Tag: sephora

Thursday Favourites: August 13th

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Hey y’all!

Hope everyone’s been having a fantastic week so far! I’ve actually been pretty busy these last few weeks, between finishing up tasks and trying to squeeze in some socializing before fall (and a potential second wave comes). However, I do have some exciting news — not only have I finally finished decorating my room, but also I’ll be getting my first tattoo this weekend! Stay tuned the next two weekends, where I’ll be sharing posts detailing both more in depth for you all!

But that’s for later on. Today, I wanted to share a new favourite product of mine — NARS Laguna Paradise Found bronzer!

When it comes to makeup, my favourite part to complete is my cheeks. I’ve never had the chance to share any of my favourite cheek products with you all, as I haven’t used up/replaced any of my absolute staples since I began this blog. After all, I want to make sure I can take pictures of these products when they’re pretty and fresh for you guys! In the last year, though, I’ve been branching out and trying new products on my cheeks — and while my staples remain my favourites, I’ve tried out a couple new products that I absolutely adore and still think are worth sharing with you guys.

One of these products is NARS’s Laguna Bronzer — the one I have is their Paradise Found limited edition version with a golden overspray on top. I won’t lie — I actually bought this product on a complete whim. I already use two bronzers in my usual routine, which seemed like enough as is. But NARS is one of my favourite brands, especially for cheek products (one of their blushes is my holy grail everyday go-to) so when I saw this product, I just decided to go for it.

When I initially received and swatched this product, I honestly didn’t think I was gonna like it at first. The sheen of gold glitter coated on top seemed odd, and the swatch didn’t seem like it was all to pigmented. However, when it comes to makeup, there is more than matters about pigmentation — which is definitely true of this bronzer. Lower pigmentation can actually be a good thing for cheek products — as counterintuitive as that sounds. It can be really easy to go a little overboard with bronzer, blush and contour — so having a product that’s buildable rather than pigmented can actually make life a lot easier.

That’s exactly what I ended up loving most about this product — it’s so blendable and buildable that it almost looks as if it was airbrushed on when you apply it. Not only does that make it easy enough for anyone to use (even those who aren’t super familiar with using bronzer), but allows a truly flawless sunkissed look no matter what makeup look you’re going for. While it’s a powder, it has a rich, creamy texture that gives it a really seamless-looking effect when applied. Plus, it doesn’t take much to build this bronzer up to a good amount of product — it isn’t so light that it’s impossible to build. Ultimately, it’s lighter pigmentation just makes it easier to build and blend — rather than an ineffective or difficult product.

Unfortunately, this exact product was limited edition — but that only means you can’t get it with the golden glitter spray on top. If you’ve been needing a bronzer like this to add to your collection, no worries — NARS offers it in both matte and shimmer.

I hope everyone’s been doing well and staying healthy! These last few weeks have been kind of hectic but I feel like I may finally be on the verge of getting my life just a littttllleeee back on track (I don’t want to jinx it though!). I’m so excited for the next couple blog posts and the content I have planned out to share with you all, so be sure to stay tuned this and next Sunday to read all about everything I’ve been up to! I’ll be sharing how I decorated my bedroom with you all this weekend — I hope you’re all ready to see how it turned out!

Much love,

Meredith

Thursday Favourites: August 6th

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Hey everyone!

Today marks the third and final part of my skincare tools series! I hope you’ve all been enjoying reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together. For those of you wanting to check out the entire series, you can check out my post on Mount Lai’s Textured Jade Facial Roller and Herbivore Botanical’s Rose Quartz Roller as well!

Today, I’m going to be sharing the final tool I use in my skin care routine: the classic jade Gua Sha! Now, unlike the other tools, my current Gua Sha is just one I picked up from Amazon when this trend first came out, and I was looking to give it a try but not feeling ready to commit. However, at this point in my skincare tool journey, I’ve been looking into purchasing a new one — and I’ve had my eye on Mount Lai’s Gua Sha in particular. Even though I don’t exactly have a specific brand to share with you all at the moment, I still wanted to share what it is exactly that I love so much about the Gua Sha as a skincare tool, as truth be told, it’s my favourite out of all three.

The Gua Sha, unlike crystal rollers, is a simple curved jade tool that is used to help massage, brighten, and even sculpt the face. Unlike jade rollers, which can help with many of these but area ultimately a tool for de-puffing and soothing skin, the gua sha can really help to boost circulation and really physically push blockages down the lymphatic system. Most importantly, however, it can really help to break up muscle tension in the face, release tight areas and relax the skin of the face.

