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About Me

About Me
CrystalPhuong.net is a Personal Style & Travel Blog based in Singapore, written by Crystal Phuong. The blog was nominated FOUR times in Top 10 Best Fashion Blogs in the annual Singapore Blog Award from 2012- 2015, voted as one of the Best Lifestyle Blogs in Singapore in 2013 by Hotelclub.com, and Best Travel Blogs in 2016 by Foodpanda.com. Crystal hopes to connect and inspire young women to lead a healthy and happy life. Be confident, be positive, and be kind.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012


Hi everyone!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope you are having great time with your family, your loved one so far. Let me start this blog entry with my very own iPhone postcard to you:


Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year ahead. Wishes come true, lot of luck, love and happiness. 


 What did you do to celebrate this year Christmas? I had a simple but sweet Christmas celebration with my boyfriend. We spent half day relaxing at home, walking around the shopping mall to buy some stuffs. At night, we went for a dinner date at Four Season Hotel.

Day time, I was wearing simple sparkle Guess black blouse with ZARA floral lace shorts to go shopping with him.


At night, I changed to a bodycon convertible dress and pointy-toe pumps for dinner. 


 Arrived at One-Ninety restaurant in Four Seasons hotel, we didn't have to wait too long for our food as the service was really good. Lovely ambiance with full of Christmas decoration and an Acapella performance made our dinner more memorable.

 
The plum-alike candle looked so real. I couldn't stop looking at it. 


 Christmas dinner with lobster, foie gras, turkey etc....The menu was lovely.

I had my lychee martini for the start. 


We both ate so much that we could hardly hide our round stomach when leaving the restaurant.
I guess I was a good girl this year, so Santa was good to me. He gave me lot of presents 


1. Swarovski watch with necklace and bracelet set which are unavailable in Singapore. So mine is the one and only Swarovski set in Singapore. 


2. iPad Mini with my name engraved on it. Supposedly my website address would be engraved too but Santa forgot, lolz...Never mind, it's the thought that counts. 


3. Lot of Christmas cards, gifts, presents on my desk this year too. I read all the hand-writing messages again and again so many time. I felt so much love from so many people. Thank you my dearest Santas. 


4. iPad Mini casing. Because I love Pink! So Santa knew it. 


What did you do to celebrate your Christmas? What did Santa give you? Share with me in the comment section below coz I would love to know. Share the love and holiday spirit around. 

Again, wish you merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Be happy always!
Talk to you soon!
Love
Crystal
Crystal Phuong
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28th BIRTHDAY IN STYLE


I was so busy that I almost forgot to blog about this. The most important day in a year to me: MY BIRTHDAY, which was more than a month ago.

Last year, I had the most memorable and meaningful birthday celebration ever as my parents were able to celebrate with me in Singapore. After ten years of living far away from my family, this simplest thing is sometimes the most precious thing to me, and somehow I forgot about it.

This year, I wanted to fly my parents to Singapore to celebrate with me, booked a yacht to party with my group of close friends and my parents. In the end, nothing happened as I was so uncertain whether I would want to do anything on my birthday. I was in the roller-coaster mood, happy & unhappy kind of mode. And I let it passed as if it was like many other normal days.

But when I didn't do anything to celebrate my birthday, people DID IT for me. And that's when you know you are loved, cared by many people around you. I felt extremely happy and blessed!

Thank you so much everyone whom I'm going to call you by name here. You guys are amazing, and I'm so thankful for your Love, Care, and Support. I really am!

Thank you for the countless Facebook messages, emails, Twitter messages on all the social network sites from my friends and fans. They are almost up to thousand of them, and It took me days to reply each and every one of you. I love reading those messages; they make my day!

