Estee Lauder Double Wear All-Day Glow BB Cream

By J
Sample Review

Uhh yeah so I decided to give this a try since they were offering a 10-day free trial at the counters here. I thought I'd give high-end bb cream a try and see if it was worth the splurge.

It claims to "brighten, perfect, and even skintone" and is "lightweight, oil-free, moisture-fresh" with SPF 30

I went to my most convenient pharmacy and picked up the pottle. 
At first when the counter assistant brought  out the little pot I was like, "What....", because the little sample pottle they give is the size of the cosmetic containers you can buy at the dollar store, and I didn't think it could possibly be enough for 10 days. 
Boy was I wrong...

Anyway, the container is really nice, even though it's just a sample.

The 'intensity' (as it's called) that was given to me was 1.0, the lightest available. 

It's actually not that light, and it's geared more towards a pinkish skin tone.

The colour above is pretty close to what it looks like to me in real life.

And funnily enough, the smell reminds me a little of playdough.

 Even though it claims to be light weight, I find the formula quite thick and much heavier than any of the Korean bb creams, and heavier than the Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum foundation.

It might be oil free, but it has zero oil control, so if you need help in that department, powder up.

It's pretty moisturising I guess, but it doesn't leave you feel cool and hydrated? Maybe I've been too spoiled with Korean bb cream formulas haha.

So here's what it looks like on. I'm a bit pink from washing my face and around my nose, and  have some minor spots on the left cheek in the image, and some minor spot son my forehead.

Its coverage I'd say is medium to full, but bearing in mind I did slap on quite a bit on my face. Because it's so thick; I found it hard to blend easily. 

Although the picture doesn't show it, in real life, it makes me a little more beige than my own skin tone.
___________________________________________________________________

Pros:

☺ Decent coverage

☺ Evens out skin tone

☺ Not drying

Cons:

☹ Thick (not as light weight as you’d expect)

☹ Expensive

☹ Colour caters to western skin tons

☹ Smells like play-doh

☹ Not much oil control

Overall: 2.5/5
Verdict: The product itself I'd give about a 3/5, it's a decent bb-cream, but it doesn't really live up to its claims. The price itself is pretty steep, and I wouldn't be willing to pay so much for a bb-cream that I felt so meh about, when there are so many others that I find nicer.

I'd say save your money and buy a cheaper bb cream.

I'm keeping that cute container though. Just sayin'

Japan Trip 2014 Part 2

Date: July 2 2014
Destination: Tokyo Skytree and a little wandering

If you've checked out our instagram, you'd've seen us post this agessss ago! If you haven't, check us out here!

Onigiri of some sort and some cold bottled tea was our staple breakfast for a lot of the time when we weren't at a hotel that provided food--at the end of the trip, a friend of our's said she didn't want to see another onigiri for a long time LOL

It's pretty cheap from the convenience store; you can buy it both for less than 250yen in total.

We decided to walk from our hotel to Tokyo Skytree, which thankfully wasn't too far, because the day was so hot. Any time we weren't in the shade or there wasn't a breeze it was stifling. 

Luckily, the walk there was incredibly pretty and peaceful. We went through this long green park that had trees and a stream and all sorts of people passing by. Grannies, men on bikes, a dad and son catching a bugs with nets, young school kids with their teachers running around in the heat...

But finally, we made it to the bottom of Tokyo Skytree. We saw this cute panda costume sitting by the store and the lady so kindly helped us take a photo with the panda. We felt pretty bad for not buying something from her store D: 

Something cool in Japan; their recycling. THIS ISN'T EVEN IT'S FINAL FORM. This is a quick taste of what their recycling is like; everything is separated for efficient recycling.

This is taken across the river from Tokyo Skytree. It was so green and pretty, and even though we decided against going up the Skytree, it was really worth exploring outside of it.

It was around tanabata when we were in Japan, so everywhere you could write wishes on paper and tie them up. If you check out our instagram here you can take a look at another picture that K took.

The photos below were taken from inside the mall at the base of the Skytree. The decorations were so cute and colourful ^U^

The two pictures above are fake food! Pretty impressive huh? Japan has some of the most realistic fake foods for display that I've ever seen before. I just wanted to take some home with me!

It was a super hot day and I'm so grateful that everywhere indoors was airconditioned... 

But what better to do on a hot sunny day than to drink cold green tea and eat sweets? Seriously, it's such a good combination I totally intend to do it when it's summer time here~

At the base of a lot of malls, you can find the food level, where there are SO many different food stores which give out lovely, lovely samples for sweaty people. 

We met this really nice guy who gave us a ton of soy food samples to try, and chatted to us about where we were from and so on. (I guess it was pretty obvious we were tourists haha.)

We ended up eating yakitori (chicken skewers), a wakame salad (seaweed salad), and the tofu roll thingy from the guy. 

We couldn't find a place to sit so we went back outside and sat in the shade of a sculpture to eat, while watching a lot of little kids play in this water feature.

All in all, day 2 was a pretty relaxed day to recuperate from our flight. While we can't say much for Tokyo Skytree itself, I totally recommend taking a look at it and checking out the mall underneath it.

Part 3 coming soon I hope... sorry it's taking us forever to do any posts; we've just been so swamped with assignments and projects, and we've got the exams coming up. We'll probably have reviews and more posts after November~