Fimo canes

I received my package from eBay with these fimo canes yesterday. The canes are made of polymer clay, and they're fun to work with.
They come in various designs, and fruits are very popular. I didn't buy a mix pack with any thou, since I just bought the cheapest so I could try it out, but there's still many cute designs, and an apple. lol

You can cut these in pretty much what ever thickness you want. Be sure to use a very thin and supersharp knife. If you want them really thin you might want to roll the cane in the palm of your hands to heat it up a little.



I totally recommend trying these. They say you can get up to 50 slices from one cane, at least the ones I bought, and they're very cheap on eBay.



Low budget approved
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Perioral Dermatitis

I just want to share with you my personal experience and how I'm recovering from POD without any antibiotics. And here is a pic even. I have barely started to recover on this (looks better now):

Yeah, I took it in black and grey webcam quality so I don't disgust myself. lol
But you can clearly see my trouble areas, and the same on the other side.


So, what broke me out? Heavy creams and glygolic leanser. I was 2-3 months in my new skincare regime when I first noticed something wrong on my jawline. It quickly spread to both sides, on the cheek and around my mouth. If this have happened to you now, you probably know how depressed I was over this.

After I found out that it was my facial cream and cleanser that was the cause, I stopped right away and started to use my jojoba oil instead. I just can't go without any moisturiser and jojoba oil is a very gentle all around oil I recommend everyone having in the cabinet.
If you use a cleanser with SLS, parabens and a lot of ingredients, you will want to avoid using that as well. Since I didn't have any cleanser at hand without SLS, I used an all over wash from the pharmacy which didn't contain any of those things. And then I bought African black soap and shea butter.

African black soap is the most amazing stuff ever. Buy it raw and organic, 250gr will last you for ever! It lathers well and removes makeup, all natural. Be aware that it can be a little drying if you have dehydrated skin.

Shea butter also raw and organic, is wonderful as a night cream, or day if you have dry skin. It moisturises well, and I feel it keep the underground acnes away. It feels like rubbing hairwax in your face thou.

Jojoba oil have a low natural SPF in it, so it is great as a day moisturiser if you don't hang much in the sun or on rainy days. I recommend staying out of the sun as much as possible since it can worsen your scars and condition.

Tea tree oil is great at treating perioral dermatitis in my experience. I mix 1 drop for 30ml jojoba oil and use it as a day moisturiser. Tea tree is very antibacterial, so you can moist a Q-tip with it and rub it on acne spots as a treatment.

Aloe vera, use it thickly on your affected areas every night to help heal scarring. You can unfortunately get plenty of scars from a break out like this if you pick on the bumps. Especially if you have thin and sensitive skin like I do. Pure aloe vera gel (96%+) can sting quite a bit, if you find it uncomfortable there are creams with aloe vera. Just make sure there are no nasty preservatives in it.

Glycolic- or salisylic acid. Skip it. It will most likely make it worse.

Applecider vinegar, nomnom. Drink two glasses of water a day with 1 tblsp ACV mixed in it. Also you can use it as a toner, mix 2/4 water and 1/4 ACV and apply with a cotton ball or pad. It sure smells funky. What it's good for? Making your body sour so that cruel bacteria and fungus will enjoy living in your body a little less. Yupp.

I also use Decleor cleansing water in the morning since the ABS (lol, not the brake system) can dry out the skin. I've had no problem using it.

Makeup? Use mineral makeup! Not L'oreal etc, but a pure brand like BareFacedBeauty which is personally use. It's great, and the brush is sooo soft. I use two coats on my face, and two extra rounds on my acne and scars.

Also remember to peel your skin once or twice a week, I just use bakingsoda to scrub with, but be sure to scrub carefully on the infected areas. If there's alot of sebum in the bumps or it's highly irritated don't scrub at all there. Scrubbing will help getting rid of the worst scaling so your makeup looks better on.

"Do I have perioral dermatitis?" To be sure, contact your doctor. Google for more information about the subject also. If I were to write anything about it, it would just be retelling anyway :) Read more

Matte flower puff

Today's mani is just a simple press and glue one. I used stickers from Vivalanails and some cute black rhinestones. Note that the glue on the stickers don't stick as well to matte polish, so I had to cover them thickly with some Seche Vite top coat.

