Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Good Day Everyone,

Happy (Chinese) New Year and welcome to the year of the horse! 

Whilst Christmas break has looong become a distant memory for family and friends back home in England, we in Singapore, are winding down for the main holiday of the year, Chinese New Year, with two public holidays making this a long weekend – woohoo!

As well as lots of horses decorating the streets in Chinatown, most buildings in Singapore have been decorated with the traditional red lanterns, red scrolls, mini trees bearing little Mandarin oranges, as well as red and yellow plants. The colour red represents good luck and is thought to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. 

The little Mandarin oranges represent gold and prosperity because the Chinese word for this fruit sounds like the word luck in the way that it is pronounced and the fruit’s golden colour is closest to gold. As a result many people will gift these oranges to one another, in pairs. Even numbered tangerines are offered because odd numbered gifts are associated with funerals. However, since the pronunciation of the number four in Chinese is similar to the word death, you won’t find people giving each other four tangerines. 

My hubby and I have been out and about taking lots of photos of the decorations to celebrate the year of the horse and share them with all of you :o) This is the one time of year when things really do wind down in Singapore, so much so that even building work on the numerous construction sites around the country come to a halt. 

We will be having a nice long relaxing weekend spending time with friends, taking walks along the beach and chilling on our balcony, taking advantage of the temporary peace and quiet. 

Read to find out what's in store for the year of the horse

How will you be celebrating? Are the streets or Chinatown area decorated with lanterns and horses where you are?

Love Sheen xxx
  

Sephora Members Birthday Gift

Good Day Everyone,

I recently celebrated my birthday (we won’t go into how old I am for fear of raising the January blues to a whole new level ;o)) and right on cue an email from Sephora popped into my inbox telling me that I could go and pick up my free Sephora members birthday gift.

 

When I became a Sephora member in February last year I received a welcome gift which was a Sephora own brand body lotion. I did use up the body lotion because it was free and I don’t like to waste but it certainly wasn’t something that I would go out and purchase myself – clearly I wasn’t impressed. So when it came to my first birthday gift, I’ll be honest, I didn’t have high expectations and wasn’t expecting much, in fact, I was expecting something similar to the welcome gift but boy was I wrong!

What I received was this cute mini Sephora own brand makeup palette and I do have to eat my words here because I am impressed with this little freebie, and not just because it’s a freebie! This palette, which fits into the palm of my hand, contains four eye shadows, two lip glosses and a blush. The palette is designed to resemble a Sephora shopping bag, complete with cute little red handles. Inside the lid there is a decent sized mirror and a clear plastic sheet that goes over the top of the products so that they don’t transfer on to the mirror. 

 

 I’m seriously impressed with the colours as they are all very wearable and colours that I would choose myself. The eye shadows are more pigmented than I was expecting and very easy to swatch, which makes me want to checkout Sephora’s own brand eye shadow palettes once my spending ban is up ;o) The shadows are very soft and buttery, not at all powdery and blend really well too. The only downside would be that it is easily possible to over blend them which makes the shadows lose some of their intensity and so I do sometimes have to go back and pack on more colour in places. The eye shadow colours are;

• Catherine NO3 - a satin mid tone silvery grey

• Must Have MO4 – a matte black – great as an eyeliner and for smoking things out

• Crème Caramel MO8 – a matte pale peachy beige – great for blending and brow bone highlighting

• Coffee Brown NO8 – a satin mid tone warm brown

The blush, called Exclusif (Exclusive), is a gorgeous peach shade with no shimmer or sparkle at all. The colour compliments my warm skin tone beautifully and I can imagine this colour suiting most skin tones as its very natural looking. The texture of the blush is very smooth and it blends really well. The only drawback to the blush is that the long shape of it makes it quite a challenge to pick up the blush colour without dipping my brush into the eye shadows and lip gloss next to it.

Blush Excusif / lip gloss Rouge Shine 05 / lip gloss Rouge Shine 30

 The two lip gloss shades are Rouge Shine 05 which is a very pale nudey pink colour and Rouge Shine 30 which is a bright raspberry pink, although on my lips, it is more of a soft pink and therefore a lot more wearable than what it appears in the pan. The lip glosses are not sticky and not particularly drying either. They feel very smooth and comfortable on my lips and the pink colour wears off pretty evenly leaving my lips with a natural looking pink stain like effect. You can see why I’m impressed.

Rouge Shine 30 is more of a soft, rather than bright, pink on my lips

Rouge Shine 30 gloss wears off leaving a stain

I can see myself getting lots of use out of this little palette and it’ll certainly make my weekends away makeup bag a lot lighter. It has all I need for my cheeks, lips and eyes. I often tend to wear black eye shadow as eyeliner and so all I need is some mascara, foundation and concealer along with a few makeup tools and I’m done.

