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Sunday, 27 January 2013

Review: Yesstyle Haul

Hello,
My name is Becca.
And I'm addicted to Yesstyle.

I've finally come out and said it.

I'm addicted to the bargains, the cute clothes, the makeup and the accessories. I'm addicted to the free shipping, the sales and the free samples.

All in all, I spend way too much money shopping at Yesstyle, and today I am here to show what I have indulged in with my last two orders. In order to gain my Elite Club Silver membership on Yesstyle I had to spend around $200NZD before the start of the new year. Being a Silver Member on Yesstyle means I get an extra 5% off all items, as well as two $10USD coupons. In my mind it felt silly not to take advantage of that offer.

Then after that order, my sister and her friend decided they also wanted to order, but didn't want to go the whole $200NZD together. So I decided to third the amount with them ... and ended up spending more than I anticipated ... again ...

I find Yesstyle shipping fairly fast and pretty good. I've never received damaged goods, missing items or wrong items.
 I'm a little disappointed that this order didn't come in a fancy white box, but the second order did. No photos of that once since my sister opened it while I was at work. Of course.
 Starting off with the clothes section!

This is super cute! I was a little anxious that the skirt wouldn't fit me since it looked so tiny on the model and in real life. The stretchy waistband is definitely a huge plus for me since my weight fluctuates a lot.

I have to be honest, I am slightly disapointed with this skirt. Even though the colour clearly states Beige, the pictures provided on the website look substantially lighter than the colour of the skirt in real life. To me, the skirt looks almost like a Khaki green more than the Off-White that it does on the website.

Yesstyle states;
Images are for reference only. Colors on your computer monitor may differ slightly from actual product colors depending on your monitor settings.
(Photo from Yesstyle)
Well that's pretty legitimate. My bad I guess.
A basic layering slip skirt. Silk and chiffon. Nothing special.

CatWorld Sleeveless Tulle Overlay Dress
This dress is a little shorter and tighter than what I would have liked, but overall a cute, well-made product.
Super cute little tank top with crochet neckline and pearls. Love, love, love it.
This is the Beige colour I was expecting the Tulle skirt  to be! After buying my black pair a couple of month ago (pictures here) and wearing them almost to bits, I decided another pair was definitely going to be worth the investment. The only weird quirk about these super cute lace overloaded shorts is there is an extra flap that needs to be sewn down. To put it bluntly, the lace over my uh, front, needs to be sewn flat, otherwise it looks like some sort of weird skirt. But that doesn't matter because a little hand stitching isn't hard, and the shorts are just that cute!
 See the little front flap? Weird.

D.P-Shop Dolman-Sleeve Knit Top in Sea Green
A pretty little slouchy jersey, in a lovely muted green colour. As with most of the jerseys I have bought from Yesstyle and Taiwan, the sleeves are about 5cm too short. Short enough to show off my watches and bracelets my Asian boyfriend tells me. Maybe they are made purposely like that, or maybe I have long monkey-arms. I haven't decided yet.
I love the structure and fit of this top, but its very, very small. I kind of assumed it would be more of a jumper than a top (which I now notice it definitely says top) but that's still ok! I have something very special planned for this, so watch this space! ;)

Super soft and cozy, this is the knit of my winter dreams. It fits loose, with batwing arms that leave you enough space to do activities, but the wool is oh so soft and warm.
Maymaylu Dreams Bear Print Tee in White
Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my. This is the most adorable jersey I have ever bought! Strangely enough the bear isn't dyed in, but printed on top of the fabric. So the bear section feels a bit rough to touch, (you wouldn't want to be stroking my belly) but the rest of the white material feels oh so lovely. The front is a little too long for me, but there is room to take it up.

Quick little outfit of the day (: You can see the awkward wrist to jersey sleeve gap, and my adorable new phone charm! ^^ I need to invest in some more bracelets to make up for the sleeve gap.
I also bought some more basic cosmetics.
 
I haven't yet been able to try these out, but they look promising! Priced at $6 for 10 pairs I just couldn't pass these babies up!


