Sanctuary Spa Convent Gardens is a top day spa in Europe. They have formulated this kit so you can experience at home, what you would experience in their spa all the way over the other side of the world. Experience glowing, luminous skin with a dewy finish that is visibly radiant. So step into our bathroom and let us show you how it’s done.

This is my housemate Alea who is my model for this blog post. It’s so much easier to take photos of other people and she is a good model. Step 1: Deep cleanse with polishing hot cloth cleanser. – The box comes with a muslin cloth for you to use on your face to open the pores. Once you have opened your pore, gently smooth the creamy cleanser over the face.Gently then wipe it off in circles with a cold cloth to close the pores.

Step 2: Exfoliate with radiant exfoliator. Exfoliate focusing on the t-zone for 30 seconds with gentle upwards circular motions while breathing in the beautiful citrus scents. Wash off.
Step 3: Treat with moisture boosting mask.

When the skin is dry smooth the mask over face and neck avoiding eye area. It says to use the entire sachet but you don’t need to. There was enough in there for both Alea and I to use it and more to spare for later. Lucky because there is lots of the other creams left to be used again too many  more times so it would be a shame not to have the mask too.

Take a rest for 10 minutes and then rinse off with a face washer. You might feel the mask burning your face a little. It’s a weird sensation. It feels a little burny and a little cold all at once. It doesn’t hurt your skin at all and does a fantastic job of hydrating it.

Step 4: Apply the eye cream. You can put this in the fridge for a few hours before hand to make it cold if you like. Gently dab it around the under and top of the eyes but not near the eyeball.Step 5: Hydrate and protect with the illuminating moisture lotion SPF15. Use a pea sized amount and gently press it into the skin in little pats. Then you are complete and your skin feels amazingly moist and hydrated.
You will love this little box of happiness as much as we did! Why not have your own facial party and invite your friends around? It’s a great girly idea.

Both Alea and I were very impressed with this kit because we both have sensitive skin. The next morning our skin was as fresh as a daisy and no break out in sight! That’s love right there!

The Sanctuary Spa Convent Gardens Brightening Facial In A Box is available from Priceline for $29.99.

This product was provided to me for my consideration.

I only get my hair cut 2-3 times a year so it’s quite a special time that I really look forward to.

I was invited by Donna, Soren and the team at Rare Earth Hair in Prahran to come and experience their salon which is right across the road from the beautiful Prahran markets in a super stylish salon that uses renowned Aveda products.

As an alternative to other salons, the Rare Earth Hair team approach hairdressing with fresh, trained eyes and by listening and caring about your needs, creating individual styles and colours designed to suit your face shape, hair texture and lifestyle. I can personally attest to that, as my stylist did a great job of getting to know my hair and cutting it to suit, not to mention the aromatherapy heaven I experienced from the Aveda products.

Using Aveda products and Aveda hair colour (which is 97% naturally derived from plant and flower essences), the team create outstanding natural results.  Rare Earth Hair and Aveda offset 100% of the energy from green renewable sources too.

Donna and the team at Rare Earth Hair have been in Prahran since 2012. Stunningly designed and renovated, the salon creates a space that you are immediately at ease in. I loved the music soundtrack that was playing too. The salon is designed to create a relaxing tranquil environment with comfortable cutting and colour bar chairs, soft lighting, calm music and your choice of beverages from their beverage menu. It really is a special experience.

My stylist was senior stylist Amy who hails from Chicago USA. We had a good chat about our world travels and the USA as I used to live near Chicago in my year on exchange during university.

Amy started out by looking at my hair. She asked me how I usually like to wear it, how much I would like cut off and if there was any particular style I would like. I wanted to get rid of the dead ends, retain as much length as I could after trimming the necessary ends and have a side fringe cut. I wear my hair up and in a bun a lot (mainly because i’m too lazy to get up early and straighten it sometimes). Amy suggested to me that I put a little bit of conditioner on the ends of my hair before I put it in a bun because that stops the hair splitting on the elastic hair tie. Great tip!

