Skincare review: Tony Moly "I'm Real" Broccoli Vitality

When I lived in Seoul, I may have dispensed a rather ridiculous amount of my discretionary spending on sheet masks, then gone through the bother of hauling them back in my hilariously (and expensively) over-stuffed luggage. If you've never heard of them (are you living on Titan?), sheet masks are face-shaped cloth or paper masks saturated with serums and ointments meant to give your skin an intensive dose of healing goodness. There seem to be as many sheet masks in existence as there are sea shells scattered along a beach, each purporting to be the best at whatever it claims to do. Need a brightening super-dose of vitamin c to wake up your skin? There are countless options. How about some snail mucin to soothe anxious, irritated skin? Boy howdy are you in luck! Every skin care/cosmetics company in Korea seems to be in on the sheet mask game, and compared to what I'd have paid for them stateside they are SUPER cheap to purchase when in Korea. When in Seoul... 

Each company throws out new and innovative products trying to get an edge on the competition, so you'll often find some surprising inclusions in the serums. Snail mucin is old news and not particularly shocking to me- in fact, it's an ingredient my skin seems to absolutely adore, so I seek it out. Broccoli essence is a little more novel... but does it work?

Tony Moly is one of the more well-known Korean Beauty brands in the US, or was one of the first I was introduced to through beauty blogs, at least. They have adorable hand creams shaped like bananas or Pokemon, and their aesthetic seems a bit more young and youthful than some of the other brands. That can be a good or bad thing depending on what you're looking for. As much as I love clever, cute details in the packaging of products, if it's not doing it's job or serving practical purposes I'm not going to love it. This sheet mask, as you can see in the photos above, didn't fit my face very well. It clung on my forehead and cheeks alright, though it tore near one of my eyes when I tried to adjust the fit slightly. The serum was very watery, which I didn't particularly mind because the serum itself felt nice and soothing on my skin. I woke up with a nice, calm glow that wasn't greasy, so the serum worked well enough. The mask itself felt cheap, though, and didn't add any real sense of luxury to the self-care ritual. Also, that package is kind of obnoxious to me. I get the uniqueness and shelf-appeal of having the unique shapes jutting from the top as opposed to the standard pouch, but it makes it harder to store. I like to keep my sheet masks in the fridge because they feel that much nicer going on chilled, and I imagine it helps to preserve any volatile or less shelf-stable ingredients. It gets hot in Vegas, and even with our air-con on it doesn't prevent our bathroom from getting warmer than I really care to make my cosmetics. Fitting this in with the rest of my sheet mask horde means that there's a weirdly shaped end sticking out somewhere, and makes it longer/taller than my other masks, so some of the places the others would have fit no problem can be meddlesome with this shape.

As far as this mask goes, I don't think I would repurchase it. You can find a set of Tony Moly sheet masks with this one included for about $18 on Wal-mart's website, which isn't a terrible price for 11 masks. If you're looking for an affordable way to pamper your skin and get into the sheet mask game, it's not the worst possible place to start, but it's not the best, either. 

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Overall I'd give it a 2 out 5.

I like the serum, but the mask feels cheap and doesn't adhere to the face well. Any adjustments to the fit once it's on could cause it to tear or lose adhesion, and it never really clung to my jaw to begin with. There are much better options out there.

Thanks for stopping by!

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XOXO,

NAU

Art: Tie-dye photoshoot in Valley of Fire

Happy day-after-Valentine's day, guys!

Sorry, single friends, if our cheese is a little disgusting to you right now. I understand, I really do, but it's also a cheesy romantic time of year and we're a couple of sappy bastards so I couldn't help myself but to at least have some nod to romance here. And, not to sound too vain, but I think we look kind of cute in these photos. 

Here's something else to look at so as to ease your urge to vomit.  Our campsite out here at Arch Rock campground in Valley of Fire state park was quite photogenic and we found what was the perfect spot for us. The lighting was good for much of the morning and we were visited by an array of cute creatures over the hours. 

While we had spent the night previous relaxing and enjoying each other's company and a fire-cooked meal away from the city, once the sun rose and I had an adequate amount of caffeine and spontaneous cuteness in my system it was time for us to get to work. Luckily for us, the work involved here is modelling some of our finished tie-dye creations among the beautiful landscape. While in the past we've opted to keep our photoshoots on the simpler side so as not to draw too much focus away from the shirts, we realised that this approach is also a bit boring and doesn't convey much about our personalities or the kind of vibe we want our clothes to have. Since we're going to go camping anyway, why not bring along some of our stuff and snag some shots when the lighting is good? We were still able to enjoy most of our morning and the photoshoot didn't take so long as to keep us occupied longer than we would have been comfortable with. We were back in the city and the comfort of our own home by mid-afternoon, and that's even with the stop we made along the way... there will be a separate post on that, though, as it was too hair-raising for me to want to include among the outtakes from the photoshoot. The ones that we used for the listings are all up and visible on our Etsy shop, along with the items being modelled themselves!  

