Product Review : Lush Twilight Shower Gel

YES SAY HI TO HARDWORKING DOMO. For now~ *Coughs*

I will be scheduling a series of Lush reviews as I've been completely in love with some products from them such as this one! The previous one not as much but this one's great :D

I actually meant to do the shampoos first cause I didn't want them to clump together but this one's limited edition. So I'll be doing this first of course. Otherwise how can anyone get it if it's no longer available?!

Presenting~~~ The Lush Twilight Shower Gel!

It's a lavender shower gel with a twist!

Contains very fine shimmer particles. Not sure if you've spotted it in the first picture but I've taken a bling bling one in an attempt to emphasize the sparkles.

See plenty of white spots in there? Those are actually the shimmer particles suspended in the shower gel.

How to use? Lol, the instructions is up there!

Lastly this is the ingredients list for people who er... Have great knowledge on stuff like this. (I don't so I can't help anyone :/)

Lush SG says :

"To our Twilight Bath Bomb fans, we heard your requests. Here it is, a Twilight shower gel, so you can lather up in iridescent purple lavender and tonka bubbles. If you haven't smelled this fragrance before, you're in for a treat! It's slightly sweet with the perfect herbal balance. Wonderful to use in the evening before bed, especially on cold, winter nights. Dreams do come true!" - Taken from the Lush SG website HERE.

My say :

This smells really really amazing. For those of you who like PURE lavender scents only, this is not for you. As I've mentioned, this is a lavender shower gel with a twist. I think it's because of the tonka absolute, thus adding a really sweet note to this shower gel. The description says its only slightly sweet but to me, it's quite overwhelming. Like 50% lavender and 50% tonka sweetness. It'll hit you the moment you flip the cap, in a good way for me at least. It's pleasantly sweet to me, along with that slight soothing lavender scent to relax your mind.

I use roughly about a 50 cent coin amount and it lathers easily to cover my entire body. It comes out as a beautiful deep dark shimmery purple liquid. I wouldn't say it really looks like a night sky but it's fun to use. I mean, ITS SPARKLY. And it washes off completely so no worries there on turning into an Edward Cullen. If it stays on your skin... You're probably not very clean D: I think. Cause mine washed off effortlessly and completely.

Scent : ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ (I love this scent, but not my no.1 scent~)

Ease of lathering : ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (I'd say average, not extra foamy or dry)

Pretty-ness : ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ (Weird point to evaluate but not all shower gels are this pretty!)

Overall : ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ (I love it, it's only available for Halloween and I'd indulge in a lil bottle!)

This costs £14.95/500g if you get it from the UK, which converts to roughly slightly above 30sgd? However in SG... It costs $54/500g. Sad TTM. However like I've said, as it's only available for Halloween, I think it's okay to spend $17 for the 100g one and enjoy a little. Use it for days when you feel like you need to pamper yourself. If you're super rich and willing to spend, this wouldn't be a problem for you!

XOXO,
Domo

Product Review : Lush Cupcake Fresh Face Mask

Hi :D I actually did this review on the same day as the Shunji Matsuo Hair Treatment and scheduled it for today because I'd be working. See... I'm slowly getting hardworking right? Gradually... Turtle-ishly...

SO. During the period of time that we were MIA, my skin turned really bad. I confess that most of the reasons were due to my own laziness though. And usually when I'm home, I don't wear any sort of make up on my face. Contrary to popular beliefs that wearing make up causes your skin to grow lotsa zits, I actually grow more zits without make up. When I have make up on, I do not touch my face at all. Also my powder helps to control the sebum secretion.

Thus when I keep going without make up, I'd touch my face here and there, poke it when I'm bored and pat it too. My sebum secretion is also crazy and makes my T-zone reflective.

So here's what I got to save myself from the oiliness!

The key selling point for me is the CHOCOLATE! I pretty much love a chocolate anything so this was practically screaming my name.

Here is the ingredients list for the sensitive skin peeps. It's a little blurry though T_T So you might want to refer to the Lush website HERE!

