eos Lip Balm- Medicated Tangerine

Back with another review! I somehow lost my herbal lip balm from sephora and as much as I tried to hold out for spring, my lips were peeling and bleeding like crazy from the weather. I so happened to be at Rite Aid and a friend mentioned that this was a lip balm that another mutual friend used. I'd heard a lot about these round lip balms from around the internet and thought I might as well check it out.

     It works for my purposes. My lips aren't chapped and aren't cracked anymore. Buuuuttt.. I don't know if it's because I got the medicated Tangerine for something, but it smells icky. Under the tangerine smell, there is indeed the smell of old people medication. So, that being the case, I don't think I'd buy this again. If I find my other lip balm, I'm liable to use that all up first =/.

Zoya 3 Free Nail Polishes- Psych!.. or not?

Please read the entire post carefully before coming to conclusions.

I'm one of the many who didn't get to participate in the shouts of joy.

"Why is that? Because Zoya is a liar. I clearly made an order, but never got a confirmation email. I thought it might be slow in coming because of the huge amounts of orders so I tried again to see if maybe the first time was a fluke. Again I didn't get a confirmation email- and thus appear not to be getting anything in the mail (as long as they don't charge me for it). BUT this time, I printed the order page just so I would have proof that I did order. I feel cheated- even if they don't take my money. If you say something, you should stand by it. They could have put a limit to the number of orders and said, "Hey, only for the first 50,000 orders" or something. But no, they didn't. They just ignored the rest of us."

IS WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY. BUT I just now chatted with zoya using the livechat thing and they said my order was in the system o.o! So if you didn't get a confirmation email, but you have your order number, check and see! Don't jump to conclusions like I almost did. See, this is why we need to take down the order number and not rely on the confirmation emails. Of course I won't be fully satisfied until I actually receive my order, lol. I'll update on whether or not that happens later.

EDIT- Oh wait, now i know why I wasn't seeing any of my orders.. because I was looking under Order History, not current order.... But if you ordered and didn't get confirmation or don't see your order, still contact them about it first.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share the colors that I was/ am interested in. I forget if I did order some of these or some other ones- it was a mad rush to hurry and get my order in.




Happi, Adina, Reece


Portia, Stephanie, Skye

I looked into a couple alluring colors like Suvi, but I decided that they wouldn't be worn enough or that I already had a similar color.

I'd also like to note that how I even found this promotion was through one of the digests that I subscribe to. They were talking about Bela, the nailpolish by Zoya that's "featured" in Black Swan the movie. Just because of that, I went and watched the movie. Which freaked me out completely. But for the sake of nailpolish @.@.... I was searching all around and couldn't see the nailpolish. Turns out it's when she's in the dressing room right before the gala where she's to be announced as the new swan queen. I was expecting to see her paint her nails with it or something, but it's really just a passing glance. The bottle is pretty tiny on the screen too. The color while pretty in the bottle looked way too intense in swatches and like it wouldn't complement my warm skin tone so I passed. Hopefully I like the pink that I bought... whichever it was again. I wanted a gentle light pink color just for wearing out and about but one that wasn't too sheer (you know those that are so sheer it's like clear? yea no).

Well, if I do get them, I'll definitely swatch! Oh, I was expecting them to arrive faster, so I sent it to my home address. So actually it's going to be another 3 weeks until I actually know if I got them. ^^;; sorry.

Woe is Me

I've been plagued with materialism!

Point and Shoot Cameras vs. Low Lighting

I haven't acquired any new products to try or anything so instead I'll talk about my camera woes. They didn't really form into woes until yesterday really.

I have a Sony DSC-W120. I did a decent amount of research and decided that the functions and features on this line of cameras would fit my needs the most. It can take 7.2 mp shots, but usually I set it at 5 mp because I just don't have the need for such big pictures. I'm usually just posting them on facebook and here anyways so too big of a picture actually becomes a hassle since the pictures take forever to upload and I have to resize them smaller. Besides, just because it has more megapixels doesn't mean it takes better pictures, it's really more dependent on the lens. So I got my camera used off of ebay for $30 because I'm a poor student and it's been working fine for at least a year, half a year? something like that. (I was skeptical and thought it might break within a week or so).

