Incoming!

Seeing as I'm back to blogging and everything, I think it's only fair to warn all you readers that someone better take my wallet away fast, because I'm going on a spreeeeeee!
Fyrinnae's new Halloween 2011 collection is out, and from all the swatches I've seen I knew I had to get everything! Well, I'm missing some of the lip lustres I've wanted since forever, but I added Coffin Velvet (it's such a gorgeous purple, if it doesn't fit my complexion I'll just paint my whole face), Visual Kei, Romantique, and Lollipop-pop to my order. Sweetest Poison was sold out :( and so was Fanservice, which I want so bad I'm about to turn inside out.
So I placed that order earlier today. Just a tip: I couldn't find the lip lustres on the Fyrinnae website, so I just Googled it, and there was a link to the page. Sneaky.
In addition to that order, I'm totally salivating over my order of Shiro Intertubes, which I think (hope) should be arriving some time late next week. 40 Cakes looks so gorgeous! I'm not ususally a pink person, but when I saw that lippie I felt like I'd been posessed by the good faerie Flora from Sleeping Beauty. "Make it pink!"
I also got Shoop da Whoop (which I can already tell is going to become a very good friend of mine), Numa Numa, NyanCat, and Rickrolled.
I think that's everything, so I'll keep you posted on when it arrives! Til then, Happy Halloween!
Edit: The larger sizes of the Lip Lustres restocked when I checked back, so I went ahead and nabbed Fanservice, Sweetest Poison, and Meloncholy. Yay!

The yummy stuff that's good for you! Glowing skin and rambles.

Hello all! In my last post, I talked about an oil-based face mask I'd made. After using it, I noticed a drastic increase in the softness of my skin (and not because I don't usually exfoliate. I do!) and a lot of the redness on my skin was reduced to a barely-noticeable level. I'd had a bad breakout recently and my trusty face wash did nothing to help it. In fact, it turns out it only irritated my skin more.
I've been using the same type of face wash for about five years now and it's never failed me. So, as you can imagine, I was pretty surprised. But at a helpful tip, I reluctantly used a regular bar of soap to wash my face with. In about a week, the old blemishes were retreating and nothing new had sprung up. This doesn't have so much to do with my aforementioned face mask, but I feel like it's worth talking about because I've tried scrubs and frothy washes and I always use moisturizer, but somehow it wasn't helping much. So here's what I discovered:
I've been stripping too many of the natural oils from my skin. In reaction to seeing a spot I'd often wash more attentively and obsessively. Which, of course, only made matters worse. So, after several weeks now of using bar soap and nothing else to wash my face off, I can happily say taking the more laid-back approach is working! I'm so pleased... and I have the prospect of not having to spend a pile of money every few months on  another tube of face wash!
So that's taken care of my breakout, but I've always had fairly dull skin. Being quite pale anyway, my skin just seems to take on this ashen look when I'm tired or stressed, and the rest of the time I'd say it's pleasantly matte, at it's most remarkable. The use of my newly invented face mask has really helped my skin become clearer and softer, but I can't say I noticed much in the way of a new dewy glow.
But a few days ago I began using honey on my face for a minute or so before washing. Now just so you know I'm not just leaping off into the deep end, I actually used to use honey on my nose and lips because it seemed to help with these wonky mini-spots I used to get. Still don't know what they were, but they'd stay for weeks when I didn't use honey and aloe. So anyway, after this recent honeying I rolled out of bed this morning and I look dewy! Sure, it's probably a minor-dew in comparison to some, but for me it's pretty exceptional and even though my hair's like a haystack in the mornings, my skin really stood out. For only a few days of honeying I'd say that's pretty good news to me! So I figured I'd share the discovery. Has anyone else tried this? Or used honey or another raw natural ingredient in their skincare regime? Til next time!

Hello! and new things

Hello all, I am back from an extended absence! Not to worry, I'm alive and well. SO much has been going on, but I promise new looks and reviews soon and I have to say I'm absolutely drooling over the new Shiro Intertubes collection, so I'll be swatching those as soon as I can lay my hands on them.
Hope everyone had a lovely summer. Mine was fabulous and filled with new discoveries... I've been looking into the ingredients behind skincare products recently. You know, things like Prunus amygdalus dulics and Linum usitatissimum and actually looking at their properties and purposes instead of just going 'Eh, whassat?' and putting the product back down.
So I recently purchased several different oils to experiment with, and I'm so happy that I did!
I made a face mask last week with green tea, flax and hemp oils, sweet almond oil, and finely ground turbinado sugar for exfoliating purposes. I leave it on for maybe ten minutes before I wash my face in the mornings (though I haven't repeated the process daily... don't want to get too oily) and then put a moisturizer on after, and I'm good to go. I have persnickety combination skin that doesn't react too well to changes in my skin regime, so I'm beyond thrilled to see that my skin is loving this new approach.
I don't think my face has been this soft in years and I've gotten several compliments already on how nice and even my skin looks.
I'll keep you posted on these experiments with natural organic ingredients and in the meantime thank you to all my readers who stayed subscribed while I was away!