Review: HBC's San San Rosy Blush Cheek Blusher

Some time ago, I chucked out my old Human Nature blush because I already used it up and abused it in good measure back when I was still a practicing journalist for print and television. Now that I have another desk job as a technical writer, I have time to get ready in the morning and motivate myself at the vanity before I head on out the door.

A few weeks ago, I picked up the San San Rosy Blush at the HBC branch in town and got if for a really affordable price of only Php 102 or $2.55. Such a steal, I know, I know. Does blush have its benefits? Why do women treat this as a beauty essential? Let's face it, blushers offer that healthy, rosy glow, it's just a matter of choosing which blush type and color that goes with your skin tone. In order to avoid looking too pale, blushers make you look like you have been sun kissed, and alive, not to mention it also contours your face and cheeks.

I've been using it to work lately (please just allow a girl to play with a hint of color) and here are my two cents on it.

Pros

• I was quite hesitant about the gold specks on it, but I don't see any speckles on my cheeks after application. 
• Simple, blue case packaging
• Easy swipes
•  Subtle, rosy, healthy blush 
• Absolutely affordable!
• Stays on for long hours, from morning, lunch until coffee break 

Cons

• No mirror in the packaging
• Applicator brush is too small

Overall, I think it gives just the right subtle blush and it is really appropriate for work, not to mention, it is affordable, even students can readily reach for it. Also, just in case I run out, I can just head on to the nearest HBC branch and get another one. 

I have another HBC San San product I want to review before I head on to the skin care series posts. Hmm, maybe I can do that next. Have a good weekend everybody! Join my Wawaza giveaway if you are feeling lucky!  

Wawaza Authentic Japanese Beauty Products Review + Giveaway

I don't even know where to start. For the past eight days, life here in mi ciudad has been on a standstill. I am lucky though that I live far from all the action and the happenings, but there is still the fear and concern since my family is in the pueblo. So much has happened already, and to add to the hurt, some people do not really understand what is going on and keep making negative comments about our city and people as if we have control and make it seem as if it is our fault that this has happened to us. I just wish some people were more sensitive to our situation.

Thus, the silence here.  But, in times of challenges and trials, there will be people who will stand up. And there will be people full of hope.

To distract myself, I am going to introduce to you a luxurious shop that specializes in authentic Japanese beauty products which have been used by geishas and even celebrities have been patronizing them. Enter, Wawaza Authentic Japanese products. I have been lucky to be chosen by Ms Hanako Mori for being able to review their products. When I say luxurious, I daresay even the Hollywood A-listers like Victoria and David Beckham have been using them.

You can head on to Wawaza to check their site and see if there is something that you might like. 

Cool, you are back? Now, let's talk about the products that I have received.

This is the skin secret of celebrities. I have tried it once and have been using it regularly ever since. (Gotta love Wawaza for this!) This is Uguisu No Fun or Nightingale Droppings Powder. Don't be quick to dismiss this product because this has been the beauty secret of many geishas for hundreds of years!

Uguisu No Fun is rich in natural guanine that contains high amounts of pearl essence for that porcelain-like Japanese clear skin. It also helps to prevent aging. 

Benefits:

• Restores damaged skin due to sun exposure and premature aging
•  Whitens skin
• Deeply cleans pores

Pros

•  I like that it leaves the skin instantly soft and smooth. It is a good and gentle scrub that also evens out the skin tone.
• You can tell that it contains pure guanine, no artificial fillers whatsoever 
• Fully organic and hygienic 
• Very versatile, you can use it as facial wash or mask

Cons

• Some people might not get used to the aroma of guanine

Now you can tell how meticulous the Japanese are when it comes to their skin. You see, Wawaza also sent me the Lady Butterfly Blotting Paper to try out. I am no stranger to blotting paper, but this is one of the more traditional formulations. It is made of first grade Abaca hemp paper with traditional techniques in Kanazawa, Japan.

Pros

• Compact, you can carry it anywhere
• For all skin types
• It is transparent and with a single texture so you can see how much of the paper you have already "blotched"
• Does not remove foundation powder or bases
• Fully organic

Cons

•  Needs careful handling or else it might rip before you use it up

 

 

Now time for the giveaway. I am also including 2 bottles each of the other products that was sent over by Wawaza to you my readers. You can also get to try out the  Bijn Japanese Rice Bran Facial and Body Oil and Aya Japanese Camellia Hair and Body Oil thanks to the additional samples sent over by the shop.

 

This is the loot that is up for grabs, thanks to Wawaza, you can experience luxurious pampering for your skin right at your own home just the way geishas and Japanese actors did years ago.

The giveaway ends on October 5, anybody in the Philippines with a serviceable shipping address can join. Be sure to enter the correct details, alright? Good luck!

Entry-Form

Currently Reading: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

 I didn't leave home for the past five days. Most of my kababayans know why. However, I feel like I just need to do something normal for a while just to distract myself. If I am going to keep mindful of the negativity going on in my city, Nothing is going to happen to me.

Another thing, I would like to inform my frequent visitors that I will be preparing something for you in the form of a giveaway. It's something really special so you can stay alert for it here.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

"A masterwork of twentieth-century literature"

"The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literature future"

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house?  The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literature future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.-Good Reads

Literary Awards

Hugo Awards for Best Novel (1954)

Prometheus Hall of Fame Awardn (1984)

National Book Award for Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000)

 The interior defense dines under the sabotage.

Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Five years after securing my very own copy of GG Marquez's Chronicles Of A Death Foretold, I finally get to read Strange Pilgrims. I have been on a hunt for this ever since! Even if it is in epub, still, I can't pass up the opportunity of looking at the world and travel through how GG Marquez tells it-in consistent, nostalgic voice all throughout.