What do you think of this little freebie? Do you find these colours wearable for you? 

Love Sheen xxx

Oh No You Don't!

Good Day Everyone,

Today, I had plans, and plans are something I'm often hesitant to make. You see living with a chronic, painful, and at times debilitating, illness has made me a little nervous of planning because how I feel depends on how Arthur (aka arthritis) feels and sometimes Arthur has a tendency to throw a spanner in the works i.e. have a bit of a hissy fit!

Today I had planned to head out into town to do some shopping. I have a few birthday presents to buy and quite fancied a mooch at the ION shopping mall on the infamous Orchard Road - a place I tend to avoid at all costs on the weekends!

Clearly Arthur had got wind of my plans because last night Arthur threw his toys out of the pram and screamed, "Oh no you don't! You're not going anywhere!"

"But why not? I've been good all day - I had fruit for breakfast, vegetables for lunch and a vegetable omelet for supper. I didn't really eat anything that you don't like me to eat AND I stayed home all day taking it easy. So why can't I go out tomorrow?" I asked.

"Because I say so and I'm the boss!" A defiant Arthur shouted back.

And indeed he is the boss of me because last night- I - did - not - sleep - at - all! I had really severe pains in my right shoulder, that no amount of massaging from my hubby would alleviate. I tossed and turned all night as the pain spread across to the other shoulder and up into my neck. I tried a hot water bottle to break all the knots down, doing neck and shoulder roll exercises at 2am but nothing worked. The pain was nausea inducing and this morning I've continued to feel incredibly nauseous. So, my plans for a little outing have been put on the back burner until Arthur calms down again.

I was hoping that an afternoon visit to my Thai masseuse, whose magic hands can often work wonders on my spine, would help ease Arthur's anger but I just found out that she's changed her shifts and now only works weekends. So I'll have to wait until Saturday :o(. I've tried several other masseuses in the past but they just don't seem to be able to read my arthritic joints the way Pauline, my regular masseuse, can and as Thai massages are quite full on (not your relaxing spa type massages) I worry about a different masseuse doing my fragile joints more harm than good.

So it's another day at home with lots of hot water bottles and hot showers to try and ease the pain and  Friends series 1 on repeat (as a distraction from the pain) along with cups of ginger tea! This is life living with a painful chronic illness that is often unpredictable.

Love Sheen xxx

Revlon Colorburst Lip Butters #2 More Colours

Good Day Everyone,

If you've read my previous post on the Revlon Colorburst Lip Butters then you’ll know that I’m not really a lipstick person, in fact I’m a lipstick scary cat if I’m honest, so you’ll never catch me with a bold bright opaque lip, nope, not ever! However, that does not mean that I don’t like a bit of colour on my lips because I do and I absolutely love the Revlon Lip Butters. They’re moisturising, balmy, buildable in colour, have a gloss like shine that’s not sticky, smell nice, and wear off evenly leaving a bit of a stain. To me, they offer the best bits of all the different types of lip products out there!

Wild Watermelon and Berry Smoothie

I already have the colours Peach Parfait, Macaroon and Candy Apple, and recently I picked up Wild Watermelon and Berry Smoothie . And no before you say it, I haven’t broken my buying no makeup for six months ban. I actually picked these up last month. In fact, I bought quite a bit of makeup last year that I’m still working my way through trialling so perhaps this six month ban won’t be as painful as what I initially thought it might be ;o).

Wild Watermelon and Berry Smoothie

Berry Smoothie is a gorgeous warm pink shade with a subtle hint of purple on my lips. It is an ideal fall/autumn winter shade for someone like me who’s not a big fan of the bold berry coloured lips that tend to make an appearance during the colder months. I wore this particular colour quite a bit when I was visiting home last month. Berry Smoothie isn’t completely matte, like Candy Apple. It’s more like Macaroon in that it has some teeny tiny shimmery flecks running through it but they’re not as obvious as the flecks in Peach Parfait which I can actually feel on my lips.

Wild Watermelon sheer then built up. Berry Smoothie built up then sheer

Wild Watermelon is a gorgeous bright pinky red. Whilst in my photos it looks more pinky red, on my lips it is definitely a bit more on the corally side. That difference in colour, between the photo swatches on my forearm and how the colour looks on my lips, will be down to the effect of my lips natural colour. Hence why the same lip colour can look very different on different people as we all have a different natural lip colour that interferes with the lip product’s colour.

