Pretty In Bronze

Saturday, February 20, 2016

My Negative Zala Experience + Extension Review
February 20, 20160 Comments






I can break this down pretty quickly for those of you who don't want to watch the entire video. First I'll talk about the bad experience and then I'll have a mini review on the actual product.





My bad experience:



  • They forgot to ship the hair out in time so it was an extra week and a bit late (ordered 7th of december and didn't receive until the 24th)
    • They gave me a $15 credit for being late so whatever
  • They sent me the wrong colour (a medium brown when I ordered their dirty blonde)
  • When I emailed them telling them their mistake, they kept saying "no that's the right colour. It's just the lighting"
  • It was obviously the wrong colour and they didn't want to reimburse me
  • They told me that "honey blonde" looked like a better match for me EVEN THOUGH I ORIGINALLY ASKED THEM TO MATCH ME AND THEY SAID DIRTY BLONDE
  • I sent the hair back with my own money
  • They finally admitted fault when they received the hair and it was too dark (obviously)
  • They did not apologize for their mistake
  • They sent the correct dirty blonde this time and didn't mention giving me money for my shipping and material costs
  • I had to badger them to send me money, which they eventually did
  • I got the right extensions at the very end of January, almost two months after I originally ordered
  • They sent me 20 AUD (19 something CAD) for the extra money I had to spend and still did not apoligize

If you have any questions please ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.



The actual extensions
  • Great quality
  • Thick
  • 100% real human remy hair (I took them into a salon to make sure)
  • Hair is great, just hated the service I received

Their free gift (zala mascara) was absolute crap so I definitely don't recommend that. 



Overall: This was my own experience with the company and in most cases they won't mess up that badly. Because of my experience I will NEVER be ordering off of Zala again, but the hair is great quality so if you don't care about bad customer service and waiting two months (if they mess up) then go for it.


If this little writing blurb was too weird and annoying for you just watch the video. I'm on pain meds from my wisdom teeth removal and can't be bothered to write an in depth review after sitting down for 20 minutes to talk about it.


See you soon!

Saturday, January 09, 2016

2015 Makeup Favourites ~ Swatches
January 09, 20160 Comments
Hello all! I made a video rounding up all of my makeup favourites for 2015 and promised I'd upload a few photos of swatches of things that you probably haven't seen swatched on my channel or this blog before (more recent purchases).

Here's the video with ALL of my favourites (not just the swatched ones) and below that will be a few swatches:








  MAC Cosmo, Kate Moss #____, Kat Von D Double Dare, Rimmel London Notting Hill Nude, ABH Brow Pomade in Blonde and NYX brow gel in Blonde as well.

A lot of the lippies are very similar, but that just shows the colours I'm most comfortable with!




 Milani's Luminoso and The Balm's Mary Loumanizer. The shade and light pallette doesn't show up very well because of the flash and the fact that the underside of my arm is super pale but you can clearly see the contour shades while the lighter shades look very light. On my face you can tell I swear!




I hope you enjoyed this post and watch the video to see ALL of my favourites from this year!

Friday, November 20, 2015

NYX Swatches + Updates
November 20, 20150 Comments



 Hello! It's been forever since I've posted on here. November is the busiest month of the fall term for me and I'm finally down to one essay and one section of a group paper left. Two weeks ago I uploaded a video about going to NYX (the new square one location) and have a few swatches to show you! These are all lip products, but I also got one brow product that I'm in love with.

Here are the swatches and the video that goes way more in depth is below! And below that are just little updates in point form of what's going on.









Flash










No Flash

















Updates
  1. We're moving throughout December-February and will be fully moved out on the last day of February so uploads might be very sporadic
  2. I will try to upload a "What makeup I'm using to tide me over while I move" video at some point
  3. I have an etsy shop called brazilianglamour that you should check out if you like the EC life planner in vertical!
  4. Exams are happening from the beginning of december to near the end so check on my twitter @amysousa for updates there
  5. This is weird so I'm going to go now!


Sunday, October 18, 2015

Erin Condren Life Planner Review
October 18, 2015 4 Comments
Hello! This is a blog post I've been meaning to write for a very very long time. So I'm going to do this super informally and just use headings for everything I'm going to talk about

The Planner Itself

This is a daily planner that includes the entire year of 2016. I paid an extra 5 bucks when I ordered it back in July to include all of that month up to the end of 2015 so I could enjoy the planner beforehand.  The planner I got is the Personalized metallic Life Planner in the white with gold foiled designs. This option is $65.00 USD, but you can get a ready to ship planner (without having your name on it) for $50.00 USD.  You can get a rose gold planner, but that's an extra 15 bucks. Click HERE to visit the website.


Picture taken from Erin Condren's website (same planner as mine, except for the last name)

















What Comes When You Order a Planner

When you order the planner the shipping depends all on where you live. The planner comes with a few stickers, but you can also order a few accessories. These are the ones that I ordered



 (This last one is my own picture of what came along with the planner (nothing extra purchased)).



