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Posted by Annette @ Wellness WA on October 27, 2011
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One of my absolute favourite things about make-up is the fact that you can use it to express yourself creatively. It’s your face and quite frankly you can do anything you want to it…and then wash it off later. For me, this includes the nails. If it were practical, I would get those super long nails that you can paint all kinds of nail art on to- sunsets, space scapes, mountains, animals- but I would be rendered pretty much useless like that so I have to look for another option for my much shorter nails.
What about the b nail polish collection by Bloom? Aside from having every colour under the rainbow designed to help celebrate your bold spirit (ahhhhh right after my own heart!) they now have a Crackle top coat in Black.
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The possibilities here are endless. Paint your nails any colour you so desire (you need some polish on your nails for it to work even a clear base coat would be fine as long as there’s something there), I painted mine green on one hand and half purple/half pink on the other hand, and then you paint the Crackle top coat over it and watch the magic. As the black coat dries it quite literally cracks revealing the colour you painted underneath. Over the green it leaves my nails looking like lizard skin and over the pink and purple my nails look like delicious little Easter eggs. I had to try more! Over red my nails look like volcanic lava, over yellow it looks like graffiti, over silver it looks like the moon !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe I can achieve that space scape after all? The best part is you don’t have to be super neat in your application of the Crackle top coat because it’s going to crack when it dries anyway leaving a pretty rustic kind of look. My only tip would be that after you apply the Crackle top coat you should apply a clear top coat because the black does look a little bit dry and can be a bit rough after it cracks. This just makes sure that your lava graffiti moon manicure lasts a bit longer!
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I cant wait for this Crackle top coat to come out in more colours (I hope you do this Bloom), especially pink so then I can paint it over red to wear my favourite colour combination around on my nails all the time. And then I can’t wait for white. And then neon orange. And then EVERY colour. Imagine the possibilities then! AND, Halloween is coming up, maybe to get in the spirit you could paint some of the black Crackle top coat over orange, maybe then your nails will look like pumpkins!
It’s such a fun way to do something a bit different with your nails, try some over your favourite nail polish shade to give your manicure a new lease on life.
I’ve really only skimmed the surface here…what other colour combinations can you guys think of that I’ve missed?
b Collection by Bloom – Black Crackle
Price: $12.95
Where: Exclusive to Target
Review by Adriane Daff, colour enthusiast, nail polish lover, excitable human being.
Be well,
xoxo
Posted in Products, Reviews | 
Comments Off on Product Review: b Collection by Bloom, Black Crackle Polish!
Posted by Annette @ Wellness WA on October 26, 2011
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My Dad has always said, ‘people just look better with a tan’, and maybe he’s right- a little bit of colour can give you that confidence you need when it’s time to shed the winter layers. BUT, and this is a big but, my Dad has also had more than his fair share of skin cancers in the past decade. Hm. So if you are curious to see whether or not you really do look better a different colour, fake tan is really your only safe option.
♥ Jane Iredale Tantasia – $54
And it’s not so bad! Fake tans have come a long, long way from the streaky orange cream days and there are so many on the market that surely there will be one out there for you. But whose got time or the desire to try them all? ME. That’s who. Recently I tried out Jane Iredale’s Tantasia, a self tanner that claims to build ‘your own tan’. This idea seemed intriguing, how would this seemly standard bottle of auto-bronzant know what my tan was? How? Was Tantasia going to magically, fantastically, intuitively know what colour to turn my pale, pale skin?
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To start with I prepared my skin for the tan (very important) with Kit’s Tan Prep Body Scrub ($29.95), a grainy scrub of shea butter, beeswax and Australian sea salt. It’s scented with a light coconut fragrance that smells very summery and instantly transports you from your bathroom to a tropical beach somewhere, no complaints there. The scrub is very effective in getting rid of dry patches and evening out your skin to provide the perfect canvas for your tan.
So it’s tan time. The texture of Tantasia is not as creamy as others, it’s quite a light lotion which means you work a bit harder to rub it in, but it makes up for this by going on as a colour so you can see what you’ve tanned and what you haven’t, which of course prevents streaking. The colour of Tantasia is quite an orangey brown, which had me a bit concerned. I certainly didn’t look like a carrot or anything like that but it wasn’t as brown as I had expected. The smell on application had a faint citrus scent but a couple of hours after I was getting waves of that normal fake tan smell that you get from nearly very fake tan (to be honest I don’t think any product out there has successfully eradicated this smell and I think we’ll just have to live with it for the time being).