 




















I'm still trialling this product! It doesn't really seem to put enough colour down for my liking, but as I experienced with my last eyebrow pencil, sometimes they just need a little while to get going properly. Don't even ask me why. I probably just need to sharpen it a little bit. I LOVE that this has a little mascara wand on the other end to brush your brows with. It's so handy! The colour is quite dark, which suits me pretty well, since my eyebrows and hair are pretty dark naturally.
This is one of the three colours in the range. I reviewed the #01 White Star & Milk Pink last time and decided that I liked it so much that I would buy another colour set! The other colour is #03 Milk & Orange, which I may buy in the near future. Hehehe. I absolutely LOVE this tint and tear liner! Like I said about the my other Byulsatang Eye and Lip Tint, double (in this case triple) duty products are my absolute favorite, and the cheaper the better. Within reason of course. 
Top Left; Etude House Tear Eye Liner #04 Sunlight
Top Right; Etude House Tear Eye Liner #03 Pearl Tear
Middle Left;  Skinfood Byulsatang Eye & Lip Tint #02 Gold Star
Middle Right; Skinfood Byulsatang Eye & Lip Tint #01 White Star
Bottom Left; Skinfood Byulsatang Eye & Lip Tint #02 Milk Coral
Bottom Right; Skinfood Byulsatang Eye & Lip Tint #01 Milk Pink

I found that the Skinfood tear eye liner was just as good as the Etude House tear eye liner. The Etude House liner was a little more pigmented than the Skinfood liner, but in comparison with the prices I would prefer the Skinfood liner since it has the lip tints attached. More value for my hard-earned money.

I bought this for my little sister after she tried my Pearl tear drop eye liner (#03 Pearl Tear reviewed here)  and loved it! I suggested the #04 Sunlight shade would probably be better suited to her skin tone, and it was settled. Since her birthday isn't for another couple of weeks, she allowed me to use it a couple of times so I can review it. So kind of her! I found the colour was really nice, it is very shimmery and shows up really well on my pale skin. It's quite natural looking, and doesn't contain large glitter particles. It also stays on for a really long time!

I'm starting to become the crazy bag lady with the amount of bags I have accumulated. I can never resist a good bargain, and to be fair, this was $6, I don't own a bag this colour, and big bags are just so handy! Are those good enough excuses?

This bag has pockets to spare, and seems to just swallow everything that I stack in it in a structured way. What more could you wish for!
It has a removable shoulder strap and tassels. Cute!
There is a grand total of 7 pockets/compartments in this bag. Not bad!
I love Earphone Plugs. I bought a lot while holidaying in Taiwan last year, and subsequently gave most of them away to friends because at that time you couldn't get them in New Zealand. I moved on to making my own simple ones, and then I found this one. Bows, Pearls, Rhinestones, EEE! The bow doesn't really get in the way of the camera, and perhaps the best thing about it, the bow section is detachable. It has a little hook, which means I can craft other dangley things to hook on! I'm SO excited! :D So far (5 days) nothing has broken off or faded in colour. Hopefully I don't drop it and ruin it. ><
These are actually my sisters, but I thought I'd show them to you anyway! These are super cute, and weirdly are not set to a foot each.  They are incredibly soft, warm and comfortable, I just wish they were outside boots instead of indoor, since the soles are made of foam and velvet, there is absolutely NO WAY these are going to go outdoors. Oh well.
Becca's Pro Tips for shopping at Yesstyle;
  • Always measure yourself thoroughly before you start shopping. This will cut down on the time it takes you to decide on which things you want.
  • If a dress looks short on the model, it's probably going to be very short. Measure one of your dresses that you would consider short and compare it to the measurements on the website.
  • Shop the sales! There is a special sale section on Yesstyle, and you can sort from the highest discounted price or the lowest price in general and pick up some bargains.
  • Watch out for colour differences. In my experience, Beige and Khaki are generally quite a bit darker (for my computer at least) in real life than they appear on the screen. 
  • If you think a bargain on makeup is too good to be true, check the ML amount. The cheaper products are most likely going to be tester or smaller size. 
  • Yesstyle provides a lot of makeup that isn't available in New Zealand, but sometimes it's hard to find swatches online of products. Be aware that products are going to look different on different people.
  • Don't stress out too much if you buy something and when you receive it you hate it. Yesstyle accepts returns (you have to pay postage though) for unwanted items, size exchanges, defective item exchanges and defective item repairs. You can check out the return polices here
 Happy shopping lovelies!
 

Monday, 7 January 2013

Review: I.Fairy Aki Violet Lens; Iszo

Hello Lovelies!

 Today I am going to be reviewing the I.Fairy Aki Violet Circle Lens from Iszo!  
Since I knew I was going to Jacynta and Adams wedding (MrMrswalsh), I decided to buy a new pair of lenses to go with my new cute dress ^^ If you've read my previous lens review on the Beuberry Bella Green lenses I bought from  Uniqso you'll know that I wanted to try some more natural lenses the next time I made a purchase. I was tossing up between grey lenses and violet lenses after browsing through Uniqso's store. My reasoning was that the grey lenses would look more natural with my brown eyes. But I just kept coming back to the violet lenses because they were so pretty!

