Pretty In Bronze

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Defy Damage Protective Shampoo - SRP $24.95 for 300 ml

This shampoo is free of sulfates, which is very important for me since I have naturally curly hair that I am trying to improve the appearance of as I grow out the chemically straightened parts. Even though the shampoo is very high quality, it still does lather up, which I personally like because I find it easier to spread around and use less product. The smell is all right, but that isn't very important for me. This leaves my hair feeling very clean, which I love because I only wash my hair once a week on a normal week, but I did wash it twice the week I went on Vacation to Cuba since I was exposed to so much sun and salt water. This did very well at cleaning my hair and all of the sand that was stuck in it. The price seems on par with my other favourite shampoos and it is very good considering I can use less of it.

Defy Damage Protective Conditioner - SRP $25.15 for 250 ml

I like that this comes with less product because I do use much less conditioner than shampoo on my hair (Yes I know, it's strange). I don't like that it's priced higher when you get less product, but I can understand since this conditioner does claim to do a bit more. On top of all of the regular claims, this conditioner is an amazing detangler. After the first few nights in Cuba of swimming around and my hair becoming a rats nest, I used this in y hair to detangle my hair before rinsing it out. Because I was wearing my hair natural and curly the whole trip, I also didn't only add it to my ends and was very pleasantly surprised at how my hair remained looking shiny and feeling super soft and healthy, but never greasy, even with all of the heat and sweating.

Defy Damage Protective Mask - SRP $27. 65 for 150 ml

I've only used this particular product twice (once the very first time, and once last weekend) and I can certainly say that I noticed a difference in my hair after the first time. My hair always acts funny the very first time I try a new product, especially after using the same line for a long time. I was surprised after leaving this mask in for a few minutes before rinsing it out that my hair didn't feel like there was a bunch of product left in it and didn't make it become oily before the usual amount of time (about five days after washing). I did notice a small reduction in split ends, but although it claims to protect from heat styling, I refuse to not use an additional heat protectant just to be extra safe.

Defy Damage Protective Shield - SRP $27.65 for 150 ml

This is probably my favourite product from the line because I could actually use it while on Vacation and see if it was truly working or not. This claims to protect against UV damage as well as pollution. You can also use this on it's own between washes, so I brought enough for my week away in Cuba and put it to the test. I definitely noticed that my hair wasn't becoming dry in the heat or after swimming if I simply rinsed the salt water out and added some of this to my hair. My hair also wasn't becoming dull like it normally would after several days of being in the sun all day long. The smell is a bit gross (it smells fruity, which most people like, but I hate), but it works so I love it.

Here are a few pics of my hair on vacation so you can see how good it looked dry, what my natural hair looks like when fully wet, as well as after I arrived back from vacation and washed my hair (third day hair). You can see how healthy my hair looks considering everything it was going through, and how it was barely frizzy even though I had no products or tools for heat styling during this time.


While these products will be available in Canada as of this month (March 2019), please check out the Joico Canada website to find out when they are released, and where to find them.

Thank you again to Joico Canada's PR team for sending this line over for my to try out and review! As usual, all opinions are my own.

I have a few new exciting things to write about so I'll see you soon!

Hello!




This is a beautiful light pink sparkly colour. It isn't very opaque, but from my understanding it isn't supposed to be as it provides more of a 3D effect in person. I love putting this on top of the cream shadow for a very pretty but effective look since it does stick down well and the colour and shine stays the same until you remove it. This is a bit pricey, especially in comparison to Mac's regular eyeshadows. I love this colour and would potentially buy one of the other colours (the gold), but the range isn't huge so I can only recommend it if there's a shade you really like. If I had time to put makeup on in the morning, I'd likely throw some bronzer in the crease, and layer those two shadows all over the lid to make me look fresh and awake, do my mascara and brows, and throw on the lippie I'm wearing in this next picture along with this eyeshadow. In the photo below, I put a medium brown shade all over the lid (minus the inner quarter) and then pressed some of 'Last Dance' in that inner quarter for a little bit of brightness.


