A new segment I’m trying out where in I show my morning make up routine for various days and chat about what I’m doing that day. Not really a tutorial, more of a random girly chat while we get ready together in the bathroom 😉
This is my day’s worth of beauty for a trip to Adelaide including 2 plane trips.
A blog and Youtube channel about a girl and her quest to make everything sparkle. New craft, hair and beauty tutorials every week!
Violet LeBeaux spends most of her time trying to think of ways to make life prettier, posting said ways on her blog and drinking very strong tea. She writes about big hair cute things, girly fashion, beauty finds, sometimes Hime Gyaru fashion (姫ギャル) and crafty tutorials.
She lives with her adorable boyfriend Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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Music: Garageband unless otherwise credited
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Welcome to a special morning make up edition.
This issue/episode/whatever I’ll take you through how I get ready, did two hair styles and took it all out for the Adelaide Beauty Conference.
We start at around 6am at my apartment. I had put my hair up into pin curls the night before and tied it all in a scarf.
Shower and getting dressed then moisturiser and primer.
This early in the morning I’m not laying much attention to the order I’m going things in.
I wear minimal make up for the plain trips so I can sleep in later.
Foundation, highlighter and blush.
I prefer to spent more time on hair in the mornings because I can do manke up on the plain but it’s harder to do hair there.
Undoing pin curls.
This time I only did a couple on each side because I knew I would have time to mess with them later.
Basically I just unpin them, brush through each to remove any kinks and retwist them with my fingers.
Nice and easy.
I’m pretty much on auto pilot this early in the morning.
I don’t function or smile much without my morning cup of tea and breakfast.
Brush the top layer of hair to get rid of any separation between the curls.
Straighten the fringe and maybe the top parts if there are pin marks.
Add a pretty headband, spray it and finished.
Simple and classic.
For extra bonus points tease the underneath of your fringe so it doesn’t split during the day.
Super magic time travel!
Ok so now we’re on the plain and I was feeling a tiny bit more awake.
This is my set up.
Firstly eyeliner, brown, top and 1/2 of the bottom.
I like flying, it’s nice to have with a couple of hours to myself with no interruptions.
Sparkly highlighter under the brow.
The flight to Adelaide was really quick though.
Light purple shadow all over the lid.
It felt like we were hardly in the air for 20 minuts between take off and descent.
Read the full description in the captions or the blog post.
Take a trip to Singapore with two of the cutest girls around! Travel isn’t just about seeing the sights, but seeing them in style. So prepare yourself for a total kawaii overload!
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A blog and Youtube channel about a girl and her quest to make everything sparkle. New craft, hair and beauty tutorials every week!
Violet LeBeaux spends most of her time trying to think of ways to make life prettier, posting said ways on her blog and drinking very strong tea. She writes about big hair cute things, girly fashion, beauty finds, sometimes Hime Gyaru fashion (姫ギャル) and crafty tutorials.
She lives with her adorable boyfriend Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
Well if you followed me on Twitter you would probably have guessed where I was the weekend before last: the Adelaide Beauty Conference! I’ve done my first V-Log at the end of the post too so enjoy!
I was flown up to be the special guest speaker and also to provide a nail art demonstration. James was the photographer for the day too so credit to him for all of these pictures.
The event it’s self was a huge amount of fun, it was held at Liquid Hair Salon and there were demonstrations of Dermalogica and Cloud 9 as well as make up from Miss Kitty and my nail display.
My models for the day were Sherry and Neena who were both so lovely and accommodating for me. I did a rose design on Neena and leopard print on Sherry.
I’m always nervous when doing nails for other people but I was even more so at having to talk and answer questions at the same time. Talking isn’t really my strong point but once I got to know the girls and we all got chatting a bit I felt so much better! It was like hanging out with my friends 😀 I know Saku video’d the whole process so if she uploads it I’ll post a link for the rest of you.