Lips by Lime Crime.

More photos below!

Hair: My experience with Lime Crime Unicorn Hair dye in Charcoal

My love for Lime Crime has been documented here before, and when I purchased their Unicorn Hair dye in Leeloo I also picked up Charcoal to give it a shot because, you know, two birds with one stone and all that. I was really excited to try this color because it's marketed specifically towards darker haired gals so you know the color pigmentation should be pretty intense! My natural hair color is obvious from my roots to about the top of my ear which is to say it's naturally pretty dark brown, while the rest from ear down has been bleached over time with multiple applications of 10 volume developer and PrismLites bleach in the purple shade. I've bleached my hair in the past using a 20 volume and toner the next day, so I know how my hair reacts with the 20 volume developer. I opted for 10 volume this time around as I didn't want to go so shockingly blonde so fast, obtaining more of an ombre sort of effect by going a little higher with the bleach each application. I don't apply it to my ends every time, either. Most people won't use 10 volume developer for anything more than giving a color application a little more oomph, but my hair has reacted well to this slow-and-gentle bleaching method. That being said, I had several shades varying from deep natural brown to a light yellow going on through my hair length prior to application of the Charcoal dye. Most of the Leeloo had faded out and I gave my hair a round with the bleach the day prior to brighten it up a little further. There were still some yellow tones left, but I figured that since it was intended to give color to brunette hair it would work out on the lighter parts. 

The dye itself looks sufficiently dark and once it was on my hair I was quite excited. I'd been sporting varying shades of pinkish-orange-blonde since the spring and wanted to tone it down and go cool for the winter months. In the end I succeeded in a way, though the end result wasn't quite what I anticipated. 

My experience with Lime Crime Unicorn Hair in Leeloo

Another Lime Crime post! 

I'm rather smitten with them, to be honest. So far I've had pretty good luck with all the different products I've tried from them, and I've made a point of it to seek out different formulas and try things I might not otherwise to get a better idea as a whole. I was impressed enough with their velvetines formula and found myself oogling their shade selection of Unicorn Hair dyes long enough that some of them went on sale and I finally jumped! I was really pleased with the results of Leeloo in my hair. I'd been using various dyes from Sallys Beauty Supply to get an orange-pink shade but figured I'd give the Unicorn Hair a shot and since my hair already had warm tones in it they should play well together. The worst thing a fashion hair dye like this will typically do is stain your hair a color you don't necessarily want or simply not take at all, but I knew going into it that reddish-orange should play nice and if it didn't take I'd chalk it up as a lesson learned and whine a bit. I purchased Charcoal (and more velvetines, because love) at the same time as a backup or experiment shade, and I'll have a post on that soon, too. 

As much as I love Manic Panic and have used a wide selection of their hair dye over the years (like the time I went pink in 2015, then turned that faded pink to turquoise, and that faded to a seafoam shade, and I tried electric lizard for glowing green hair, or that brief but beautiful time I had lavender hair) I've had some duds, so even established brands can sometimes have an off formula. Leeloo, in my experience, worked great! Definitely no dud here! The color was super bright and intense, reminiscent of blood orange. I left it in my hair for about an hour and forty minutes before rinsing until it ran mostly clear. It definitely took a lot of scrubbing and there was so much color run off in the shower! That happens with tie-dye, though, so I wasn't terribly concerned. I took cold showers for the first couple weeks and stretched out the time between showers when possible with dry shampoo. It stayed pretty vivid for the better part of a month, and faded to some pretty shades of peachy-orange-blonde along the way. It didn't stain my towels or pillow cases, which is nice.

When the dye was soaking, we carved (and I painted) pumpkins!

About 10-12 days later after a couple washings.

About 15 days later and another couple washes.

After that point I started using warmer water and washing like regular as I grew more eager to test out charcoal! Overall I was very happy with the performance of Leeloo and still have roughly 1/3rd to 1/2 the container left and may dabble with it again soon as the weather starts to melt into spring again.

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Overall I was super happy with how this hair dye performed! It was extremely bright and vivid the first couple of weeks and faded into a gorgeous peachy-pinky-orange blonde that I really enjoyed. 5 out of 5 happy hearts.

Hope you enjoyed this post!

XOXO,

NAU