4 Minute Morning: My Quick 6-Step K-Beauty Routine

How long does it take to do a multi-step Korean beauty product routine? A lot less time than I thought, as it turns out. Gone are the old days of lazy 20+ minute AM routines, where I could leisurely apply layers of products between answering emails and sipping my coffee.

My AM routine now consists of potty dancing in front of my mirror as I slap on products while my puppy chirps and whines to be let out of her crate. It's easy to slap on a bunch of products as fast as possible, but it's trickier to have them absorb in time for your sunscreen to safely adhere to your face.

It's fast, it's fervent, it's done on a full bladder: it's my 3 minute and 47 second K-Beauty morning routine

It's also as hot and humid AF right now, which means my sunscreen wants to slide into my eyes as soon as I step out the door, resulting in me staggering around my yard trying to wipe my burning, streaming eyes like a freshly maced frat boy. I need my products in place and locked down against the summer heat, and that's a lot harder to do in the time it takes for the puppy to lose patience and start chewing her bed.

In this post:

• It's all in the timing; a simple change made a big difference
• Which 6 steps are necessities
• A full face with +2 minutes extra

Trying to get all this stuff done in stages, in between her AM potty break and AM playtime, just wasn't working for me. Instead of popping outside in a hat, doing the thing, and zipping back indoors for my next step, anything less than a fully ready face resulted in me chasing her around the yard trying to dig rocks, sticks, and occasionally my shoe out of her mouth, without sun protection. Hat + chasing down a speedy tinydog = unplanned sun exposure.

Necessity was the mother of inventing a workable AM routine so fast I decided to time it to see just how long it took for me to roll out the door, ready for puppy potty & playtime in the summer sun.

K-Beauty On the Road: Inappropriate Sheetmasking & Involuntary Strobing

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you've no doubt already seen/heard my special-event-attendance woes leading up to this weekend; I live a hectic life full of important things like reorganizing my spreadsheet or inventorying my sheet masks, not to mention writing a blog post every weekend and working 60 hours a week at my day job.  This means social outings that require the trappings of non-hermit life such as well-behaved skin, makeup, and spanx is more than I can handle.

Having had to do it a few weekends in a row has me ready to retire from human contact until at least midsummer.  Stress and troubled skin is a bad combination, but weddings are one of those events that you can't really dodge, so I took advantage of our out-of-state drive and loaded our car trunk with (I kid you not) a cardboard box full of skincare, makeup, and sheet masks.  Being 'ready' was beyond my means, but this was as close as it was going to get.

I loved the dark cherrywood of this desk so much that I'm writing this covered in sawdust. More on that later.

I'm actually already a few hours overdue to be asleep for an early morning workday, so this post is going to be brief (ahahaha no) and terrifying; I'm going to include a demonstration of the cushion + (accidental) highlighter on my skin.

I've also finally figured out how to properly create a linked table of contents (I think), so you can now just jump to the section you want, woo!

In this post:

• Preparing my skin in advance
• What I brought with me
• Unedited photos of the Hera cushion
• Unedited photos of my face wearing the Hera cushion (I need a drink.)

I need an adult, or preferably an adult beverage, but then I'd fall asleep at my computer and the rest of this post would be endless lines of "dfghjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj" and then possibly a tweet tomorrow about how I caused an electrical fire by drooling into my keyboard.  If you don't want to see how my repurposed highlighter + cushion looked after a full night of wear, duck out after the money shots of the cushion.  You've been warned!

2015 in Review, Part I: My Favourite K-Beauty Products of 2015

This year has been definitely been an exciting time for K-Beauty and Asian beauty product fans; long-time fans have seen what was originally a grassroots niche become mainstream.  We've seen the advent of products carried in Sephora, Amazon, and other major retailers, regularly featured in major magazines like Vogue and Allure, and even book releases on the subject- K-Beauty and AB (Asian beauty products) has really come into its own this year, and it's the time of year for 'best of' posts, so here's mine!