Tendertalk Lip Balm 'Play With Me'


I love this lip balm! It gives me that popsicle look, but evenly on my lips without staining them. It's super moisturizing. This is a lip balm and is pretty sheer, but since my lips don't have much pigment to them, this does show up on my quite well, like you can see in both face pictures. I don't think it's amazing enough where I'd buy it myself since it is $25 and I get a similar effect with my favourite lip oil, but I'm very happy about getting it as a gift because it is very lovely. The packaging is also really cool, so that and the back to Mac program make it even better!

Hello!

Instagram

I have lost a lot of followers, but it seems like they were the annoying spammy followers that you get every time you post a photo. I've noticed over the years that I get a lot of accounts (including some major brands) that would follow me, and unfollow after a few days, only to follow me again a few weeks later. This is apparently very common as they are hoping for you to follow them back and not notice what they've done. While it is a bit discouraging to see the numbers falling, at least I know that my true followers will remain and continue interacting with my posts, even though the algorithm makes it difficult to get seen without annoying everyone with hashtags. This year I've stuck to my instagram layout/theme for the most part which has seemed to help with engagement. I hope to continue with the same layout in 2019, or altering it eventually, but that really depends on some of my goals for 2019.

YouTube

The year started out better because Steven and I had our apartment with good lighting. I felt more motivated to post, but with the loss of being a YouTube partner (I don't meet the criteria anymore as I have under 1,000 subscribers and less than 400 hours of video views a year), I also lost the money I was making from ads. It wasn't a lot, but I used to use my YouTube money to purchase makeup or beauty tools to feature on my channel. Without that, I can't buy nearly as much makeup, which gives me way less content to produce since my own entertainment budget is tiny (most people, including my own mother, don't understand how I do it) so I rely on gifts and free products sent in PR. I started posting less videos and focusing more on Instagram and this blog after I noticed that I was barely getting views, and a lot of thumbs down. I know a majority of the thumbs downs are trolls that are coming from one particular video of mine... or two... but it still really bothered me (still does), but near the end of the year I posted a few videos, despite the lack of real viewers and all of the thumbs downs, while living in a crappy basement with terrible lighting. In 2019 I hope to post more as soon as we move out and I have access to my lighting and makeup again.

Life

A lot has happened in 2019 in my personal life. For one, I got engaged! I have two posts so far talking about the ring if you're interested. This means some wedding content will be sprinkled in here and there once we actually get started on planning—though you can see all of my inspiration on my 'Wedding' Pinterest board. We moved from our apartment that I loved into Steven's mom's house temporarily as we didn't know if we'd have to move for his job or not. While it meant (and still currently means) my commute is 2+ hours each way to work every day, we are saving a lot of money since we're paying very little rent comparatively that can help us buy a house sooner, and pay for our wedding. On top of that, I got a promotion and raises, I released my debut YA Fantasy novel, I wrote  second novel and so much more has happened!

2019 Goals

It's been a crazy year for us so with that in mind, I have a few goals that I will share with you. I won't be sharing anything big or very important because RawKristiBeauty made a great point (based on a few research studies) that you are less likely to achieve your goals if you tell others about it. I know other studies say the complete opposite, but I've never tried this before so we'll see how it goes. I'll just share a few small goals that don't really matter.

Wear Earrings 

Yes, that's literally one of my goals. I love the look of earrings on people, but I suck at wearing them. My mom gave me a cute pair of diamond earrings for my birthday that I actually wore for a few months. My biggest issue is that if I take them off to sleep, I'll never remember to put them back in, so I wore those for three months straight and they got so gross (TMI) that I almost ripped my ear trying to get them off. My goal is to make an effort to put earrings on most days, and if I sleep with them in, take them out at least once a week to clean everything well. If I can stick to this, I'd love to get a second piercing as a gift to myself in 2020!

Taking a Pictures Every Time I Wear Makeup

I know it sounds silly, but I honestly forget most of the time. When it's time to add a new face picture to my feed, I have nothing. I wear makeup once a week, and post a face picture once a week, but every several weeks it will be twice since I try to post every other day. Because of this, I need to have a good picture of my makeup every single time I wear it. If that means wearing makeup more than once a week, that's fine, but I am going to try really hard this year to do this right.