So I decided to get both colours. Indecision at it's best.

I bought the i.Fairy Aki Violet lenses because they just looked so damn pretty, as well as the  i.Fairy Star Grey  because I thought they would blend out better and look more natural with my light eye colour.













How very, very wrong I was.

Anyway.

Being the budget princess I am, I decided to shop around to see if I could get any better deals on the lenses. From Uniqso, the Violet Lenses were $21.80 USD. Not bad. PinkyParadise doesn't sell the I.Fairy brand so that was a no go. So I resorted to googling I.Fairy Aki Lens to see if anyone else would offer them for a lower price, and discovered the Iszo store. The price for the Aki Lens was slightly higher, at $22.00 USD ... But the deal breaker was ... Free Shipping. 

Living in New Zealand, there aren't many places that sell high quality Circle Lenses. So I have to ship them in from overseas. This means higher pricing of the lenses, (depending on trade rate) and usually a generous shipping fee. Which sucks. So free shipping is awesome! Which explains why I tried Iszo! ^^
Cute pink lacy wrapping ^^
 And a gift of a free cute animal lens case ^^
I received the lenses one day before the wedding (impeccable timing) so soaked them in solution overnight and popped one of each colour into my eyes the morning of the wedding to decide. 

Window Light
 Indoor Lighting
 With Flash
Yeah I know its a little disturbing to look at two very different shaped and coloured eyes.

I.Fairy Aki Violet (With makeup and flash) Just to be clear ;)
I was actually SO disappointed with the  i.Fairy Star Grey lenses. Although I may change my mind when I put both in and test them out. Since I don't wear cirlce lenses in Gisborne (I don't think ANYBODY wears coloured lenses in Gisborne), I didn't bring them back with me, so will have to wait till February to test them out. Urgh. 

The  i.Fairy Star Grey made it look VERY obvious that I was wearing circle lenses. Not really the look I was after. :c

So then we get to the i.Fairy Aki Violet.

Um, can I say WOW. 
 Not wow at me. Wow at the lenses! So pretty!
Never in a Million years did I think that Violet and my orange/brown eye colour would look nice, but the design of this lens and my eyes and the colour just makes the prettiest combination! ^^ I can see a lot of violet colour when I look sideways.
 
I ended up wearing the lenses for a total of 10 hours with minimal discomfort, which I thought was pretty amazing! The false lashes caused more discomfort for me than the lenses because I was rushed while putting them on. I took my lens case and eye drops to the wedding in case the lenses became extremely uncomfortable and I had to take them out in the bathrooms, but I didn't need to! Yay!
 
 Colour and design:
I LOVE the colour and design! It has a thick black Limbal Ring which has waves on the inside that help it fade to the violet colour. The violet coloured iris has a pattern of black stars around the perimeter which is very effective in helping to soften the colour and provide a more natural look. The lens fade into my natural iris colour really well, and the violet colour compliments the orange/brown colour of my eyes.

Enlargement: 
I thought the enlargement on these lenses was perfect. My eyes looked huge, cute and dolly. ^^ I know that in my last lens review I said the 16mm lens were too big for me, but I couldn't see that much difference in the 16mm to the 16.2mm. They are just such perfect lenses! ^^

Comfort:  
They were a breeze to put in and take out, and 10 hours in them was absolutely fine. The heaviness of my eyelashes bothered me more than the lenses, and I don't really consider that uncomfortable.

Overall: 
I actually can't stop raving about theses lenses! They are perfect in almost every way. The ONLY bad thing I would say about them is that because the lens colour overlapped with my pupils, at some point in time I was able to see a bit of the violet colour in my peripheral vision. This wasn't uncomfortable or disconcerting and doesn't affect how much I LOVE these lenses but I thought I should mention it.
In terms of the store Iszo, I found that the service, packaging and shipping was very good. They have a wide range of brands and colours of lenses, with an easily accesable website and browsing system. The only downfall of the service was the communication. The Aki Violet lenses were not in stock when I ordered them (which was not shown on the website) and I had to wait one week for them to be sent to me. While this is in no way a big deal at all since I was somehow organized enough to order them two weeks in advance to cater for Pre-Christmas shipping, the problem was that the Iszo team did not email me to tell me they were out of stock. Instead the wrote a note on my order page which I didn't think to check. Its not a big deal, but that was the only fault I could find for the store. ^^ 

I would definitely order again from Iszo! (: If you are interested in trying some Circle lenses, have a look and see if anything takes your fancy. You never know what will end up looking amazing! :D