Wild Watermelon is like Candy Apple in that it has no shimmer in it what so ever but at the same time I wouldn’t say these two colours are completely matte as they do leave a bit of a sheen on the lips. Wild Watermelon has a similar effect on my complexion as Candy Apple, in that as soon as I apply this colour, it immediately lifts and brightens my face. It makes my brown eyes appear browner and makes my black eyelashes look more intense, almost as if I’m wearing mascara (when I’m not). There’s just something about this shade and Candy Apple that just makes my face come alive - do you get what I mean? Some colours just naturally lift your complexion and for me that’s anything that is a red-y corally colour. When I wear Wild Watermelon I don’t need to wear much else other than a slick of eyeliner and a bit of mascara and I’m good to go.

I've talked about the packaging in my previous post but this time I did twist up the Wild Watermelon Lip Butter all the way to the top just to see exactly how much product you actually get and as you can see from the photo, it's not a lot. However, I personally still think these are good value for money given how much I love the texture, finish, and application. 

I picked up both Berry Smoothie and Wild Watermelon at the airport in Singapore when heading home last month and got both colours for just $18 SGD (approx. £9) which is cheaper than buying them in England. Whilst back home though a few other colours caught my eye, in particular Juicy Papaya but I restrained myself. Five Lip Butters is quite enough for now plus I’m determined to adhere to my six month no makeup purchasing ban… even if it’s just to prove my hubby wrong ;o)

Have you tried any of the Lip Butters? What are your favourite colours?

Love Sheen xxx

My verdict: 5/5

For UK: Website 
For Singapore you can find this product at Watson and Guardian stores

(Note: I bought these products with my own money)

How To Add Social Media Icons On To Your Blog

Good Day Everyone,

I hope you all had a great weekend? I think it's fair to say that I spent almost the entire weekend glued to my laptop. After avoiding it for as long as I could, I came to the realisation, that I could avoid it no more! That's right, I'm talking about embracing the world of social media. For someone like myself who is sooo not tech savvy, I purposefully stayed away from it. However, as I've had more and more people ask me whether I'm on Bloglovin' or Twitter or Instagram, I decided that this was the weekend to take the plunge. I'm starting of slowly with Bloglovin' and Twitter only at the moment to see how I get on before embracing anything else.

Getting myself set up on Bloglovin' and Twitter was a pretty painless affair. In fact, I wondered why I'd put it off for so long. I then decided that the next step in this, embracing scary techy things move, was to get these social media links on to my blog. Well, this is why I had put this off for so long! It sooo was not easy and I was having my fears realised. I literally spent a whole day Googling and Youtubing for tutorials / info on how to add social media icons on to my blog. On top of this, I also spent quite a while trying to figure out where I could get these icons from, preferably for free. Even when there were glimmers of hope with finding a video or web page that I thought would have the answer, lulling me in to a false sense of security, I was then faced with a language that I didn't really understand... HTML, widgets, JavaScript and so on.

As the sun had set, and my joints were screaming out to me to be stretched with some vertical movement, I had all but given up for the day when I came across THIS blog post. As I nervously read the post, watched the video embedded in it and clicked on the links enclosed, I could sense that this was what I'd been searching for. However, before allowing myself to scream a mission - mission that felt almost impossible - completed YES, I restrained myself and set to work on following the instructions and YES it worked! OMG - I could not believe it! You can see the results for yourself! I now have social media icons... on my blog... that work! And I got them for free. Plus I didn't have to edit any HTML stuff! "Hallelujah!" I could hear my brain cells singing!

The lovely Pam, from DIY Design Fanatic, had saved my sanity. In her blog post, Pam shares THIS video by Emily from Blogoholic Designs that showed me how to incorporate social media icons on to my blog in a way that I could actually understand! Pam also shared THIS link to Craftiments, where thanks to Kirstin, I could download free social media icons - how amazing is that?!

Oh the satisfaction, not to mention, the immense gratitude I felt towards people like Pam, Emily and Kirstin who made the impossible possible for people like me that just aren't at the forefront of modern technology. I cannot tell you how happy these three wonderful ladies have made me, and I also felt a little proud of myself for persevering when my brain was saying, "STOP, no more!".

Having recovered from the emotional roller coaster of this weekend, I began to think that there must be others, like me and Pam, who would benefit from Emily and Kirstin's wisdom and generosity. With that in mind, I decided to create this post in the hope that it might help someone else, just like Pam's post helped me. It may even help you :o)

And now I can sleep easy tonight, with a sense of achievement, knowing that it wasn't a wasted weekend being glue to my laptop. Oh and another great thing to come out of this, I now have three new blogs discovered that are right up my street.

