Beauty June 19, 2015

GRAND OPENING: Toronto’s First Benefit Boutique!

Toronto’s Canada’s First Benefit Boutique is here!

You probably all know that I own a lot of Benefit products and that I’ve been a huge fan since my Shopper Drug Mart days of being a beauty advisor/make-up artist. If you asked me to name a few of my favourites, I’d start with gimme brow, high beam and the dallas bronzer. For those of you who ~~have been living under a rock,~~ don’t know about Benefit Cosmetics, it’s a San Francisco based make-up brand that believes “laughter is the best cosmetic”. Every product has a fun, girly and unique spin. I’ve been to the boutique in Connecticut and California, so I had an idea of what to expect.

I was over the moon excited to be invited to the Grand Opening of Canada’s first Benefit Boutique, here in Toronto. I must say, Benefit’s corporate team is a bright bunch. I mean, the whole team (brow experts to corporate) are amazing! The strategy of slowly entering the Canadian market by placing little brow bars in Sephora stores around the GTA was brilliant. The perfect way to create a strong clientele and an opportunity to see geographically what/where would work best for the first boutique. Well, that’s my own marketer assumption. If you haven’t heard yet, the boutique is located on 2614 Yonge St and you can’t miss it! (see above image of boutique front)

You don’t live in Toronto? Don’t worry, rumor has it that they’ll be opening more boutiques across the country in the next five years! The boutique has a brow raising variety of services. You can most importantly get your eyebrows done, facial and body waxing, threading, tanning and more.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch my snapchats (HumJK) from that day, here are the highlights:

Beauty March 13, 2015

Friday Faves : Travel

Travelling to new places and learning about the culture and history of different destinations is something my husband and I love to do. Some trips are planned well in advance and some last minute. Our last big trip was to South Korea and Japan. We also had booked a trip to China this week for two weeks that we cancelled due to the wonderful new addition to our family. Now we look forward to taking him with us on all of our trips. The first one being to a resort in Mexico this May.

When planning a trip, where do you look for information, inspiration or general tips?

Reading and collecting the lonely planet books has become a tradition. However, a lot of the unique suggestions and tips come from articles. Articles like the ones I read in the Global Style Advisor that released today. If you haven’t already, I’d go out and get this travel edition found in the Globe and Mail to keep as a reference for the many destinations mentioned or check out the digital version here. Love the resort fashion spread, that has left me inspired for our trip in May. Need to have that Hugo Boss dress!

If I were only allowed to take a ~~few~~ some items with me to any of the great escapes mentioned in this Globe Style Advisor edition, they would be the following:

Fave Fragrance

Try travelling with a light and fresh fragrance. Especially if you’re stuck on a long flight.

Fave Notebook

Everyone has that one notebook they travel with. Somewhere to keep all of their plans, schedules, tips etc.

Fave Cosmetics

All I need is Benefit’s new roller lash, blush and an awesome lip tint balm for the perfect amount of natural colour.

Fave Tag

Just in case you lose your luggage and just because it’s a cute accessory for your carry on. Plus, there really is no place like home. 🙂

Beauty May 2, 2014

BrowsWOWed: Benefit Brow Bar

Have you ever looked back at your pictures and thought “whoa! What’s up with that uni-brow?!” or noticed your overly plucked eyebrows?

Our eyebrows go through their own changes either based on lack of attention or too much attention. Always keep in mind that the shape and look of your eyebrows play a big role in framing your eyes and enhancing your appearance.

It was evident that if you had thick eyebrows, you may have to tweeze/wax them. If they were thin, you would need to fill them in. Today the rule of thumb is that they can be thick and still look hot. Just like one of my favourite models Cara Delevingne. She is known for her power brows.

Sorry ladies, the over plucked look is not “in fashion”. Good news! There’s hope! If you have made that mistake and can’t get them back to their fuller days, you can fill them in and fake it. There are so many options for fillers, hair growing formulas and pencils galore. I used an eye shadow occasionally to fill my own and on my clients. Hands down, the best products I have ever used were from Benefit and I haven’t used anything since I was introduced to it in my make-up artist days.

That being said, the beautiful ladies at Benefit booked me an appointment at the Yorkdale Benefit Brow Bar inside Sephora. I have to be honest, I was expecting an entire store of only Benefit products, maybe because I’ve seen the one in California and it was beautiful. Pink, everything. I can’t wait for those stand alone stores to come here! They would do amazing. Not to mention that the one inside this Sephora was so busy. Fully booked for the weekend and during my appointment 4 people asked at different times if they could go next.

To my surprise the brow expert was someone I knew from my very first cosmetics role! How wild is that?! I have known Kelly Correia for over a decade and she is still the beautiful person inside and out that I first met years ago. I always thought she had the most perfect eyebrows. There isn’t anyone else that I would trust my brows with but her.

Here is the breakdown of how Kelly did my brows at the Benefit Brow Bar:

1. She first started with a brow tint. Which made my brows look naturally fuller and a bit darker.
2. Then she did some brow mapping using my nose as a guide to get the perfect shape for my face. She drew guidelines on my brows using the product called brow zings.

3. She then showed me my brows to see if I approved of the shape.
4. Waxed the middle of my brows first and continued to wax and tweeze one brow at a time.
5. Once I had seen the shape and loved it, she showed me some products to fill in my brows and taught me the technique.

The brow pencil that was used on me was the insta brow-dark colour. And then the med/deep gimme brow on top to look fuller. Below are the products I use to fill my brows. When I’m in a rush, I use Gimme Brow. Love it!

I love these products so much that I just had to share them with you, so I did a giveaway on my Facebook and Instagram pages. I am ecstatic to announce the lucky winner who will be receiving a Benefit gift bag of BrowsWOWed goodies! Congratulations to @m_mila_sd!

benefit cosmetics