Scheduling Content

This is something I've done for the past few months and it's really helped me on Instagram and my blog. When I have free time and nothing else to do, I want to write as much as I can up for blog posts, or edit product pictures and start scheduling those posts to ensure I have a more consistent blog and feed. My actual goal is to have at least two instagram pictures a week realistically (every other day as my big goal), and at least one blog post a week. It doesn't sound like much, but for me that would be huge if I can actually stick to it.

Painting My Nails at Least Once a Week

Another huge deal for me. 2018 was the first year that I didn't bite all of my nails off. I've been biting my nails excessively since I was five years old (a byproduct of my General Anxiety Disorder... yes diagnosed) to the point where they'd constantly be bleeding. I did almost 'relapse' a few times and caught myself biting small pieces off, but it never got really bad like I used to be. Taking multivitamins every day (or at least 90% of days) definitely helped strengthen them and help them grow faster, but I am proud. I set that goal for myself because I knew I'd either be getting engaged in 2018 or 2019 and didn't want my old disgusting nails with a beautiful ring (shallow I know) and that truly motivated me to not bite them. Painting my nails about once a week really helped stop me from biting as well. Because of that, I want to continue that into 2019 so my nails can remain nice and... normal. Maybe I'll even stop biting the skin around my nails... but that might be unrealistic for me.

Washing Brushes Once a Week

Another goal that seems easy, but is hard for many. I used to be really good about this, but now that I only wear makeup once a week, I've gotten really bad at it. I always think it'll be fine to use them a second time a week later, but I always end up breaking out. Because of that, I want to wash them once a week. If I end up wearing makeup more than once I have enough brushes to do another full face of makeup, but then I'll have more to wash.


I have a few other goals, but these are the smaller ones that I'm willing to share. Let me know if you have any goals that you aren't keeping to yourself and if you have any questions or comments about my goals or anything. I hope 2018 has been good to you and that 2019 will be even better!

See you soon!

Hello!




 As you can see, if you swatch the blush lightly, it's not too crazy dark. Though if you build it up it becomes very vibrant so it would work very well on deep skin tones as well. Thankfully with a light hand, this works for me. Not sure if this would work on someone pale, but as a light medium girl with a yellow to olive undertone, this is great.


Below is what the blush looks like on my face when applied with a very light hand. I don't even sweep the brush in the blush. I just lightly tap it to make sure I don't accidentally pick up too much product. This blush gives a beautiful glow as well so I skipped highlighter so you can see what it looks like on its own. I do have contour out that I was taking pictures for (coming soon), but you can see how subtle this blush can be.


Surprisingly this blush is still available on the Wet n wild website. I'm not sure if it's still in Canadian stores or not since it is from a limited edition collection from the summer. I did see it about a month ago in my local Rexall so there's a chance you may still find it, but I know a lot of people received this in PR so I wanted to show that while a blush might look scary, it doesn't mean that it won't work for you.

See you soon and Merry Christmas!

Hello!



The Teint Idoe voxbox included a full size foundation, primer, lipstick and setting spray and I've been putting them to the test ever since. This review is focused on the foundation, but as I use the other products more I'll probably end up writing reviews on them too.


This is a matte foundation—a finish I normally stay away from because of my combination to dehydrated skin. I have a few dry patches on my face that foundations tend to cling to so I normally go for natural finishes or dewy foundations, but I've heard so many amazing things about this particular foundation (and still love my super old expired Lancome foundation) so I really wanted to give this a try. I even filmed a first impressions full day wear test  video that went up a few hours ago on my channel! Here's the video linked down below if you want to see what I thought the first time wearing it. If you want my full review; keep on reading!


This foundation really surprised me. First of all, the shade Bisque is a perfect match for my winter colour. It's very yellow so it's identical to my skin, so if you find foundations might look too yellow on you don't get that shade, but on me it's perfect. Most yellow undertone foundations are still too neutral for me so I was super pleased with the match.



The foundation is definitely matte, but I thought it would be full coverage. It's definitely a high medium coverage and could probably be built up to full, but I prefer how it looks with medium coverage because it looks more like real skin and the matte finish ends up being more of a 'natural' matte rather than looking too dry on me. At first it was a little bit dry, but after finishing the rest of my makeup, I noticed that it was setting in very nicely. It's one of those foundations that takes an hour or so to start looking really nice on your skin, which is amazing because on me that means it'll look amazing all day long.