Pony’s Makeup Book: 朴惠敃韩系“抢眼妆“

Finally something beauty related. I need to really congratulate myself for finally being bothered to talk about anything beauty related (review wise) for a looong time.

I’ll probably start with a bit of random background and bits and pieces about myself as well as Pony to explain this post in better detail.

I used to (emphasis on the past tense) spend a lot of money on skincare and cosmetics when I was in my late teens (late meaning 19, 20 – even though 20 isn’t technically “teen” anymore) because I was always attracted to gifts with purchases and stuff like that. I hoard cosmetics to the point I have a supply good enough to last me several years – in fact, I still do it now. Back then, I really had quite an in depth knowledge about makeup, skin care and skin care routines because it was something that I really was interested in. I mean, back then I used to shape my brows and watch beauty tutorials – I knew a lot.

After a period of time, I was told by several people (whom I don’t need to mention, really) that I didn’t need to apply makeup. My closest friend whom I attended uni with for the entire 5 years never could tell when I actually had makeup on versus times when I didn’t wear it – SO… I then pretty much got lazy. I really did forget about makeup techniques. I haven’t shaped my brows for about 3 years – not that it’s a big deal to me, because I like the way they look, but that’s the extent of how lazy I am – and I realised how lazy I was until I came across this book.

I used to browse Soompi a lot for makeup inspiration, and one of my favourite threads contained makeup tutorials posted by none other than my favourite ulzzang, PONY (Park Hye Min). I honestly think she’s gorgeous, and her makeup skills are great. Her skin looks flawless and well, yeah, she’s just so pretty. I also thought that she was super generous for posting up free makeup tutorials online to share with fans or girls who just want to look pretty – I REALLY LOVE PONY. SHE IS FLAWLESS.

Ulzzang, or uhljjang is a Korean term given to someone who is idolised because of their looks – it literally means “best face” and ulzzangs are typically popular through their personal blogs, modelling photos they post up for personal or commercial purposes, and are even popular through winning ulzzang competitions online or on tv shows. Pony is one of them, and for good reason.

Yes, ulzzangs do photoshop their photos, they wear wigs, they wear makeup and they wear circle lens. Maybe the style’s not for everyone, but I am certainly drawn to it.

Pony’s makeup book isn’t really about makeup for ulzzangs – it’s more like an in-depth guide to the basics of makeup, makeup application, and then offering you a variety of tutorials as a base for you to start with so you can venture out on your own. There are limitless combinations if you follow her techniques (she has different eyeline drawing methods, which you could mix with different lips, cheek colour application and most importantly, eye makeup) so the so-called tutorials aren’t really looks like you need to follow solidly. It’s more like “here’s what you need to know – now go have fun.”

I found out about the release of ths book from WaiWai magazine – I logged onto Kinokuniya and found that they were still waiting for the shipment to arrive. Literally just a few days ago I checked and realised they had stock. I HAD TO GET IT.

It’s fairly popular as I bought one out of two remaining books. The retail price is $25.88AUD and it’s available at Kinokuniya bookstores. You may also order the book from Yesasia for around $23USD but shipping will cost extra and you will have to wait for it to arrive.

The book has been translated into Chinese, so for those who were worrying about not understanding Korean, problem solved. Of course, if you can’t read Chinese, you could probably still understand everything from her easy to follow diagrams, but you won’t be able to read her extra tips that are on the side.

As you can see from the cover (which I was too excited to bother reading, I just grabbed the book and headed straight for the counter), there are looks for all year round – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter looks, and there’s a 90 minute DVD which is included, so it’s actually fairly good value for money. Everything is in high quality gloss paper and in full colour. I also like the covers because it’s well constructed and have flaps you can use as bookmarks to mark your favourite pages.

The book starts off with the basics of how to highlight and contour different face shapes. I’m really amazed at Pony’s care and detail put into this book because she actually talks about all sorts of different face shapes (about 4 from memory), and not just her own face shape, which is well, obviously, really quite nice ;_; Haha. She tells you exactly where to apply highlighter and even blush, as well as how to shape your brows and what they should look like.