However, what makes me love this tool the most is how it actually provides a deep massage for your face. When you use this tool, you can actually feel your facial tension slowly being released and your circulation being boosted immediately (I always love the little tingly feeling you get post massage when you know it worked). Especially when it comes to areas that can contain some serious and deep-rooted knots and strain, such as your jawline, cheekbones, eyebrows, and temples, you can feel this tool popping knots and actually making a difference in your skin. Plus, relieving facial tension will help you feel more relaxed by proxy — just as being stressed will increase tension in your face, the psuedo-placebo effect of having knots in your face will cause you to believe (and therefore feel) stressed out.

And, as promised — I wanted to share a little about skincare tools that you should typically avoid as well. Now, obviously, if you’ve already been using these tools and they work for you, by all means keep using them. But rest assured, I will be explaining why to avoid them and what it is that makes them poorly suited for use of your face.

The first tool that generally should be avoided are the vacuum-style electric tools advertised to remove all the excess dirt from your pores. While I love a good deep-clean as much as the next person, these types of machines (as with basically every other method I’m going to mention) should really only be performed by a professional. There are all kind of face masks you can use to combat blackheads and clogged pores safely at home, but these tools are not only dangerous to use in terms of damaging your skin with their powerful suction — but also, you’re not trained to use them. Aestheticians go to school for a reason — these tools are challenging to use, and when used improperly can do more harm than good.

Another tool I’d generally recommend staying away from are Micro-Needle facial rollers. Once again, these types of procedures can have numerous benefits and stunning results when performed by a professional, but you should avoid attempting this one at home. Not only does the “roller” style of micro needling damage your skin, but without the proper tools to care for and sanitize your roller, all you’ll be doing is pushing bacteria that collects on the needles deep into your skin. When this procedure is performed as part of a facial, the needles are administered straight onto your skin, and the quick and direct in-and-out movement is what helps to avoid harm to the delicate skin of your face. When you use a needle roller, however, the rolling action drags the needle through your skin, creating micro-tears — which are damaging, ineffective and can even lead to scarring.

The last technique is one that I have actually tried myself, so I can speak on my own personal experiences. Microdermabrasion is a technique that has become all the rage lately, and many people try to get similar effects at home with face razors — which definitely work for some people but do require a lot of care to be used properly. While I’ve used face razors in the past on my upper brows and upper lip, there’s a couple of things you need to consider if you’re actually going to try to use a face razor on the entirety of your face.

First of all, you’ll want to make sure you know what you’re doing — so make sure to do a little research, or maybe watch a couple YouTube videos first. Second of all, you’ll want to be sure you have a good, clean and sharp razor that’ll be safe to use on your face. Finally, you’ll want to consider that there’s risks to performing this by yourself (since, once again, you’re not a professional). Shaving off your peach fuzz will make it easier to apply makeup, sure, but scraping away at your face too much can create micro-tears (or full-size cuts), ingrown hairs, and most importantly — when you remove hair from the hair follicle, it leaves it open and vulnerable to dirt and other foreign substances to make their way into your skin. Basically, I wouldn’t recommend this one either — I never used it myself more than five times, and I haven’t tried it in about a year (nor would I bother to again). Basically, what I’m trying to say is be careful with skincare tools; while some are useful, others may be damaging and should only be used by aestheticians and dermatologists. Be sure to pick what you use on your face carefully!

And there you have it! I hope you enjoyed this little segment on skincare tools — I know it’s been a little different from my normal content, so hopefully you all felt you learned something new from these last three posts. If you have any fave skincare tools of your own, drop a comment below and tell me all about them! As well, if you’ve been inspired to try any of these tools out for yourself, I’d love to hear how they work for you!

Happy Thursday, everyone! I hope August is treating you well. I know everyone’s been talking all year about how strangely time has been moving, but I really can’t believe it’s August already. I feel like the last three months specifically have been such a blur, but on the bright side — we only have four months left until we get a fresh start with 2021! I don’t want to jinx anything, but fingers crossed things will feel a lot more normal by then.

Love you all,

Meredith

UPDATE: Got my hands on the Mount Lai Gua Sha in Rose Quartz, I’m in love!

Thursday Favourites: July 30th

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Hey friends! Happy Thursday!

This week marks part two of my three-part skincare tool series, and this week I’m going to be sharing a classic with you: my Rose Quartz roller from Herbivore Botanicals!

Yes, I really do use two separate rollers in my routine — one in the morning, and one at night. Because of the similar appearance of this product to my Mount Lai Jade Textured Facial Roller, I can see why a lot of people would mistake them as the same. However, the two have two distinctly different uses. The textured jade roller I shared last week is meant to massage your face and help your skincare products penetrate deeper into your skin, making it the perfect tool to incorporate into your nighttime skincare routine. The rose quartz roller, on the other hand, is smooth and a perfect addition to any morning routine.