I sat back and relaxed into Amy’s capable hands, sank into the beautiful chairs and experienced the Rare Earth Hair signature head, neck and shoulder massage with Aveda aromatherapy oils. It was great to relax after a stressful day at work.

Amy did a really interesting twisting technique that I have never seen before. It’s such an effective technique and only takes the necessary splits and fuzzies out of your hair. The difference could be felt right away.

It was then time for a relaxing shampoo with aromatic Aveda oils and a head massage. Bliss! Such a relaxing and indulgent experience.

I had a beautiful coffee while Amy worked her magic with the scissors. I didn’t get any photos of that part as I didn’t want to jolt and wreck Amy’s hard work.

After the cut Amy applied the Aveda Smooth Infusion Heat protectant balm. Amazing! My hair has felt silky ever since!

Blow dry time!

The style was coming together and my fringe was the last thing to be cut to ensure it didn’t jump up and flowed with the rest of my style.
All done and looking great! Amy names all of her styles and calls this one “The Italian Job” because she learnt the special techniques for cutting during her time in Italy. If you love this style let her know you want “The Italian Job” too!

This absolutely stunning style stayed in my hair for 3 days and the next day at work I received so many compliments on it. Even from people who I see around but don’t work closely with! A compliment from a stranger (try 3 compliments from strangers) is a big achievement and a true testament to a fantastic cut. So happy! Tell me you love it too!

Here’s the salon in action with Amy and Candice at the welcome desk. I was given a new client Aveda welcome bag too with some little samples to try at home. I didn’t get a photo of the beautiful Donna, but she was such an elegant host and I’m very thankful that I was invited to experience what Rare Earth Hair has to offer.

So if you live in Melbourne I highly recommend visiting Donna, Amy and the team at Rare Earth Hair in Prahran who are on a journey to become the iconic Aveda Salon of Melbourne and Australia. You’ll feel so pampered and walk away with head turning hair form this top Melbourne hair salon.

Rare Earth Hair, 184 Commercial Rd, Prahran Melbourne Victoria 3181 (03) 9510 7447. Tram stop 30 on the 72 line tram.

Oh well, never fear because I have learnt the power of a good eyebrow pencil to fix those very important parts of my face. Eyebrows make such a difference to the face so it’s so important to have them shaped and coloured correctly.

When I was in Italy last year I visited Kiko Milan and purchased this fantastic brow pencil for just a few Euro. One of the best purchases I made over there I think.

It’s a thin pencil and comes with it’s own tiny pencil sharpener and an eyebrow brush. Such great value!

The colour (02 Brown) is the perfect colour for my face. It’s not too dark and not too light and blends naturally.

So how do I fix my eyebrows every day? Like this:

Before colouring them in

This is how I colour. Create a straight diagonal line under the brow and fill in the gap at the top. I then use an eyebrow brush and brush the front up to sweep the colour through then down the end of the brow to smooth that out

After colouring with Kiko Pencil. A naturally perfect appearance!

So there you have it. I love and highly recommend the Kiko Milan 02 Precision Eyebrow pencil! If you’re in Europe (Italy, Germany, Spain, UK just to name a few countries where Kiko is) and see a Kiko Milan store, spend your spare change (5.90 pounds) on this little beauty.

I have pretty frizzy curly hair so I always need to add some serum to my hair after it’s dry to moisturise it and keep it together smoothly. Goodbye fly aways, hello silky smooth tresses. I bought this Toni & Guy Classic Shine Gloss Serum the other day and gave it a try.

It’s a small bottle that’s almost travel size 30ml. It has a little pump to squirt the serum out but I don’t think it’s a very good quality squirter. It’s a little difficult to use.

For my hair I use 3 pumps and then rub my hands together.

Make sure you put serum only at the ends of the hair and not near the roots of you’ll be a greasy oil head in no time. Oils don’t get to the ends of the hair which is why they split and get frizzy.

