Saturday, March 31, 2018

[LIFESTYLE] : Dare to Express Your Unique Self

12:00 AM
Hello gorgeous, welcome back to my blog! How was your day? Have you had a good deep talk with yourself? Well, if you haven't talk to yourself then you might need to take some time to do that. It is necessary to know yourself is in a good condition and if not, you have to know what you need to make yourself feel good and comfortable again.




Being able to accept your true self and even express it to the world is not an easy thing to be done, we all know that. Still, we need to try to do that for a better us, you know. Believing that your true self is acceptable somewhere in this world, that you're not alone, can save you from nightmare. Here's my tips : never deny yourself, even if you are doing that now, stop it and start to accept your unique self.

Being thin or fat, black or white, asian or western, is all not your fault. Nor your parents' fault. It is all destiny, where God put you there knowing you'll grow bigger than other places. After being able to accept your true self, then you need to express it. Be confident in expressing yourself, for being unique and different than the others. Having "unique" taste is also good, you know. There'll be only black and white without any fun colors if everyone has the same taste.


Pomelo, an online fashion brand from Bangkok, takes us to the next level with their newest summer collection 2018 in more than 90 fashion items in various colors. The launching took place at Lucy in The Sky, SCBD, Jakarta. They're using colorful bright colors that represents summer, like green, yellow, orange, pink, and other pretty colors. The fashion show also let fashion influencers took part in it, showing their "true self" in pomelo's newest summer18 collection. Ayla Dimitri, Alika Islamadina, Patricia Devina, and Anna Octarina are present amongst fashion influencers. Hosted by my favorite ASNTM gurl, Patricia Gouw is adding the fun and making me confident to show my unique self, just like her! You girls must've seen how unique she is and how confident she is in front of cameras, right?



In this collection not only showing that "ordinary" summer kinda outfit, they also show that we can be everything. We can be feminine, we can be sporty, just as comfortable as we are. They also persuade all Indonesian women to be more courageous in expressing their true self and to be confident. So they ask us to join #IAMPOMELO as the campaign for women to celebrate their own uniqueness. Ready to be unique?



Sunday, March 25, 2018

Healthy Glowing Skin Using Local Products (Acne and Normal to Oily Skin)

10:39 AM
Hello gorgeous! How's your day? How's your skin condition? Wishing you have a healthy skin, but is it well nourished? or is it glowing already? If not, then you'll need to read this. Once you know how to take a good care of your skin, you'll get a healthy glowing skin, just like mine! No more heavy makeup needed, only natural healthy skin.

Here's the key to healthy glowing skin : use products that contains natural ingredients and contains essential oils. Avoskin is one of those brand that meets this condition. Collaborating with local farmers, to meet sustainable 3p (profit, people, planet). They use green beauty concept and work with organic ingredients. Not only the ingredients, the paper bag they're using is also from collaboration with local citizens. This helps the community to improve better.

FYI, Avoskin is 100% paraben-free, whitening free, and don't use any kind of chemicals that are dangerous or will make you dependent to it. To produce their ingredients they're using hygienic and high technology. Until now, Avoskin still commit to share beauty values to women through continuous improvement. As for this post, I'm gonna share product review avoskin beauty, which consist of avoskin perfect hydrating treatment essence review and avoskin aloe vera facial wash.

Avoskin PHTE (Perfect Hydrating Treatment Essence)
What I have here is the travel size, in 30ml packaging. The full size has already launched in 2017 in 100ml packaging, and this March 2018 they're launching the travel size. This multi-functional product can be used as : essence, moisturizer, primer. The travel size makes it simple and easier to bring wherever I'm going, especially someone like me who travels a lot for work and private purposes and of course I don't want to skip skincare even though I'm far away from home.

Ingredients
Aqua, Alcohol, Mineral salt, Ascorbic acid, Fragrance

Packaging
The packaging looks really elegant with clear glass. Its simplicity made me fall in love with the packaging itself. Having glass material makes the packaging looks sturdy and makes us know exactly how much the product left.

How to use
1. Pour enough amount needed onto your hands
2. Apply it evenly onto your face and neck 
3. Use every morning and night after wash your face

Texture
As you can see from the picture, this PHTE is a liquid skincare in a medium texture - not too thick but not too watery. The water based-texture makes this skincare absorbed easily onto my skin, and doesn't leave any sticky feeling. I love this kind of skincare, that gets absorbed easily so it can reduce the time of using skincare range (less time to wait to next step). 