This über-smooth, cooling roller helps to de-puff your skin in the morning, leaving you fresh-faced and looking your best. This rose quartz roller, which is naturally cool to the touch, helps to soothe your skin, while also helping over time to diminish fine lines and tone your skin. As well, this little tool helps with lymphatic drainage, which clears any residual build up of toxins or waste in the skin and helps to clear up your skin overall! Plus, the cool crystal on your skin really helps to wake you up in the morning, which is just another added bonus.

For those of you who keep hearing the term “lymphatic drainage” thrown around but don’t really know what it means, hopefully my little explanation can provide a little clarity. When you use a crystal roller on your face, it can help to manually push fluid in the system along, which paired with the cooling effect helps reduce inflammation and boosts circulation. I found an article in the Washington Post that explains it a lot better than I can — as well, it helps build up realistic expectations for using crystal rollers. While they are amazing and I love the results mine brings me, many people tend to overhype them or label them as some type of miracle anti-aging tool. Rose quartz and jade rollers help to properly massage your face and cool your skin, and I think I’ve done a good job of outlining their benefits here. However, they won’t do anything impossible like completely erase wrinkles or completely change your face shape. That isn’t to say that they have no benefits, they absolutely do. However, if you’re looking for some kind of magic cure, you’ll likely only find it in a surgeon’s office.

If this sounds like the facial roller your skincare routine has been missing, you can check out Herbivore Botanical’s Rose Quartz Facial Roller online at Sephora, as well as their original Jade roller, too!

However, for whatever reason, if you’re looking into purchasing a jade roller elsewhere — I’m going to share with you a little tip I’ve learned for making sure you’re purchasing a proper, good-quality crystal roller.

While I mainly purchased the rose quartz roller for the ~aesthetic~, since I trust Herbivore to provide high-quality tools with proper ingredients, not all Jade roller sellers are quite the same. There’s definitely people out there who sell completely fake jade rollers and price them as though they are made of real jade. Apart from wasting your money, fake jade rollers are often made of glass and do not have the same innate cooling effect (and therefore will not have the same results). However, at any price point your roller likely isn’t real jade — the real deal is awfully expensive. As such, you don’t likely know what exactly your roller is made of.

On the other hand, rose quartz is a much more common and inexpensive crystal, meaning that barring your roller being made of glass, it will more likely be true authentic rose quartz. As well, rose quartz rollers are said to have extra benefits — such as being less influenced by skin temperature and staying cool for longer, as well as more anti-wrinkle benefits. A quick Google search will tell you everything you need to know about the difference between jade and rose-quartz rollers, however, both for the added benefits and the likelihood that you’re getting exactly what you think you are out of the product, I’d have to recommend rose quartz rollers as my personal choice. If you want to know more, Mount Lai has a guidebook online that answers all kinds of questions about crystal rollers and related products!

Are you a fan of using a roller in your skincare routine? I’d love to hear all about how you use yours, what type it is and what results you’ve seen long term! Drop a comment below and share your experience — good or bad! I love hearing all of your different opinions on products that I share.

Stay tuned next week, for the third and final facial tool that I use in my skincare routine! I hope you guys have been enjoying this little series — I know it’s a little different from my usual Thursday reviews, but I’ve really loved putting it together for you guys! I really love using these skincare tools, and since they make up such a large element of my skincare routines, it seemed like it was only right they all get their own posts.

Happy Thursday, everyone! A little reminder to power through tomorrow and finish this week strong! The weekend will be here before we know it.

Much love,

Meredith

Thursday Favourites: July 23rd

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Hey y’all!

Today marks the first post of a little three-part series I’m going to be sharing with you all: my favourite skincare tools! For those of you who are into skincare, I’m sure you’re already aware of many kinds of skincare tools out there — in fact, you’ll probably already be familiar with the kinds of tools I’ll be sharing. However, I wanted to share what it is about these products by each specific brand that makes them even better than the rest!

To kick off this little series, I’m sharing one of my nighttime skincare tools — the Jade Textured Facial Roller by Mount Lai. I stumbled across this product on Sephora’s website randomly when searching for a new jade roller, and I’m SO glad I did. What makes this little jade roller so special is that it’s textured surface helps to gently massage the face, relieving facial tension (which I have plenty of, tbh).

Face massages are kind of a necessary thing, but a difficult task to perform yourself — you don’t want to pull or stretch your skin too much or you may risk damaging it. That why I love this little tool here so much — it’s so gentle, and the smooth stone surface doesn’t tug your skin at all (not even in the most delicate of areas). Plus, this jade roller is super cool to the touch, which is always lovely and refreshing. As well, since I tend to use this roller at night, I feel like it really helps to press all my skincare products into my skin to help them absorb. One of the main intentions of this product, rather than deputing, is to help your skincare products penetrate more deeply into the skin (hence why I use it at night, when I do my main skincare routine). The texture of this roller really helps me to get the full benefits of the products I’m putting on my face.