Very fresh looking imo :) (and the blue is still a teal, actually looking more like a jade with the matte top coat)

With flash
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Cheap polish brand: Jordana, Boy Oh Boy

I have no idea what's up with this polish. The other formulas from Jordana that I've tried goes on okey. This one on the other hand, is very hard to spread evenly and it goes on a little streaky. And the colour on the pics looks blue, really blue. This is a teal, with more green hue then you can see on these pics if you even spot anything green here, lol. So it's not picture safe, that's for sure.

Still a very gorgeous colour thou and highly pigmented, so I would recommend buying them with nail art as a purpose, unless you don't mind cursing over the application. I mean it, I've never made so much mess when applying polish before (maybe when I was 12yo). If you already do cleanups, I guess your safe. But I don't, soo.. *Splaett* all over.

Two coats w/o top coat, daylight


Two coats w/o top coat, flash



Low budget approved for nail art
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My birthday!

Sorry for not writing much, but now it's my birthday and midsummer all at once.
Take a look at what they're doing here: http://www.smp.no/nyheter/article239909.ece,

Translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smp.no%2Fnyheter%2Farticle239909.ece&sl=no&tl=en

So I'm off now, and won't be back for a day or three. Have fun y'all! :)

Oh, and it's Sonics birthday too!

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Bohemian Chic

What did I say earlier about one colour on the nails? Yeah, too boring for me. lol
So here is what I made today. I used the sponge technique, since I finally found my sponge stash!

Items used
China Glaze Golden Spurs
NYX Girls Marigold, Amour
L.A Colors Gold Sparkles
NailTek III foundation
Seche Vite top coat
Rhinestones
Sponge
Toothpick



If you're curious about how to sponge your nails to get that smooth colour overlay, look it up on youtube! Much better then trying to understand my explaining. lol Read more

China Glaze, Golden Spurs

This colour is from the Rodeo Diva 2008 collection. I love the entire collection and I really want to get the rest of the colours!

Anyway, here's a swatch of the Golden Spurs colour. Although I don't like people using spurs, I absolutely like this colour. It's a pretty brown with golden shimmer.

Managed to dent the polish, way to go girl. With top coat in daylight:

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Introducing my pets: Part 2

Now I will be introducing my real life companion, the grey/brown tiger Embla (pusi)! I got her when she was a kitten and she's now 4 yo. Although I tried real hard to tame her, I failed. She is super stubborn, dislike noises and people inside the house she doesn't know. Strangers on the street is no problem however, she often stand on the fence when school is out too get some attention. She's a doll!



Embla is the most playful cat I know, it's literally all she wants to do besides sleeping in the bed with me on my duvet (almost pushing me out of the bed. I know. She uses her 3kg well). She doesn't like to be picked up, and hits for an escape as soon as she can. And she rarely sleeps on the sofa, which I thought was the most natural thing for a cat.

She's been pregnant once, and gave us three adorable kittens. We kept one, but the story isn't too happy for all of them. One went missing, and the one we kept got hit by a car. The third we gave away to an elderly artist living in the woods who had many grandchildren, so I hope he's having a good life at least.

Did I mention she is fierce? Read more

Feline Splash

Since I find plain colours a little boring, I did some watermarbeling over the NYX Girls Doll face and added some bling and dots.

Products used
NYX Girls; Doll face, Marigold
Jordana Tangy
Depend 159
Kiss nail art, Silver Glitter
NailTek foundation III
Seche Vite top coat
Rhinestones




What you need
Base coat
Base colour
Top coat
Colours of your choice
Toothpick or other slim tool
Bowl of water
Nailpolish remover
Q-tip
Papertowel

There are many videos on youtube on how to do this process. Here is one on fake nails, but it's the same as doing it on real nails. Just dip it in there. To avoid too much mess on your finger, you can tape around the nail, or smear some vaseline (petroleum jelly) on you fingers.
The thing about having a round bowl, is so the nailpolish gets to stick on the walls. If this doesn't occur, the polish will clump together if you try to drag the outer most layer invert. Read more

NYX Girls, Doll face

This is a very pretty green/pink iridescent sheer polish from the budget brand NYX. The cap on the bottle feels very lightweight and cheap, but the little diamond on the glass bottle really weighs up for it. Super cute!