Scent
The scent is super relaxing (it has apple scent) which reminds me of green apple ;p the PR team of Avoskin said that they use natural ingredients to create this apple scent. They didn't use any kind of chemical perfumery, so it is very safe for our face. 

Overall
Overall, I really like this product. It gave me more of natural glows (it already glow actually but it enhanced even more) on my skin, and yet balanced this normal-to-oily skin. I used to use only the core of skincare but then realized how important each and every step, and one of those steps is using essence. Oh and the most significant effect I love is the PHTE got rid of my acne, just the scar left.

Price : IDR 289.000 (100ml) or IDR 130.000 (30ml)
Pros : Nice Scent, Natural Ingredients, get rid of acne and makes my skin glows better
Cons : they need to improve the packaging so the product can come out easily (and not spill) or use the pump just like the normal size.
Rate : 4.5/5


Avoskin Aloe Vera Facial Wash
You girls must've already known that aloe vera is in the "hype" lately, especially for skincare products. This works really well to cleanse your face to the deepest pore, non comedogenic, and of course with soothing effect it'll make your skin hydrated, supple, and clear. This suits all skin types.
[claim]
Benefit :
1. Removing makeup residue, dead skin cells, oil, dirt, and pollutants from the skin
2. Unclogging pores, Prevents the growth of dead skin cells, comedone, or acne
3. Restore your skin moisture and hydrated with supple result
4. Lift up the dead skin cells from the deepest layers without drying out your skin

Main Ingredients :
Aloe Vera Extract
Vitamin E & C

Ingredients
Aqua, Sodium cocoyl alaninate,  Sodium laureth sulfate, Cocamidopropyl betaine, Polyquaternium-39, Triethanolamine, Sodium PCA, Acrylates C 10-30 alkyl acrylate crosspolymer, Tocopherol, Aloe barbadensis leaf extract, Fragrance (parfum) components and finished fragrances, DMDM hydantoin, Phytosteryl octyldodecyl Lauroyl glutamate.

How to use
1. wipe your skin with water
2. pour some of the facial wash
3. Apply onto your face with circle motion
4. Wash your face until clean

Packaging
The tube packaging using plastic material seems handy and easy to use. But honestly, this packaging makes the products easily spill if you don't close it right. Also if the bottle fell onto your tub or gets into water, it'll easily absorbs water onto the bottle of facial wash. I'd prefer if they make it pump bottle to make it easier to use and of course less risky of water-contained.

Texture
It has a soft and gel texture. Completed with gentle scrubs to cleanse your skin and pores. This feels moist onto my skin (and they said this facial wash is suitable for any skin type). Oh and it's liquid so be careful when pouring the facial wash. You might pour too much.

Overall
I love how this face wash get rid of excess sebum on my normal-to-oily face, and have a good oil control throughout the day. The gentle scrub is suitable for daily exfoliating but if your skin is too sensitive maybe you can use this product 2-3 times a week. Other than that, everything seems fine to me. 

The good thing is : as a local brand they also tend to develop their local community, through @rubicommunity (on instagram) which consist of selebgram, instagram, beauty enthusiast, and women achiever in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. #Zhenbang!
[After using Avoskin]

P.S : They're also available both national and international!



Wednesday, March 21, 2018

[REVIEW + HACKS] : Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful with Virgin Coconut Oil

9:27 AM
Hello gorgeous! I'm back with another great insight in this article. Excited enough to read this? Let's jump right in!

Being our own kind of beautiful means being who we are from the inside first, then translating it onto the outside of our bodies. It requires to develop the inner you. Do you know what you love? How's the influence of everyone else in your life and style? Those are two important questions you need to answer first, to determine if you're trying to live under someone else's definition of being beautiful instead on your own skin. Don't mimic other beautiful people. Just because they're popular and people like them. 

To live our own kind of beautiful, we have to do things regardless of how they'll make us perceived by the society. It is living the way you know that you should live it, without worrying who stays or who leaves your side. Simply put, being your own kind of beautiful is living as yourself in daily life! 

