I had finally found one...

It's too bright for me! This is a beautiful orange lipstick that is a slightly too bright for me since my complexion is on the olive side, making me look like I have neon lips. It looks much more orange in real life than it looks in the photos.

I'm probably going to sanitize it and give it to a friend that is paler and has a pinker skin tone.

Catrice Tinted Lip Glow Balm

This next lipstick is the holy grail of lipsticks. It is a total must have!

A couple of years ago Catrice came out with the idea of a lip color intensifier and I ran to buy it. Now, very recently, they came out with a balm version of the same lip intensifier and it is brilliant.

The original lip color intensifier lipstick is very dry and gives you a matte finish, as this new one gives you a glossy finish and cares for the lips.

Both of them are amazing and I think everyone should have them in their lipstick collection.

Gulosa Blueberry Hair Mask 

This is not makeup but I thought I would talk about it because it is so good!

Since I bleached my hair, the hair dye never sticks to the hair and after a couple of washes, my hair has lost all of the color, so I decided to buy this hair care product. The lady at the hair shop told me that this would maintain my color for much longer as well as care for my hair and make it a bit healthier.

When I first opened this bottle I saw it was way pinker than I was expecting, so, as soon as I applied it, I knew it wouldn't turn out purple, as I expected. It turned out pink. Like bright dark pink.

And, if you know me, you know that my dream has always been pink hair so this product was some sort of amazing revolution in my hair dying history.

Now, I will say that this product is, in my opinion, too expensive for the amount that you get. I have to use this sporadically, like once a week or so and just a little bit, to maintain the color.

Other than the price, this products gets five stars. It's great and smells so so good!

They only have shades such as browns, purple, orange, red, yellow and neutral. I would like to see them develop some blues and greens as well!

Totally recommend it!

This is it for this week's post, I hope you have enjoyed this huge post!

Next week I will be doing a Halloween look inspired in a song and it won't involve as much FX makeup as the last one.

Love, 

Anna