This month's addiction: BB Cream - Skin79 review

**Disclaimer - I purchased these items with my own money, they were not promotional gifts. Product links below are affiliate links.

Ok, I know BB creams are old news in Asia where they have been favorites for years now, but we don't see many of them here in the States. I think Clinique just came out with one, and Boots No7 has a "beauty balm" which isn't quite the same thing as its Asian cousin.

After receiving a sample with an eBay item I ordered, I am *completely hooked* on this Skin79 Super+ Beblesh Balm:

It's from Korea and totally reasonably priced on Amazon.com: 

At first when you pump out some of the product it looks kind of greyish, but once you rub it into your skin, it seems to adapt to your skin tone. I would recommend this for lighter skin tones only. I'm not sure if they make a product for darker skin, but I suspect this product would look ashy or chalky. Did I mention it comes in a pump? I *love* that. I hate dipping my fingers into jars or bottles to get the product out. Pumps are just so much more sanitary, in my opinion.

What else I adore about this product is the texture and the coverage. It's not quite foundation, but it's more than a tinted moisturizer, and it wears all day without getting shiny or cakey. Add to that an SPF of 25 and it's now my everyday go-to product for my face. I admit, since my skin is so dry, I do apply moisturizer before using the balm, but if you had normal, oily or combination skin, you could skip that step. 

The balm has ingredients to control oil on your face and does a great job at doing so. It also says it has whitening properties  -"whitening" being the equivalent of "brightening" here in the states since we are so obsessed with tanning - and anti-aging properties. I haven't been using it long enough to see any results for either of those claims, and quite frankly I'm not sure how much whiter my skin can get! (I'm pretty darn pale: NW15)

I also got a sample set of 4 different creams from the same maker: 

One of them was a duplicate of the larger size I already had, but the other three were different. The three new ones were:

• Diamond Collection Prestige Beblesh Balm
• Diamond Collection Pearl Luminous Beblesh Balm
• VIP Gold Collection Super Beblesh Balm

I honestly couldn't tell any difference between the Diamond Prestige and the VIP Gold Super balms, but the Pearl one definitely was different. It was very shimmery, almost bordering on glittery. I can't see using it all over your whole face (except maybe as a primer underneath foundation?), but it works great as a highlighter on your cheekbones, browbones and inner corner of your eyes if you are going for a "no-makeup" look.

It also bears mentioning that the packaging has some really grade-A Engrish on the back:

• "it make your skin light, soft and dry all day without that skin gooey"
• "use it proper quantity on the area of your face like patting at the last step of skin care"
• "protect your skin exposed from the sun more thoroughly"
• "wrinkles improvement"

*giggle* I just love that :)

Any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments below and thanks for reading!

UPDATE: How funny, I just noticed that one of my fave YouTube gurus posted a review on "western BB creams" yesterday. You can see it here.

My Wedding Makeup

I was married just yesterday, and unlike a lot of brides, decided to do my own makeup. I will post links to products at the end of the post. Here's how I did it:

I started by prepping my face with DHC Olive leaf cream. I really love this cream because I have dry to very dry skin and this keeps it moist for a long time and wears well under my makeup. My skin tends towards being sensitive too and I have a lot of redness to cope with, so I let things calm down for about five minutes before moving on. At this point I also slapped on some plain lip balm (just basic chapstick or whatever you have is fine).

A lot of brides may at this point want to apply a primer to their face to help their makeup last. Since I knew my entire event was going to take less than 3 hours, I didn't feel this step was necessary for me.

I started with foundation, MAC Mineralize cream foundation in NC15 and stippled that on with a Sigma rounded kabuki brush. I have to say, this is my favorite brush to apply my own foundation with. Because of the dry skin again, the swirling or sweeping motion used with other brushes doesn't give me a nice finish and can cake or streak.

Next was eyes. I started off with just a basic eye primer from ELF. I applied it all over the lid, blending with my finger, and also tapped a bit on underneath my eyes so my concealer would adhere better later and not crease or cake. I don't find a huge difference in eye primers from bargain brands to the more expensive ones, so whatever you have on hand should work fine.