There was an awesomely delicious spread from Monnie at Cupcake Treats. We hadn’t eaten much all day so I spent a lot of time monopolizing the food table 😛
We only spent the day in Adelaide so James and I got up super early to fly in the morning and then out right afterwards. I had been hoping to go to dinner with the rest of the girls but there was an early curfew on the airport so even on the last flight we missed out ;_;
This is totally my favorite photo of the day, I wish I had gotten to see Kitty’s display to understand what was going on here XD
The best part of the day for me was getting to meet girls that I’ve been talking to online for months (or in some cases years!) in person finally!
Of course getting to play with nails was fun too! We covered all of the basics in my awesomely technical manner: splotches, squiggles, stripes and decals 😉
Being a blogger meet there was an influx of awesome cameras 😉
Liquid Hair was decked out in some serious bling, very appropriate!
The Dermalogica display was really informative and they presented us with some great information on the FITE women’s charity too.
With the amount of running around we had done that day (plus the getting up super early) I almost volunteered myself for the facial haha!
I found Emma’s Cloud9 demonstration really interesting too and it made me think about upgrading my hair appliances a step and maybe giving my wand another try! I’m pretty good with the straightener but no matter how I try I fail miserable at using those styling wands which is why I still haven’t reviewed/done tutorials with the one I have >_<
I got to see the O heated roller system in action too which cleared up a lot of questions I had about it! Emma also showed us an interesting powder which is supposed to take the place of teasing/back combing. That was something I was very interested in!
Speaking of hair products, if anyone has a good heavy duty hair spray recommendation please let me know, they’ve discontinued my black label Cedel ;_;
Other than my display I spent most of the time getting to know the girls and answering questions about blogging. Next time I definitely want to stay for a couple of days so we can hang out more and see the sights!
Biggest thank you of the day goes to Celeste for organising my trip and being a wonderful host! Thank you for ferrying us around, being so organised and for letting me borrow your nail polishes!
Thank you as well to the Adelaide girls for being so nice to me! It sounds obvious but I was blown away with how nice people were, we had so many offers of lifts and at one point my eyes were watering from hay fever and no thought at all Jac was straight to her bag looking for antihistamines for me! *so appreciative*
Kitty’s make up presentation using all kinds of cool colours:
Everyone seemed to have such a wonderful time. Driving around there has gotten me thinking about moving again XD Such cheap rent too!!
Of course it was another good excuse to hand out business cards, I’m completely obsessed with them right now. Probably good too because my printing company gave me double the amount I ordered so I’ve got quite a few to hand out!
The event ended with thank you’s, cheers and gift bags. Celeste surprised me with some really lovely gifts as well, I’m really lucky to have wonderful friends like her! I ended having to leave most of it with her because of my lack of baggage but I can’t wait to try out what I did bring. Especially the Ardel 6 week false lashes, that sounds like such a cool idea so I’m going to try them tonight!
Cheers to everyone and thank you all so much for having me as your blogging exchange student!
Now something I’ve been looking forward to (and dreading slightly) my first vlog! I debated for a while how to pronounce vlog (as in VEE-log or like blog with a v) and settled on VEE log because rather than being short for “video blog” I’m going to make them short Violet’s Log mwahahaha! Now I can make all kinds of nerdy Captain’s Log jokes too ;P
I’m still getting the hang of recording and remembering to look at the camera but it was fun to put together so I might start doing them more often if you all enjoy it ^_^
Thank you so much to all of the Adelaide girls for giving me such an awesome intro!!!
Ok that’s it from me for now, I hope you all enjoyed coming with me to Adelaide and had as fun of a time as I did!!
Before MBBE I had never heard of KMS California but I’m very glad that they included their shampoo and conditioner set in the gift bags because I found something to add to my must-have list.
Out of all the shampoo/conditioner sets that were in those bags, I found the KMS ones to be the most compatible with my hair. If you want to see what it beat out you can see the other items in the gallery here.