Well, inner beauty also needs to be enhanced with outside of our body, right girls? So here it is, the 100% organic virgin coconut oil to fulfill your beauty needs. When I was having a graduation holiday, I spent a whole day to create a hand made coconut oil for my needs. It took a lot of coconut to get only a small amount of the oil. Of course, a lot of effort too. It was all worth to do since the organic stuff is really does a good job onto my skin and hair. 

Worry no more, now Coco Beauty has prepared a 100% organic Virgin Coconut Oil for us. It was hand crafted, prepared from small batches from fresh, wild coconuts on the mineral rich and beautiful Balinese Island of Nusa Penida. Can you imagine the beautiful beaches there? Just imagining it made myself want to go there for holiday. So the VCO is extracted by the most natural of processes to retain a higher level of anti oxidants, vitamins, and minerals. I believe this has the most natural process of creating a VCO compared to others. 



Here's the packaging (I have 5 variants - full set from Coco Beauty) 
The variants are :
-Cherry Berry (VCO with strawberry, grapefruit, and cherry blossom
-Sugar Baby (VCO with passion fruit and greentea)
-Hug Me (VCO with lemongrass and ginger)
-Pink Spice (VCO with Sandalwood, cinnamon, and pink grapefruit)
-Posy Babe (VCO with champaca, patchouli, and whitemusk) *my favorite
It came in a beautiful white box - I love how simple the design they made yet still looks elegant. Unfortunately the box was a paper made (I believe this has a good insight - for an easier process of recycling maybe) but it made the inside separator easily ripped. The box itself is sturdy so the product inside didn't get affected. 


Move on to inside box, they comes in small boxes. So for you who wants to buy these products, it doesn't have to be full set, you can get it only one piece or few bottles in the aroma you want. The small boxes have the same design as the big box covering them, and it comes in thick paper. 

Next, for the bottle. It comes in a small handy bottle which I can say very suitable to bring everywhere, for traveling or even just simply sleepovers at your boyfriend. Since it's more like an everyday product, we can bring it everywhere we go. This glass bottle looks super simple yet elegant, with the same design as the boxes. It has their variant name on the bottle and also on the box, so it makes us recognize easily. It comes with a spray bottle cover, makes us apply it easily anywhere we want to. Just spray and spread!

For the aromatic, well I can say the VCO aromatic is still stronger than those variants. Not in all variants, like for Posy Babe it has a strong aroma of the fragrance. But for some variants still have stronger VCO aroma. It's a good thing if you like a coconut aroma. Since I'm more into neutral side, so it's fine for me. But if you want something that has strong fragrance, then you might want to reconsider or use fragranced-products for washing the VCO. 

Here's the functions of VCO :
1. Make up remover - works just as well as cleansing oil, even better for your skin since this is a 100% organic product.
2. Eyelash conditioner 
3. Massage oil - one of my favorite, this makes you feel warm ,loved, and also relax with the aroma. 
4. Skin moisturizer - works really well if you have dry skin, just like other oils. This makes your skin moisturized and hydrated.
5. Bites, sores, itches, rashes
6. Face oil - to complete your skincare range
6. Hair oil - you can spray this oil onto your hair, then do a simple massage by yourself, then rinse off with shampoo afterwards. It makes your hair smooth and shiny!
By the way, I'm wondering if I can use it as an oil-fragrance too ? ;p

My favorite-thing-always-do is hair oil as my hair mask weekly routine (do this twice a week). I spray this while watching youtube or K-dramas, then enjoyed massaging myself while watching those fun, wait for 15-20 minutes, then rinse it off with my favorite shampoo. Voila! You'll get a pretty smooth and shiny hair just like mine.
[me using Cocobeautyasia Virgin coconut oil as hair care routine]



Oh anyway, if you purchase COCO beauty natural moisturizer you are also helping to support the communities on Nusa Penida. 5% of all sales go directly to the community. Available in handy, hand bad, anywhere take sizes, these practical moisturizer are stunning and stylish. 

Overall :
(+) perfect size
organic and hand made
nice aroma ( at least for me )
multi functional
nice design

(-) no expiration date

Packaging : 4.5/5 (please work with the box material)
Aroma : 4.5/5 (you need to improve the fragrance)
Performance : 5/5
Recommend/repurchase : YES.