Thank to people who bought me lunches, dinners even before and after my birthday. It wasn't my expectation, but that's really sweet of you! :)

Now, let's me take you to my birthday celebrations arranged by these amazing people:

Friday 2nd November, three days before my actual birthday, my friends took me to one of the beautiful Chinese restaurants at Harbourfront for a group dinner. There were so many foods on the table: prawn, fish, shark fin, pork, beef, chicken that we didn't know what to eat. I ate so much that I could barely walk after.

We ate, we talked, we laughed, we took photos. It was a fun night.

Kris, Hong and Me. 


Camile and Kris with their prawn competition "Whose is bigger?" :D. Looks like Camille's prawn won.


A group photo of us! Standing row from left: Carmen, Hong, me & Kris. 
Sitting row: Alicia, Xiang Yin, Sara, Camile, Nicole. 

Thank you guys so much for the love, presents and laughter. I love you guys very much! 

Also, very coincidentally, my sponsor gave me this sweet gift exactly on my birthday. A COACH bag sponsored by Warmth Luxury Collection.


Another surprised gift from FANCL came to office in the morning with a personal message from BrandStory. Thank you so much! I love FANCL products very much now not because of all these stuffs because their products are really good for my skin. My skin is combination skin type in case you are wondering. I'll blog about it later when I have more time, I promise!



This HUGE soft bear was delivered to the office


                               together with this bouquet of flowers.                                                   


Flood of gifts, flowers, birthday card on my working desk. 


Photo taking time with everyone....

With Eddie Chua- my silent Blog reader, Twitter follower, fan, and friends.

With Carmen- my crazy fan and PA.

With Hong, love him! He is the best manager I've had. 

with Lily, soon to be my office roommate. 

With Yong, my big boss and my great supporter too. 

with Jacqueline, my shopping buddy.  

With my cute little girl Nicole. 


With Camille whose age and horoscope are same with mine 



Hopefully, wishes will come true next year :)


With Carmen! She bought me a rose bouquet too, and she was trying to hide it at her back because she was so afraid that I would be able to see what it was. 

Alicia, Nicole & me. Loving these girls very much!

Finished cake cutting and group celebration, I went to have another little private candlelight dinner with the boyfriend. He arranged all these! Booked a private dining room at Absinthe, our favorite French restaurant. 



We both had very yummy Wagyu steak for dinner.


and I had special Happy birthday fruit platter for dessert. 



When it comes to present, I feel like I'm a small kid no matter how old I will be. I love receiving gifts regardless big or small, cheap or expensive. Sometimes, just a personal postcard can also make me happy. Like many other years, I never expected any present from anyone. Even when Mike asked me "What do you want for your birthday?", I had no idea what I want, and I kept giving him a vague answer "Anything. I don't know". But I think he did a good job in the end because I loved everything he got for me. 

A teddy bear. 


A rose bouquet sent to the office. 


And a beautiful Swarovski watch. I love Swarovski watches. 


A jewelry holder from Swarovski too :D


And here are some birthday presents from my friends. 

Sweet, personal and lovely! Thank you to all of you. 

A cup cap in pink from Nicole. Very practical and sweet especial when it's in pink, I double love it. 

I'm a Miss Popular. 

GUESS necklace brought from New York by Amber. 


Earrings from Accessorize. Looks like my friends know my style well! 

Body care set picked by Alicia. 

Special wristband with my name engraved on it from Camille. I love it! 


Sara's present to me and her personal message. 

And lastly, another beautiful closeup shot of my Swarovski watch. How beautiful!

Thank you very much to everyone who loves and cares about me. I'm very grateful to all the amazing people in my life. We come from many different parts of the world, walk from all different parts of life but somehow at some points, I'm lucky to meet all of you, and we become friends, brothers, sister.

Not forget to mention my wonderful fans, blog readers, followers or even my haters. You guys are my true motivation every day. And I hope you will still read this blog when I blog about my sexiest 30th birthday party ;)

Til then, I'll talk to you again soon.
Love,
Crystal
Crystal Phuong
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EYEBROWS ENLIVEN AT HIGHBROW


 Advertorial

Today I'm going to talk about one of the most essential and simplest things yet very often be neglected by many people. It is about your EYEBROWS.