The brush is good, and I like the formula too. It is a little on the runny side, and the polish is tricky to get even on several coats. First coat is pretty even thou, so it's great for an exciting french manicure.

Swatch with three coats w/o top coat, daylight



Low budget approved
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Cataclysm, zones

If you haven't bothered to look through all the screenshot previews, here's the official zone changes preview:


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Magnolia vanilla cupcakes, tweaked

Introducing: Magnoliaelrania vanilla strawberry cupcakes, with less calories. *giggle*

Cupcake porn illustration


Best frikkin fantastic cupcakes I've eaten. I love the original recipe, but it's so much butter and sugar in it that it hurts just thinking about it. So in my attempt to slim down the calories (not much since when I eat cucpcakes I want the real deal), I ended up with something delicious.

Original recipe, find it here:

• 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

• 2 cups sugar

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 1 cup milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Tweaked, and in metric:

• 2 teasp baking powder

• 1/2 teasp salt

• 210 gr all-purpose flour

• 125 gr butter

• 100 gr kesam (quark, fresh cheese with a sour cream consistency, high on proteins)

• 100 gr sugar

• 100 gr brown sugar

• 25 gr splenda (or other low calorie sweetener equal to 250 gr sugar)

• 4 large eggs

• 2 dl milk (low fat)

• 3 teasp vanilla sugar or 1 teasp vanilla extract

• 6 large strawberries

All ingredients at room temperature.
Preheat oven to 175 Celsius. Recipe gives 24 small cupcakes.

In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, except the sugars. Blend the sugar in another bowl, freeing the brown sugar from clumps.
In a larger bowl mix the butter until creamy, by hand with a fork like I did or a mixer. Mix in kesam until well blended. Add the sugar mix a little at the time and mix it for about 3 min.
Add eggs, one at the time. Add the dry ingredients in three parts and then the milk. I did this entire process with a spatula, blending carefully and letting air into the batter. Do not overmix it.

Fill a muffinpan with paper and spoon the batter in. Cut off the tops of large strawberries and slice them in four pieces. Lightly press one piece into each cupcake. Put the pan in the oven, and let it cook for about 20-25 min. Pop them out from the pan when they're done, and let them cool on a rack. When cold, place your favourite topping on top and enjoy (you don't really need one either)!

Note: Baking powder, salt and 170 gr flour is the same as 1 1/2 cup self-rising flour.

Tip: Make an icing from the strawberry left overs. Simply add smashed/puréed strawberries instead of any liquid to your favourite (butter cream) icing. Read more

Budget makeup brushes

I know many girls out there are wishing for cheaper brushes then Mac and Sigma, but when you chose to go far below their prices you might end up with brushes that don't work. Yeah, don't work. They're stiff, won't pick up product and shed like a cat during springtime.

I decided to try one of the cheap china brushes from eBay. I paid 4,99$ for the brushes, and 7,99$ for shipping (85NOK total). Off to a good start eh? Brushes cheaper then the shipping. This one.
My hopes were low.



When I first removed the plastic caps from the facebrushes, I literally dropped my jaw. I got covered in bristles! They shed like crahaaazy.
I went ahead and washed them carefully, more bristles fell out but it seems like they calmed down after a while. It's like a lot of them just didn't make the cut. After I washed and dried them, I trimmed some of the brushes because one or two bristles was longer then the rest. They smell like.. Spicy paint, too. Yuk. I recommend washing them good with a scented soap. And remember to ALWAYS put the facebrushes into their plastic caps, even when they're moist from the "bath". They need all the help they can get to stay in shape.

The eyeshadow brushes are a way too flat, so they don't really pick up much shadow. They're pretty soft thou. E.l.f's eyeshadow brushes are better.