I rub my hands on to the ends of my hair and rake my fingers through to make sure I get the serum off of my hands and on to where it is needed most. This serum is not greasy and smells like all the other Toni & Guy products (sort of like sea water I think).

I then style my hair and the serum makes my hair shiny and silky. By the second day my hair is perfect after the oils have absorbed into my crazy hair. Using a straightener on it works well.

I must say I do prefer to use Lee Stafford Argan Oil over this Toni & Guy Shine and Gloss Serum.

This product is great for people who have slightly dry hair but not super thick and frizzy like mine in my opinion.

You can buy Toni & Guy products from most Coles stores.

1. Black semi high heel ankle boots
2. Army green anorak jacket

I ended up buying some amazing leather Hush Puppy boots: look up Gala. NICE

And then the search for a nice and cheap military anorak jacket came.

I’m really good at scouring shops, taking in what each one has and then comparing the style benefits over the price. It’s probably one of my strong points in life. A real value hunter!

Target – $79 (I got a 30% off sale too. YEAH)

I visited Target today and saw they had 30% off jackets. My true love poked out at me… but they were all size 14! TOO BIG she cried! As I walked around the store I found a 12 hiding in another aisle as well as some nice maroon coloured ones. 12 is still too big but since it’s winter and I’ll have layers underneath, this little puppy fits well and oh gees is it warm and cozy! It has pockets too!

It has a fake fur trimmed hood… i’m normally totally against fur trimming but this looks sort of cute I think. It’s a nice looking fake fur too I must say.

It has a big long zip as well as press studs so you have options to do it up how you like.

It also has toggles on the back which are sort of strange since they wack on the back of my knees a little. But looks how long and cozy this is! It’s puffy. mmmm comfort

In the middle it has a toggle drawstring that you can pull to show off your wa-aaaaaiiiisstttt (say that in a Honey Boo-Boo accent if you like, I did).

So what do the other stores have? Much pricier options that I really don’t see the need to pay extra for.

Portmans $169.95

It’s a little wishy washy in colour but its a fairly nice style. I still think $169.95 is too expensive for it. Go to Target lady!

Marcs $279

Now, I adore Marcs. But for $279, you could buy one of their beautiful pea coats which are amazing quality and look so sweet and timeless. I find this anorak to be a mushy colour and the fur in the hood just isn’t nice looking or feeling.

Seed – $140

Yes it’s nice. It has the toggles and the fur and the pull in waist. If I was going to spend a lot, I would probably buy this one. I don’t remember it feeling too cozy warm though but that could just be my memory. The fur on this one is detachable.

Zara – $479

I can’t find a photo of the Zara jacket that’s available right now.

UMMMMM what kind of price is that Zara? Are you knitting gold into the sleeves? The jacket is a dual jacket where the inside can be taken out and then the outer layer put over the top. It was very warm and cozy looking… but $479? No sister

So all in all I think the Target one is the best value so good luck getting your hands on one in your local Target because they are running out.

What have you been wanting to get your hands on this season?

Here’s where a shellac manicure comes in and answers your prayers.

I visited Ella Bache on Chapel Street in Prahran to indulge myself in a shellac manicure to keep my nails looking great before I went back to Adelaide to see my family for Easter. If my nails got chipped my mother would annoy me about it so I figured this would be a great work around and she would probably even comment on how beautiful they looked. I tried Orly Gel FX Nail treatment a while ago which is much the same as this.

So what is Shellac?

Ella Bache uses the CND brand of Shellac. I’m not 100% sure what the name of the colour is that I chose but looking at the CND site I’m going to take a guess that it is “Gotcha” which is a candy pink colour and looks like the colour Barbie would pick if she had to match her Barbie shoes.

My manicurist was lovely and we had a nice chat about life and what we were planning to eat for dinner as you do. She did a great job and was a real perfectionist. She pushed back my cuticles and used a little rounded tool to clean the base of my nail then started to do the coats. Shellac, UV light, nail polish, UV light and so on for about 5 coats. At the end she put some Ella Bache hand cream on my hands and I must say that was some nice cream! I’m pretty fussy with hand cream and it is by far one of the nicest I have tried keeping in mind I only tried it once. It absorbed nicely I thought.