Even though this little massage tool is gentle, it totally works. Whenever I use it, I get that classic tingly feeling afterward when your skin has been stimulated and tension has been released, allowing blood to flow throughout your skin easily. I’m a chronic jaw-clencher; whenever I get stressed my face feels the impact. However, even if that’s not the case for you, facial massages are a really important part of maintaining healthy, glowing skin. And if nothing else, getting a little massage everyday feels fantastic and adds a little self-care to your skincare routine!

If this textured jade roller sounds like the skincare tool your routine has been missing, you can find it online at Sephora!

Stay tuned for next week’s post, where I’ll be sharing another one of my favourite skincare tools! As well, I’ll be detailing some more over the course of the series which kind of skincare tools you should avoid, as well as how to choose a good jade roller if you decide to go with a different brand.

I’m so excited to be sharing this little series with you all — I hope you all love reading it as much as I loved putting it together! If you have some skincare tools that you love and want to share, drop a comment below! I’d love to hear what you guys are using, or what brands you’ve purchased skincare tools from that you love.

As always, I hope you guys are having a fantastic week. I’m starting to feel a little more productive again, and just overall a little more like myself. While I’ve definitely still been neglecting to put as much time and effort into my blog over the last month as I would have liked, I did hit an important milestone — I’ve reached 5,000 views on my blog in 2020! While it’s not a huge achievement, and I have a looooong way to go to hit my end of year goals, it’s nice knowing that no matter how tough this year has been that I’m still making progress.

Much love,

Meredith

Thursday Favourites: July 16th

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Hey friends!

Happy Thursday! I hope everyone is having a productive and positive week — and if not, at least it’s almost Friday! I’ve still been feeling a little low on motivation lately, but the weather has finally started to turn around in Vancouver and feel like summer (which is kind of a huge blessing, but I also don’t have AC in my apartment, so it’s a bit of a curse, too). However, I’m kind of hoping to find some motivation and turn the second half of July around — there’s still time!

This week, I’m returning to more regular content and sharing a brand-new product with you all. I wanted to share a product that I’ve only started using recently, but have quickly fallen in love with. Have you ever stumbled across a product that filled a void in your skincare or makeup routine that you didn’t even know existed? Yeah, that’s this product for me: Milk Makeup’s Hydro Grip Primer.

Not that I wasn’t using primer before — that would be crazy. I just didn’t know how much primers could DO before I tried this product. I honestly just tried it on a bit of a whim — I didn’t really need a new primer just yet at the time, but as this product grew in popularity I began seeing it popping up everywhere and decided I had to try it. I had been feeling just so-so on my old primer for a while — it was fine, but it was more of a moisturizer than something to really keep makeup in place. I already have more than enough moisturizers in my skincare routine, so I felt it was time to branch out and try something new (after all, I can always put down a layer of my everyday moisturizer before my primer to fill the need).

I really didn’t know what to expect when I tried out the Hydro Grip primer — I’d been using my last primer for years, and I honestly didn’t remember what it felt like to USE other primers with my makeup. (I guess Tarte’s Timeless Smoothing Primer would be the exception, which I only used on special occasions — but I still stand by and love). And while it wasn’t like my old primer had no grip to it whatsoever, I definitely did NOT know what grip really felt like until I gave this primer a go.

This primer is almost like a layer of glue that keeps your makeup stuck down on your face once you apply it. That definitely sounds like a bit of a weird way to describe something, because it does sound a little unpleasant, but I swear it’s not. This primer is also super lightweight, and once you’ve applied your makeup you absolutely cannot feel it, so don’t let the whole “glue” thing deter you — it really just means that it’s going to help your makeup stay put all day. (Which it does do an amazing job at — I can’t wait to be able to go out more and really test out what this stuff can do because while I’ve gotten a chance to see it in action, all the reviews say this stuff keeps your makeup in place like no other).

As well, this product does an amazing job of smoothing out skin and adding a little boost of hydration — which are two things I find are really important for a primer to do. There’s nothing I hate more than the look of my makeup when my foundation settles in to every fine line, pore, and bump — it really drives me crazy, as sometimes it actually makes my skin look WORSE than it did without makeup. As well, as someone who’s prone to dry skin, I’ll take any and every moisturizing product I can when it comes to my makeup routine. Overall, this product really helps my skin and makeup look smooth and fresh, while also keeping my makeup locked down all day long.

If this sounds like the primer you’ve been needing in your life, be sure to check it out at Sephora!

Stay tuned for this weekend’s post, where I’m going to be sharing with you all how to have a productive self-care day! It’s hard to carve out time for self-care when you’re feeling overwhelmed with life — but with my day plan, there’s ways to achieve both at once! That way, for those of us feeling little overwhelmed lately (I know I certainly am) you can kill two birds with one stone and relax AND get ahead on your tasks!

Much love,

Meredith