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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.
28th BIRTHDAY IN STYLE

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
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EYEBROWS ENLIVEN AT HIGHBROW

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
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Best Fashion Blogger for NokiaLVK Challenge (part 2)


There are only 3 days left before the NokiaLVK Fashion Quest is over. Things are getting crazy. Everyone is trying to show what they do best and so do I. I've seen many mood boards from other bloggers and they are amazingly beautiful and inspiring.

55 of us from all over the world, only 1 winner will fly to London. Honestly, I'm hoping Nokia & Leila would pick my mood boards as I hear London is calling my name :p. Who doesn't want to be a winner of such big contest, I'm just being honest and thick-skinned here :p

Back to my mood board, I've created another 3 new ones so far and each of them is totally inspired by Leivankash Skullmania collection. I'm so excited to show you:

Notice on Leivankash's website banner? She uses black & blood red as main theme to feature her jewelry collections and I think these are the best two colors for edgy and gothic (sometimes even creepy) look yet still so stunning and eyes-catching. I love it!

And so it goes, my THE SKULL FASHION Stylebook:

My second Stylebook ROMANTIC SKULLMANIA is somehow different. It's sweet, it's romantic, sexy and magical inspired by the Skullmania Amethyst pieces. This is one of my favorite stylebooks so far. The amethyst skull earrings gave me so much inspiration and freedom to portray my feeling, creativity into this mood board. I find myself when I created this set as if the whole set is made just for me. It is my style!
Last stylebook is actually my outfits of the day (OOTD) paired up with Leivankash Skullmania collection. See what I got!
So far, I've created 5 different mood boards and I love all of them. What about you? Which stylebook or mood board do you like most? 3 days, only 3 days left. I'm so excited to know who will be the winner chosen by Leila and Nokia team. And of course, before ending this blog entry, I'm gonna say: Pick me, pick me, pick me, lolz....
 Pardon me, I'm just having fun! :D
 Will talk to you guys real soon.
 Love,
 Crystal
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Best Fashion Blogger for NokiaLVK Challenge.

Best Fashion Blogger for NokiaLVK Challenge.


Hi guys,

I have a very exciting announcement to make!
If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, perhaps you might know what am I talking about.

Few weeks ago, I received an invitation from Nokia team to join their very unique fashion quest called NokiaLVK. What does NokiaLVK mean?

Basically, this year Nokia have teamed up with an incredibly talented jewelry designer Leivankash to come up with a fashion challenge whereby we- invited fashion bloggers from many different parts of the world need to create our own mood board (inspired by one of LVK's collections) using given Nokia Lumia 900 to capture as many photos as possible and to provide inspiration for Leivankash to create a one-of-a-kind jewelry masterpiece. There are 5 jewelry collections in total:




I was told to pick 1 collection that I like most and create my mood board, my very own inspiration. Make a guess what did I pick? Stay tuned! I'll reveal it in a while. ;)

So what are the prizes? There is only 1 grand winner will be flying to London to meet Leila and to make her mood board come to life by creating her bestspoke LVK piece. Other 5 winners of 5 each collections will be receiving a one-of-a-kind Nokia & LVK Jewellery chest containing the brand new Nokia Lumia920 and a beautiful LVK piece.

It sounds amazing, doesn't it? When I received an email from Nokia team, I was thrilled of joy and without any hesitation, I agreed to join. To me, it's such a good chance to express my love for fashion, my inspiration, creativity and my fashion sense to the world.

2 days after confirming my participation, I came office to this beautiful turquoise goddess.

So efficient and speedy, Nokia! Thank you very much! 

And so with this gadget, I was ready to start my NokiaLVK creation. Before I started, I even did a quick research to see who are other bloggers, what are their backgrounds, where are they from etc...Holy shit, I got shocked! There are 55 bloggers all together. They are all really good and talented Fashion Bloggers from Milan, Mexico, London, New York, US etc...and of couse myself from tiny little red dot- Singapore. Looks like I am the only Singapore Fashion Blogger invited to join this fashion quest. I feel so proud! :D

Anyway, back to the contest criteria, we need to choose 1 collection that we love most. I chose Skullmania! You must be wondering why didn't I choose "Floral" as it seems to suit my style more. Trust me, it was a tough decision to make whether to stay in my "comfort zone" or step outside of it and try something new. My fashion style is more toward sophisticated, sexy, classic, girly and feminine style and I can humbly say, I know how to flaunt it.

Skull is something that I used to "stay away" from because it looks scary *in my mind*, lolz. And I'm not a rock chic, thus I wasn't interested in wearing skull inspired fashion. Only after I had my first look at Leivankash Skullmania collection, I was stunned, I was sold and I was inspired so much.

The scary looking Skull I used to think before becomes so elegant, beautiful and gorgeous through Leivankash's creations. Instantly, I'm in love with it.

Before I started my mood board, I was struggling to find out "What is my inspiration?", "Where can I find it?", "How to make my mood board inspiring" etc...But then looking at all Leivankash's collection, I realized that Fashion inspiration can come from the simplest, the most ordinary thing in life. Instead of looking around, I should find inspiration in my daily life, things that I see, I touch and make the ordinary thing become extra-ordinary through my creativity and imagination.  It's like how Leila looks at a flower, a leaf, a skull and turns them to beautiful jewelry pieces.

Enough with words, now it's time to show you my mood board:

Mood board No1: Crystal Phuong for NokiaLVK

Mood board No2: OOTD for NokiaLVK (part1)



Mood board No3: OOTD for NokiaLVK (part2)


Nothing fancy! It's all about self-taken photos by my phone of my everyday outfit. As you can see, my outfit speaks out what I feel on that day itself. Sometimes,  I'm in girly mood, sometimes sexy, sometimes fierce, sometimes classy and sometimes mysterious. All that feelings are portrayed in Skullmania collection too, don't you think?

Are you inspired when looking at my mood board? If you are, I think I've done pretty good job here and I'm happy with what I created. Not sure If I would be the grand winner of this challenge (*I wish I will*), I'm still happy to be part of this amazing quest. I never expected taking photos of my outfit everyday could get me to this international fashion quest organized by such a big brand like Nokia & famous fashion brand like Leivankash. Not to mention, I got to know many awesome and inspiring Fashion Bloggers too.

If you love Leivankash's collections and are inspired so much like me, check out her Website, join her Facebook & Follow her on Twitter.

And oh, don't forget to check Nokia's Website too. They have lot of amazing stuffs there!

Last but not least, if you think I would stand a chance to meet Leila in London, PLEASE SUPPORT ME BY LIKING THIS BLOG POST!!!!

Thank you so much everyone!
Stay chic,
Crystal
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