So I left the salon with my beautiful pink shiny nails and had to take photos and tell my friends about how beautiful they were.

Ella Bache shellac manicure at Prahran is $45.

*This is NOT a sponsored post.

When I saw this photo I immediately realised how Nicki Minaj manages to look so strange. I mean, her face and bone structure makes her look robotic sometimes. It’s all a trick of make up! Since this is such a close up shot, you can see all her make up secrets, from a distance they blend to look good…. well…. Nicki type of good.

So how is Nicki achieving such a strange look?

• Nose – A stroke of lighter coloured make up or highlighter down the middle of the nose makes your nose look smaller and catches the light in the right places. In Nicki’s case, the light colour extends up her nose and across her eyebrows so they stand out
• Eyebrows – heavily pencilled in and extended lightly in the middle surrounded by the light highlighter
• Lips – pink pink pink, with a little darker liner around the edge and a tiny bit of white highlighter around the cupids bow.
• Eye balls – fake lenses to give blue eyes
• Eyes – Thick false lashes, crazy solid green eye paint and black liquid eyeliner. Her water line has white liner to make her eyes appear more open.
• Cheeks – Because Nicki is dark skinned, this trick works well. Her cheeks aren’t given a general pink flush but instead have lighter make up across the apples to match the stripe down her nose. This makes her cheekbones stand out and look fairly natural.
• Hair – Always a kooky wig

Here she is from a photographers distance where you can see how all of these make up tricks blend together to look seamless from a distance. Great illusions!

Now you know the celebrity beauty secrets behind Nicki’s red carpet make up.

I attended the media launch of Salon Melbourne at the award winning Joey Scandizzo salon on Toorak Rd in South Yarra.

Let me tell you about the amazing beauty and hair industry professionals that you can learn from at Salon Melbourne if you are part of the industry.

- Joey Scandizzo is Hair Expos hairdresser of the year and has won a swarm of awards. If you don’t know who Joey Scandizzo is then I recommend that you Google him and then feel the shame that you didn’t know who he was previously. His salon is beautiful too. Joey created a beautiful rocker hair style as we wandered around his salon to see the other stylists.

- Frank Apostolopoulos of Biba created some edgy and extremely high fashion looks. The models looked slightly freaky but the artistry in his craft is certainly out of this world. Not your every day looks but if you were a musician or someone wanting to stand out – Frank would be your go to man.

- Caterina DiBiase of Heading Out Hair & Beauty demonstrated a beautiful hair style that would be perfect for the racecourse. Caterina is a style icon and created a style with long hair and I can assure you was absolutely stunning but I didn’t get a photo. She will give you a head start to glamour at Salon Melbourne.

- Lorna Evans of Lorna Evans Education showed us a dazzling hair style with long hair. There are not enough hairdressers out there who know how to manage long hair and create upstyles for formals and weddings in my opinion. Weddings are a huge market with $4.7 million spent in this industry a year. Hairdressers that can nail upstyles and long hair styles really can really cement their niche in this market. I have had some terrible upstyles and bridesmaids hair styles in the past so I really urge hairdressers that visit Salon Melbourne this year and take note of what Lorna has to teach you.

- Victoria Fox of Miss Fox day spa and her amazing manicurist were on hand to give us manicures with the latest trends in nails. One of the latest trends is a gradient effect and of course, being a girl, gradients of sparkling glitter really make for pretty nails. The Miss Fox day spa in Melbourne is one of the cities best locations for a fantastic primping session.

- Dr. Jean Laing founder of LaGaia Naturaceuticals took us through the brand’s signature spa treatments. LaGaia is one of the leading professional spa skin care products. They are pH balanced and make your skin feel like the day you were born. If you are the owner of a spa pay a visit to the beautiful Dr Jean and her team at Salon Melbourne.