Kit Tan Prep Body Scrub – $29.95
The last thing I did once I had finished applying the tan was wash my hands. They always suggest you wash your hands ‘thoroughly’ and I really take that advice on board, washing mine almost obsessively because my hands are so pale and quite dry. There is nothing worse than orange hands- it’s almost enough to make you throw in the towel on fake tanning completely, so this time I used some of the Kit Tan Prep Body Scrub on my hands just to make sure it was all gone and it worked a treat, I don’t know why I had never thought of that before. They should really consider calling it a Tan Prep and Post Body Scrub. Although I guess that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
None o’ this thanks
The next morning, I very pleased to discover that any concerns I may have had about orangeness were gone. The colour of the tan was a very light golden sort of brown, dare I say- the same colour that the real sun would turn my skin if I were to lay out without sunscreen. Hang on a second…does that mean that Tantasia really did help me build my own tan?! YES, yes it does. Oh Tantasia, you’ve done it again. And although I was happy with the colour one application gave me (remembering how pale I am here guys) you can apply Tantasia everyday until you get a shade that you are happy with, it’s all about finding your own tan, wherever it may be out there, to see if my Dad was right.
What do you guys think; do people look better with a tan?
Tantasia is available: here for $54.
The Kit Tan Prep Body Scrub is available in Kit stores or here for $29.95.
Review by Adriane Daff, Queen of the Pales, lover of the beach, daughter of a man who doesn’t understand the dangers of the Australian sun.
Posted in Products, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Posted by Annette @ Wellness WA on October 25, 2011
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Honestly, you won’t want to share this. I’m just going to say that right up front. It’s effective and (more honesty here) it’s expensive. You’ll want to set an alarm and get up in the middle of the night to use it if that means you wont have to share it. Sure, you’ll recommend it, you’ll even perhaps have conversations about the EGF (Epidermal Growth Factor, more on that later) because it’s interesting and perhaps the futuristic side of skincare but you wont want to share. Let’s just be honest about that right away.
Sif Cosmetics are the smarties behind this EGF Serum that goes simply by the name of BIOEFFECT. The key ingredient in the serum that sets it apart from others are cellular activators made in plants, barley specifically in this case (no bacteria and no animal cells!), that mimic that action of the cellular activators found naturally in humans and have the ability ‘to speed up the rate of cell turnover within the skin’. Let’s recap; there’s no human bits in this (don’t laugh, I thought that at first glance), so the EGF which only makes up for 0.9% of the serum is all barley and you use it to help your complexion appear fresher, revitalized and glowing.
An anti-ageing treatment that battles the skin’s problems by getting it to repair its own cells is a pretty nifty concept, and although it might seem like the product of a ton of research and development (and of course it is) its also quite a simplified product- only nine ingredients and no preservatives, no fragrances, nothing unessential, it seems to me to be a harmonious mix of science and nature. Ah, let’s touch on the science for a moment and allow me to point out that this product does involve some genetic engineering, a fact I think the consumer should know, namely in that the barley in the serum is genetically engineered. I don’t claim to know a whole lot about genetic engineering but in comparison to other products, BIOEFFECT does not contain EGF from genetically modified bacteria or hamster cells. It’s all barley. Which made me feel good about it. BUT of course if you think you might like to use a product with EGF in it you can make the decision as to which one would be best for you.
I really enjoyed using this (I dramatically screamed out ‘NOOOOOOOO’ when I accidentally dropped the little bottle on the floor and it rolled into the abyss under my bed, don’t worry it was fine) and I am dreading the day the last drop runs out. I’ve gotten lots of compliments about my skin since I started using this, mainly about it looking clear and even ‘glowing’ and I noticed a real improvement in the texture and an evenness in the tone of my skin and I guess what I am really trying to say here is, how am I going to go back after this? HOW will I go back? Please little bottle, don’t end. Please be a magical bottle. Because in the real world buying BIOEFFECT is going to be an every now and then special treat purchase for me because of the price unless I figure out how to tap into the properties of barley all on my own. So considering the likeliness of that I think it’s better to put my bet behind the possible magic properties of the bottle.
C’mon bottle, what do you say?
BIOEFFECT is available online at http://www.bioeffect.com.au/ and is $180 AUD for 15ml.
Review by Adriane Daff, barley skincare babe.
What are your thoughts on genetically modified skincare? Would you do it if the results were incredible?
Be well,
xoxo
Posted in Products, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Posted by Annette @ Wellness WA on October 13, 2011
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Recently, my hair has been getting real long. I’ve been growing it for ages in an attempt to get to a length that I call ‘mermaid hair’. I’m not too far from my goal, but with great hair lengths comes great responsibility. Unlike a real mermaid I am not underwater all the time and my hair is oft tormented by the ravages of dryness and breakages, split ends and unruliness. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the ends of my hair sometimes feel like straw or a broom. Or a straw broom.