The amazing scent of this wreath makes up for the needles everywhere.  Mostly.

There will be two parts to this post, the first a light-hearted rundown of products, and the second a more reflective discussion of the themes, concepts, tips, trends, etc, of 2015.

In this post: Favourite Products of 2015

• Favourite Cleansers of 2015

• Favourite First cleanser

• Favourite Foaming Cleanser

• Favourite Travel Cleanser

• Favourite Cleansing Tool & Honourable Mention

• Favourite Acne & Anti-Aging Products of 2015

• Favourite Skincare of 2015

• Favourite Toner

• Favourite Essences

• Favourite Serum

• Favourite Cream (and overall top pick for 2015!)

• Favourite Sheet Masks

• Favourite Sunscreen

• Favourite Makeup of 2015

• Favourite Base Makeup

• Favourite Lip Product

The more serious-toned Part II is here: 2015 in Review, Part II: My Favourite K-Beauty Tips, Concepts, & Trends of 2015, and includes:

• K-Beauty goes mainstream: does it have to be Korean to be K-Beauty?
• The most influential concepts of 2015
• Healthy habits: things I adopted and let go of in 2015, for the better
• Top tips from 2015: things that made my life easier
• Trends I loved in 2015 and will continue to love in 2016

It should go without saying that this is just my personal list of top picks; please don't be offended if your favourite isn't here!  This year has seen a lot of interesting developments beyond just the products, so rather than just focus on the tangible products, I'll also be giving a shout-out to the intangible developments that excited me the most in Part II- now finished and linked above.

One Shade to Flatter Them All: Clio Tension Lip #7 'Some' Review & Swatches on Fair, Medium, and Deep skin tones

Time for more fall-appropriate makeup adventures!  I'm quite excited about this post because not only do I absolutely freaking love this lipstick, thanks to the help of two lovely fellow K-Beauty bloggers, I'm going to be able to show how it looks on skin tones other than mine!

I not only love this lipstick, but it's been my go-to shade side I started using it in ... July?  (Seasonal appropriateness be damned, I love plum shades.)   I made a summer haul from Clio's official US site which included this lipstick, and was very excited about it as it was sold out on the site from which I'd been hauling, but to my sadness it didn't survive the trip.  When I opened it, the lipstick was nowhere to be found- it had melted and slid into the lid.  Nooooo!   I let Clio know about a (sunscreen) hiccup in my order which was my fault, I mentioned what happened to the lipstick, and to my delight, they offered to send me a replacement!

My pristine replacement tube, finally ready for photos.

When the weather cooled off, I contacted Clio to arrange to add my replacement lipstick to an order I was making- which is how got my hands on the new eyeshadow palette from Clio; you can check it out here: First Look & Swatches: Clio Pro Palette

In this post:

• Product Details
• Lip Swatches on NC10, NC35, and NC/NW45 skin tones
• Comparison swatches with other red/pink/purple lip products
• Final Thoughts

One of the drawbacks of looking for makeup swatches online is the swatcher may not have a similar skin tone as you- this is especially an issue with K-Beauty and deeper skin tones, which are distressingly underrepresented.  So for this post, I reached out to some friends who are both PoC K-Beauty bloggers on Instagram, and they agreed to test it out for me for comparison's sake!

Amazingly, all three of us absolutely love the lipstick despite having very different skin tones.  Swatches ahoy!

First Look & Swatches: Clio Pro Palette

This week I'm venturing out of my skincare comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory and doing a first look and swatch breakdown of the just-barely-released Clio Pro Palette, which I purchased from Clio's official US shop, Club Clio USA. In fact, I don't think this palette is available online yet, just in their NYC store, but I figured it would be helpful to have some real-life swatches available for reference for those eyeing it.

Clio, Peripera, and Goodal sample swag.