- Jazz Pampling is a Sydney-based brow expert. I really enjoyed chatting with her and was thrilled that she took a look at my kooky brows to offer her advice. I have wonky eye brows, partly because of plucking too fine when I was 16 (should have listened to my mum and left them alone) and also partly due to just having a really weird missing section at the top of my brow that I’ve had since I was born. I colour gaps in my Italian bushy brows every morning and Jazz graciously took the time to colour them in for me and recommend a new shape for me to follow. Each face is different so she has some great tips for make up artists out there on creating the best arches and shapes. Follow the 2/ 3 rule for arches and don’t over arch eyebrows or you will emphases drooping skin in old age. Jazz was so friendly and informative so I really recommend that you see her demos at Salon Melbourne.

So if you aren’t from Melbourne hurry up and book your ticket to come!

Salon Melbourne is a trade only event running 14 & 15 April at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition centre. Entry is free to everyone in the beauty and hair industry just register at www.salonmelbourne.com.au

Owner and absolutely gorgeous hairdresser, Sofia Basile, opened this salon in gritty Degraves street in the heart of Melbournes’ famed laneways 20 years ago (when she was just 22!).  Recently Sofia teamed up with uber talented interior designer Kate Challis to give the salon a modern facelift to match the rest of Degraves funky shops and to really showcase the talent waiting to transform your hair! Sofia wanted the salons new look to reflect Degraves streets grunginess, style, culture and edginess and to shine out in this iconic lane way.

I must admit I have walked through and sat in Degraves street many many times and had never noticed the salon before, but with it’s bright new facelift, the stunning salon that it is will be noticed by all. As it should be!

Unico Hair Salon pumping in the midst of funky eateries

Sofia and her award winning team at the new look launch party.

Unico’s own range of hair care that is free of nasties, designed by Sofia Basile herself and made right here in Melbourne. Talk about sustainable hair care! Derived from pure plant ingredients and enriched with vitamins and essential oils, Unico Formulations were designed by Sofia after she suffered dermatitis from using harsh hair chemicals.

Everyone was celebrating Unico’s new look and amazing lighting design. You can’t see from this photo but that giant light has beautiful green and silver patterns inside it. Volker Haug designed and created the lighting displays and there he is in the photo.

Sofia and Kate give their speaches and explained the journey of Unico. Super inspirational.

Loving this French wallpaper that echos Melbournes heritage and the edginess of Degraves street where this Unico salon is.

As you have your hair washed in the basins you can be dazzled by another one of Volkers designs.

So next time you visit Degraves street for a bite to eat and some hipster sightings, make sure you make an appointment with the fabulously beautiful team at Unico. If you have been wanting a hair transformation then you have found the right place. The team have won many awards over the years and will take excellent care of you!

Learn more about Unico Salons (also in Fitzroy and Little Collins St) here. Find out more about the Eco-Friendly Unico Formulations hair care range here.

At the time I had terrible skin that was breakout central and the little sample, although I thought it smelt bad and had a funny texture, did a pretty good job of controlling my skin.

If you are a regular reading of my little blog you’ll know that I discovered that I have dry skin so the hydration (or the oil) in this Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream worked well.

It’s in a classy tube with a cute red top. It does have a funny smell sort of like an old lady and it’s more of a gel than a cream in my opinion. The texture is sort of like Vaseline (it contains 56.8% petrolatum) and the colour of quince pate. There is something comforting about using such a timeless product that generations of ladies have used since 1930. You can buy a version that doesn’t have a scent (I think it still does have a scent no matter what they say), but I prefer this one.

It’s a cult miracle product because it can be used for so many things. I used to put it on my face as a night cream so it settled my skin. I also use it on dry skin on my feet and elbows. You can also use it as cuticle cream, lip balm, tame those crazy eyebrows, soothe windburn, minor burns and cuts or even highlight your cheek bones with it. It’s a legendary product.

It isn’t expensive in my opinion and the Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Skin Protectant retails on Strawberry Net for about $20.

Have you tried this product before and loved it’s moisturising and protective qualities?