Price : IDR 50.000 (Currently they're having a discount, you can get a single bottle only for IDR 40.000)
Size : 12ml
BRING BACK THE BOTTLE! Bring 5 used VCO from Cocobeautyasia and you'll get FREE one bottle of your choice! Let's take a good care of our earth <3


Tuesday, March 20, 2018

[LIFESTYLE] : Dinner at Secret Garden Yogyakarta

12:45 PM
Hello gorgeous! Get ready with a lot of posts upcoming these weeks, since I'm gonna share a lot from my BSkeJogja trip! This is one of it, where the community got to held the gala dinner at Secret Garden. Let's see the fun!


Have you read my previous post about BS 1st Anniversary Gathering at Yogyakarta? If you already read the post then you should've known how fun it was and that we had dinner at secret garden. It was only a little part of the gala dinner I shared there, now I wanna share more details about the restaurant. Well, of course with a lil bit story of the event. 

As I arrived first than the others (because I stayed with mommy) when I was arrived the resto was not that crowded, and I love it! The waitress was really friendly and kind, showed me where I should go to my table. And what made me skip a beat was the place and decoration, yes! It was comfy yet gorgeous at the same time. I always love nature and outdoor dinner places, since hotels and indoor sometimes bore me. So here we are, secret garden! 

The gate was decorated in white, when our table where we had event was decorated in black and gold. What I get from this point : they're good in table settings and decorations. Seriously, they have a skill. One of my friend said that people often held events like birthdays or wedding there. No wonder, they have a good skill and taste in decoration. Oh FYI, the restaurant staff did the decoration themselves, without any vendor. So yeah, this needs to be appreciated! 

After my friends came, we got to take an OOTD shots with our photographers from Ari Putra Production, which also documented everything through the first and second day of gathering. 

Okay, back to the restaurant talk, then the staff gave us a menu paper (with some choices of food and drinks) then we continue with chit chat and mini challenge event. It took some time for them to prepare the food (maybe because there's a lot of us) and another more time to deliver the food (who has this food and so on) since writing our names didn't do much. Anyway it's not a big deal since from my experience, when we come in medium or large group it happens (in Jakarta also) so I'm fine with this. For you who don't like taking time for these stuff, choosing whose food and so on, maybe you'd like to come alone or in small group to prevent such thing to happen.
Oh right, I have something to say about the facility, since I was the host/MC of the gala dinner (with kak Alifah), we felt something kind of confusing. The restaurant have a live music concert (which I enjoyed the most, the singer voice was great while their choice of music was also good). But since we need a microphone, we had to share the microphone with them. So when we were doing our job as MC, they can't play live music and sing. Vice versa, while they're doing their job as live music then we can't use the microphone. Maybe, they just need to add some more microphones for this kind of events (or the MC should bring their own microphones?). 

Back to the menu, I choose chicken gordon bleu and lemon tea. The menu was good, as for me the portion was too much ( it's more like one and a half of my portion ). For you who love to eat on normal portion or maybe more, you might love this restaurant. It also comes with french fries and salad, so yeah it will fulfill your need. The taste, well I can say it taste good, with cheese and beef inside the chicken. But I want mayonnaise and chili sauce and ketchup please :( 
Overall, I enjoyed the time when we had our gala dinner (and being part of the host too!) It was fun, the place was great (OK I need to stop saying the great place but it is great! Greens everywhere, grass and trees, I love the place), and as well delicious food too. Oh and don't worry about the price, it only cost around 60 per person (incl. drinks) which I can say super affordable and worth to try! (compared to places like this in Jakarta).

See you on my next posts!

Thursday, March 15, 2018

[EVENT] : Beautiesquad First Anniversary Gathering | #BSkeJogja

8:10 PM
Hello Gorgeous! Greetings from Jogja, well from Jakarta to be exact, but with memories from Yogyakarta! Well I'm so excited to share about the first gathering of Beautiesquad, the long wait is over! After waiting for one and half year finally we get to meet each other (even though some of us already meet in Jakarta).




Beautiesquad is a beauty blogger community built on November 2016, and we celebrate our first anniv on November 2017. After long discussion and votings, we decided to hold a gathering in Yogyakarta on March 2018. Me myself, took executive train on Friday night due to work-hour and I don't think I can catch the latest flight. Long story short, we arrived on Saturday morning and had fun! Read this till the end to feel the joy and excitement together with me.