For eyeshadow, I started with a very light dusting of the uppermost right shade in the Wet-n-Wild "Comfort Zone" palette, using a fluffy natural hair eyeshadow brush. I didn't pat the color on, I really just did a light dusting motion over the lids up to the crease. 

I gently patted a tiny bit of the silver color on the left from the Sonia Kashuk duo in the center of my lid.

To define, I used Sila's "Storm" shadow on the outer corner, upper lashline and blended it a bit into the crease. Storm is the one in the lower right in this palette - it's a dark matte grey.

I lined my upper lid with ELF waterproof eyeliner pen in "Ash". I didn't want anything too harsh like black would have been. Ash is a nice grey color that defines without being too obvious. I just did the tiniest flick upwards at the corners, not a true winged liner. I like the pens a lot, especially for beginners because they are easier to use. I do get annoyed with how fast they dry out, however, but I have the same problem with some brands of gel eyeliner as well. Waterproof is important here in case of any crying, as often happens at weddings.

I also lined my waterline with the silver L'Oreal HIP Chrome pencil you see above tucked in the Stila palette. It brightened my eyes up without looking as obvious as white would.

I curled my lashes and applied two coats of MUFE Aqua Smoky Lash, a waterproof mascara. Again, waterproof in case of tears. I then also applied fake lashes only to the outer corners of my eyes. I felt like a full strip of lashes was too much and that individuals weren't quite enough. The main trick to putting on false eyelashes is to let the lash glue get a little bit tacky (20-30 seconds) on the lash strip before trying to place them on your eyes. Trick #2 is to close your lids halfway while looking down into the mirror, and holding the lashes with tweezers (or one of those fantastic discontinued shu uemura eyelash applicators if you can find one), just plop them down in the center right on your own lashline, or if you are using half-strips, stick the inner end down first. It's much easier to wiggle the ends into perfect place once you have a bit of adhesion in the middle.

For my brows, I just brushed them through to tidy them up. I'm blessed with good brows that don't really need filled in or shaped overmuch. I tweeze regularly and that's about it. I made sure to clean up my brows the night before the wedding because my skin gets so red afterwards.

I cleaned up under my eyes a bit with my foundation brush just using any product that was left on there to get rid of any shadow fallout, then applied Benefit Boi-ing concealer in 01 under my eyes and blended outwards over the cheekbones with a slanted Sigma precision brush.

From the left: Sigma rounded kabuki, elf blush brush, Sigma slanted precision, elf C brush, elf concealer brush, natural hair eyeshadow brush, bare escentuals complexion perfection brush. Not shown: elf eye definer brush.

I patted on some MUFE Super Matte powder just in the center of the face with a bare escentuals brush. It's important to just lightly pat on powder instead of swipe it on with a brush because that could disturb any foundation or concealer you've already applied. If you prefer, you can pat powder on with a puff or a sponge using a rolling motion to really press it into the skin. 

I chose the Super Matte loose powder and NOT the HD powder because I knew there would be flash photography at the wedding. The HD powder DOES NOT photograph well with flash. For a great demonstration of this, check out one of my favorite gurus on YouTube, Wayne Goss.

For blush, I used what I think is a great compromise between bronzer and blush for fair to medium skin tones - MAC Harmony blush. I just got it recently and it's already become my everyday go-to for blush. Since I already have fairly ruddy skin, I don't need to red or pink it up any more and Harmony is a nice brownish shade without being muddy and is completely matte. I highlighted my cheekbones and browbone with a homemade highlighter powder that is a creamy shimmery slightly gold color - it's the round pan below.

For lips, I didn't bother with liner because I knew I didn't need my color to last all that long and I had selected lipcolor that was pretty easy to reapply as needed. I went with a  combination of NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream in "Istanbul" with a bit of MAC Viva Glam Lipglass in Gaga 2.

The final result - defined but not dramatic, glowy but not shiny or glittery (I saved the glitter for my manicure).

Blue glitter. Oh yeah.

Any questions, please feel free to ask!

Product links:

DHC - dhccare.com

MAC - maccosmetics.com

MUFE - makeupforever.com

ELF - eyeslipsface.com

NYX - nyxcosmetics.com

Sigma brushes - sigmabeauty.com

Stila - stilacosmetics.com

Wet N Wild - wnwbeauty.com

Sonia Kashuk - available at Target.com and Target stores