Before anything else, congratulations to Pinoy Guy Guide for winning the Best Blog: Fashion and Lifestyle category! 
Chris with Nikka Abes of Nokia
Please take care of your trophy…I retouched that with lots of love! 
Now on with how my longgggg day went (warning: v. photo heavy post!)…
Readers Gn. & Crissy are definitely not alone. I bet that most of you are still either confused or on a hunt for that perfect red lipstick. The key to this hunt’s to know the basic color rules first:
All Skin Tones: Primary red with absolutely zero color base.
I haven’t found the perfect primary red lippie yet. 
Cool Skin Tones/Pink Undertones: Plums, berry red, blackberry red, blue red (excellent teeth brighteners!), brick red, and pink red.
My fave blue reds (I’m addicted to them!) for cool tones: NARS Scarlet Empress, MAC Red, MAC Ruby Woo, and MAC Russian Red.
Warm Skin Tones/Yellow undertones: Golden, brown, orange, tomato reds.
My fave reds for warm tones: MAC Chili, MAC Spice It Up, NARS Shanghai Express, NARS Heat Wave (orange red, one of my HG bright lippies), and NARS Gipsy.
Gn. asked:
What’s the difference between a matte and satin finish?
Most companies just classify their lipstick finishes into three categories: matte, satin, and sheer. Matte has zero shine/gloss but lots of color, satin’s got probably 70% of color + 30% gloss, while sheer appears like a color stain on your lips that’s topped with shiny, thin glaze. Lipstick master MAC has this awesome cheatsheet on their lipstick finishes:
AMPLIFIED CRÈME Ultra-creamy. Quietly shiny. Colour-packed! Hi-res: hi-impact.
–> A personal fave! Checkout COSMO if you can. It’s a MLBB (my lips but better) for someone in between NC30-NC40 (like me!).
FROST Excellent colour payoff with medium to high frosted shimmer-and-shine finish.
GLAZE Low-colour impact with sheen-style finish. Glazes the lips, makes them shine!
LIP TREATMENT Colour-free. Texture-free. Provides natural healthy-looking lips.
LUSTRE Demi-sheer with wet-look lustre finish. Very slick. Makes lips look soft, smooth, ultra-moist.
MATTE Pigment rich with intense colour pay-off. No-shine, all matte finish.
SATIN Colour-rich. Soft satin, semi-matte finish. Conditions while adding intense colour.
Check out what made to this year’s “The Luxury Index” (TIME Winter 2007 supplement):
(image shot from the magazine itself)
Yes, yes. Like you, I thought that I’ve seen the Yachiyo kabuki ages and ages ago somewhere else:
image lifted from Japonesque.com
I would agree on how TIME described NARS’ kabuki brushes to be “designed to define and contour cheekbones.” While we’re already familiar with the usual short and dense kabuki brush variant, (should it be available in your area) you should give the featured brush a shot. I got to try it a year or two ago and oh my — the definition it gives is amazing! Similar to the uber-popular MAC 187, it picks up the right amount of pigment all the time. I would love to have this in my boudoir for my growing number of bronzers. I can totally picture the soft sculpting wonders it can do! 
On most days, I only get 4-6 hours of sleep. Yesterday though, I got a whooping TWELVE hours (slept from 2am-2pm) since I didn’t have work! Guess what I had to deal with after one helluva great zzzzz:
swollen bags due to oversleeping!
That’s the weirdest thing about me! I get worse eye bags when I oversleep versus the ones I get when I do not get sleep! /:)
(I digress) I know that I owe myself a proper haircut but I thought I cannot afford another night out with the girls with fugly hair so I decided to cut it myself (as usual). I got my shearing scissors and whipped out my reference:
front-ish
WOW I look very happy in this photo LOL
(taken at my house during my “Not So British Tea Party”)
back
Finished product after ten minutes of shearing here and there:
next to my violet cabinet
taken by my old friend, Nikko
(I had a VERY hard time taking my own photo of this view)
What do you think? I think I did a pretty good job. 
But just as I was uploading these photos, I saw this old photo of mine and suddenly, I miss my long hair!
27 December 2005
WOW I looked very stress-free (almost) 2 years ago! Me thinks I wore the following:
FOUNDATION: MAC Studio Fix NC30
BLUSH: NARS Orgasm
LIP GLOSS: Baby Pink Lip Gloss in Raspberry (that was my fave sticky gloss back then)
It’s already 5:30am here in MNL and me thinks I should log off now and get some sleep. Am making a mental note (and setting my alarm) not to oversleep this time!