Price: I googled for Australian prices and the average seems to be around AU$20 per bottle
If you follow me on Twitter you would have seen me asking for recommendations for hair treatments and products to fix my damaged hair. I’ve been dying my hair various colours for almost 10 years now and while I’ve escaped most damage it does take it’s toll.
The bleached sections of my hair are relatively unscathed but the pink dye is drying out the ends like crazy. If you have any recommendations for non-damaging-not-ridiculously-expensive pink dye available in Aus I would love to hear them! So yes trying to be kinder to my hair so I can keep the pink happening as long as possible. I’ve tried quite a few different hair treatments and with the exception of one which I will review later, these two products have by far improved the texture of my hair the most.
After using consistently for 1 month I can really feel the difference in the ends especially. Less straw and more silk if you know what I mean XD
The texture to both products was quite thick. The shampoo feels substantial and while lathering easily it doesn’t produce so many bubbles that your entire head is engulfed. The conditioner feels soft and silky but not so slippery that it runs off the hair, it grips well to the hair if that actually makes sense. There’s no strong smell which is also a plus in my books.
The only major con I have for these (other than the intensely ugly/generic looking bottles) is the price. At $20 for 1 bottle you really need to be prepared to invest in it. For me personally I don’t have the budget to do that unless I can find them on sale somewhere.
VERDICT: Overall while it’s certainly not on the cheap side, I think this is the best shampoo/conditioner combination I’ve ever used for my particular hair. So if I had the money to make the choice I wouldn’t hesitate to buy them repeatedly. DO WANT.The PR agency for KMS also sent me their Dry Shine Styler as well as the travel kit to test out after I mentioned I have problems with frizz.Name: Dry Shine Styler
Price: $19.95
Basically it is supposed to shine and smooth down all of your little fly away hairs. I’m sure there is all kind of fancy technology employed to do that but that sort of thing you can read about on their website.
It comes in the form of a glue stick XD The idea is that you can take it anywhere and use it on the go. You are supposed to smooth it straight onto your hair, I found that doing that was too much product and too hard to see what I was doing so instead I applied to my hand and then wiped it onto the hair.
It seems like an odd thing glue-sticking your hair but I remember at school when girls I knew used *actual* glue sticks to do this if they were desperate hahaha!
So does it work? You be the judge…
Before. Unbrushed hair first thing in the morning:
After. Applied very lightly on hands and smoothed down, no brushing:
So yes it does work, and it works very well. You would think it would be heavy and oily to get such a dramatic result but it’s really not. My hair didn’t feel greasy and I couldn’t notice much of a difference at all. There is a light plesent scent with it, kind of smells like a hair salon actually XD
I think the biggest fan of this product surprisingly enough was actually James. As a photographer he is forever having to photoshop out fly away hairs from client work, after one use with me he wanted to take mine to use on shoots. I didn’t want to give it up though so now we argue over who can take it on certain days XD I feel almost like we need a lawyer approved joint custody arrangement!!
VERDICT: Love it. Again pricey but you need so little of it to get results that I imagine it would last for a *very* long time and therefore be worth the investment. James says it’s a must for photographers and I would agree that I can tell when I’ve used it/not used it in outfit photos! DO WANT.
Now small bonus with these reviews, from May 1st if you buy any 2 KMS products you get this cute little travel bag as well as a change to win a $1000 travel voucher. Clearly they know how I think because it’s got my travel motto stamped on it:
“I didn’t come all this way not to look good”
Inside it’s got a bunch of little bottles, sprays and jars to put your travel beauty products. Clear case so you can take it on the plane with you and a pocket inside to hold make up. They even were nice enough to print my name and address onto the label for me XD
So summary? I am very glad that KMS put those first products into the MBBE gift bags because if they hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have been introduced to some of my current favorite products.Very much looking forward to trying and testing more from them in the future. Thumbs up from me.