She also goes through the basics of priming, concealing and just basic face stuff to get your look flawless. She even teaches you how to conceal freckles.

There is an entire section about eye makeup, which includes eyelining (she goes through different types of liners – pencil, liquid, cream/ gel), eyebrows (how to trim your brows), mascara (different eyelash types, what mascara brush to use, and product recommendations), false lash application.

As you can see, the product recommendations are really handy for people who are new to makeup. If you find makeup difficult and the look out for good products a pain, you can just copy the list of products and buy those. There are prices included (albeit in Taiwan NT, which doesn’t really help me) so you can decide whether or not you want to buy the products or not. One thing to note though is that Pony does tend to use a lot of professional, high end products which means for those who aren’t so adept at makeup, may be looking at quite an expensive shopping list of makeup items to buy.

Not only that, she has this list for like every look. EVERYTHING. So much dedication. But if you trusted each tutorial… that’s… a lot to buy.

Personally, I don’t look at the lists because I’m more interested in the techniques rather than the products used – well, it’s probably helpful for some people.

This is one of my favourite photos of Pony in the book and it features her with smoky eye makeup which I think is really pretty.

The tutorials are fairly straightforward to understand (it’s like, a picture of her eye, with a bubble marking where you should apply stuff) so it’s fairly straight forward. The tutorials only teach you eye makeup, however. They do not tell you how to do the cheeks or lips.

There are sections that teach you how to apply blush and how to do lip makeup, so you just have to figure it out yourself and follow the corresponding tutorial you think fits the eye tutorial best. This is what I mean by mix and match. Having said that, I didn’t take any photos of her looks because they’re actually similar to her previous tutorials online – only it’s just about the eye only. It doesn’t talk about prepping the face whatsoever – you need to get it from the basics at the beginning of the book.

• There are also other things that the book includes, which may be useful:
• Makeup for single lids (monolids) – there are about 3-4 looks – so single lidded girls are not excluded!
• Makeup that can be done in 10minutes ie. natural/ work makeup for those with a busy lifestyle
• Makeup for those who wear glasses
• How to clean your makeup utensils
• How to cleanse your face/ remove makeup properly

Overall, I think that the book has a good variety of looks from natural, to sweet, to sexy for a good range of events. It also covers girls of all face shapes and eye types, which is good. Like the book aims to do so, it does cover you for the entire year regardless of whatever occasion you need to attend, so it’s a handy book to have around in times when you’re really stuck on what to do. The best part is that you just need to like the photo of her, decide you like the look and then follow the tutorial. Fairly straight forward – just make sure you have the colours for it.

I was under the misconception that there were like 70 tutorials because that’s what I read somewhere – but that’s not the case. If you include every single thing she talks about, maybe there are 70 things, but in terms of just eye makeup tutorials, there are about 30-40 of them, which isn’t bad.

The DVD includes step by step instructions of 12 selected looks. They are just video snippets of Pony talking, and applying makeup with really dodgy Chinese subtitles which were lazily pasted on. Not everything she says is translated, and to be honest, it’s boring. You don’t get to see her full face… you just… see… her… eye >_>

The DVD (more specifically, DVD-ROM) was a nice touch, but I rather stick with the book.

As a fan of Pony, this book is something I think I spent my money well on. However, if you were after unique tutorials, I think some of her tutorials she posted online were actually way more innovative than the ones she has in the book, which tended to be a bit more conservative. She did however, repeat her Golden Cat tutorial in this book. Too bad she didn’t include Russian Blue or Juliette – those were some of my favourites. But then again, they reside in my computer in a folder dedicated to Pony tutorials

Hope this has provided some insight for this makeup book. I’m most likely going to blog again later tonight because I have a crapload of stuff to upload, but if you don’t see the post, maybe next week. Guh. I have a lot to write about.

Let the bull***t begin.

WARNING: IMAGE HEAVY POST.

Not that it matters, because you’re here now already and it’s loaded. BWAHAHAHAHA.

