Shinju Pearls

I'm not really a pearl person as not everyone can pull off the pearl necklace look. No doubt it's a classic accessory but this look is also a fine line between classiness and old fashioned. I always feel like it's kinda like a 'mom's/ old lady accessory and you need some serious elegance to ensure you look good in it. I'm not one of those people, but Shinju Pearls has come up with some excellent designs that can look quite trendy and could help you work some classic feel into our modern trends I think. 

This particular pearl necklace I bought is very versatile. It comes with an external clasp that you can  use to wear it in various ways.

External Clasp

Worn as a long necklace

Worn as a short necklace/ choker

Twisted variation of long

Twisted variation of the choker look

The colour is quite versatile too. Can go with black and warm and cool colours. They have other colours on sale too. But most are mainly white or peach coloured ones.

The pearls upclose

Not bad, right? It's currently being sold with a 'value buy' promotion in Isetan for MYR99.00. You can also check them out online here. I recommend going to Isetan though, cause they have many other designs on display. The salesperson also told me that the 'value buy' isn't really so 'valuable' because normal price is the same too. Besides, they can order if they run out of stock, so, you don't need to hurry to catch the so-called value buy promo.

The Original Salon Shaper

As part of my recent obsession with manicures, I decided to try out the Salon Shaper.

So as you can see the device comes with a pouch, an 'instruction guide', and the 5 attachment tips.

The instruction guide - which is only a piece of paper - is quite useless. And also it missed out information on one of the heads (The Diamond Tip).

However, you don't really need it because it's pretty easy to use; just stick the attachments into the top of the device and press the pink button on its side. It makes a whirring sound which is kinda scary. Reminds me of the dentist.

The five nail shaping attachments:  

L-R:

• Diamond Tip - Remove Dead Skin & Calluses
• Grinding Barrel -Smooth Thick Nails & Rippled Surfaces
• Small Grinding Cone- Shape Cuticles & Nail Edges
• Soft Felt Cone- For Polish Emery Tip Shape, Scult &Trim
• Flat Emery Head - Shape Nails & to give them a Smooth Edge 

The five attachments are not very good. The Diamond Tip doesn't really remove dead skin and calluses for me, I think its surface area is too small and it's also not rough enough to effectively file away hardened dead skin. The Grinding Barrel does work - however - it's difficult to control and you can EASILY grind away your whole nail to your flesh. I'm not joking. I think the main problem is that the motor spins too quickly, hence making it quite difficult to control! That's some serious nail grinding - you could end up with a very uneven nail surface, or even worse: paper thin nails if you are not careful with that.The Small Grinding Cone doesn't work too. I think the problem is the same with the Diamond Tip - not rough enough. The Soft Felt Cone also failed as well. You might think it would act as a nail buffer right? Because the cone feels kinda soft and cotton-ish. WRONG. Does not happen that way. It just glides over your nails, does nothing.

As for the Flat Emery Head, it works.. too well! It's rough enough to really grind stuff away, and the same problem is with the Grinding Barrel. I kinda grind my nails into some weird shapes and then I needed to grind over that so I keep grinding more and more till I have hardly any nails left! Same comment: Motor is too fast with this one. *Shakes head*.

In a desperate attempt to squeeze some use out of this,  I played around with it and ended up using the Diamond tip to shape nails - I think it works better because the surface isn't SO ROUGH, hence making it easier to control as it grinds away your nail slower. And also the Flat Emery Head can be used to grind away calluses because it's like SANDPAPER. Works best on the nasty ones on your toes! The rest of the attachments: fail. So, ok la, 2 out of 5 still can be used for its unintended purposes. At least I found some use for it.

In conclusion, this product isn't for just anyone. I think it can be useful but it's freaking hard to use! It really requires A LOT of skill to use this to shape your nails using these heads actually. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who isn't so good with their hands or you'd end up with screwed up nails like me:

Screwed up nails after using SS

Notice my thumb and my first finger? Anyway to be fair, the sellers really did not promise fireworks and rockets so I think my expectations were unjustifiably high. Also, I do keep short nails, so that might be one of the reasons that i @#$^-ed up? I might revisit this in the future.

