CNY Spirit Continues...

From the 23rd of this month 15 days of Chinese New Year celebration continues on...

Hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday spirit spending time with family and friends!

An extremely talented friend of mine Claude is a Perth based graphic/website designer, he was nice enough to hand draw a CNY themed picture especially for Shanghainese Dumpling, it is so cute I want to make it into a header! :).

I must proudly say that Claude designed the Shanghainese Dumpling blog logo too, so if you're interested to get one done to personalise your blog or design a new website please feel free to contact him.

Email: wai_ting@hotmail.com

Facebook Page: Onion-蔥仔 

P.S Don't forget to mention Shanghainese Dumpling, he'll give you a friends rate.

Chanel Makeup Event - Mystic Eyes Les 4 Ombres

I got invited to Chanel's makeup event last month at David Jones, to try their new products and also just as a coincidence I have recently got 2 bright lip sticks from them (Posted HERE) I wanted the makeup artist to encoporate the bright lip look with a designer eye makeup both for day and night.

We've tried quite a number of stuff ranging from skincare, base, foundations in both liquid and powder form, contouring, eye shadows, brighteners and almost all of their lip products the makeup artist even tought me some brush techniques, it was definatly good fun.

After trying on numorouse brown, grey and taupe toned (those are my prefered colours) eye makeup we have decided that the Mystic Eyes Les 4 Ombres worked out the best for me, as it's a quadra eye shadow palate, which I can use any colour by itself or together to create a lighter makeup for the day or an intense one for the night. The makeup artist has also taught me to wet an angle brush and use the darkest matt eye shadow as a liner, which worked out great for me as I'm about to go traveling!

The 4 colours always comes with a matt dark shadow, a shimmery highlighter shadow, 2 sheen toned base and depth shadow, which usually people use these two together for a lighter day time look and add on the matt and shimmer shadow for a night time look.

It was a little embrassing to take close up photos for myself at the event so I've come home and recreated it, I must say it was extremely quick and easy.

This quadra shadow palate is a little bit on the pricy side but definatly worth investing into, as it is so versatile and you can create so many looks, go give it a try!

The Year of Golden Dragon 2012

2012 we celebrate Chinese New Year to welcome the year of Golden Dragon.

Dragon has always been an symbolic animal for us Chinese, we call ourselves "Descendants of the Dragon". Each year on Chinese New Year's eve doesn't matter where you are, doesn't matter how busy you are with study, work or family the children of Dragon, which inlcudes all black hair, black eyes, yellow skin will come together. Unite with their parents, grand parents even great grand parents.

I came to Australia when I was 10, always loved Chinese history, the 3000 years didn't come easy, so many Emperors, so many wars, so many people died and so many people moved away.  But something is still unchanged, after all we still have black hair, black eyes and yellow skin, we are still Chinese.  

Little Pork Bun asked me today:"what's 过年 (Guo Nian)?" - a direct translation would be "living pass the year". In my memory when I was a child in Shanghai, all children are allowed to stay over 12am on Chinese New Year's eve, 5 seconds before the count down the whole neiboughood would light up with fire crakers, it is so loude we had to cover our ears, fingers crossed that the fire department is still working. Then we head back into the house quickly as it usually snows and we eat dumplings and gluten rice balls, then the next morning all the adults will give children Red Packets, wishing them a prosperous year this year.  

We repeat this process year after year but never find it's boring.  By now I have realised it's not the fire crakers nor the gluten rice balls, it's the family members, 10, 20 of us sitting around a big round table, grand dad would check if cousins did well at school last year, grandma is asking how uncle's business is going, older brother is asking if the younger sister is getting married soon and the youngest brother is letting everyone know his wife is pregnant.  It's all simple family stuff but the year brought everyone together!

P.S Of course I didn't tell Little Pork Bun this complicated version, there is a fairy tale story about "Living Through the Year", if you're still intersted please read it HERE.

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!

An American Girl in Paris - Jason Wu for Target

Diane Kruger's favorite designer Jason Wu has collaborated a 56 piece collection for Target, they're going to be avalible in stores and online from the 5th of Feb - 6th March, prices are set under US$60.  If you're interested better line up early!! 

Unfortunatly this is just for looking for us Australians, once again how I wish I lived in America, but lucky there's Ebay.  I couldn't pick what to buy, absolutly in love with every single piece!

Here's the Jason Wu for Target collection.

Enjoy!

Picture Credit: http://www.hollywoodlife.com | http://www.glamour.com

Earth Tones

I have been into earth toned clothing & accessories lately. Beige, green, taupe, dirt red, turquoise blue, burnt orange and sun flower yellow, these are the colours of the world around us.

Top: Country Road Hat: SABA Shorts: Sportsgirl

All items shown above are random personal selections from: Net A Porter, Shopbop & Matches Fashion