I however enjoy the angled brush, and smudge.. sponge? Yeah. the pointy black sponge. It's great to remove harsh lines from the eyeliner, and the angled ones I use on my brows. Tiny concealer brushes (actually lip brushes I believe) works okey too, with mineral makeup.

But despite all this, there are many brushes to choose from and they are not as stiff as many cheap brushes are. If you're like me and don't use much makeup, I think this is an OK purchase, although spending a little more for higher quality is more then recommended. Or, check out EcoTools.

Here's some pictures showing the truth about the powder brush (angled, smaller powder brush and fan brush is the same deal), but surprisingly still very usable considering they look like crap.



I shook it so it would spread as much as possible



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BB Couture For Nails, Disco Ball

My first polish from BB Couture, first of many I hope! The formula is without all the nasty things (toluene, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate), which makes it smell a lot more pleasant then China Glaze for example. I took a smell test, *put the nose straight in after opening the bottles* and CG almost gave me a headache compare to BB, lol!

It also claims to be a 4-1. Base coat, top coat, nail strengthener and colour in one. I have applied my base coat, but skipped the top coat to check the durability. Will update on how that goes!

The colour is LOVELY on the first coat, very translucent but super pretty. On the pics however I have three coats so you can see the colour. I bet it's great on top of other colours too.
Application is good, the brush spread the polish evenly but the glitterparticles makes it a little streaky and gives an uneven look to the surface when used with several coats.
The colour is metallic with string and regular tiny glitter, and it dries off semi shiny. The polish itself also dries rather quickly, so you don't have to wait 30min between coats.

UPDATE: Colour started to rub off after I washed my car on day 3 (hands down in a bucket with carshampoo, understandable), but it didn't come more off the day after so I reckon the durability is quite good. I also shower every day and type a lot on my computer. Heavy testing!

Kim from Overallbeauty picked this one for me, with my WoW interest in mind. I think she did a great job! I feel like an orc engineer, of all the things. Haha :)

(w/o blitz)


(Blitz)

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Susie's giveaway!

This is a huge giveway, so I really understand her demands before she gives it away. Enter it here.

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Video games live

Gaming can be high culture too! ish. lol
My weak spots in this video have to be Zelda. I'm a huge Zelda (Ocarina of time) fan. Anyway, enjoy this trailer.

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Store review, Overallbeauty

Overallbeauty.com is owned by a lovely woman called Kim Snyder. When I first contacted the store, I got a fast response from Kim herself. I honestly believe she loves all her costumers and want to give everyone a good experience when shopping from her store.

This store contains many exciting products that you might not even have heard of before, and they also carry their own line of mineral makeup. One of the best sellers is Magic Lash Eyelash Enhancer, which I honestly hadn't heard much about but the product gets raving reviews everywhere! So I definitely want to try it out sometime.

Ever heard of BB couture nail polish? Overallbeauty is one of few stores that sells this brand, and I received one of those plus something from their mineral line today and a pumice sponge. Never heard of that either. So reviews of those products are coming up! (picture below)

The design of the page might seem a little confusing at first sight, but click around and explore because there seems to be many goodies in there, especially if you enjoy organic products like myself. Extra plus for swatches on many of the polishes.

PayPal verified and offers international shipping.



In fear of sounding like I'm bought, these are my honest opinions! :) Read more

Sunset sparkle

Last night I finally found a good use for NYX Glitter On the Go! I didn't like these for use as makeup really, since you have to pack it on pretty thickly to get the peachy colour. So I decided to try them out with nail polish, and recommend giving it a try.




And here's the result. I'm pretty satisfied, although the glitter would probably go on smoother if acrylic gel is used (my nails are pretty gritty right now and cling on to a lot of stuff, lol!). But it's easy and cute.

What I did basically was:

1. Apply basecoat
2. Cover tips with clear polish or a translucent polish with matching colour of the glitter (one tip of the time)
3. Pack on glitter with a brush
4. Apply topcoat on the tips
5. Carefully place images on the nails either using the topcoat as glue, or nail glue
6. Put some rhinestones on
7. Apply topcoat on entire nail

Done!

