Maybeline The Jewels lipstick in Fuchsia Crystal and Refined Wine

 Maybeline The Jewels lipstick in Fuchsia Crystal (left) and Refined Wine (right).

DIY Manicure: Galaxy Ombre Nails

My galaxy ombre nails, a new favorite mani! (Shown here with an Instagram filter)

DIY Nail Patch Manicure: stick on holiday nails!

Simple and easy Christmas themed nails that cost me PHP 39! 

(Excuse the monkey, it was a cereal freebie I found adorable)

DIY Nail stickers/Nail Patches Manicure

Would you believe that this manicure only took 10 minutes to do?

Unboxing the BDJ Box and the Belle de Jour 2013 Planner

Last week, I blogged about going to the BDJ Box launch. I took home a Belle De Jour planner and a BDJ Box for myself that day. Do you want to see what's inside?

Ombre Hair!

As promised, more photos of my new hair color:

50 Shades of Ombre Hair at Azta Salon

Finally took the plunge.

Say hello to my Ombre'd hair!

Because a while back I got myself make-up brushes

I found myself playing around with make up earlier and I ended up with this look using purple eyeshadow.

DIY Floral Manicure

Yesterday, I did this dainty floral manicure.

After weeks and weeks of neglect, I was finally able to squeeze in time to fix my nails.

DIY Aztec Nail Sticker Manicure

After a that manicure hiatus I had, I am back to painting nails!

What do you think of my Aztec nails?

DIY: Gradient glitter tips manicure

How cute is this cheerful looking manicure?

Saran Wrap/Cling Wrap Manicure

These past few days, all I've been doing is paint my nails. I've been dreaming about nail stick ons, but I've gotta grow my nails a little for that.

I promised to give my nails a rest but I couldn't stand to wait when I saw this manicure online. 

Pretty, right?

DIY Tape Manicure: Boxes with Borders 2, Mod Nails

As promised, another tape manicure DIY with different colors.

DIY Tape Manicure: Boxes with Borders

This technique is turning out to be a favorite!

A new spin on the tape manicure.

DIY Tape Mancure: Colorful Triangles/ Choose Philippines Themed

These last few days has left me busy with Tick-Talkative and tinkering with the laptop. After switching my Air with a Macbook Pro, I've been glued to the now 13 inch screen for days now. After a whole week of sleepless nights and the development of a small twitch in my eye from hours of staring at the lcd, I managed a small break yesterday to paint my nails. This short recess proved useless as the manicure I was going for involved letting each layer dry, and the time spent drying them was still time spent in front of the computer.

The manicure turned out this way:

And now the tutorial:

Etude House: Precious Mineral BB Cream and Surprise Essence Concealer

Found myself in the overwhelmingly pink store that is Etude House the other week. The korean brand carries almost all of your beauty necessities– from eye shadow to nail polish, they have it all.

I decided to get myself a tube of their Precious Mineral BB Cream, a steal for around 700 php. I also got their Surprise concealer, super affordable at around 300 php.

DIY Sponge Manicure: Gradient Two-tone Nails

Like I've previously posted, been going gaga over polish– again. Going crazy from inhaling the polish fumes, the price I pay for nail art.

I finally tried the gradient sponge manicure I've been seeing a lot online. A worthy first try, I think, but the colors remind me too much of marshmallow came icing (thus the recurring dreams about eating cake).

DIY Tape Manicure: Simple diagonal

I've been seeing so much pretty nail art lately! My Pinterest is overflowing with nail art inspiration (oh so many pretty manicure photos!). I had to try one of them– so here you go, my DIY Tape manicure.

Decided to go for this design, it seemed classy, simple, and easy enough. Really cute, don't you think?

Nounou Pak Treatment at Azta Salon

If you've known me for a long time, you'd know that for the most part of my life I've had hair issues. I've had really short lion hair that poofed up, burnt rebonded hair, permed hair, permed hair with bangs, etc. 

It was awful.

Then again, I could attribute this to my want for people to caress my head (hence so many haircuts), and my impatience and belief that I could DIY anything (hence the unbelievably high frequency that Trish, my old dorm mate caught me cutting away at my hair inside our dorm room).

It is only now that I've learned to let my hair be. Sure, I still DIY my hair color but no more hacking away at my hair when I feel bored or depressed.

This is probably the longest I've had my hair, and the happiest I've been with it (except I dyed my hair purple days ago but it doesn't show, oh well).

I visited Azta Salon today to have their Nounou Pak Treatment done on my hair, courtesy of Bloodrush Diary (a cool online publication), here's what went down:

The Nounou Pak treatment supposedly protects from sun damage. Perfect for scorching Philippine summers! Perfect since I'm heading to the beach in a week.

 Slathering on the treatment goop on my hair, wrapping my head in cling wrap and a really nice mini head and back massage.

Rinsing and blow drying was up next.

Before/After

To be fair, I think the drastic change in these photos owe much to the blow drying process.

I didn't realize I had this much hair till today!

Of course, a few hours after this whole process my hair doesn't look this straight anymore. My hair, just like Neil Patrick Harris, can never be straight– not that there's anything wrong with that.

Fake Nails and No Chip UV Polish

A while back I was able to try the Jennifer Lynn No Chip UV polish. (more on that here)

This was pretty cool since my nails have a tendency to chip and I could never grow them. With the gel polish, not only did it protect my nails from chipping, but the colors were so bright and the polish was so shiny!

This got me thinking about long nails, though. The next best thing to my short nails? Fake nails! 

I managed to find a box of fake nails from SM Watsons for PHP 64. I made a mistake upon application and unfortunately, these nails did not fare well through my busy day. They either fell off one by one or I ripped them off out of frustration.

Finally tried again with an old pack of fake nails a friend gave me eons ago. Used nail glue from SM (PHP 18, I really can't believe it's that cheap). This time, the nails are sticking on.

I take forever as I write this blog post. This is probably the first time in my life (not counting last week's failed attempt at sporting fake nails) that I have (fake) long nails. With these babies, even the simplest tasks, like opening a zipper or texting, become impossible. But, it's so pretty, I can't help it.

Let's see how long I keep them on this time.

/edit.
Okayyy, so I ripped tim out last night. No more long nails for me.