A Look Inside:




These first two are weeks that have already happened and obviously I'm awful at drinking water. I need to do that more often :(
The last pic is obviously a future week, but I wanted to show you how I plan things out beforehand.




Stickers (not from Erin Condren)

Ok so half the excitement is the planner and the other half are the stickers that I ordered to help me organize the planner itself. Originally I didn't even know that this planner existed, but Elle Fowler on youtube introduced me to this and stickers that you can use to customize the planner further. As you've seen in the pictures above every month has it's own specific colour. Every year the colours stay the same, which is great for the stickers that you can buy for the planner. As of right now I've only ordered stickers from two different shops and those are PurpleDogwoodDesigns and PlannerStickerPlus



PurpleDogwoodDesigns here    












   and PlannerStickerPlus here :)


I actually also had a mini september kit from PlannerStickerPlus, but I used it all up so there was no point in keeping the sheet, but you can look up whatever you want on their Etsy pages!


I used PSP for September because I ordered the stickers late and they're coming from much closer to me shipping wise. The stickers for this shop are great for different categories and events such as going to the movies, grocery shopping, periods tracking, and little things like that. For my actual organizing I used PDWD for my to do lists, event flags, full boxes, weekend banners, and all of the more structural stuff. Honestly these two stores are amazing (especially for the prices if you're in Canada and don't want to pay a ridiculous amount for shipping).


I only bought two things outside of Etsy and Erin condren for the planner and those two things were Pens and Washi Tape both from Amazon:





That's it for my review! Hopefully it was way better than the terrible quality video I attempted to film for it. If you've read so far here's my coupon code to get 10 bucks off the planner or anything you order off of the website!  https://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/amysousa1012  When you use this link I won't get anything unless you actually make an order. If you order with my link I will receive a 10 dollar credit on my account to use on Erin Condren's website, but at that point you will receive your own link so really you save 10 and I make 10 :D

I hope you enjoyed this review and I hope to write again soon!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Fall Favourite TAG
October 10, 20150 Comments
Hello again!   This week I'm doing a  TAG video and blogpost. These are a lot easier to write about because it allows me to link everything as I talk about it. The actual video is at the bottom of this post if you would rather watch that :) Remember if you do to watch it on youtube so you can see who's been tagged and all that :)

So here are the questions for the tag:

THE FALL FAVORITES TAG -

Favorite Candle 

Warm Vanilla Sugar (Bath and Body Works) by far. It's super warm scented and smells like you're baking a vanilla cake. It's not overwhelming at all, but the scent is strong enough to make the entire room and hallway smell amazing.

Favorite Lip Color: I have three: 1. Just So by Revlon 2. Cosmo by Mac 3. Purply pink? (Fail)By Lancome. These are my three favourites for years, but I know I'm going to have at least two other favourites being 1. Kat Von D's Vampira and 2. MAC's Speak Louder.

Favorite Drink French Vanilla from Timmies (Tim Horton's). Apparently there isn't any caffeine in it, but it wakes me up really quickly (maybe it's the amount of sweeteners that I put in).

Favorite Blush: Coastal Scents Blush Duo in Forever Blush. It has a warmer side (Fresh) that looks really good while blended closely to my bronzer because we all know I'm not a fan of blush AT ALL. I only want to try that one luminoso blush by milani and an hour glass one before I make it definitive. 

Favorite Clothing Item: Sweat pants are my number one for a variety of reasons including comfort, wearing leggings underneath them to make them super warm, and when I eat a large meal they help conceal my food baby. Scarves - I have a lot of those to help make my black winter jacket not look so plain jane!  I also have like 7-9 pairs of boots when most girls I know have two- maybe three?

Favorite Fall Movie: Twitches (Both of them), Halloween Town (entire series),The Brothers Grimm and The Corpse Bride (can you sense a theme?)

Favorite Fall TV Show: Once Upon a Time season 5 is coming out yayayayayyayayay! And The Vampire Diaries (even though I'm incredibly behind)

Favorite Thanksgiving Food: Turkey and it's glorious Gravy!

Favorite Halloween Costume: From what I've been in the past: Luigi. For what I want to be: Persephone or Aphrodite (easy I know), Alice in Wonderland (original or Tim Burton Themed)  or Little Red Riding Hood (a darker version).


That's it for my fall favourites this year! I'll make one again next year if a lot changes, but I doubt they will other than favourite costumes and possibly favourite blush (If I can find one that I would actually not be afraid to put on).  I hope you've enjoyed the tag and if you watch me on youtube and I also watch you, check out the downbar (Description box?) to see if you were tagged. Even if you weren't I'd love it if you did the tag and linked it to me :) In my video I added a tenth question (which is the second part of favorite Halloween costume, where I mention what I dream to be for Halloween) so it'd be awesome to see people doing that as well!

Have a great week everyone!

Amy Sousa



@beautybyamysousa