Stuff I've hauled and spiral stairs

Latest haul from Korea (eBay) and cherry culture.

First up - K stuff.

I didn't have high hopes for Etude House's Happy Tea Time Milk Tea face wash. It just seems so gimmicky with its pinkness, silly name and Korean branding. It's also really cheap (less than £6) compared to Origins Checks and Balances facewash which is my usual facewash. Happy Teatime actually surprised me though. See, the Origins wash is over £17 - and it's not like it lasts all that long (a few months, max). So I thought I'd try out some cheaper options and although the Etude House wash is slightly thicker and more stronger scented (it has that baby powder smell a lot of Korean cosmetics have), it has quite a similar effect on my skin as the Origins. I'm liking it so far - I'll be doing a more in depth review after a few weeks if I end up loving it.

Next up: Etude House Missing U Hand cream.

Ngl, this stuff is completely gimmicky and I bought it solely based on the "kawaii" factor. Why else would anyone buy a hand cream that comes in a panda shaped tub?

The panda tub is peach scented and works fine as a hand cream, nothing special really. I figured I would use up the hand cream and then add my own hand cream afterwards.

There's hardly much in there. Those looking for an actual hand cream are better off buying the Nuetrogena one. For me it was all about recycling the panda tub so I'm happy with this purchase. ^__^

Lastly in my Korean haul I got the Skinfood Salmon concealer since it had good reviews online. The name also reminded me of the Eve Pearl Salmon Concealer though I knew the quality of the two would be drastically different (since Skinfood is more on par with drugstore quality in Korea and Eve Pearl is most definitely more high end).

It didn't work all that well under the eyes for me as it creased into all my fine lines. The average person over 18 has some fine lines so thick, sticky concealers like this just don't work for under eyes IMO. I do makeup for my young teen cousins also and tried this concealer on them and it didn't work all that well on any of them (and they aren't exactly riddled with crow's feet so it must be the concealer's fault). On blemishes it was okay. Overall just a bit of a "meh" purchase.

Cherry Culture had 40% off a while back for NYX products only. Since NYX is practically the only brand I ever buy from CC I was happy to see the sale code on the website. I got some glitter (which is more like craft glitter than cosmetic glitter - so awful in fact that I took it to school and let the students go wild making xmas decorations with it rather than put it anywhere near my face), some excellent HD Grinding blushes (will do blush collection mentioning these blushes next week) and the Nude on Nude kit.

The lip colours are not my scene and I bought it only for the neutral shades. It's nice for the most part, but nothing can compare to my Urban Decay Naked palette. I was planning on comparing the Kat Von D Saint palette to the Urban Decay palette but I think I'll just test the NYX one out a bit longer and then compare all three.

Makeup, makeup, makeup. I need to start doing some book reviews again - it's been all about makeup for too long (though I can't say I don't enjoy the makeup posts!). Since I got my Kindle though I've only read the free nonsense just 'cause I haven't got round to the idea of spending £5 on a "digital" book... I need to find a novel that's really worth reading about. 2011 hasn't been a good year for reading really. Unless you can count Diary of a Wimpy Kid books (well, I wanted to see what my students made such a fuss about... turns out they aren't half bad!).

On a random note, I have discovered I hate spiral stairs. I took the stairs in Belsize Park train station the other day (since I prefer to take stairs to lifts if I can). It was a weird feeling though, the stairs seemed to go on and on and I found myself getting dizzy and feeling sick just from looking at them. I guess I'd hate to live in a lighthouse.

Anyhoo, one more week to the two week Christmas holiday break. I have a whole backlog of posts to do so will be posting more then. In the mean time I'll be continuing using the very cheesy but nevertheless lovely Etude House products.