Friday 17 July 2015

☂ コスプレMAKE (cosplay makeup) magazine review

Hello!! Today I'll be reviewing/showing a recently published cosplay makeup magazine ☆☆ The full name is メイクだけで誰でも人気キャラになれる!! アニメ&ゲーム コスプレMAKE (主婦の友ヒットシリーズ) , and I've seen many posts and some previews on my twitter feed and decided to pick up a copy for myself using Amazon.co.jp. 

The magazine itself is ¥1,111 and shipping + handling fees to Australia is ¥900, which totalled to ¥2,011. Although the postage may nearly double the price of the product, the insanely quick delivery and thorough packaging made it worth it. To my knowledge for this product, Amazon offers only this method of shipping.

You can order a copy for yourself here.
NOTE: I ordered quickly when there were only 14 copies left, and at the moment they have yet to restock. Hopefully the wait won't be too long!!

Ordered on 14th July, 2015
Paid at 1:30pm - 15th July, 2015
Received at 9:30am - 17th July, 2015

Incoming picture spam, please click for enlargement/////
package!!
contents sealed in plastic
magazine's front cover
The first 12 pages featured eye makeup tutorials for the very popular online game, Touken Ranbu. Some characters have dedicated single page, step-by-step guides, whilst other characters only cover half a page, showing close ups of the eye makeup. If you're planning to cosplay from this game, I highly HIGHLY recommend you check this out - they cover 15 characters so I'm sure it'll prove useful to you!!
Ookurikara makeup tutorial
Tsurumaru Kuninaga makeup tutorial
They also have plenty of other non-character specific makeup tutorials for  female and male looks. In addition, there's plenty of guides for eyebrows, lashes, eyelid tapes, contouring, face paint, post-cosplay skincare, photoshop, interviews and many more. What I found especially interesting was their small guide to instant face slimming by using sports tape! I've seen this method being used by many cosplayers on social media (though most of the time they left wounds behind;;), and always wanted to test it out.
female makeup tutorial
eyebrows tutorial

Another extremely useful segment they had was their beginner's makeup tutorial for 3 basic female and male looks. They covered a range of basic styles that can definitely be adapted to many characters.

Overall, I think this magazine was quite worth the price - for ¥1,111 to include nearly 100 pages of content seems like a pretty decent deal to me ヽ(*・ω・)ノ  Even though everything is in Japanese, there's plenty of supporting photos to be able to guess what they're explaining. If not, Google Translate is pretty useful for translating small sections!

I think this magazine will be extremely useful for beginning cosplayers like me, who want to move on from the basic "dolly eyed" girl makeup and start creating character-specific looks and crossplaying ☆☆

I hope this short review is useful in some way!!
P.S I am in no way sponsored to write this review, these are all my honest opinions.

Sunday 5 July 2015

☂ lens review (GEO: plum brown)

H-Hello everyone!! It's been a (long) while since I last posted and the only excuse I can give is that uni ate up so much of my free time, I could barely use makeup or cosplay;; But now that it's my mid-year break, I now have a month of free time to catch up on all my backlog and hopefully post more frequently - especially now that I'm preparing my cosplays for upcoming conventions!!

Today I'll be reviewing GEO Medical's Plum Brown (WTC24), once again sponsored by the lovely 
Adelaide Little Lens.

Company: GEO Medical
Diameter: 14.8mm
Water content: 42%
Base curve: 8.8mm
Prescription: Yes
Lifespan: 1 year
left: outside view & right: inside view

COLOUR & DESIGN
★★
The distinct flower design is definitely unique and something that I especially adore, as I've never owned a pair of circle lenses with a design that purposely does not blend it naturally. Unfortunately, this shade of brown does not show up well because of my dark eye colour, so most of the floral pattern is lost unless you're in very close proximity. 



ENLARGEMENT
★★
As a 14.8mm lens, this certainly enlarges your eyes significantly, though not to crazy and unnatural proportions. It can definitely be worn both casually and for achieving a doll eyed effect ♥

COMFORT
★★
Initially I had some problems getting the contacts in, experiencing uncomfortable pains with my right eye. It took a couple more tries to adjust to the lens, but after a minute or so the pain went away! I think it was just my eyes not being accustomed to wearing contacts after such a long time;; Besides this little issue, I experienced no dryness or other problems (♡˙︶˙♡)

OVERALL
★★
All in all, I'm quite happy with these lenses! The only let down is the colour and design not showing up very clearly, but it's still nice to wear when I'm looking for a comfortable lens that naturally enhances my eyes. 

As such, I wore this lens with light makeup for a casual and cute look!! Please excuse the changing lighting, it was cloudy the day I took photos wwwww I really should invest in a better camera ( ̄▽ ̄*)ゞ