All posts filed under: Personal

Unboxing: BDJ Box July 2014* & Some Thoughts on “Value”

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On the last day of July, BDJ sent me the month’s box, which may explain why this is late. BDJ is one of the top subscription boxes in the Philippines, if you’re not familiar, and it only costs Php 580 (or a little over $13) each month. Here’s what’s inside the BDJ July 2014 Box*: To be honest, I was contemplating on not posting about this box because I didn’t really find it too exciting. Thought I’ve been sent these boxes for a few months (maybe even a year now), I was never required to write these posts. I usually find BDJ boxes to be quite OK, if not great… Good enough to post about anyway. BDJ has built a reputation for itself as a kind of reliable subscription box with thoughtful picks for boxes. This box was so dull to me that I didn’t even want to post about them, but going through each item, I had a thought (more on that later) and ended up writing up a post anyway. Here are the …

June Monthly Favorites & July Beauty Goals

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Aside from my Beauty Dare (20 Days of Lipstick), June was a pretty lazy makeup month, partly because I was more antisocial than usual. Here are a few of the beauty bits I enjoyed a lot the past month, though. I kept switching it up in the eye makeup department, but a quad that I went back to a lot is THREE’s Star Guitar. I also practically used a MAC Paint Pot called Groundwork on my lids as a primer when I became too dark to use Painterly. I’m still loving my NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer. I have the shade Ginger and was convinced that I maybe should have gotten Custard instead but that turned out to be too light for me. For my quick face base, I was using the Le Métier de Beauté Peau Vierge Anti-Aging Pressed Powder in Shade 2 a lot last month, though towards the end, I began using my liquid foundations and bases more. My go-to cheek has definitely been the Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Dixie. I used to …

Thank you, some news + a quick review of 3 Concept Eyes x Pink I’m Good Mascara*

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Hey everyone! First of all, I just wanted to thank all of you who read one of my latest posts, called All the Things: On Beauty, Buying & Blogging. The response and discussion have been amazing, and I just feel really good that the people who read this blog are super smart and wonderful. 🙂 I’m still a little confused and conflicted about this space, in that I’m not sure how to shape it, but I like that questions are being asked and points are being raised and so on. For the next bit of news… I’ve been holding off announcing this bit of news for a while, but I applied to be part of the next round of the BNT Girls Network and I got in! 🙂 I’m actually joined by two members of the previous batch of which I was also part, namely, Kine and Joanne, as well as two new girls, Doris and Bella. If you’re not familiar, BNT Girls is a Global Beauty Editors Group set up by BNT News, an …

All the Things: On Beauty, Buying, and Blogging

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Softly Sometimes has been alive for a fraction of the time that most websites (and beauty blogs) have been up, and frankly, I feel a little bit bored with it. I haven’t really grown tired of “beauty” or “blogging,” but I have grown tired of buying. Or at least, some aspects of it. I’ve been on a low-buy since April and I haven’t really bought a lot of beauty things since then. However, when I resubscribed to the Le Métier de Beauté Beauty Vault VIP 2014 round, it made me think about my relationship with “beauty,” or rather, beauty products… and why I often feel the need to have and to own. To be fair to myself (heh), my case of the grabby hands has toned down quite a bit since freefalling into the world of beauty, as we have all come to know it. Whenever I asked a person unfamiliar with the world of beauty blogging the “What’s your beauty philosophy?” question for Nosy Beauty, I feel kind of weird because I don’t want …

On Consumerism & Spring Cleaning

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I’ve been going back and forth on this topic for quite a while now, and have been sitting on this particular blog post for about a month. I don’t really know what to say about “it,” but I do know that I want to take part in the conversation. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on the matter of consumerism and over-consumption, all of which, at least in part, echo what I feel as a person and as a… how do I say it? Mindless drone? Sheep? Just kidding. I’m not here to berate myself for liking material things, but I do want to examine my personal habits as someone who does enjoy, in some measure, shopping, acquisitions, and beautiful things. First off: I hate to admit it, but I think this blog is a big indicator that I am a hoarder. When I was drafting this post, I felt like I wanted to “out” myself as a terrible person who collects useless things only to abandon them later. Then I backtracked and …

Quick-ish Beauty Update: Confessions

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Hey, everyone! Just a quick beauty~ update here, as we approach the end of the first month of the year. I don’t really “check in” and update very often when it comes to my makeup affairs—I just post looks and reviews and stuff and not a lot of “thinky” reflective things—but I’ve been having a hard time sticking to my resolutions and have been breaking a few of them. Yes, this early! Anyway, I got to the bottom of things, of this mysterious situation I’m in that should really have been something I figured out right away because it’s so damn obvious: I’m a compulsive beauty shopper.

The Weekender No. 1

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Hey everyone! I’m trying to make this blog a bit more personal, just because it feels so stiff and dry sometimes. You know, try-hard humor can only do so much, lol. So The Weekender is basically a post I’ll do every Sunday that kind of collects all of the stuff that’s been happening the past week, as well as the posts I’ve made on this blog, sort of like an index. Let’s see how often I can actually do this, lol. Starting off with the most important of this week’s events, I got to see Tegan and Sara play live! I’ve been a fan of their music since around 2005/2006. The Philippines is kind of a hard country to visit, so we always appreciate it when foreign acts notice us and pass by. It was absolutely golden. I have more photos & a post on this here, if anyone cares. 🙂 I should note that I don’t go out much (I work from home), so the next “eventful” day was Saturday. I was a bit …