Estée Lauder Christmas Gift Sets 2017 Review

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The most joyous time of the year has arrived! As you indulge in the festive cheer, have you given some thought to your Christmas shopping? I am sure you did, since it is just 15 days away!

Apologies I have been busy and couldn't do up a more comprehensive gift guide featuring all my favourite beauty brands on a single blog post. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook, and you will see an assortment of different beauty gift ideas on my feed, all through November & December!

Since I only have time for ONE blog post for this Christmas season, I'd like to dedicate it to one of my top five most favourite luxury brands since the day I discovered my passion for makeup & beauty, and this is none other than Estée Lauder! (I can still vividly remember my first EL face wash I invested when I was 15, and how the ANR gift sets lured me to throw in my first full-time salary when I was 20!)

Review of Yves Rocher Sérum Végétal Wrinkles and Firmness + Thoughts on Elixir 7.9 Face Serum and Eye serum

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Following my recent shopping haul from Yves Rocher Singapore, I have been most excited to try out and to review this Sérum Végétal Wrinkles & Firmness Botanical Resurfacing Care. If you are still not very familiar about the brand, I have written about it before HERE. 

Sérum Végétal Wrinkles & Firmness Botanical Resurfacing Care is actually an non-rinse exfoliant. Means no unnecessary harsh scrubs or extended duration of rubbing on your face. Just apply and go to bed - I think that alone is a major brownie point!

My Holy Grail Series (3) : Eyecare Routine

Some lucky gals have been blessed with good skin, pretty eyes, etc. Too bad, I am just not one of them. I am sure there are many souls out there feeling the same as me. Girlies, cheer up! There is an amazing invention called 'skincare products'! HAHA! Which is pretty why I could start this blog... to introduce some of these awesome products that I personally tried & tested (and to ramble about things I like. Heh.) 

This post is the third instalment of my Holy Grail Series. If you haven't read HG Series (1) and HG Series (2), please do so and share the love through your social media!

As you can probably guessed in the pic above, I do not load on skincare products around my eye areas. Yes you are right. I DO NOT and WILL NEVER use more than TWO products at a go, on my skin near the eyes!

You'd have already known by now, the skin around the eyes is much thinner and delicate than the rest of our face. That is why the skin around our eyes show first signs of aging.

Our mothers are usually among the first people whom we pick up beauty tips from. I am fortunate my mother has warned me to take care of my eye area, due to the fact that our family genetics seem to wreck havoc on our eye area prematurely. My maternal aunts & uncles all have wrinkles around their eyes when they hit late twenties. Sad.

Hence, I started putting on eye gel religiously at 13 years old, and never looked back.

I am not kiasu okay.

I am just vain. LOL.

After trying on NUMEROUS eye gels/eye creams/eye masks for a whooping 20 years, you bet I know what I am talking about when it comes to eye care products.

Blame on my acne-prone sensitive skin, the area around my eyes too is super picky when it comes to skincare products. I am prone to milia seeds ALL OVER my face, so you can imagine how cautious I get when it comes to selecting my eyecare products.

Because I do not want to look like this...

Image credit to trueaesthetics.net

So here comes... my holy grail eyecare products that I have been using for YEARS!!

 Products featured:

• Shiseido Sun Protection Eye Cream
• Kiehl's Midnight Recovery Eye Cream
• The Face Shop Raspberry Roots Collagen Eye Patch 

You may be wondering why are there only three products being featured?

If you haven't caught on by now, I will reiterate:  

You DO NOT need a ton of products on your skin, especially on the delicate area around your eyes. You only need a couple of quality products which are SUITABLE for YOU. 

Shiseido Sun Protection Eye Cream with SPF25

I don't know about you, but my skin is pretty reactive to products with high SPF. I am probably sensitive to high amounts of titanium oxide or zinc oxide. I break out or develop milia seeds overtime if I apply anything higher than SPF30.

BUT we all need some protection from the sun, don't we? Especially when we know our skin around the eyes ages faster than the rest of the skin, all the more we NEED some SPF in our eye care products.


That was why I chose Shiseido Sun Protection Eye Cream with SPF 25.

My Holy Grail Series (2): Daily Skincare Routine

The year I hit 29, I underwent a facial skin pilgrimage. Plagued by the thought that I was approaching my Big 3, I vowed to start a suitable skincare routine in order to gear myself up for the coming Big 3. (I wasn't using a moisturiser prior to that. Horrors of horrors!)