Okay, I’m not a happy chap these days and it’s due to a variety of reasons that are work-related and shit that is happening on a personal level. Not going into detail about any of that because that’s not what this blog is for. Every time it seems that I start to even merely begin complaining about something that is vaguely pinpointed, people are going to latch onto me and start bombarding me with conversations like “BUT U NO PERFECTIONIST URSELF” so I’m just going to keep quiet about things, eventually bundle it all up inside and probably implode from rage maybe 20 years down the track.

I kid about imploding, by the way. It’s not like I have an X-gun that they have in Gantz to shoot myself with… and make myself implode.

Gantz ball. As seen in Gantz: Perfect Answer.

I KID. I WOULD FREAK OUT IF I ENDED UP WITH A GANTZ BALL IN MY BED FIRST THING WAKING UP IN THE MORNING.

Speaking of which, I completely missed the Japanese Film Festival, so I watched Final Answer the bootleg way. Let’s just say… the anime is way better. WAY BETTER.

OK, all sarcasm aside, I really should have updated earlier. I just never had the mood to blog, and I seriously got busy. Training look longer than expected. I started designing a magazine ad for C. Just… stuff.

Sculptures by the Sea

The last time I went to Sculptures by the Sea was in 2009. Back then the Lovigans were doing a random flashmob at the Opera House (we walked all the way there and stood on a full bus there and back…) and then we very randomly last minuted-ly decided to head to Bondi Beach. I know. Random. We walked from literally the north side of the beach to the south side of the beach (in other words, one end to the other), up the hill to the top of Bondi Beach, and all the way to Tamarama Beach. What’s even better was we walked the entire length back.

Our legs were dead that day.

It was really fun that day and I somehow managed to miss the 2010 Sculptures because I was working on my finals. This time we set a date and I was about to miss it again because of work… but I got a last minute shift change, so I half arsed-ly made it. After about an hour on freaking public transport and a full bus all the way to Bondi Beach (as it was the second last day the event was going to be on for – plus lovely weather), I made it.

There were a crapload of dots on the beach (aka, people) but I didn’t bother taking a photo, even though that was my first instinct upon whipping out my camera. Then I was like “meh, cbb.”

Ramille bought a tent and set it up on the beach – it was pure win! Though small, it was kinda enough for all of us (some people like me are vampirish in nature and don’t like vitamin D with free tans – others embraced the sun), and it was easy to spot from the top of the hill, which was where I kind of “descended” from when I alighted my bus. The tent worked out great, until it got really really windy and then we realised we were supposed to put sand on the side pockets around the outskirts of the tent to hold it down.

I mean, DUH, but we didn’t know, okay??? We ended up putting the sand in like 10 minutes before we left lololol. The things we randomly do to amuse ourselves. Like this…

I know, I’m so lame. But I couldn’t help it – the sand was slightly damp and it was perfect for writing something… and that “something” happened to be one of the most abused internet lingo acronyms invented. I just could not resist.

Please excuse and ignore the embarassing watermark noob placement. I think I must have clicked something on Photoshop before saving – too lazy to go back. Facepalm worthy indeed.

There was sand on the floor of the tent and it looked like it spelled the word CHILL so we quickly took a photo of it. Does it look like CHILL? It did upon first glance… not sure now, lol, but I still see it… sorta. It now looks more like CHILLI… so err… yeah…

So basically we spent like… 1 hour or 2 at the tent, eating pizza courtesy of Leah and making crude comments about other commuters at the beach, namely unnecessarily revealing outfits – like G-strings… wth. G-string. On a beach. WHAT.

Credits to Leah 

Well obviously I couldn’t take a photo of myself, and I haven’t seen many other photos posted, but this is a photo fellow Lovigan L took with her film camera That’s me, with chubby legs and holding up a plastic cup shaped like a wine glass looking like a boss. I kid once again. But the cup was just too lolsome for words. And I finally got to wear my straw hat which I bought ages ago. Namely end of 2010, when we were just having too much fun. YUS. STRAW HAT.