These days, short stories are my cup of tea because each one can be devoured in just one sitting, refer to The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. Most of the time work takes up most of my afternoons and I am pretty positive that you won't enjoy what I have to share about technical writing reports here.

Strange Pilgrims is a collection of twelve stories compiled by GG Marquez from his travels in Europe. Let me approach this through constructivism: Marquez's style always makes use of magical realism and the symbols are present in each story. The top themes are death and its effects on the living as well as light and the absence of it. The common recurring symbol is blood. This reminds me of his profound use of blood and incidents of bleeding in Chronicles Of A Death Foretold. 

Another cherished book of mine from GG Marquez

My top five stories from Strange Pilgrims are (this is ridiculous, with GG Marquez it's impossible to settle on just five!):

1. "I Only Came To Use Your Phone"- Maria is driving alone to Barcelona when her car breaks down and she hitches a ride with a bus transporting women to an asylum. At their destination, it is assumed that Maria is one of them. 
2. Maria dos Prazeres- An aging prostitute waits for her death to arrive in her apartment in Barcelona with her dog whom she has trained to weep at her grave. 
3. Sleeping Beauty And The Airplane- a very beautiful woman sits beside the author on a flight. He is completely captured by her beauty, and here he expresses his musings. 
4. The Ghosts of August- A family vacationing in Tuscany decide to spend the night in a castle of a friend where legend has it, the builder killed his bride in bed before setting dogs on himself. The family then discovers the truth of this tale the next morning where they awaken. 
5. Tramontana- people seek shelter from the Catalan wind which locals call the Tramontana, bringing with it the paranormal effects on everybody. 

I have a special liking to these death stories:

1. Tramontana
2. Miss Forbes' Summer of Happiness- Two young boys have the serenity of a peaceful summer holiday until a strict German nanny arrives. 
3. Light Is Like Water- Two young boys ask for a boat in return for their good grades in school. Because of the absence of navigational water, they break the bulbs of their home and the light flows out like water. 
4. The Trail Of Your Blood in Snow-Billy takes his new wife to a hospital to help her stop the bleeding from a scrape on her ring finger from a rose thorn and he is unaware that he will never see her again. 

Marquez arranged the stories himself in his order of his writing them. Each one has a pilgrim's story to tell, in beautiful cities like Rome and Paris. Naturally, he leaves the best ones for last.

Even the prologue has Marquez's own strange story to tell, of him visiting his own funeral and finally seeing his closest friends, but once the funeral is over, he alone cannot leave. 

 "True memories seem like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality."

Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Marquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. He is known as "Gabo" in his native country and is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He started as a journalist and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in order to explain real experiences. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, most of them express a theme of solitude.-Good Reads

With Marquez, the name of the game is magic and majesty, each pilgrim emerging spellbound.

Next on my reading list is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, unless someone out there wants to donate another book to read. What's on your reading list?

Review: Pevonia Enzymo Spherides Peeling Cream

 Introducing......

The new way to exfoliating!

Alright I will cut out the tv commercial voice.

It's the weekend so I am feeling carefree, but also I am giving in to one comment by a certain France who asked for a review on the Pevonia Enzymo-Spherides Peeling Cream which I got from Sample Room.

Before you go on, please (you have been warned) remember that it is not my intention to scare you, I hate to give you nightmares before Halloween, and I hate to lose readers because my scary face.... (Oh please I am humiliated as well) but here goes...

The sample size is only 6 ml, and it is worth 80 points in Sample Room. For me, it is only good for a single use. 

"Experience the cutting-edge technology of this cream’s unique enzymes entrapment. Enzymo-Sphérides® Peeling Cream offers encapsulated enzymes in micro-sphérides for maximum activity upon contact with your skin. Pineapple and Papaya enzymes eliminate impurities, blackheads, dead cells, sebum, and toxins as you work this cream into your skin and gain a bright, smooth complexion."

Benefits

• Easy and immediate deep surface cleansing
• Removes dead cells, impurities, and clogging
• Brightens the complexion
• Increases absorption & results from home care products
• Leaves the skin refreshed, soft, and glowing

Key Ingredients

• Pineapple Enzymes (Sphérides)
• Papaya Enzymes (Sphérides)
• Gingko
• Calendula
• Chamomile

 

It took two applications of the cream, so that's two layers you see there on my face, I think I didn't put enough or 6ml of the product is just not enough for my round face hehe.  I already used up the entire sample in one use and didn't even get the nice layering mask effect that I wanted! I think it is also because of my blending technique which I automatically did as if it were moisturizer.

Up close you can see how gritty it becomes and it becomes stiff and flaky. Again, not enough of the product to have even layering. I used up the whole sample already, but I could feel the tightening and firming effects on the pores already. It has to stay on for two minutes.

I used a gentle sponge cloth to clean it up and washed off with lukewarm water just to be sure that no more cream was left on my face.

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 Immediate effects:

• I felt my skin become soft and smooth even when the mask was on
• Pores tightened a little
• I looked like a pale zombie for a couple of minutes

But now I am reborn! Yeah!

So what skin care ritual did you do this weekend? Are you ready to face the week ahead?

I might do another mask ritual next weekend and you can watch out for my post about it only here at Raisie Speaks, a lot of masks are coming my way because I ran out of facial scrubs hihihi.

I have collaborated with other ZC bloggers to give you another giveaway and you can join here.

To know more, you can visit the direct link to Pevonia Enzymo-Spherides Peeling Cream or also find out more products from Pevonia Organic Skincare Philippines.