Tales of the Peculiar

Autumn arrived in the beginning of October, and since then it´s been awfully cold.

In my world that means only one thing: it is time to fill my already stuffed tea cupboard, take the soft blankets out of the wardrobe and curl up with a good book. I love books all year long, but somehow the cold months are my favourites for endless reading sessions. 

Consequently, this might be the period when I buy the most of my paper editions (the rest of the year I tend to download on my ebook, but when Winter comes I prefer the company of a good old paper specimen), as I take advantage from all the seasonal releases. One of the titles on my last book haul was Tales of the Peculiar by Ranssom Riggs.

My top five vamp lip products.

 

In the last year or so I´ve been falling into the habit of shopping less, but better quality makeup.  So now and then when I make a purchase, I try to give a chance to both medium and high-end brands in an attempt to make my own opinion. I´ve always felt a bit intimidated by the huge quantity of makeup reviews out there (am I the only one who wants to hide in a corner and cry when you receive all those contradictory reviews on blogs/youtube and so on?), and I would happily cut my right hand rather than just sitting there for HOURS trying to figure out what internet gurú is right, because well, most probably they all have a point as long as a product does not work the same for everybody. 

Summer reads

At the beginning of the week I tried to organize my spare time a little bit, as I had no chance at all recently. I thought  sorting out my Summer reads could be a nice start, as this task seems to have lived in my to-do list like FOREVER. So last Monday I patiently sat on the bedroom, and started separating the unfinished books in a group that I called the "pile of shame"  almost immediately (as a philologist and a general bookworm it is quite rare to leave any unfinished stories to me. However, most of them happened to be short stories compendiums, which I tend not to read in strict chapter order. As a result, there´s always some story forgotten and left behind).  

 

MAC Diva review.

By now you probably know I rarely post any spontaneous beauty reviews. However, when I find a product I truly like, I can make an exception and talk a little about it. As you certainly guess, this is totally one of those unusual occasions.

During our little Vienna holiday two weeks ago (more on that coming later), I accidentally stumbled upon a MAC Cosmetics store and decided to stop and have a look. I should explain that, although we do have a shop in Bucharest, it is quite a small one and unfortunately its stock is normally quite modest for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, its Austrian counterpart was reasonably interesting in terms of supplies, so I took the chance for a quick look.

Chocolate Bar palette review.

As I mentioned on my Wishlist post last month, I had been craving for the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette for some time.

 

Since it caught my eye in December, I was thinking about purchasing, but the price restrained me from getting ahold of it immediately.  

However, Christmas holiday arrived, and The Gentle One can be really sharp when it comes to presents, so together with many other beautiful things, I finally got it! I gave it a first try on Christmas Day just to discover I liked it even more than I expected, and I thought it could be nice to share a little review with you. This is my honest opinion on Too Faced Chocolate Bar, I hope you enjoy it.

Blogmas Day 14: What´s on my festive makeup bag.

Hi everyone and welcome to Blogmas Day 14!

This morning I was checking my phone when I looked at the calendar and realized it is just ten days to go until Christmas Eve! I can´t believe it is so close now. Indeed, what I can´t really believe is all my Christmas shopping is not done yet. Someone should start panicking already... But coming back to Blogmas itself, today I am posting something a reader specifically asked for: my makeup bag content. Well, if you have been reading me for some time now, you might know I am not truly into beauty massive shopping. Also, I am a bit lazy about reviews, which seems to be the most popular blogging topic out there right now. But this girl was truly nice when she asked me to make a little post about my current favourites for the holiday season, and I thought I could totally make an exception. So here you go, this my festive makeup bag content.

Crimson Peak: personal impressions.

After my first watch of Crimson Peak at the theatre last month, I wanted to write a review.

De Toro has been one of my favourite fantasy directors for years now, and when I left the cinema that day my mind was full of interesting thought I wished to share. Nonetheless, I was planning a trip to Spain by then, and I wasn´t sure about inmediately posting my impressions on a movie that people might or might not had watched at the time. I decided to wait a bit, and even found the chance to go for a second time with my sister and friends during my stay in Galicia. At this point, I had even more thought running on this, so I started putting this post together and just waited some more time to let most of my readers to find the opportunity to watch it by themselves. I´m sure most of you have done it already.

If not, I beg to stop reading here, as I´ll be exposing plot details and that would spoil the fun for you.

To the ones who can keep with it, here you go:

My personal thoughts and impressions about Crimson Peak.

Too Faced palette review

I have been looking for a nice eye shadow palette for some time.

However, as I invested uncountable spare evening haunting makeup stores, I noticed the high street barely launches any with gothic-friendly colours: you can find nice nudes, as well as plenty of pastels and neutrals, but darkest tones are always an issue, and it was quite hard to find nice products without spending a little fortune in luxury products.

Lately, this tendence has changed, though.

More and more brands have been hitting interesting packs for the last year and a half, and many shops are receiving their stock, even in their little and more modest affiliated locations.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon the Too Faced shopfront at the local Sephora store, and casually their Return of the Sexy palette caught my eye. Although I find the name REALLY awful (The Return of the Sexy? C´mon! This is not the nineties anymore...) the colous were quite pretty, dark and also very versatile from my perspective. Nevertheless, the price was a bit over my budget at that point and I decided to wait. Nonetheless, as I have been recently attending different formal events as a consequence of all the wedding preparations, I thought I was finally able to justify the expense.

So this babe came home with me last Friday.

What I did in January

Oh, Jeez... February is on its last week already (WHAT? Is it almost over?)

and I can´t believe what a soft and nice Winter we had.

You see? There´s no way to complain about the weather anymore, as it has been quite warm comparing with last year around here...

Anyway, it´s time for another monthly round-up episode.

Do you want to know what I did in January?

Dark circle beaters for pale girls

I am pale. Very pale. 

Actually, in words of my family almost traslucent, (which is not a total overstatement if you consider you can see my veins through the skin in most parts of my body, oops...) Now, you can think that´s suppose to be desirable, something of a natural fashion on any alternative lady who wears black, mostly. 

Sure: white skin, dark hair, red lips. Dita von Teese and all that jazz.

Glamourous... Theoretically.

 When you are that pale you have a double chance to suffer from dark circles, or more exactly, to suffer from very distinct ones.

 On top of that, I have been experiencing sleeping issues lately. The morning result is a tired-looking and puffy-eyed Violette, whose dark circles are observable from around the International Space Station.

Yeah, not so glamourous, right?

Xes a Devil beta tester box

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by the nice people at Xes a Devil, a little and brand new gothic-friendly company. They wanted to know if I would be interested on receiving a pack as a gift, in the hope I would write an honest review.

On the first place, this was not a normal box but a beta tester box, which basically means the company is on the previous stage of launching their online shop and they are curious about potential costumers honest reactions.

Actually, I liked the idea of testing a sample selection of their future catalogue products, so I decided to give it a go.

Sephora red carpet eyeshadow review

Following my current red shade obsession in the search of gothic-friendly items is not new stuff, is it?
But it´s not actually my fault guys, I swear! Lately it looks like, wherever I go, there is some beautiful red item craving to be picked by me.
And you can´t simply say NO when the universe tries so hard.
That would be quite unmindful!
(Not like if I were looking for excuse, ahem...)

Vampire blood lips

If you were asked what is my favourite colour, I am quite sure you would bet for black. 

Mostly because a good 95% of my wardrobe belongs to that tonality.

Nevertheless, you would be wrong. My absolute fav is red, specifically a type of red shade dancing between burgundy, ruby and crimson BUT it is so difficult to find pretty clothes on that colour to match with black... so I basically focus on red lips instead of red clothing.