As you can see, my legs are actually in the sun – and they were in the sun for a significant amount of time (don’t forget I did climb up to the top as well) – did I tan that day? Well, surprisingly, I didn’t. I didn’t even get darker even a quarter of a shade, which really made me surprised. If anything, I’d like to owe it all to Shiseido Anessa, probably one of the best sunscreens around. SPF 50, yo! I mean, it worked for me, at the very least.

As soon as everyone was gathered at our orange headquarters, we made our ascent towards the top.

This photo is pretty sad because it looks like a really empty and quiet day at Bondi Beach, but it wasn’t. There were so many people it made you want to headdesk lining up to take a photo at the photoframe sculpture. Yes, it was like that. But anyway, it’s because this is the south end of the beach, and it was getting cloudly so it naturally wasn’t inhabited as much. The south side is forever always slightly gloomier and colder – well, in my opinion at least.

There were a lot of sculptures along the way, and I took a lot of random shots of whatever I thought was cool and didn’t have too many people photobombing the shot – but I must be honest, it wasn’t that great. In 2009 I climbed up Bondi Beach with a Sony Cybershot and I took better photos than I did this year, probably because I liked the sculptures more than I did this time around. I must also say, I know my photography has declined rapidly in terms of quality – not that there was much quality to begin with. But I really sincerely think that I used to put more thought into what I took, instead of now – I know I just rely on my camera to make up for the other 80% of lazy when I take a shot. But let’s not get into this, because the photos I take now aren’t meant to be artsy or creative like I tried back in 09. They’re just to document random bits.

Anyway,  because I didn’t really want to have a post with a zillion photos, I decided to just cut the crap short because I didn’t really like most of my photos to begin with.

This seemed to be most people’s favourite along the way. It’s a reindeer made of mesh. Looks a lot prettier in real life.

OH HAY, A HALF NOT SO BAD CANDID SHOT OF THE BACKVIEW OF TWO RANDOM DUDES IN FRONT OF ME.

Maybe I should stick to candid shots, which is what I seem to do the best >_>

Well, this is Tamarama Beach. By the time we got there the sun was starting to set and it was getting cold pretty fast. It was about 6:30pm or so by the time we got there and half of us couldn’t be bothered going down to the sand and just stood at this platform waiting for the rest to come back. We were hungry, kinda tired (I’m probably not as tired as people think, because I’m already used to standing and walking for long hours – THE PAIN IS NOTHING – jk, I have stronger legs than I did 2 years ago), and we were hungry. We were all like zombies demanding dinner.

Mostly because, well, apart from pizza and my random cookies (as I accurately said “made of chocolate… Arnott’s biscuits… and maybe an egg”), we actually all skipped lunch. So we essentially hiked Bondi Beach to Tamarama on an 85% empty tank stomach.

We “took it to the streets” on the way back – no need to go back along the winding, rocky steps – we were just freaking hungry.

We walked along the entire stretch of the main restaurant strip (yes, I know, a lot of walking, sounds painful), found nothing that wasn’t packed or could fit like the 8 of us. So we walked all the way back, LOL.

Leah and Lucy somehow managed to find a Tapas bar named Vue that was upstairs… after a peek, it seemed like there was room for us \o/

The interior is pretty homey. It was my first time at a Spanish restaurant (yeah I know, I am really slow and I miss out on a lot of awesome things), but I didn’t get tapas, because I’m a party pooper.

Actually, it’s because I really really like avocado.

Grilled chicken salad – $15ish.

This photo was taken with the aid of Lamah’s self made studio umbrella – he turned on the light on his iPhone and then covered it with a napkin LOL. I didn’t touch the colours or anything for this photo – it’s 100% raw aside from sizing and the watermark. I must say… the studio umbrella is pretty amazing. The photo turned out surprisingly well.

What to say about this salad? Well, the “grilled chicken” was actually what I described (out loud) as “salted chicken slices” because that’s exactly what it was. I mean, it wasn’t grilled chicken at all >_> Side-eyeing pretty damn hard. The salad overall was flavoured a teeny wee bit to the salty side, but it was flavoursome and I really welcomed the pine nuts (nomnomnom) and the refreshing addition of pears. I haven’t eaten pears in ages so they were awesome. The only thing I didn’t like was… NO CHEESE??? Lately I’ve had a liking towards cheese in salads… too bad there was none in this.