Verdict: * out of ***** stars. Better stick to a old fashioned file and buffer. Or if you have cash, go and just book a manicure.

The Original Salon Shaper retails for MYR30.00 from Supermodel's Secret.

Nails Du Jour Pilot

One of my recent obsessions have been nail polish, and I've been shopping a whole lot at nailfiesta.com. Love that site as they have a wide selection of OPI, China Glaze and Orly nail polish (not to mention reasonable price and excellent service). They seem to have the latest collection too (based on my personal research using Google)! Anyway there are LOADS of nail swatches and reviews out there so I'm not going to talk so much here. Just a swatch to show you how it looks like. FYI I have a slight warm skin tone (I'm Chinese: yellow) so you can use me as a guide if you are Chinese and shopping for nail polish online and want to match your nails with your skin colour.

So without further ado, here's the first of my Nails Du Jour series featuring OPI's Do You Think I'm Tex-y? It kinda has a raspberry/coral mix to it with jelly ('sorbert'  if you want to use the 'proper' term OPI uses but it looks more like JELLY to me) finish - which I super love! The colour comes out differently under different lighting though. Under natural light it looks more orangey - but otherwise it's more pinkish and raspberry.

FYI:

1. This is 3 coats (jellies are very sheer - understandably so)
2. I didn't use a top coat
3. This lasted me for about 4 days (I do stuff like dishes & ironing)

Natural Light

With flash - quite different right?

The jelly/ sorbert finish does make your skin look fairer and your fingers kinda edible. Hehe. I have gummy bears on my fingers now. Yumm/.. ^_^ . I've ordered more stuff from Nailfiesta.com including two more jellies. Stay tuned..

Other sources for swatches:
http://www.scrangie.com/2011/03/opi-texas-collection-spring-2011.html
http://www.nailgalore.my/2011/02/opi-texas-collection-swatches-and_28.html

Cami Secret Clip-on Camisole

I have a lot of low cut stuff I would love to wear to the office, so when I came across Cami Secret Clip-on Camisole, I thought it would work great (less clothing to wear in this hot weather).

Picture taken from Supermodels-secrets.com

Cami Secret is basically just a piece of cloth that you clip onto your bra straps and it covers your chest area. So it's like a normal camisole minus the extra cloth.

The colours are basic enough - black, white and beige. The quality of the cloth is reasonably good, they look okay and not too cheapo pasar malam-ish under clothes. (The only one I don't like is beige because the colour is so...blegh...I'll show you in a sec) And they do work great! I came across some reviews elsewhere that said that it only works for bigger sized people because the cloth is quite huge and is not tight enough for petite people. Well it could be partly true, but although I'm quite petite I don't have a problem with this because I wear the Cami Secret under tight clothing. That's what it's obviously designed for anyway! I think if you were to wear something loose on the outside that's lowcut and also need some coverage inside... well, just go get a REAL camisole-lah. The seller recommended tucking it into your bra for security but I say don't do that. It'd be uncomfortable and not to mention would look terrible if you were to bend down and flash/zhao gong (走光) your half cami/half piece of what looks like don't-know-what-cloth-scraps to other people.

See what I mean about the beige?

And someone also commented that they can't adjust the cami lower to reveal a bit more cleavage. Well, this actually depends on the kind of bra that you are wearing. If you are wearing a full-cup bra where the straps start higher up, then you won't be able to go very low with the Cami Secret clips. My suggestion is to wear half cup bras when you want to go lower. It looks way better lower anyway. Not so Ah Por (啊婆).

Verdict: ****/***** stars. These are certainly handy pieces of cloth! Recommended.

Cami Secret can be purchased from Supermodel's Secrets for MYR24.00/ 3 pieces (black, white and beige) inclusive of delivery. It's really not bad. Give it a go, girls!