When it comes to facial beauty, people often pay much attention on their eyes or the nose as they are more visible instead of the eyebrows. In fact, eyebrows are so important that without them, our face looks horrible. I'm not exaggerating. If the eyes are the windows to our soul, then the eyebrows should be the curtain to make everything complete.

You can have the brightest eyes, prettiest smile, perfect hair and skin like this, but without eyebrows, you would look so weird.





WHY EYEBROWS ARE SO IMPORTANT TO OUR LIFE! 

But the problem is, not everyone was born with perfect eyebrows. Some have too little hair, some are not balanced, some are too long while some are too short. And that where we need a professional help. 

My eyebrows used to be very light, thin and mis-shaped. I hate it as it made my face look coarse. I had my first eyebrows tattoo in 2004 if I'm not wrong and it was hell so painful. The color has faded since then and turned purplish but I didn't want to redo it because it was really painful and I was lazy to be honest. 

Until I was introduced by my friend Camile to her client's salon called HighBrow, I started considering about getting my eyebrows fixed. As what Camile introduced to me, Highbrow's signature service is eyebrows enliven which is totally different from eyebrows embroidery and it's pain-free. I trusted her! And 3 weeks ago, I went with Camile to Highbrow for my eyebrows enliven. 

Arriving at their premises! First thing first, photo taking time. 



It's located in a new shopping mall thus everything is so nice and clean. Their shopfront is so eye-catching too with bright lighting and beautiful exterior. 

Andy- the Creative Director of Highbrow was the one did the eyebrows for me. I felt so special and privileged. My worry was gone immediately as I knew my eyebrows were in good hands ;).  After all the formal introduction, he looked at my eyebrows and my face shape to define what would be my ideal brow shape. 

And then, he drew few different brow shapes so that I could see how my face would look like with different shapes and I would pick one that I like most. 


Look at the pencil he used to draw my eyebrows! It's so fine that I almost thought whatever he drew was my eyebrows hair, lolz. 



Every single step he finished, he always let me to look at myself in the mirror and look at how the job done and whether I'm happy with it. 
Here he was showing me some of his customers' before and after eyebrows photos. They look so different and of course the after photos are so much nicer. 


Next step, there was an amount of numbing cream applied onto my brows. This was to prevent the pain would occur during the process. 



While waiting for numbing cream to take effect, we made use of the big-ass DSLR camera that Camile brought along and took lot of photos. 


Out of curiosity, I asked Andy "Why do you called it "Eyebrows Enliven" instead of "Eyebrows Embroidery"? Is there any difference?". He said "Yes" and so enthusiastically, he explained to me what are the differences. 



Basically, Highbrow is the one that coined "Eyebrows Enliven" term and they are the only salon in Singapore that applies this technique. It's their trademark! I'm sure most of you heard about "Eyebrows Embroidery" or "Eyebrows Tattoo". And if you think this is their marketing strategy to change a common method to a different name with purpose of making themselves different from the rest, you are wrong! Just shut up and read please!!!!

I'm sure there must be reason(s) why HighBrow is so proud to call themselves a pioneer in this. Here are the main two reasons:

1. Tools
This is used for eyebrows embroidery. It's a hard, metal cover of 9 to 11 prong needles blade. Because the cover is made of metal, it can only allow you to draw straight lines due to its hardness. 


HighBrow's pens? They are all designed by Andy himself with his rich experience of more or less 20 years in this business. After designing process, they will give the needle specification to their manufacturer to come out with these: 



Their blade covers are made of rubber, thus they are not so hard to use. It has so much flexibility and freedom  to create whatever shape you want. I tried to draw a eyebrow arch using both pens and I'm telling you, the Highbrow pens are so much easier to use. They create such natural curve and fine lines. Not to mention, Highbrow even designed different blade sizes for different types of eyebrow hair in our eyebrows. This is because our hair at beginning of eyebrow is always finer than the one on the arch area so logically, they can't use the same blade size. 

