Hi everyone! How have you all been?

I know it's not even Christmas yet but since it's really close to the end of 2015 (crazy, right?), I think it's time for me to round up my favourite and least favourite products I've tried this year. I guess should leave a disclaimer like everyone does when mentioning stuff that they didn't like. We all have different tastes. Whatever doesn't work for me probably works for someone out there so everything is just in my opinion! Let's get started!

The Best of 2015:

The Shiseido Extra Smooth Sun Protection Lotion is something I've had since 8th grade and it's always been a morning skincare step I never skipped. But somewhere in sophomore year my mom stopped buying this for me and I just used some Eucerin moisturizer that had SPF 50 in it. It worked fine but it had that typical sunblock feel where it felt really greasy and it just sits on top of the skin instead of blending in and sinking into the skin right away. I decided it was finally time for me to repurchase the sun lotion since I went too long without it and I fell in love with it all over again.

It's a very liquidy sun lotion and thin so it sinks into the skin easily. It's non-greasy as well which is always a plus and it has SPF 38 PA++ which is essential to protect your skin from the sun and aging.

I also feel like this kinda works as a primer as it smooths my face out before putting on my base makeup.

Truly, this is my holy grail sunblock and I will never try any other sunblock again.

The Pixi Correction Concentrate in Brightening Peach is actually a product I've had my eyes on for a really long time but I never picked it up until recently around Black Friday week because Target was having a 25% off beauty items deal so I bought this for $9 instead of $12.

Even though I've only been trying this for less than a month, I really love this product. It makes quite a difference to my under eyes compared to without the peach concealer. Now, I don't have the worst dark circles and they're not that blueish but they are obviously darker than the rest of my face and I look especially tired all the time. I always piled on the concealer but I could still see my dark circles and I just end up with my dark circles still visible and cakey under eyes.

With this corrector, I only need a little bit of product and it makes the dark under eyes go away! I use a little bit of skintoned concealer to blend the colour with my skin but only a little bit. Sometimes I don't even need the concealer and just need the corrector.

If you guys don't know, I have eczema which is really dry, flaky skin, The product I used to remove my makeup was the Neutrogena makeup wipes and I didn't really like using that anymore because of all the rubbing I had to do on my face and it might have irritated my skin and caused more flare ups so I had to search for a new way to remove my makeup. I've heard a lot of talk about cleansing balms, specifically the Banila Co. Clean It Zero balm (more like a sherbet texture) so I bought a pack of  5 sample/travel sizes to try. I fell in love right away.

You scoop out a little bit, melt it a bit between your hands, and rub gently on your face and it removes your makeup and cleanses easily. It removed my eyeliner and waterproof mascara with ease without losing any lashes.

I love that it's a balm that turns into kind of an oil since that is perfect for my dry skin. I'm sure this is fine for oily skins too.

I think that I'm going to buy the big size and save the sample sizes for when I travel since it's more convenient to carry than travel wipes.

I've always used eyebrow powders over pencils since I always found that powders gave me the best look. I hated how harsh most eyebrow pencils looked and the ones in the drugstores here were always kinda too hard and waxy and the colours were never ashy enough to match with my hair. They always looked super orange.

I decided to give Korean eyebrow pencils a try as I thought the colours would match me better and I was right! I tried the Etude House Drawing Eyebrow pencil in Grey Brown and it matches my hair perfectly and it's so easy to use!

I especially love the triangular shaped tip as it helps make the right tail for your brows. I'm gonna buy a bunch of backups of this since I use this all the time. I haven't picked up my eyebrow powder since I first tried this! I hear The Face Shop one is good too so I'll give that a try as well. We'll see which one's better!

I have posted a full review of the Doraemon x A'PIEU Air Fit BB Cushion on my blog so you can check that out for a more in-depth review.

Basically, cushion foundations in general are the best things I've tried in 2015, not just the A'PIEU one specifically. These cushions are super easy to travel with or for touching up and I love how light they feel on the face.

Cushions are now making their way to the United States (L'Oreal and Physicians Formula just released one) but I'm gonna stick with the originals even though the L'Oreal ones were made in Korea. The A'PIEU one is a lot cheaper than the ones being sold here.

I also really like the IOPE Air Cushion as that gave a nice finish to my face but the A'PIEU performed similarly for way less.

I'm definitely gonna try a whole bunch of cushions and see how the rest perform. What can I say? I'm addicted!

The Worst of 2015:

Am I the only one who thinks this mist is a joke? Seriously, I hear a lot of hype about the Evian Mineral Water Spray and how amazing this mist is. I don't see how different this is from just splashing tap water on your face. I mean, this does refresh my face and wake me up but just regular water does the same thing.

I can probably get a spray bottle for a dollar and fill it with water and it'll give me the same result and feel as the Evian spray for almost free. Why would anyone pay $13-18 over and over again for a spray bottle of water?

It's not really hydrating at all. It's just water and there's no special ingredients that actually hydrate the skin. It's just WATER.

You know what I would pay $18 for? The Disneyland spray mist that has a fan attached to it. At least that actually does something and has a fan. I don't know. This product has a whole bunch of hype for no reason. Can my spray bottle I use on my cat get the same amount of hype too?

You're probably thinking "what the hell is that?" That's a sample of the YSL Le Teint Touche Eclat Illuminating foundation I got from Sephora. It's a good thing I didn't cough up the $57 for the full bottle!

I'll say this: freshly applied, this looks really beautiful and natural. It's gives a natural luminous finish the the face. Too bad that doesn't last. I have normal to dry skin and I love a luminous and healthy glow to the face as my skin is always dry and flaky. About 30 minutes into wearing this, I become an oily mess. Never have I had a problem with an oily face because I don't get oily at all but this foundation was basically melting off my face and I always set my face with powder so I have no idea why it was so oily and shiny.