Love Sheen xxx

Glistening Sheen Gets Bloglovin'

Good Day Everyone,

Do you notice anything different about me today? 
Go on, take a closer look? Do you see it? Do you? 
Shall I give you a little clue? 
Follow the arrow and look to the right but make sure you're viewing the web / desktop version and not mobile. What do you see? 
Yep that's right I gave myself a bit of a makeover yesterday. How do I look? Good, I hope :o)

Now I know I'm really late getting on this band wagon but I finally got Glistening Sheen onto Bloglovin'. For those of you like me, who tend not be at the forefront when it comes to social media, Bloglovin' is a site which allows you to keep up to date with all of the different blogs that you read, all in one place. Instead of having to go to each blog's website for the latest blog posts you can just log in to your Bloglovin' account where you will get the latest blog posts from all of the blogs you like to read.

You do this by setting up your own Bloglovin' account and adding all the blogs that you would like to follow. The great thing about Bloglovin' is that you do not have to be a blogger / have your own blog, in order to have a Bloglovin' account. So for those of you that don't blog but do like to read other people's blogs, you can now collate them all into one place, making it much more convenient and easier for you to stay up to date with your favourite bloggers.

For those of you that do have your own blog, you can set up a Bloglovin' account and claim your own blog on it. So as well as following others, people can follow your blog too, via Bloglovin'.

Setting up an account is surprisingly simple and takes just a few moments. Claiming your own blog doesn't take much longer either and if I can do it then anybody can! Just click on this link and follow the instructions :o)

So as well as setting up Glistening Sheen on to Bloglovin', I have also included a follow me on Bloglovin' icon to the right of my blog. This way you can just click on the icon and it'll open up a new page where you can follow me on Bloglovin'. Go on give it a try - you'd make my day :o)

Getting A Bloglovin' Icon On Your Blog:

Because sharing is caring I'm going to tell you how to get this icon so you can add it to your blog too :o)

1. Once you have set up your Bloglovin' account and claimed your blog, click on the white heart in the blue circle on the top right to bring up a drop down menu and click on Bloglovin' button. 
2. This takes you to a page where there is a selection of Bloglovin' icons for you to choose from. Click on get this icon! beneath the icon that you want to add to your blog. 
3. This generates a code in a box and you need to copy this code. It will say that this code is generated for - the name of your blog. So in my case it said that this code is generated for Glistening Sheen. 
4. Once you've copied the code, log in to your blogger account and click on the layout tab on the left to bring up your blog layout template.
5. Click on add a gadget.
6. From the menu that's brought up, click on the + next to HTML/JavaScript.
7. Paste the code you copied from Bloglovin' into the content box.
8. Click save at the bottom.
9. Now click save arrangement on the top right and voila you should have the Bloglovin' icon on your blog now.

 I hope this was helpful to you and made it a little easier for you, than it was for me. Do let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help / answer them although I'm no techy ;o)

Love Sheen xxx

Living With Psoriatic Nails

Good Day Everyone,

A quick disclaimer to say that I am not a medical professional and that you should not make any changes to the way you look after your psoriatic nails without discussing it with your doctor first.  This is simply my personal experience of living with psoriatic nails.

I know I'm a bit out of sorts at the moment with my Living With blog posts due to my recent absence but I really want to continue with this little series of living with my chronic health issues. Having covered life with migraines, body and scalp psoriasis, today I wanted to talk about living with psoriatic nails which I have had for over three years. I was in two minds about whether to include a photo of my nails in this post as I didn't want to gross people out but after seeking a few second opinions the consensus was that what I'm about to show you isn't that bad to look at. If you do get grossed out easily then take this paragraph as a warning that photos will be at the bottom of this post so if you'd rather not see my unattractive nails then don't go to the end of this post. You've been warned!

A few months after I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) I noticed a white-ish ripple like discolouration on the nail of one of my arthritic fingers. It wasn’t on top of the nail (as I couldn’t feel it) but more like part of the nail itself or at times looked like it was underneath the nail. Over the coming weeks the ripple got larger and the natural white tip of my nail started to expand down the nail so that the top half was now completely white with the bottom half still the natural pink colour.

I had read about people with PsA having a higher likelihood, than those suffering from psoriasis alone, of developing psoriatic nails so it didn’t come as a complete shock. However, as time progressed I noticed that another nail was becoming psoriatic but unlike the first nail, the finger of this particular nail was not arthritic. This confused me a little as in my head I had associated the arthritic finger with later going onto develop the psoriatic nail. A few weeks later the finger that was not arthritic but had the psoriatic nail did become arthritic. So I thought perhaps the psoriatic nail was some sort of ‘warning’ sign that the finger would go on to develop arthritis. But I was wrong!

