Bless My Bag!: Bless My Bag's Boracay Summer Stash

I barely made it to the beach before summer's end. It's a good thing for me (or is it) that climate change has extended sunny days and clear skies here in the Philippines and I got to make that fast dash to Boracay with friends in tow. May signals the start of early monsoon rains, but not this year.

"Boracay is an island of the Philippines located approximately 315 km (200 miles) south of Manila and 2 km off the northwest tip of the island of Panay in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. In 1990, it was voted by the BMW Tropical Beach Handbook as one of the best beaches in the world." Thanks, Wikipedia. I am proud to bear the single flag of 7100+ islands, that gorgeous, steamy archipelago that is the Philippines. Ok, so let's get to my very sandy summer stash. Some of these products I already blogged about.

In this picture, in an order generally from the left:

1. Your skin's most absolute necessity under the sun is sun protection. Thanks, Mom, this product is hers, just tried it. Shiseido Ultimate Sun Protection Lotion SPF55.

2. Pixi Flawless Beauty Primer- This light base aids in giving a hint of sheen and rosy beige tint, and is also packed with vitamins.

3. Dior Color Awakening Lip Glow (which I will blog about separately soon) - a mood lip balm that brings out a blushed color on your lips and protects with SPF 10, pretty low protection but at least it's there. Support it then with your sun protection lotion with higher SPF, lips are still skin ^v^. Or you could try...

4. Lanolips Lip Ointment in Rhubarb (newly launched shade) - This was one of my prizes from the Lanolips contest giveaway which I wrote about here. SPF in this product is up a notch, SPF15.

5. Make Up For Ever Ltd. 25th Anniversary Edition Miniature Aqua Eyes pencils, set of 5 - Whew...that was long. Lovely, lovely product. These are long-wearing, waterproof eye pencils (provided you don't rub your eyes while in seawater) that give you wonderful outdoor payoff if you want to give your eyes that extra shot of color for the summer. I blogged about these here.

6. Cover Girl's Waterproof Lash Blast Mascara --This is a really, really good product. This eye shot was taken after swimming underwater in the ocean for about 30mins with mascara. This is a truly waterproof mascara. The blue that remains on my lower lashline is the remainder of the MUFE aqua eyeliner. Understandably, the color on my eye's waterline disappeared when I swam (on your waterline you are essentially applying your product to something wet, not something dry it can cling to before rendering itself waterproof) but the color stayed on pretty well. It was so bright here I could hardly open my eyes without squinting. My lashes couldn't compare though with this young lady's own.

Goodness talk about blessed, look at the length she gets on those! This little one belongs to an officemate of mine.

7. Last, but not the least, for our beach nights out I was finally able to use my slightly darker shade of foundation, Clinique Superbalanced Foundation in shade Cream Chamois after I had slightly tanned (ever so slightly :( ), that's the 1 shade darker after Fair which would most likely be my perfect shade when I'm at my most sunless.

This is a REALLY really nice foundation. It goes on silky and blends well, and the cool thing about this makeup is its considered to be Clinique's smart makeup. It works really well with the Pixi primer, I pat a bit of the pixi primer on my cheeks (the Pixi primer also somehow works well as a cream highlighter/blush for some reason) after the Clinique makeup to give myself a bit of color and glow. The superbalanced formula adjusts its benefits according to whether you are oily or dry, so this worked really great for me in the hot climate. I only used it at night when we would roam the island for places to hang out and eat because it does provide medium coverage and you don't really want to wear something that heavy at the beach during the daytime, after swimming you'd look a bit silly. I guess you could opt to pat on a drop or 2 for the day, but not much really.

By the way, the lipstick I'm wearing is Shu Uemura's gorgeous bronzy nude Rouge Unlimited #908 . I didn't include it in the summer group shot coz I already wore it down to the bottom of the applicator. It looked too loved.

That's it for my summer stash showcase. Now here's me looking at you with a coconut tree growing out of my head. Enjoy summer while it lasts wherever you are!