With the main ingredient being Rhassoul mud and cacao powder, you must have expected the mask to be of such color. Looks more accurate in the picture below though.

The texture is a little chunky as you can see, probably because of all the mud it contains.

Here it is on my face! Just a thin layer all over will do. Leave it on for 10-15minutes till the mask is dry. Then when you wash it off, don't simply splash water all over. Wet your hands and rub gently in circular motions. I feel like the little chunky bits help to exfoliate a little.

You'll get this! Ok, I'm not referring to the huge eye bags, the crooked nose and the strangely twisted face shape. I think the camera made it weird. LOOK AT THE SKIN! Just focus on the skin will do please :)

Lush SG says :
"Chocolate heaven for oily and teenage skin. Its action removes excess oil and calms breakouts. Rhassoul mud cleans and soothes, linseed, cocoa butter and cocoa powder soften the skin. Balancing peppermint, spearmint and sandalwood oils complete this effective and delicious experience. Apply to clean skin, avoiding the eye area. Leave for five to ten minutes, and then rinse away with warm water. Keep chilled." - As taken from the Lush SG website.

My say :
It's actually not as chocolatey or cupcakey as I expected it to be when I took a whiff of it in the store. It smells really sweet, somewhat overwhelming actually so it may not be for everyone. There's actually a more floral note to it than candy sweets. It's strong in the pot, strong while on the face but lingers around lightly after washing off. I like the washed off scent the most.

The mask itself is actually really creamy in texture. However when you use it straight out from the fridge, it gets a little lumpy and hard to spread around the face. Thus I recommend for all users to let it melt a tiny bit before spreading it all over.

What I've noticed with this mask is that it does suck the oilies out, but not those more stubborn blackheads. For those you'll still have to use those peel off strips or something that works the same way. Despite what it does, it's actually not drying on the face. I have combination oily skin and after using this, my cheeks felt comfortable even without anything on. My skin felt cleaner and softer at the same time. My zits were also less red so I guess it works for the calming breakout part!

To conclude, it's good if you can stand the smell and the price. If you're living in the UK, hooray for you because you can get it at £5.95/75g. This converts to around $12 or so. But because fresh face masks are made without preservatives, you can only buy it in the Singapore Lush which sells this at a whopping $25/75g. It's like double the price. Personally, I will not repurchase as this $25 tub will only last you for a month before it expires. I will stick to my other clay/mud masks >___< (IF IF IF, I'm from the UK, I would repurchase. Not for SG because the price is not worth it.)

Texture : ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (Creamy but lumpy when fresh out from the fridge.)

Effectiveness : ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ (It does what it says AND doesn't dry my skin.)

Scent : ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ (Not really my favorite scent but still bearable.)

Overall : ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (Stars off for the texture, scent and how it's super OP in SG~~)

Cheers,
Domo

Event : A Hair Makeover at Shunji Matsuo Hair Studio

Hello hello my Domokies! Okay don't shoot me yet :/ I forgot how to use photoshop to adjust the lighting of the pictures SOOOOOO I finally stopped procrastinating and got down to it today! (So don't assassinate me, I'm trying!)

Some time ago, I got invited for a hair makeover at Shunji Matsuo, presented with the option of perming, rebonding, coloring, hair treatment or a simple haircut.

I've actually gotten addicted to bright colors and have gone to my usual hairstylist for my colors so I decided to just get the hair treatment done at Shunji's. Besides, you hair will never die from a few more hair treatments as compared to perm/rebond/color.

Here are some pictures of my hair before the treatment.

If you look closely, you can see a mini helmet of frizzy hair surrounding my head. Here's a close up for those who are unable to see it.

Yea I'm pretty sure you can see all the hair sticking out now. Pardon the color though, this was taken in a toilet with strange lighting.

With that I headed off to Shunji Matsuo for a hair pampering session and here's how their new interior looks like!

Really nicely lit but not glaring to the eyes. Their design seems to revolve around wood and somehow that provides a more calming environment? Better than concrete walls all over imho.