So how did I get it when it's not released online yet?  Happy accident- I didn't even realize it was not generally available yet; I was emailing back and forth with Clio to arrange for delivery of my replacement Tension Lip in 'Some' from this summer haul.  My original tube melted in summer heat, and they offered to replace it immediately, but I asked them to wait until the weather cooled and then just toss it in with the next order I made.

It's now autumn, I was prepping for an upcoming Instagram giveaway, and I wanted to purchase a few things to test while they were having their 10 Days of K-Beauty discount.  (Enabling mode: engaged and ready for action.)  I asked what sort of fall-themed makeup they recommended, since I was getting some autumnal lip shades.  They mentioned that they had the new Pro Palette and sent me a product/swatch photo, and I caved like wet cardboard.  Fall-themed colours are my weakness, and my point makeup wardrobe is scant.

It's the most wonderful time of the year (for me.)  Leaves courtesy of my non-judgemental in-laws' backyard.

Before we get into the swatches and my impressions, I need to set some expectations here: I suck at point makeup.  Put me at a table with 30+ products and ask me to put them in order of application, and like a film assassin dissembling a gun, I will have that lineup arranged before you finish wiping off your makeup.  Judging the powers of pigmentation payoff?  Snesus take the wheel.

However, what I can do is provide my thoughts on how a makeup derp like myself would fare with this palette, and frankly most Korean makeup is skewed towards minimalism, natural looks, or subtle accents.  Naturally flawless skin is a feature as important as your eyes.  This means that a lot of people (like me) have gotten into makeup due to the lessened pressure of the Korean style- I feel a lot more comfortable rocking a vivid plum in a gradient lip than the western trend of a full coverage, bold, defined lip.

In this post:

• The Packaging
• The Applicator
• The Shadows in Action (sorta)
• Pigmentation & Ease of Use
• The Swatches
• My Top Picks
• Initial Thoughts

Just a quick reminder that this is not a full review; I will need to fully test this palette so I can comment on wear time, lasting power, fallout, etc, the purpose of this "first look" is just that- first impressions and swatches of everything.  I've done them with and without primer, and tested what they look like blended together, but I'm still new to this whole ... makeup business.  Ah well, practice makes perfect.  Onward!

Goodal Mild Protect Natural Filter Sun Cream SPF50+ PA+++ Review

In my post A Haul Before the Storm: Eye candy, Details, First Impressions, & some Mini Reviews I mentioned there was a small snafu on my part when I ordered the Goodal Mild Protect Natural Filter Sun Cream in my Club Clio USA haul, and that I would be going into more detail about it later.  And here we are!

It's a long and slightly boring story, so here's the short version: I messed up my order, I received two sunscreens instead of one, and when I contacted Clio to let them know, they very graciously offered to refund me, exchange it, or whatever I wanted to do.  That's pretty spiffy considering that I was the one who made the mistake.  I suggested an alternative: what about a giveaway?

Image from original haul post

So is this sponsored?  Er, maybe?  They let me keep it, so I guess so?  I'm not into sponsored posts but I was willing to make an exception because this was something I had purchased myself, it was not something that was offered to me, I couldn't see blazing through two sunscreens when I live in an at-home vampire cave, and it didn't seem fair for me to make Clio pay for a refund when it wasn't their mistake.  They sent me a different product (the Clio Vf21 Volume Brightener) instead of a refund for the extra sunscreen, and all was well.  A++ on the customer service; I love that they were willing to make it right despite the miscommunication that was really technically my fault.

So, I decided that once I was finished with testing and using the product, if I liked it I would give away the second tube, and if I didn't, I'd send it back to Clio.  I've been using this since mid-June and it's the end of September, so I've used for two seasons and am confident in saying it's been thoroughly tested and is ready for review.

In this post:

• Product details
• Ingredients & what's the deal with all-physical sunscreens?
• Review & white cast demo on NC30 skin
• Giveaway details (also includes sheet masks!)