There's absolutely no staying power whatsoever which is a disappointment because of the beautiful finish it had when I first apply it.

Most people really loved this foundation and I really wanted to. If it wasn't so oily I would have maybe bought the full size. It's okay since I'm not that into liquid foundations anyways. That's why I love cushion foundations!

Another YSL product! It's not that I hate the YSL Pop Water Glossy Stain (which I didn't realize was different from the regular Glossy Stain?) but it's just that it didn't blow my mind for the hefty $36 I paid for it. I've tried other lip products that perform either really similar or even better for less than half the price of the YSL.

Another gripe I have about the Glossy Stain is that it doesn't last that long on my lips and it doesn't really stain my lips. It just completely disappears after an hour.

I really wish I returned this when I had the chance to but now I'm stuck with this and $36 less in my pocket. 

Now this is a funny thing (not really, kinda sad and scary). I really fell in love with this face cream from Himalaya Herbals. I've never even heard of this brand before but this was gifted to me from my aunts in Korea. I was actually gonna mention this in my Best of 2015 list until I researched last night and found out this is not a Paraben free product.

This cream has ingredients like Methylparaben IP, Propylparaben IP, and Phenoxyethanol. This cream has cancer causing ingredients!

I'm really disappointed because this kinda really helped the eczema on my eyes go away for a while but now I have to dump this out because I don't want to put anymore parabens on my skin. But I've been using this since August. Guess I'm gonna get skin cancer. Oh well, bye bye cancer cream. 

Back when I was using eyebrow powders, I was struggling with my eyebrows sort of disappearing and not looking as good after a couple of hours. I researched to find a solution and lots of people were talking about the NYX Proof It Eyebrow Primer.

While this does make your eyebrows last for a super long time, I hated how this made my eyebrow powder look. It clumped up my eyebrows and it made my powder a lot darker than I would like and I don't really like the harsh eyebrows on me (though they look great on a lot of people). I prefer the soft look.

Also this was a pain in the ass to remove because of the waterproofness. I haven't tried this with and eyebrow pencil but I don't really have a problem with my Etude House eyebrow pencil fading away. Maybe I'll give this a try again if I go swimming or during the summer.

Well that was a lot of products in one post! So much love and hate. I really hope you guys enjoyed this post! Let me know what products you loved and hated this year.

I'll talk to you guys again very soon!

xx,

Lily

Hey everyone! How have you all been?

Today I'm gonna be reviewing Makeup Revolution's All About Bronze palette. This will be my last review for a couple of posts. I've been doing back to back reviews so I think it's time to post some different posts other than reviews.

If you guys don't know, Makeup Revolution is a UK brand that is new to Ulta stores. The Ulta cashier was telling me how Makeup Revolution has exact dupes of a lot of Too Faced products like the heart blushes and Chocolate palette! I picked up the All About Bronze palette as I saw emilynoel83's review video a while ago and I decided I should try out some new bronzers and this one has different shades with highlighters for $10! It didn't hurt to try it out.

They also have a blush palette that looks pretty pretty but I'm not much of a blush wearer. If I was, I'd totally give it a try.

First thing, don't believe that the pictures on the back of the box are accurate. The colours are completely different from the actual product. Not sure who the heck was doing the colour grading??

Also, the top two shades from the left that are listed as "Shimmer" are a lot more satin finished. The rest are accurate.

You can probably tell how orange the bronzers are. They're definitely not a deep brown shade that's suitable for contouring so I don't' recommend using this for contouring. The baked bronzer is an ideal shade for contouring but it has a metallic finish which is DEFINITELY not for contouring. I mean, this palette doesn't claim to be for contouring but it would be nice if one shade was a cool tone brown.

I am a huge fan of the baked highlighter. It gives a beautiful glow to the cheeks without being so shimmery and glittery. I'm really not a huge fan of the obvious looking highlights like the Becca highlighters that are overly shimmery. I have mixed the shimmery gold shade and the baked highlight together to give a more golden highlight to the face and I liked the look of that.

Honestly, the only two shades I use the most are the matte bronzer on the right and the baked highlight. The rest, I barely touch. Either the shades are too similar to my skin tone to use as a highlight, too warm and orange to use as a bronzer, or the others I have no real use for.

Maybe in the summer time I'll have more of a use for the baked bronzer to warm up my skin.

Likes:

- Soft texture

- $10 (Great value)

- Baked highlight is beautiful

- Mixture of matte, shimmer, and satin finishes

- Pigmented

- Can be used as eyeshadows

Not-so-likes:

- Orangey bronzers (not trying to look like an Oompa Loompa)

- Not for contouring

- I only use 2 out of the 8 powders

- Bronzers too orange for pale skin

- Bronzers too light for medium to deep skin

- Easy for the bronzer to look quite heavy

So do I recommend this palette? Mmmm not really since I don't find a use for all of the powders. If you want to give this palette a try, go ahead! I've actually seen a lot of good reviews on this palette which led me to purchase it so I'm quite disappointed I didn't feel the same way about this product as the others. Do I regret purchasing it? Nah, I really enjoy the highlight shade even though I'm not a fan of the rest of the powders. 

I hope you guys enjoyed this review! It's been a while since I've done a non-Asian beauty review.

Have a great week! I'll talk to you guys later!

xx,

Lily

Disclaimer: This product was purchased by me with my own money. This is not a sponsored review and everything I say is my own opinion. Keeping it real.