I’ve been really loving experimenting with make up and mixing my own colours and things lately so I thought it was about time to make something to keep them all in! You all know how much I love customised stuff so this post is all about how I made my very own make up travel palette!
Celeste forwarded me this video tutorial she found on making one and while I thought his method was clever I didn’t have most of those items so I decided to start from scratch and just do it my own way ^_^
I think there are a lot things that could be improved with how this one turned out but this is basically a base idea and I am planning to to use the techniques I learned in making this one to make an even better version which I will of course post too!
This is my finished product:
All of the eyeshadow colours were mixed and pressed myself as was the lip colour, I’ll show you how I did those after I show you how to make the box!So what I used:
Old cardboard box
Felt
Scissors
Old eyeshadows and the metal pans they come in
Glue gun
Sticky Tape
Mixing stick
Hand sanitizer gel
Old lip sticks
Velvet Ribbon
Tea light candles
Paper towels
Pliers
So let’s get started already!
To make the box to keep it all in I use a cut up cardboard box. You need to decide how big you want your finished product to be and decide how many pans of make up you want in there. I decided 6 and measured it out.
Ignore the bits of glue and felt on the cardboard because it used to be a ring box ^_^ Anyway this is what the pieces of my box look like, you can see how it will fit together eventually with the hinged lid…
So tape it all together
You want to leave the hinge tape a little loose so it can swing easily:
Now it’s time to cover the whole thing in fabric using your glue gun to stick it. I used felt because that’s all I had left in my stash. Next time I think I will use something else on the outside but again use felt on the inside.There is no need to cover the bottom of the inside part on the right as that’s where the make up will go ^_^
Notice that on the inside of the lid I cut slashes going from one side to the other, I also only glued it around the outside. The reason for this is that you can use the strips to hold important things such as make up brushes, applicators, false lashes or glue 😀 Very useful!!
Next I glued a ribbon in place on the spine so it could be tied around and hold the hold thing closed with a bow.
Now let’s make the palette to go inside the thing!
I had this old palette that cost me like $4 a long time ago. I didn’t really like any of the colours anymore so it seemed like good craft fodder ^_^
I broke it open and removed all the little trays using pliers. Be careful because they can be sharp!
I put all of the powders into containers in case I ever wanted to mix them later and washed the metal trays so I ended up with this:
Next I cut a piece of cardboard that was the correct size to fit in my box thingy and glued the trays into place ^_^
Now while we’re here at the palette part you should cut out a piece of felt a couple of centimeters bigger than the cardboard. Unfortunately I didn’t get photos of this part but you need to cut holes that are big enough to fit the metals trays snuggly. Basically what you’re doing is making a nice little cover to make it all look pretty and so the trays don’t look so far out of place sticking up so much. So in my case I cut 6 holes… if that makes sense! Don’t glue it on yet though, we’ll fill the trays first.
Now time to mix up the powders 😀
As a mixing bowl I used the metal bits from empty tea light candles. They are perfect because you don’t have to clean them when you change colours, just throw them out! Also if you make too much you can actually just press the extra powder into them and keep for next time 😀 Just make sure that you clean them well and get rid of any old wax!!
To press your powder you will need the kind of gel hand sanitizer with alcohol so it will evaporate to make it all sticky again.
Put your powder into the candle and add one squirt of sanitizer. Mix it very very well until it forms a paste:
Tip the paste into the metal tray and squish it down with the stick:
Using a piece of paper towel press all of the liquid out with your finger. Be careful to make it nice and flat and smoosh as much liquid out as you can. You can use this same technique to fix cracked/broken eyeshadows, pressed powder, blush and the like, very handy to know!
Taadaa let it dry and that’s it! Repeat with any other colours you want to put in there ^_^
Now I wanted to include a lip colour too so I took some lip sticks I didn’t 100% like the colours of and mixed my own ^_^
First thing I did was add some shimmer dust to my mixing bowl.