After dinner we then walked back along the strip to Mövenpick where we shot videos in HD and ate icecream. Yummy.

And then we all went home.

It was a seriously fun day – lots of walking and it felt good. Stress-free, healthy, I approve.

Retailers’ Night

Another random thing that kept me busy. Our store won an award so we went to collect it. The location was Cohibar at Darling Harbour. We went after work… there was a dress code, but we decided that we fit the description accurately since our uniform was like, black. It was still sunny-ish though it was drizzling a bit. We were hungry too.

For those who didn’t know, to refresh y’all newcomers or not so newcomers, I work at a designer/ fine jewellery store. We sell branded stuff and we sell finer things like diamonds, precious stones, pearls – stuff like that. I enjoy my job greatly, provided things go smoothly during the day. I think that’s probably all I need to say, lol. I was just thinking about it recently – I was thinking of taking a course in my spare time (if it’s available) to study more about diamonds and precious gems. They’re quite fascinating. I obviously know a lot more than the average person, but I know there’s still a lot to learn. It’s not like “oh you just need to know this and this and you’ll be fine” – no, it’s not fine. There’s a lot to learn. Always. I can never understand why people stop learning because they think they know everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody can ever stop learning.

Like a bo-

When we reached the inside we all pretty much wanted to hide in a corner because people actually DID bother dressing up LOL. Well, the interior of the bar wasn’t bad. It had its own feel and it was a good size. My boss actually started poking the waiter for clues as to when there would be food available… and we had to wait like another 20 minutes OTL.

By the time they DID serve food though, all of our eyes were stuck on the platters – target LOCKED.

After finally getting food in my stomach (the food wasn’t bad, by the way, it was pretty good) I diverted my attention back to my glass of champagne.

This is the best white wine (if I’m allowed to call it that) that I’ve ever had, hands down. Easy to drink, smooth, great taste. Too bad I have no idea what champagne this is. It was yummy. Only had one glass though, the rest was apple juice and history. No, really, I don’t endorse drinking on a half empty stomach.

This was the view of Darling Harbour from our seat at around 8pm. The view along Darling Harbour really is truly beautiful. There was a time when I started thinking that Darling Harbour was boring, outdated, unsophisticated – but it’s starting to grow back on me again. It really is a great view. Sometimes it’s not so bad when it’s drizzling as well.

My camera battery died somewhere here, because I didn’t charge my battery after going to Sculptures LOL. We then went downstairs to Blue Fish and had dinner. Most of the spaghetti I was supposed to eat ended up on my dress >_> But well, it was a good night out.

Congratulations for making it here!

I know I usually rattle on a lot, but this post is a whopping 2500 words or so. Usually I average at around 1000 words on a lazy day so this time I really did put in a lot of effort to make this post look like I actually cared

I haven’t forgotten about what I was supposed to blog about this time – which was supposed to be something beauty related. I have to postpone it because I’m still trialling the products. I’m not sure… if they work, until I finish using them all. But let’s say I’m pretty disappointed.

So yeah, there’s that, and I am trying to lose weight. Failing miserably. I think I’m just going to give up. Not that I’m fat to begin with anyway. I rather chillax than worry over something that just isn’t happening.

Also, a trip has been booked in for January 2012 – HELL YES I AM FINALLY GOING SOMEWHERE. Though it’s just Melbourne. Again. I guess it means I can just reuse my Melbourne category, but still Ticket, accommodation all booked. I’m really looking forward to it. I know it’ll be awesome. I just miss the feeling of sitting on a plane and I get to use my travel bag too. I am fickle, just like that.

Anyway, as you can probably gather, I just came home from a very long day at work. I started this post with editing at around 10pm… it’s now 12:49am and I’ve been yawning since I woke up the morning for work. I am really tired. Hope you all enjoyed – and if not… splashes of colours and random text?

Will be back again soon. xx