I made a fatal mistake back then.

It just wasn't the right time to change my beauty products, at one go somemore. Back then, I wasn't aware that my hormones were holding my 30 year old birthday bash in my body! HAH!

Furthermore, I was stressed out by many nitty gritty stuff such as my life direction, my family, my relationship, my finances (okay, not that nitty gritty), and even my pet bunny's happiness index. Hah.

Coupled with all these factors plus my sudden change in beauty products, my face BROKE OUT with more than 15 pimples ALL OVER THE FACE, especially prominent on the cheeks!

Couldn't find the photo of my then bare face. Probably deleted it as I couldn't stand the sight of blemishes on my face!

In the above photo, my real face was hidden behind 3 layers of foundation, 1 layer of concealer and 1 layer of tinted sunblock. Total of 5 layers! And you can still see the active pimples!

I cried myself to sleep almost every night. I was so depressed because I spent so much money on various skincare products, new & better quality makeup, countless facials but my skin just betrayed me like that.

One day, I decided I need to visit a skin doctor for professional help. After reading online reviews, I tried an aesthetic doctor and another dermatologist. Eight painful months later, my skin was finally totally cleared.

Now, my skin occasionally still breakout when my hormones are in a mess, eg. before/during menses and around the time of ovulation. However, it is MUCH MUCH BETTER compared to the situation 4 years ago.

My recent face with no makeup.
Unedited shot, except to blur out my hubby. Was kissing him. LOL.

Our skincare routine needs to be regularly updated, because as we age, our skin needs will change. Therefore, I am constantly looking for good skincare products to add to my skincare routine.

So after a LONG term of trial & error and frequent tweaking, I finally put together a set of skincare products that I am certain will work for me for a long time. I believe they can work for you too if you have acne-prone, sensitive combination skin like mine.

Sharing my holy grail daily skincare routine in this post...

My Holy Grail Series (1) : MAKEUP REVOLUTION ICONIC REDEMPTION PALETTES

I am starting a series of blog entries entitled "My Holy Grail Series". As the title clearly suggests, in this series of blog posts, I am going to feature some of my holy grail (HG) beauty products which include makeup, skincare, haircare and bodycare products. These are products I have personally used & proven effective for me over an extended period of time, and at the moment of writing, ARE NOT sponsored.

To kick off this series, I picked out the product type that I have the heaviest usage for - eyeshadow! Probably you already know, I am sucker for eye makeup. This is partly due to my monolidded, dull-looking tiny Asian eyes...and also because I'd always felt that if you want to ascertain a person's level of makeup skills, you just simply need to look at how they draw their eyes.

My HG eyeshadow at the moment:

MAKEUP REVOLUTION REDEMPTION PALETTES ICONIC 1, 2 and 3.

MAKEUP REVOLUTION is a relatively new brand from London. Despite being new, they are gaining popularity steadily overseas, due to their amazing quality at super affordable prices. You pay drugstore price, you get high-end quality. Beat that!

At the moment, MAKEUP REVOLUTION are not available in retail stores in Singapore. Products can be purchased online via their website at http://www.makeuprevolution.sg/

I don't see many Singaporeans using their products yet. Maybe not yet, since they have only started their online presence in Singapore late last year 2014. Things may be different few months down the road...

My thoughts on REDEMPTION PALETTES ICONIC 1, 2 and 3

• Considered as exact dupes of the Urban Decay NAKED 1, 2 and 3 palattes, these Redemption Palettes are only at a fraction of the cost of Naked palattes. (SGD12 each. Can you believe it?)

• The colours are mostly an exact match. I am not going to do swatches here since this is not a formal product review. I believe you will be able to find great Youtube videos or blog posts on the swatches - just google!
• The colours are super pigmented - almost as pigmented as the original NAKED palettes.
• The texture is smooth, and glides on easily.
• Last throughout the day, with no need for touch-ups.
• Cheap-looking plastic packaging that get scratches easily. The low-end sponge applicator looks just as bad. BUT seriously, for SGD12, what do you expect? 

Among the three palettes, I find myself reaching out the most for Iconic 1 and sometimes Iconic 2. I hardly use Iconic 3 because they are cool tones, and in my opinion, are more suited for fair skin individuals or the Caucasians.

On a daily basis, I create a soft brown natural eye makeup look using Iconic 1. Let me show you guys a sample look of my daily makeup:

Indoor shot with natural sunlight seeping in

Indoor shot with artificial white lightings