Then I cut off pieces of each of the lippies and added them…
Using the pliers I held my pliers over a lit candle to melt the colours together. I mixed it together properly and poured into the tray. To get a nice clean finish on the top I use a lighter to *VERY CAREFULLY* melt the top so it was perfect!
I ended up going with 4 eye shadows, 1 shimmer and 1 lip colour so this is what my finished colours looked like:
After that the last and yet somehow hardest step is to fit the felt piece over the top of the palette so you can glue it in place and wrap around to the back.
You should have a nice pretty little tray to go in your box like this:
The best part of this is that because it fits so snugly there is no need to glue it in place so in theory you could have one master box and put in a different palette depending on the make up you wanted to wear that day! At least that’s what I’m planning to do ^_^
Closed it looks like this:
So all in all I think this was a really good experiment! while it didn’t turn out perfectly, I can see what I want to improve for next time and I can’t wait to give it another go 😀
What do you guys think? Have you ever done something like this before?
First off you’ve probably guessed that there is no Sneaker Sunday today, it’s all about Melbourne…
That’s because Valerie is off jetsetting around New York and after all of the ideas you suggested last week I decided to take this week off and bring you something much more informative next week ^_^
Secondly I just want to give a shout out to the girl that recognized me in Melbourne Central yesterday, you absolutely made my day 😀 It’s so weird to have people recognizing me on the street but it is very fun so I hope if any of you see me out you’ll come and say hello and take a photo or something!
Thirdly SuperKawaiiMama and Fashion Hayley were lovely enough to let me leech off their internet so I could upload all the photos of our journey down from Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney ^_^
I’ll try not to bore you with all the landscape photos, James hadn’t been on such a long drive before in Australia so he was very interested in the landscape… It all looked the same to me!
I kept myself entertained with knitting and juggling the camera/video camera to document it all. I also ate a whole lot of candy!
It rained a bit on the drive but it sure did make some pretty rainbows!
This was how I spent the first 14 hours of the drive…
This was the face I made after visiting Australia’s most disgusting public bathroom… I won’t go into details but let’s just say that someone had actually stolen the toilet seats WTF?!?!
James has an obsession with giant things, like the Big Pineapple etc. For non-Australian readers, we have lots of landmarks that are gigantic fruit. Here is a large prawn:
And a big banana coming out of James’ beard…
After driving for around 12-14 hours we made it Sydney. We checked into out hotel which was in a less-than-desirable area and ran out again like crazy people to find the restaurant we were having dinner at. Of course we were *fashionably* late!
I was so sorry that we couldn’t stay longer with them, the quick dinner we did have was so much fun! I can’t wait to see you girls again!
James and I poured ourselves into bed after that and got up early for another day of driving!
We saw a lot of windmills…
For some reason I had a mad urge to have a picnic here… 😉
This is what kept us going:
Oh and also this:
This photo really says something… James grew this mustache on a dare but then he refused to shave it because it irritated me! Dashing or just tickly and annoying? I’m going with tickly and annoying!
Green green green brown green cow…
I was so sick of driving when I saw something that made it aaaaaall better…
That’s right Violet Town! I’m pretty sure that if you have the same name as the town you get to be the mayor right?? It’s perfect because it’s even the town of flowers apparently XD
After 2 days of driving we finally made it to Melbourne and to Super Kawaii Mama’s house and just fell into bed. I even refused a cup of tea which should tell you how tired I was!!
We found our own apartment 1 week after that and moved in 😀
At 2221.1km it was a hell of a drive but I’m glad we did it, we had a lot of fun on the way ^_^
And in case you ever doubted my skills at Tetris this is all of our stuff… and I actually fit it *all* into a Mitsubishi Outlander 😀 WIN!
Hope you enjoyed our trip as much as we did! What has your longest road trip been?
We are loving it here in Melbourne and there are so many big awesome things coming up that I can’t wait to share with you all!
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
