crafting hair deco

All of the browshing on Etsy made me hungry for a bit of creativity on my own...I love buying things, and I love creating some of my own thingies. I was so enamorated with the various hairpieces and clips I saw on Etsy, and especially the ones with a Flapper/art deco-esque vibe (eg this and this piece).

So I bought a couple of appliques (sort of sparkly and sequinned forms -flowers, bows, butterflies, etc that you can add on your clothes etc), found a piece of copper beading thread, a needle and a haircomb and started crafting:

These are a couple of the appliques I bought: I bought a golden fan, the flower you saw above, a butterfly, and you can see a tiny part of a coral applique on the bottom of the page...

I sewed the copper thread manually through all of the hairpin holes. I checked the front if the thread was not visible, and VOILLA...a gorgeous hairpiece for a fraction of the normal price.

The front...no thread visible from the sewing...

Here is the piece in my stick-straight hair...I love hairpieces for giving my hair a bit of 'unboringness' (is that a word? it is now...LOL)

(Jamilla Camel, if you read this...yes, I still have quite pale skin...LOL)

Totally credit crunch friendly and very sassy for the summer season of flirting and flaunting ;P

THE cutest blushroll from bittenbefore

The title is really dodgy today, but how to describe my joy about my new brushroll?

Oh, I was slightly jealous of the lucky bloggers who were able to haul from Yumeko's first brushroll-sale on her blog bittenbefore: these cuties were selling like hot-cakes!

THIS time, I was so lucky to buy one myself!!! it was one of the last ones, but actually, I found it the cutest design of all!

Sometimes, I really have to guess what is in the package: what did I order...with this cute package, I had instant kawaii vibes: It must be my new brushroll from Yumeko!



Kawaii-cuteness starts already with the sticker tape on the envelope...

OMGBBQ! Wowza, it looks so cute in real life...look at that candy, annnnnnndddd, the girl included a hot-a@# fantastic eyeshadow palette. I LOVE those colours: Yumeko, are you psychic?

More cuteness with the transparent 'Love' wrapping and THAT card is too cute....

This is why I loved the design so much: it is romantic with a childish twist

Stich & Angel are sitting in a tree...K..I..S..S..I..N..G...

Smoochtastic:

The blue band holding the brush-roll together matches the roll so good.

And how about the lining? I loooove polka-dots...

Running, or kicking a tree? I first thought these yellow dots with black mini-dots inside were birds, but I think they are coconuts (?) now...

Kawaii Sanro character: I find these character more original than Hello Kitty...because they are not seen so often over here...She is PIIIINKK

Look at the eyeshadow again...it looks buttery smooth and has gorgeous silver and silvery blue colours...mmm...I need to make an EOTD with it tomorrow!

Oh Yumeko, this is awesome! I love love love the roll! I will become addicted to kawaii Japanese fabrics for now on!

HAVE a WONDERFUL and KAWAII weekend!

Ezprez yourself!

The days around the 19th of January are scientifically known as being the most depressing of the whole year (coverage here and here) Scientist have even developed a bit of match in order to calculate the exact day. It is a simple calculation of a lack of sunshine, lack of money and a gain of extra weight from the Holidays...Gloom galore...

So your dear Birkinbagbeauty wanted to lift her own spirit and injected some crafting in her life: cosmetic crafting, that is! I still had a bottle of Ezpres lying around. Ezpres is a pressing medium from one of the most know companies in the beauty-blogosphere: Coastal Scents.

I also had some pigments from tkbtrading that I ordered in December...Anyway, I am not going to do a tutorial about pressing loose pigments, because the whole blogosphere of beauty-bloggers has done a tutorial about this. I will show you how they came out...

It was my first order from TKBtrading and I wanted to place an order because of their micronized pearl powder. TKB has a minimum spending limit from $19, so I filled up my cart with some Holiday-appropriate loose pigment colours, such as golds and silvers. The ones pictured are Green Quartz, Mermaid's Gold and Gold Leaf.

Mermaid's Gold is my favourite out of these three colours. My camera was not able to fully pick up the green idirescence of the colour, which was also the fault of the crappy weather which makes this period one of the most depressing period of the year, LOL. But I can assure you that Mermaid's Gold is a stunning and original gold with a beautiful green idirescent layer on top...very mermaid-tale..

The top colour is Quartz Green, which seems more gray-green to me and the lower colour is Mermaid's Gold again. My pressing pattern went all right, but it is not perfect yet.

Mermaid's Gold and a closer look on the pan. I need to clean up the sides of the pan in order to make it look more pro-like.

It is absolutely a nice craft in my opinion. I still have enough pigment left for two other pans per colour so it makes a frugal way to make cosmetics...which is quite handy in our economic times. I really want to improve my pressing skills so I can include my homemade eyeshadows as swap extras soon...

My next project will also be cosmetic crafting, only this time I will be mixing and ReMixing lipsticks in order to create a bunch of PERFECT colours....

I blogged about it before (here), when I received two not so perfect lipsticks that could become one perfect colour. Anyway, I received my LipStixReMix -set this monday...just in time to craft ways the Blue Monday blues.

The things included in the set:

Nice, now I have to select all my neglected lippies and find the perfect blends between them....

Perfect Pouty lips...here I come. It might be January, but my lips are already feeling the joy of July....

Etude Kissade lipstick BR 302/PK002

After a pleasant experience with Etude House's Dear Darling lipstick (post here) I decided to order the Kissade lipstick as well. I was able to find a seller that sold two lipsticks in one auction, which meant that I had to pay for shipping only one time (seller hss06 and item number 152379686).

I ordered one lipstick that was recommended by Kathi from Lotuspalace and one based on the swatch chart that was placed on the auction page. The colours are PK002 and BR 302.

My lipsticks arrived in my last gmarket haul. They were 14,900 won, which is $ 11.88 at the current rate. The BR302 is the lipstick on the left and the PK002 is the one on the right.

The tubes are quite beautiful with their rosy appearance and the little decorations. Very Etude-like.

The next two pictures are close ups of the lipsticks. Both have some small scatterings of golden glimmers, which are quite lovely in my opinion. The pink PK002 is a cool pink verging to lilac. The next photograph is not quite accurate to real life: only the top reflects the real colour. It is really a cool-toned lipstick.

Etude Kissade PK002

The brown colour also looks more rosy in the picture than in real life...sight, darn camera. The dent happened before photographing the lipstick...it fell on the ground.

Etude Kissade BR 302

Anyway, it looks a bit like a muddy brown in real life...It reminds me of the lipstick that was in fashion in the middle of the ninetees. Something that was sported during the early days of Friends.

The texture and pigmentation is quite similar to the Etude House Dear Darling lipstick. It has the same thickness and smoothness. It does not have the lollipop-scent I adore, but a undefined fruity scent...

Unfortunately, I am one of the few persons who is neither cool- or warm-toned: I find lots of lipstick to be non-flattering with my colouring. This is also the case with the two colours I picked: PK002 is too cool for me, and BR 302 too warm for me.

However, I can be inventive...ha ha. I mixed a little bit of both colours together and I actually like the outcome of that. It has become a reddish nude with a hint of golden sparkle...

DA MIX: blend of PK 002 and BR 302

This brings me to another topic: I really want to buy this set: the lipstick remix. It provides tools and steps in order to create your own personal blend of lipstick (or remold your old lipstick).

A blogger named cleodelinda blogged about this over here, and she created some nice shades with this tool. The lipsticks look really proffessional as well.

It sounds really like a me-product: I have several lipsticks that are almost right, if only they were a bit darker/lighter/cooler/warmer/pink/brown/red...

So that might be my next purchase soon...