I'm a big fan of doing nails. I go to the nail salon to do gel nails when I am not busy, but I always try to look for ways to do my own nails.

I was shopping around in HK and found a store that sells soft gel sets. I gave it a try as the price is pretty reasonable and I always wanted to do gel nails myself so I don't have to spend that much money on my nails. 

The set contains 1. UV light (for you to dry the gel), 
                           2. Any colour/ transparent gel polish 
                           3. 2 nail filers - a sponge one and a rougher one
                           4. a bottle of cleanser
                           5. a bottle of acrylic remover 

I picked a transparent gel polish so I can basically use any normal nail polish and make it into gel nails. The only you need to do is to put a layer of the transparent gel polish under AND on top of the normal nail polish in order to seal it. 

I've used a very very light pink nail polish by Revlon this time and it looked like this:

It doesn't look thick like the ones that you can get in nail salons. They don't even really look like gel nails. The best thing about it is to prevent the polish from chipping - so you don't have to re-apply or fill in the edges every 2 days or so. 

I'm gonna try a darker nail polish next time so stay tuned! 

I decided to do a post about what I have in my make-up bag as it's one of the closest thing in my daily life.

The followings are only what I usually use, but obviously not everything that I own. They are definitely my essentials for a basic look.

1. Face Touch Up Stick -- Bobbi Brown

Bobbi Brown once said that if she had to choose only one cosmetic product, it would be concealer for sure. I can't agree with her more. Concealer is the most important thing if you want to bright up your face. Some people found this concealer a bit too dry, but I think it's fine as long as you put some primer on beforehand. The best thing about this concealer is that it actually has this ingredient (which I forgot what's it called) that helps curing an acne. 

PS: This concealer is not designed to be used on the under eye area though.
 

2. Boi-ing Industrial-Strength Concealer -- Benefit

Since the Bobbi Brown concealer isn't good for the under eye area, I use this one to cover-up my (really) dark circles. It has a really really smooth texture -- the smoothest concealer I've ever tried. It's also good for covering redness. I went eyebrow-shaping at a Benefit counter last time and they used it to cover up the redness brought by the tweezing. 

3. Original SPF 15 Foundation -- bare Minerals

I've only used two brands of loose powder/foundation -- Clinique and M.A.C. I chose this foundation among all the different brands in Sephora only because it's the only foundation other than Clinique that has a clicking stopper kinda thing that can stop the powder from going everywhere. But it's surprisingly great and I totally fell in love with this brand. Unlike other loose powder, this foundation can bring you a very silky finish. Since foundation is something that gets all over your face, this mineral powder is natural enough to not harm your skin that much. 

4. Black Bean Eyebrow Pencil -- Skin Food 

This eyebrow pencil is very handy; pencil on one side and the brush on another side. The shape of the pencil is kinda flat and thin that helps you to draw finer and thinner lines. 

5. Stay-There Eyeshadow (Mutt) -- BUXOM

This eyeshadow is from BUXOM, which is a brand under Bare Escentuals. The texture is really funny, it feels like I'm pressing against a sponge! It creates a metallic champagne-ish colour -- very natural but still brighten up your eyes. And yes, as it states, it really doesn't crease even without a eye-lid primer. 

6. Blush Me! Blush -- Sephora 

This orange blush can totally create the look of a sun-kissed cheeks! I use it all the time except when I wear pink cox it looks funny when I wear pink but my cheek looks pretty orange. Even better? It only costs CND 8 -- HKD 64. 

7. Flawless Definition Mascara -- Bare Minerals 

I got this mascara recently when I shopped at the Bare Escentuals Store in Seattle. The saleslady strongly recommended this mascara so I gave it a try. It's actually pretty nice. Volumizing and lengthening at the same time. It also comes off easily with regular make up removers. 

8. Prime Time Foundation Primer -- Bare Minerals 

This travel-size primer is a free gift from Sephora. It has a really weird texture that you can actually feel a layer of primer on your skin -- it doesn't really get absorbed into your skin like other primer or moisturizers. I put it in my make up bag cox of its handy size.