(Please ignore my cuticles, I have a bad habit of biting on them.. Sigh)







Here's the products I used:
Vivalanails water decals (They just didn't want to work with me, so I glued them on)
Rhinestonewheel from eBay (0.99$ inc. shipping!)
NYX Glitter On the Go, Sunset
Brush and tweezers
And a top coat to seal it



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Face primer review

I've been testing out the green Bodyography Veil Foundation Primer. I bought this at Feelunique.
It comes in six shades:
Green - To reduce redness and blotchiness
Purple - To reduce dullness and bright up the complexion
Neutral - Hint of yellow to conceal undereye circles and give warmth
Clear - Anti age and somewhat sun protection
Tahitian Glow - Bronzer effect with shimmer
Monaco Matte - Bronzer effect without shimmer

So I chose the green one since my skin is very red because of rosacea and environmental sensitivity.
The container feels luxurious and a big plus for the pump. One pump gives enough product for the entire face, and it goes on smoothly and smells good. Minus for added perfume – I could do without the good smell to avoid that ingredient. The product looks and feels dry, but on the skin it's not dry if that makes sense. And of course it's a very green product! Don't worry about looking like Shrek when applying it, a little massaging and it will blend nicely with your skin.

Does it cover the redness? Like most green products that isn't a concealer, not much. And I understand that, otherwise I bet many people who bought the product would look green in a negative way. So in all it's okey.

Does it reduce blotchiness? Yepp! On my rosacea-related blotchiness (usually after a shower or a work out) it soothes and camouflages it.

Does it work well as a primer? I use mineral makeup only, and when I use this product.. No more cakey makeup! I've always had that problem on my cheeks. Or is that scaley perhaps.. Anyway, the makeup lasts all day and doesn't even run noticeably when I'm sweating like a pig working out.

I don't recommend using a primer every day since your skin needs to breathe, neither have it broken me out yet nor aggravated my case of perioral dermatitis (in fear of that happening I only use it 2ish times a week).




6/6 Read more

Shooting heart

Another easy "piff" to add on the nails, won't take much more then a couple of minutes. Looks like hairy hearts but, what the ick.
And I'm awaiting a package later today with nail polish. Hooray!



(Two toned stripes, gold sparkle dots and blue hearts) Read more

I won!

I'm super excited right now. And congratulations to the other winners as well. Our dear Heidi the blogger and Amanda from Kremfresh was giving away gift certificates on products from the Kremfresh website. The store focus on natural products without nasties which suits me perfectly, and boy do they have a lot of interesting products. I'm still trying to figure out which products to choose, but something from Oenothera
(I really have a hard time remembering this name, lol) and some soaps and stuff.

I recommend Norwegians to check it out!



Also check out Heidi's blog if you haven't (seriously).



Have a good weekend y'all! Read more

Retardins

You find them everywhere, but unlike other classes, noob paladins are easy to spot right away.

• They often have the title: Jenkins
• Guildless or in a guild with a very immature name
• On the horde side, it's usually the male characters with blonde short hair
  
• They do not buff you, and if they do they give everybody BoM
• They do not speak a word if you tell or ask them something
• Rarely attack mobs, they prefer looking at people doing the job
• Need roll on all the gear because of the OS they'll never use
• Few of them know what Divine Storm is, or any special attack for that matter

Illustration taken from Imageshack Read more

Cheap polish brand: Jordana, Fuchsia Flicker

Today I received my order from CC, 11 days shipping and 2 days handling. I ordered various (19) polishes, two blushes and two lipsticks. From L.A colors, NYX and the brand I hadn't heard of before, Jordana. Reviews of every item is coming up, but let me start with saying: Don't buy Jordana lipsticks!

Okey, I was really impressed with the nailpolishes from Jordana. This is swatches of Jordana Fuchsia Flicker. It's a pretty bright fuchsia pink with sparkles of different shapes. The bottle is 15ml, so you get a lot for your money here.
Application is great, good coverage on the first stroke for this one and I was pleased with two coats. The bottles are of glass and looks more expensive then they are.

I recommend trying it! But be aware of chipping if you don't use a high quality top coat.




Low budget approved
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