In the coming months and years I quickly realised that there was no correlation between the psoriatic nails and the arthritic fingers, and nor did one act as a warning sign of the other. Currently all the nails on my left hand are psoriatic but I only have arthritis in two of the fingers. On my right hand, two nails are psoriatic but only one of those belongs to an arthritic finger.

As well as the white-ish discolouration, my psoriatic nails also developed a whole host of other issues;

• The nails all developed a lot of ridges in them.
• The  nail tips became really thick and it's like there was some sort of skin growing under parts of the nail tip.
• The nails developed these tiny little holes in them, like little pits and my main concern with this was the risk of the nail getting infected, but that has never happened.
• The corners of nails with a lot of white discolouration would lift up and grow upwards and outwards making them more likely to break or catch on things.
• Some of the nails started to lift up from the finger / nail bed itself, especially the ones where the white tip had spread further down the nail. This was most concerning as I was worried about the nail completely lifting up from my finger and just dangling from the cuticle. Worst still, I started to have nightmares about waking up to find that there was no nail on my finger. Luckily this has never happened and the nightmares stopped as time went on and I got used to life with psoriatic nails.
• The psoriatic nails were also more prone to breakages and became quite brittle and dry. As the tiny holes would grow out the jagged edge they created would catch on my clothes, sofa, hair etc. Sometimes if the hole was at the bottom of the nail but close to the side, it would cause a bit of a horizontal crack in the nail which was almost impossible to file down and I would have to wait weeks for it to grow to the tip so I could cut it down and file it.

On one of my follow up visits to my rheumatologist (doctor who treats arthritis) I asked him if there was anything that could be done to treat my psoriatic nails because as well as the physical damage and pain they sometimes caused, I was also very embarrassed and self conscious about them. It was bad enough that I had ‘sausage' fingers due to the arthritic swelling but to have unpleasant looking nails was quite tough as it's hard to hide your nails from people. I used to be worried that people would think that I had some kind of contagious disease and be revolted by them. I quickly became very good at keeping my fingers away from people’s view by folding them under crossed arms, resting my chin on one hand so that the fingers and nails bent towards me, putting my hands in between my crossed legs or hiding them with the way I held papers / books etc.

My rheumatologist told me that some of the stronger treatments for arthritis also have a beneficial effect on psoriatic nails but I wasn’t and didn’t want to go onto the stronger medication until I absolutely had to because of the side effects they cause. He told me that there weren’t really any treatments specifically for psoriatic nails and those that were used by doctors often had the potential for terrible side effects so it was always about weighing up the risk-benefit. He also mentioned that some people have had steroidal injections in their nails but he said that he could guarantee that if I had this injection in one nail, I would not have it in another as the pain is sooo bad. Well, with the pathetic pain threshold that I have, that was enough to put me off that option!!! I was told that if I ever did get a fungal or bacterial infection then I would be prescribed a treatment for that but in the meantime I should keep my nails clean, dry and short.

As I’ve lived with my psoriatic nails I have learnt little ways of protecting them as much as I can and minimising further damage;

• I keep them as dry as possible because I always worry about the risk of a fungal or bacterial infection if they’re constantly getting wet.
• I always wear gloves when washing the dishes or clothes to keep them dry.
• I cut them as short as I possibly can as the longer they are the more likely they are to break or catch on things.
• I always file away sharp edges as best I can.
• I massage natural oil (like argan, coconut, almond or olive oil) on and all around all of my nails just before I shower as a way of providing them with some sort of a protective layer from the water.
• I also massage natural oil into my nails before bed because I feel like I’m feeding them goodness and it helps calm the brittleness and dryness thus reducing breakages and cracks.

I do very gently buff the ridges on the nail surface because I just feel happier when my nails feel smooth and I keep the corners of the nail tips well rounded, again to minimise the risk of them catching on things. I don’t tend to wear nail polishes as I’m conscious about the fact that I’m applying a layer of chemicals on nails with pits and holes in them. I also don’t cut or push my cuticles back at all for fear of weakening the nail and it falling off!!!

Over time I have come to accept my sausage fingers and psoriatic nails to the point that I don’t really hide them from people anymore. If people want to judge me or give me funny looks because of my fingers and nails then that’s up to them. I may occasionally give them a hard stare back if I see someone who is very obviously staring at them :o) Sometimes people will just ask me what happened to my fingers in which case I’m happy to explain it to them. At the end of the day whilst it does make me sad that I don’t have very pretty, feminine nails and hands, I just remind myself that at least I still have nails on my fingers and fingers on my hand – that is still a lot to be grateful for and happy about :o)

Love Sheen xxx