This is their hair dye selection. This will probably explain where all the Shunji Matsuo ambassadors get their crazy hair colors from. There're so many colors! Also explains why they like to change colors, sticking to one is boring :P

Snuck a shot of these peeps doing their hair. I also had a picture of where they do the hair treatment with the steaming thingy but there were people lying there and it was kinda unglam to snap their pics.

I was recommended to try the Arimino Botanical Garderns Treatment for my dry frizzy hair and so that was what I did.

Here's how I look like after, with the color of my hair looking more appropriate with the lighting in the salon.

They blew dry my hair so there were less frizzies.

If you compare this picture to the one before, the hair is very much tamed.

Want to try this for yourself? Head down to Shunji Matsuo :D New fans/customers can register and receive 20% off with a minimum spending of $100~

P.S. I haven't done a post in a really long time, so let me know if you have any feedbacks!

Love,
Domo

Domo Diaries : What I've been up to

Hello my lovelies! I'm trying to blog as much as I can but as of now I have not have time to edit the product shots and stuff. So here's a snippet of my life and what's been keeping me busy :)

There's stuff like work that's been escalating to a whole new level of busy as plenty of new courses are starting and I have to handle all the registration, the orders and the ka ching! I'm constantly in fear of losing the money as it's more than a few thousands and if it goes MIA... I'm dead meat.

There's also my preparation for the BTT. It may be simple for some but I've not been reading or memorizing stuff for quite some time and this is a killer!!!

But here's the main reason why I'm occupied.

I've been preparing myself for the Safra PK Challenge 2012 and am currently awaiting results if I get into the Quarter Finals or not. This one was sent for the online submission screening and I've already passed that. I sang 蔡健雅(Tanya Chua) 无底洞 for the qualifying rounds and the video is below!

I didn't do very well because once I got up on stage I was soooo nervous my chest hurts from my pounding heart. Yea it was that bad it actually hurt. Nevertheless, I've did what I can and I hope to be able to make it through to the Quarter Finals(Results announced tonight omgomgomg!).

Feel free to comment on the video or even here to give me any feedbacks that you might have :D Please please please be nice!

Also, I found someone's video for the first 40 minutes of the competition so here it is for you to look through all the contestants.

Hope this new blog post is acceptable for you all :x Did anyone go for this competition as well? If you did, show me your video!

Have a nice day my lovelies~

Cheers,
Domo

Our explanation

Hey Domokies,

So here it is, our explanation, or more specifically mine, towards us being MIA for so very long. If you have noticed, most of the beauty reviews are done by me thus when I went MIA, Ringo slowly slipped away too. Why did I just disappear?

Firstly, it's not easy being a beauty blogger. I know of people who thinks that being a blogger equates to freebies, sponsorship and an easy life. Nope, it's not like that at all. Domokie started out with our love and passion towards all things nice. We stand by our values of giving 100% honest reviews. This made our blogger life tough. After all, the purpose of sponsoring us products is for us to advertise about their products on our blog. And not all products are that great to us. When we give our honest reviews, we have sponsors who get upset. Okay mainly just ONE big sponsor who's in charge of several brands. They've emailed us before, requesting for us to change our reviews, or stick to their format of what we should emphasize about their products. We didn't comply and thus you can see, our sponsorship with that sponsor is gone with the wind~

Secondly, not following the "orders" given by the sponsors also leads to gossiping among other bloggers. Unknown to most of you, there are unfortunately some bloggers who blog according to what their sponsors have instructed. You'll see that there are a lot of bloggers who rave about how magical a product is these days. Or one entire blog flooded with advertorials.

No, Domokie's not just about that. So we kinda got "outcast-ed". Blogging is a form of social media, so without the social part, it's sometimes a little hard on us. We buy our own products, but latest products are usually given to bloggers to review before it hits the market. Despite that, we have came to a decision that we will no longer be actively participating in sponsorships whatsoever. We'll review the products that we have and love and if you think it's good enough for you, go ahead to try it. We do not want to lie to our readers.