I won't complain about picture quality because I'm pretty satisfied with that, the pictures that come out look beautiful... well except for this thing where it can't pick up purple and sees it as blue instead (made more upsetting by the fact that purple is my favorite color). What I'm most upset about is the video capabilities.

I didn't think I'd be using video all that much, but I've found that lately I've been attending a number of concerts and it's upsetting to not be able to properly pick up what's going on. The problems are listed below:

1) The video picture is grainy. Even when I put it on the highest setting (fine) it still comes out looking grainy.
2) You can't zoom while filming. Sometimes I want to go in for a closeup during at a performance. You can't do that while filming, you have to stop, then readjust, then resume filming.
3) In low lighting, the camera can't see anything. Well it can, but barely. I went karaokeing yesterday and the room was dim, but bright enough that you could see everything clearly. My camera just picked up dark shadows moving around while my friend's Canon was able to see everything (although, it almost made things a bit too bright imo, but better than not seeing anything)
4) Even when it does zoom in, it doesn't zoom in enough. When I zoom all the way, the faces of people become blurred. When I look at other people beside me's cameras, the faces are sharper and you can zoom in closer
5) Sometimes it loses focus during filming. How upsetting!

I'm not sure if the later models have these problems changed/ fixed, but I feel like I just need to go to a different camera brand altogether. The only problem is that I don't want the picture quality to suffer and I have no idea which is best to get. I read the panasonic is particularly good in low lighting, but some comments say they don't last long and that the faces of people are blurred.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Just because, I'm putting sample pictures and videos up for you to see how my camera performs.
Vid: I did a sampling of dim lighting like that of what it was like at the karaoke place and the second half is what I saw and how I would have preferred if the camera picked up that way.
Pics: They're all taken at 7.2 mp and from max zoom so you can really tell the quality.

My purple lamp is a genuine purple, but on the pictures it shows more indigo. =(

NO FLASH                                         FLASH

Fluorescent Lighting

Dim Lighting

Dimmer Lighting (Where the video was taken)

At Last, I Present to You: Etude House BB Magic Balm SPF 30

I've been using this since I got it with my first Gmarket haul. And I've been telling myself over and over how I have to post a review. The first set of pictures I lost, then I took another set months later, and who knows what happened to those. So today, I told myself, hey! just do it! and so here it is.

On the bright side, it's given me a lot more time to try the product out and make sure I like it.

I started using this most during summer and I've found that results during summer and results during winter are different because of my skin conditions. During the summer, it was hot and my skin would produce a little more oil. Therefore, I'd put on the bb balm and an hour later it looked like I had no makeup on, it melted into my skin. Don't misunderstand though, I don't mean it wore off, I still had the coverage, but I guess the extra skin oil gave it a bit more of a natural-er look. I was wowed.

Winter though, is a bit of a different story, my skin doesn't produce as much oil, so I don't get as much of a melt it effect, it sits on top more, so closer to a foundation I would say. It feels ever so slightly drying too, so now I first put on a little bit of moisturizer beforehand. I know a lot of you do that anyways before makeup application, but I didn't do that under the bb balm during summer.

The balm looks kind of darker so you might be afraid that it won't be your skin color, but that's not true, it's actually very light when applied as you can see from my pictures. And BB cream/ balm is different from foundation as many of you know because it does  tend to adjust to skin tones. This also comes with a synthetic applicator brush which I love. It helps you to get the right amount of product and apply smoothly. You only need a dab of this at a time. Too much and you'll look like you're caking it on- very unflattering.
There's not really any added fragrance that I can detect. It just smells like makeup- like what makes up the makeup. I think..if I remember right, I've had this for ~ 1 yr, and look, I haven't even reached the bottom yet!

I definitely love this, I've exchanged my concealer + powder routine for this because it feels a lot more lighter. I don't care about 100% coverage of my acne scars, but this does a much better job than the Missha or other creams that I've tried. I think it's because it's a thicker balm.