First we visited Pondok Sare, as the place we stay for the night. Actually I didn't stay there because I'm taking my mom so we decided to sleep at another place. But we stayed at Pondok sare in the morning (before check in at my place) and prepare lots of things with my beauty blogger squad! We started the day with breakfast and then move on to another fun activity : WORKSHOP!

Workshop is always be my favorite activity because I can always learn a lot from the pro (or at least the speaker). I had even more fun because I became the MC/host for the first workshop : Skincare101 with Avoskin Beauty. For you who haven't know the brand, it's a local brand from Yogyakarta (a lot of beauty enthusiast thought it iss an international brand) and what shocked me was they have great both in packaging and quality. In this first workshop we talked a lot about skincare, skin condition, the right skincare steps and so on. Here's the hack : skincare is a long journey, but you have to keep doing what you have to do to protect your skin. Never skip toner, since it will stimulate your skin to absorb better of the next skincare steps after toner. (I admit, me myself almost always skip toner to make the preparation time faster. I'm a morning sick person ;p) Fatimah Nada and Fira, as the Public Relation from PT Avo taught us a lot about skincare. Even some of us have consult about our skin condition. The exciting part is they're giving us the PHTE 30ml travel size which haven't been launch (only Beautiesquad members and Suhay Salim who already had this!!!! So excited because I'm a big fan of Suhay) and we get to know that the formula is comfortable on skin, dry fast and don't stick. Essence is an important part in skincare routine tho so we shouldn't skip this one. For you who are curious about the location of our first workshop, it took place at Indiecology.


Move on to next workshop, well I can say this is where I became super excited, we went to Sogan Batik to have a batik workshop! I got to try making my own batik (I've tried this before actually, my grandpa is an owner of batik factory and me myself now having business in batik clothing too) but this still excites me a lot! Don't know why but creating my own batik is really emotional to me #lebay but true, it feels like I'm putting all my heart and effort to create it. We also have some sort of "company tour" at Sogan Batik where I can see all the process about how to make batik from a scratch. From designing, drawing with "malam", until coloring process and then being sewed to a dress. We closed the batik workshop with family shot, then continue our journey of the day. We flew back to the homestay to rest and get ready for the gala dinner.


I was picked up by mommy (yes I know it seems like a childhood memories but this happens to me all the time even until I'm all grown up. No laugh!) We dropped some of my friends and then move to the place I'm gonna be staying with mom, then I got ready. It feels tiring since the weather was very hot and all we did was outdoor activities. But I have to get ready as fast as possible (since I have to prepare to be hosting the event with kak Alifah) so yeah, I took a bath really fast and got my makeup on. To be honest, I'm more a skincare person so all I did was only put on sunscreen, cover my under eye with concealer and then set it all with loose powder. Of course never skip eyebrow and lipsticks, with a bit touch of liquid blush to look natural. We went straight to Secret Garden where we held our gala dinner, mommy dropped me then she went somewhere to go shopping #girlslife. I was the first one arrived than my other friends, but that's good, right? We set things up with manager of Secret Garden, I was quite surprised with the table decoration since it's super pretty and neat! Sort of speechless seeing this good service where I didn't even expected. 

The gala dinner started with opening from the MC and continue with greetings from representative of Secret Garden and Mbak Utte as representative of Womantalk. I'm glad that we had a lot of supporters and vendors who are willing to collaborate with us even though we are really new as a community. We even had some mini games of "no mirror lipstick challenge" and guess what? All the Beautiesquad girls did that only in 30 seconds! Unbelievable, they're the real beauty bloggers! The rest of the night we enjoyed live music (and of course delicious food) and took photos, also enjoyed chit chat with others. Of course all the photos and documentation was taken by kak Ari Putra and Kak Jenny as his partner.

On the second day we went sightseeing around Yogyakarta, visited Vredeburg Fort, and then ended up having lunch at Madam Tan. My favorite spot was Vredeburg Fort because I love history and museums #susahmoveon it's oldschool but true. Visiting museums and stuff made me feels calm. After visited Vredeburg Fort we continue the journey to Malioboro street since it's famous for shopping. Accidentally when we were there, there was a parade by Akademi Kepolisian Indonesia (AKPOL) of senior year, since they're graduating this year, they're having a parade. It's some kind of tradition and annual activity for those of four dimmensions academy (AD, AL, AU, AKPOL) to do the parade. I know this a little bit since some of my friends are from taruna nusantara, AKMIL, and AKPOL. Well, one of my ex was also from AKMIL. #curcol It was really cool to see them doing parade like this, and of course, best of luck for your graduation and career, pals!




