Pretty things from LUSH Christmas 2015 Preview

The recent LUSH Christmas media event was fun as always! Christmas is serious business for LUSH and they've cooked up fun new products in addition to bringing back some classic favourites.

LUSH also had someone from their manufacturing team making a batch of their new Don't Look At Me fresh face mask. This mask contains silken tofu, rice milk, and rice syrup, all blended up before our eyes!

Snow Angel bath melt is a long-running LUSH Christmas product. If I actually took baths, I would definitely be all over this marzipan-scented, cocoa butter-based bath melt to hydrate dry winter skin.

Sneak peek: LUSH Christmas

Clockwise from top left corner: Snowman shower jelly, Candy Mountain bubble bar, First Snow dusting powder, So White shower gel, Star Light Star Bright bath melt, Dashing Santa bath bomb, Snow Angel bath melt, Yog Nog soap

Currently testing a few things from LUSH Christmas (see full collection here). Have you picked anything up yet? (PS I am super excited about Snow Angel. I don't usually take baths but I will always try ALL the almond things.)

LUSH Beach Box-Inspired Nails

Hello! It's already August and despite all the gross sweatiness that comes with summer, I'm sad to admit that it'll be over in a blink. That's also about how much time you have to pick up LUSH's limited edition Beach Box ($29.95 CAD).

Beach Box includes full-sized versions of the Sea Vegetable soap and Ocean Salt scrub, as well as minis of Sea Spray hair mist, Dream Cream and Seanik shampoo bar. When I received the set from LUSH, I fell in love right away with the quirky, sea-inspired art all over the recyclable cardboard packaging. I couldn't help but reinterpret it on my nails:

Not exactly my cleanest work, but I'm pretty happy with the results!

Coming up: Clinique A Different Nail Enamel

Ahhh how pretty can Clinique's Summer 2013 collection of nail polishes get? These are fun, summery shades, many of them in bright candy colours. I loved photographing all 8 of them together.

I'm almost done swatching and testing these, coming soon in a two-part post. Which shade are you most excited about?

Coming up: LUSH New Gorilla Perfumes

I've been kind of an absentee blogger lately *hangs head* Due to work stuff, I haven't had much time to get a full night's sleep, let along edit photos and write posts! I really am in awe of people that have full-time jobs/families/other responsibilities and still blog consistently.

I recently got to check out the new Gorilla Perfume line from LUSH and am very very excited to share all the photos and info, I just need to sit down and write the post, which hopefully I can churn out this weekend.  For now, here's a sneak peek of the charming set-up they have right now at LUSH Robson in Vancouver:

I just really felt the need to post something since it's been a week from my last post T__T I promise it won't be that long until you see the next one!

My first Zoya polishes!

Zoya Ciara, Evvie, Frida

I ordered my very first Zoya polishes during the recent "3 Free Polishes" promotion (although I did have to ship it to US) and I'm super excited to wear them. Despite having to ship it to the US, getting three Zoyas (worth $24 USD/$26 CAD) for free with only $10 shipping was too good for me to resist.

Even though lately I've been wearing very fresh, Spring-y colours, I realized my order had a mostly Fall vibe. Ciara is a deep berry-purple that I later realized is extremely close to L'Oreal Colour Riche's Violet Vixen (oops); Evvie is a deep, smoky grey tinged with green; Frida looks dark in the bottle but is a bright teal jelly that I've loved for a long time from afar. I can't wait to swatch them on my nails and share them soon.

Did you order anything from the "3 Free" sale? Which polish are you most interested in seeing?

OPI Skyfall Mini Set (sneak peek!)

Lucky me, my amazing friend Sarah gave me the James Bond Skyfall mini set by OPI for my birthday :> I really like the rich colours and and variety of finishes in the Skyfall collection (12 shades in total), so I'm very happy to get a taste through these four minis.

Swatch posts coming soon!

LUSH FUN + Quickie Holiday Preview

LUSH has rolled out a few new things for you to love, including holiday goodies and a FUN new product:

FUN is a bubble bar, shampoo, hand/body soap, and creative play all in one. Basically, it's Play-Doh that you can take into the bath. There are five colours (red, yellow, pink, green, blue) in five enticing scents to appeal to kids--actual kids or your inner kid ;) A surprise fifth function: a portion of sales will go towards LUSH's FunD, which helps provide outdoor recreational activities (i.e. fun!) to children in areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

I received a few colours to experiment with, so stay tuned to find out what I made :>

Although LUSH has a ton of products for the holidays, this is hands-down the one I am most excited about. Let The Good Times Roll is an exfoliating cleanser that uses maize flour and corn meal to cleanse gently, and glycerin and corn oil to moisturize dry winter skin. It's supposed to smell like sweet and salty popcorn, but to me it smells more like yummy toffee, which is awesome.

I love Mr. Punch because of all the bright, holiday-ish colours in this soap, but I know a lot of other people will love it because it's made with gin! It's inspired by the "boozy fruit punches" that you tend to see around this time of year. It smells like it looks--delicious. If gin isn't your thing, there's also Spice Mountain (inspired by mulled wine) and Ponche (inspired by Mexican punch, with a real shot of tequila!)

There were way too many new products for me to photograph, from bath bombs to bubble bars and scrubs, but you can see them all on LUSH. Which product(s) are you most excited about?

Coming up: butter London swatches

Smitten by the UK-tastic polish names and gorgeous colours, the only thing holding me back from buying up every shade was my wallet eyeing the $17 CAD pricetag warily. Thanks to a certain Coterie sale not too long ago, I was finally able to snatch up a few butter London polishes for much less.

Because the sale was a choice of three out of six possible shades, I didn't exactly pick the colours I've been wanting the most (Slapper and Lady Muck, I'm looking at you), but it's kind of good to be pushed out of my turquoise comfort zone. All Hail The Queen is a beige beauty that is closest to my usual taste, but is packed with holographic shimmer to give it an interesting twist. Wallis is a metallic olive gold with a darkness and vibrancy that makes it perfect for fall. Pillar Box Red is actually the most out of my comfort zone, and is--believe it or not--my very first red creme.

Did you buy anything from the Coterie butter London sale? Stay tuned for swatches!

Orly Cool Romance Spring collection picks

This is an updated repost from my original blog on Tumblr

I really love the Cool Romance collection from Orly; it's quite rare that I want all the shades from a collection, but this time I had to exercise some serious self-control and restrict myself to just two okay, three (not pictured).

Artificial Sweetener is a soft and sweet cool-toned pink, while Jealous, Much? is a pale jade that goes perfectly with the deeper Ancient Jade.

During a buy two get one free sale, I caved and ended up buying You're Blushing as well, which is a greyed lavender.

I skipped on Prelude To A Kiss (pale pink with a touch of peach), Faint of Heart (a greyer version of You're Blushing), and Steel Your Heart (a dark grey and the only shimmer of the collection), but they're all gorgeous colours.