Guy De On (natural care from the Dead Sea) have created a Peach Shampoo and a Peach Conditioner to help rehabilitate the hair follicles and prevent splitting and dehydration. Which is exactly what my straw broom is in need of. Both of these two products contain Peach Kernel Oil antioxidant (containing Vitamin F and fatty acids), Pro-Vitamin B5, Vitamin C and Meadow Foam Seed Oil and claim to replace essential elements that the sun and pollution steal from your hair. I was glad to hear this, because with the Australian sun returning in a couple of months to give us another long hot summer, my mermaid hair will need more care and attention than ever.
♥ Peach Shampoo – $25.80
After using the Peach Shampoo and Conditioner my hair (especially the ends) felt smooth and soft (as I was expecting) but also surprisingly lighter which was a great bonus considering that the longer your hair gets the more it can feel like a heavy lifeless curtain. I would almost go as far as saying that I felt like I had more volume in my hair, which for someone with dead straight follicles is not something that I can say after every wash. Also, and this is a far more personal preference, I don’t like to over-wash my hair (one or two times a week tops) and not all shampoo and conditioners can give a good enough clean to go the distance- but the Guy De On products seem to be able to handle two times a week without any trouble.
♥ Relaxation Bath Crystals – $30.25
One last honourable mention from Guy De On is the Dead Sea Relaxation Bath crystals. I was having one of those weeks, the kind of awful week where it’s only Tuesday and you just can’t wait for it to be over. You know the kind. Well, my week was made significantly more bearable by having a bath with these Guy De On crystals every night which maybe that was slightly indulgent of me, but the beautiful smell of the crystals (extracted from the Dead Sea) and the aromatic oils really helped soak away my aches and pains and made me feel a little less like I was falling apart.
Who would have thought that such life-giving products could come from the Dead Sea?
Review by Adriane Daff, actress and Dead Sea Devotee!
Products were provided for consideration.
Be well,
xoxo
Posted in Products, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Posted by Annette @ Wellness WA on September 27, 2011
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Does anyone remember those fairy shops that you used to visit for birthday parties when you were little? They were such magical places, always playing calming music, they smelt incredible, everything looked all crystal-y and beautiful and you got a feeling while you were in there that a very special secret had been bestowed upon you and that you were in fact an ACTUAL fairy. And that this was the secret. The secret you must take to the grave.
Well there is now a skincare range that has bottled that special feeling. It’s called AEOS (Active Energised Organic Skincare) and their three phase skincare range (Renew, Rebalance, Replenish) uses ‘spagyric tinctures of crystal energies together with the waveforms of colour’ to create products that will make your outsides look good and your insides feel harmonious and nurtured. ‘Crystal energies’- that’s JUST like the fairies!!!
Random drawing of fairy for extra emphasis.
Ok, let’s put the pause on the fairies (BUT ONLY FOR A MOMENT) and talk about the nuts and bolts. Despite having an inbuilt magical aura about them, do these products work? I tried the AEOS Gentle Exfoliant and the AEOS Energising Conditioner from the Renew and Rebalance lines respectively and I am pleased to say that despite the amount of times I have mentioned the f-word in this article they really are very well researched, very seriously good products.
AEOS Gentle Exfoliant (blue) 30ml – $59
The exfoliant contains Spelt, in the form of the Aura-Soma biodynamic oil which contains a high concentration of Vitamin E and leaves your skin feeling moisturized after giving it a gentle scrub. My skin had been feeling really dry to the point where I could actually feel dry patches emerging (ew) and after three days of using this they were g-o-n-e. To my delight!
AEOS Energising Conditioner 30ml – $89
The real winner though is the Energizing Conditioner. This. Smells. Amazing. It smells purely magical and fairy-like (THEY”RE BACK) and I just can’t get enough. Putting some of this clear lightweight liquid on after washing your face feels like putting on a layer of contact, the kind you cover books with, on your face. That’s how smooth it feels. Seriously contact was the only analogy I could use that comes close to how smooth it feels. Except not plastic, of course.
These products just feel so special that you want to cherish them so it comes as no surprise to me that on the back of each bottle it says ‘made with love and intention’, it just gives you a warm feeling inside. Like the fairy shops did when I was little, at last I can have that feeling back!
Available online via http://www.begenkishop.com and from Karma Living (there is a store in the Claremont Quarter shopping mall) stores nationally.
Please also visit their website to read about their awesome bio-dynamic farm where they grow most of their ingredients. That are then handpicked by fairies. Probably.
Review by Adriane Daff.
Be well,
xoxo
Posted in Organic, Products, Reviews | 4 Comments »