To me, it was super fun and exciting experience to have a gathering in Jogja and take part of  Beautiesquad 1st Gathering, BSkeJogja especially when I can give my best to them, and also special thanks to our :
-Vendors : Secret Garden | Indiecology | Edelweiss Party Planner | Pondok Sare | Ari Putra Production
-Brands : Laurent | Avoskin | Sogan Batik | Kohvee Story | Purbasari | Rubiena | Poppy Dharsono Cosmetics | Artisan Lashes | Tammia | Biore | Kay Collection - Vitacreme | Emina Cosmetics Jogja | Shylas Factory | The Body Heart | The Hartz Lashes | Mizzu Cosmetics | My Beauty Diary
-Media Partner : Female Daily Network | Blogger Perempuan | Womantalk | Eblush |. Dream | Feedme | Styl.ID


Tuesday, March 6, 2018

[REVIEW] : Conspiracy in My Eyes

3:00 PM
Hello gorgeous, new month, new love, new posts for sure! Moving on from local lippies products, now I wanna talk about local eyeshadow. Can you guess it already? YES. It's Mizzu! Well, the right thing to say is Nivea X Mizzu Palette special Minyo33 Edition, which only available at Watsons Indonesia. The eyeshadow palette titled "conspiracy", and the color inside was specially chosen by Minyo. I believe, you already know who Minyo is. She's an Indonesian vlogger and beauty influencer. Actually in this Nivea x Mizzu kit, they had a lot of collection, like Tasya Farasya, Rachel Goddard, and others. As I'm seeing in front of me this Minyo 33 kit (and they're having a 50% discount on this!) that's the main reason I bought this. Actually the main thing I wanted in this box was the eye makeup remover, but then they're having 50% disc from IDR 125.000 to IDR 62.500 and I can get all three where the eye remover itself costs IDR 63.500 #chinesegirl lol I'm full of calculation in every single thing happened in my life. #justkidding

OK, move on to the special edition kit, here's that I got : Normal to oily skin micellar water (nivea), eye makeup remover (nivea), conspiracy eyeshadow palette - 6 colors (mizzu). When I put the calculation of this kit.. Well this is a must have item! So yeah I went straight to the cashier and pay for the product. Then asked the cashier if I can open the box first to check if it's still good inside. The product still looks good, but I don't know why the box seems "oily" like something spoiled on it. I asked the cashier then she said I can change to another kit but seems like all the kit there having the same problem. My assumption is, it's because the packaging was made of paper and they put some oil paper on top of the eyeshadow is what makes the box looks oily. But then I already wanted to buy so yeah no one can stop me from shopping. I am sooooo happy to bring this back home, yeah!


Here's the eyeshadow. Super cute with those blue-pinkish color accent!




And then I put some hand-swatches (I do this rightaway tonight, after arrived home and before taking bath lol)


Then one idea suddenly popped out onto my mind! I've been loving "hello-eyes" lately, so I'm thinking about creating hello-eyes with all the colors here. Then ended up doable of creating eye makeup using all these colors! Super proud of myself haha ;p Pardon me it's only eyemakeup because my face is uncontrollable and for sure will look better if it's only the eyes ;p I'm going out without makeup anyway only eyebrows and lipsticks. So yeah. Here's my eye-makeup using conspiracy palette!




I can say, all the colors are wearable. It depends on the way you do your makeup. Not only for eye, actually, they're wearable for a full-face makeup. Should I try a one palette makeup for whole face? Let me know through the comment section!

Anyway, I wanna share my review about this palette.
Pros:
-affordable (because it's on discount)
-many choice of color
-pigmented
-easy to blend
-wearable colors
-comes with a mirror inside the palette

Cons:
-powdery
-the box looks oily

Rate : 4.5/5 (I wish the packaging looks perfect without any oil or ripped paper)
Recommend : yes
Repurchase : yes (if there's another 50% discount haha)