2. Technique.
Technique is the utmost important thing that differentiates the good and the bad in any service. While eyebrows embroidery works on dermis layer of your skin (where the collagen and fibers are located), eyebrows enliven at Highbrow only works on the epidermis layer (the outside layer of the skin that contains nothing but dead skin cells)Therefore, it will not penetrate the inner layers or blood vessels which cause brows to change color after time. 
*Photo for your better understanding. 


Lastly, Andy applied some amounts of ink onto my brows. He asked me what color would I like for my brows and I preferred it to be as close as my hair color so I chose dark brown. Once done, he started drawing and drawing til he satisfied with its look :D


You want to see how it turned out? 

Here you go! 

Tadah ~_~

THIS IS MY BEFORE PHOTO!
You might not notice my before eyebrows because I drew it whenever I went out. But here is my before photo in case you are wondering:

Nice shape? I drew it. Without make-up, my eyebrows almost don't exist. :( 

and here is my after photo:


YAY for thicker eyebrows! :D
For that, I must say! I'm so pleased with their eyebrows enliven service. I think i look younger with a thicker eyebrows too, don't you think? Super love it! I'm super happy with the result because I no longer have to draw my eyebrows anymore. I hate it especially whenever I'm late for work. 

Before I left the salon, Highbrow gave me some aftercare cream and nourish essence to use at home for 5- 7 days. 

These are their own inventions too. 

After all was done, I only had time to take a look at their entire salon :p. 


VIP treatment room where I had my eyebrows enliven. 


Some in-house products displayed at the waiting area. 



Salon interior. They have total 5-6 treatment rooms if I'm not wrong. The chairs are comfortable, the environment is cozy, staffs are friendly, they will definitely make you feel like home. 





Not to mention, the Creative Director- Andy is so friendly and warm hearted. You can ask him everything about eyebrows and he will tell you everything that he knows. 


And finally, a group photo with  Highbrow team. 


Thank you for the awesome service and professionalism. 



Say Cheese for nice brows at Highbrow


Do you have problem with your eyebrows too? Don't hesitate to call them, they are very helpful and experienced. 

You can visit their Website, follow their Facebook to get more updates. 
Of if you want to visit their salon, here is their address:

Highbrow
The Star Vista #B1- 25, 1 Vista Exchange Green, S138617
Tel: 6694 2777.

Before I end this blog entry, I know you might have some questions for me. Very common questions are:

1. Is it safe?
I must say: YES! IT IS SAFE as Highbrow emphasizes on high standards of cleanliness and sterilization. Their products and tools are used one-time only for one customer's treatment and disposed after. As the treatment only takes place in the outermost layer of skin (epidermis layer), the whole process is clean and painless.

2. How long does it last?
Treatment results can last between 6 to 18 months. I would not recommend you to go for permanent eyebrows as our face, body and style may change over time and that's why we need to adjust our brows accordingly. You will look weird if at the age of 50, you have the brows of 20 years old girl, lolz.

3. How much does it cost?
Prices are various. You might need to ring them and ask 6694 277. Don't forget to mention "Crystal Phuong" when making appointment ;). 

4. Is it difficult to take care and maintain?
No. In fact, it's pretty easy to take care of your eyebrows within first week after the eyebrows enliven. You only need to avoid contacting with water, scrubbing your brows as much as possible and don't forget to apply the after care cream for at least 5 days. That's it! 

So yeah, i hope it's useful enough for you to decide whether or not you should get your eyebrows enliven. If you have not done it before, I would strongly recommend you to go for it. C'mon! Your brow is frame of your face, give it some loves. 

If you go to Highbrow and get your brows done, don't forget to show me some photos here and share with me your experience, I would love to hear that :D

Til then, stay happy and chic! 
Love,
Crystal
Crystal Phuong
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