Thirdly, having bloggers beeching about you isn't nice at all, especially when one bunch of them "bombs" you with insults. They're all older than me but I have no idea why their maturity is so... Yea. But either way, it's not easy to survive while getting bullied. We are not rocks. Well Ringo's tougher and I'm more of a er... Softie? I take people very seriously, inclusive of friendships and whatever ships we have. Thus this whole incident impacted me harder and I went MIA. It's really horrible when you go for events and have people snickering at you. I often feel somewhat like this at events.

Image taken from knowyourmeme.com

I know that I've just been running away but I've decided to return. Thanks to our honesty, we actually have a lot of people emailing us regarding LWM especially. (That was the post that made us go down too :<) We've also had readers ask about us and truly, we're touched. All of you are our blogging fuel and as cheesy as it sounds, you give us strength.

We are restarting our blog but it will no longer be like before. We're actually rather into baking now so we'll be posting one of our successful recipes up here. (lol most of them failed cause we just self-learnt baking) We're deciding to go by our real life nics now. We used Chiharu and Ringo before because we didn't want this blog to link to our private lives. But now, we're going to be a less commercial blog anyway so now you'll finally know why this blog is DOMOKIE. I'm Domo(Chiharu) and she's actually Cookie(Ringo). Domo + Cookie = Domokie. There you have it.

Cookie's a very DIY person and she'll be sharing her knowledge with you. She's pretty busy for now so I'll most likely be managing on my own. We will be revamping our blog to go with the new us so look forward to it! :D I'll still be doing beauty reviews but mostly on products I love because I do a lot of research before purchasing a product.

Lastly, we are very sorry about our MIA. It was not nice at all to just disappear and we apologize for that. Thank you to those of you who are still reading this post for you are the reason we continued blogging.

Love,
Domokie.

An apology about the hiatus~

Gomen nasai, minna san~

Our last post was on 11/11/11, and it's been four months since. If any of you is still checking this blog for updates, I feel I must offer up some sort of explanation (though a much belated one) for your persistence. (　ﾟдﾟ)

Off the bat, I don't think Chiharu is updating anytime soon. The full explanation I would leave to her to write out, should she return. 

I guess it might be simplistic to say that we've moved on from blogging, but I suppose that's the easiest way to explain. Domokie was started out of a desire to share the things we love, chiefly: make-up, food and pretty things. I don't think either of us would stop wanting to do that -- it's what makes humans humans -- but reality's a bitch sometimes.


Certain events happened, and I suppose Chiharu's feeling a bit down at the moment. 

As you can probably tell from the post count, Chiharu is a much more passionate blogger than I am. [壁]д・)ﾉ This is predominantly a beauty blog, I guess, and I'm not quite confident or adept enough to handle it on my own. I'm more a back-end sort of person, more comfortable with HTML codes and Photoshop, more comfortable out of the camera frame than in it.

So when Chiharu stopped blogging, inevitably this blog becomes a husk. I guess I'm shirking my responsibility a little here, but these days my world consists of drawing, work, and video games, and it seems a little odd to bring that world here.


On the other hand, it seems a bit of a pity to throw everything away, so this blog shall still be here, biding its time before it comes out of hibernation eventually. I might update a little sometimes, but a story cannot move on without its full cast.


---

What I've been up to thus far:
 

I like beautiful things. I think we all do. But let's all strive to be happy and good, ja?

A Ringo A Day: Eggs

Quick update!
Sorry I've been neglecting the blog a bit. > A <
The end of the year is always a busy time, no?

Currently working on:

Still some way to go before it's done. Working on my batman sculpture as well.
Will post up some movie reviews come next week!

But for now, *distracts with song recommendations*



Emma Louise hails from Brisbane, Queensland. Currently unsigned, I think, but I'm not too certain.



The song's title combined with the band name made this track almost impossible to find on YouTube search, until a while ago. Alpine is Phoebe, Lou, Phil, Christian, Ryan and Tim, from Melbourne, Australia. Their MVs are lovely.

Oh, the time, I gotta go to work, so ciao~ : 3

Love,
Ringo