Event | The Big You 3

At the beginning of the month I attended the third edition of the bi-annual ‘The Big You’ event in Antwerp together with the lovely Astrid. With over 80 bloggers and 13 brands it was the biggest edition yet. Crowded yes, but I had tons of fun nonetheless! Check out what workshops I participated in below..

Veritas was also present with a lovely hair accessory stand where we could get a hairdo and accessory of choice. None other than fellow blogger & all-round hair- & make up artist Sabine Peeters was called in to get the job done. The two ladies transformed those blogger hairdos into princess coupes like it was no trouble at all and the cute accessories were the cherry on top.

Veritas has been one of my favorite stores for accessories (tights, belts, jewelry, bags,..) and DIY material for a couple of years now and this range of colorful bows gives me the more reason to pay them another visit.

I went for a side fishtail braid with neon bow on top (since I was already wearing my neon Acne beanie) which you can check out below. I absolutely love getting my hair done. There’s nothing like sitting back, relax and be like “work ur magic and make meh pwretteh guurrl!” Lol. I’m not the only fan of neon so it seems, immediately after I came home the bow had already been claimed by my furry rascal sidekick Nemo. “It looks better on me anyway.”

We got to take another MAC make up class with senior MUA Elke Willemen. Love the way she’s always so energetic and enthusiastic when she talks about make up. Plus, that in between all the fashion shows and events all over the world she’s still willing to take some time to come and teach us tiny Belgian bloggers a thing or two about make up trends and techniques. Kudos.

The look of the day involved sparkly eyes and bright lips. I had already taken a few MAC classes and I’ll have to admit I’ve had better. The look still hasn’t fully convinced me (or maybe I’ll have to get used to it). I do recommend the in-store MAC classes though! I wrote a post about them. We also got a preview of the new Archie’s Girls collection. Those face powders are just too adorable!

L’ Occitane is a brand I never skip whenever I come across one of their stores. Even though it’s a big brand they somehow manage to give their stores a level of relaxation and Provence-feel. During TBY3 we were introduced to 2 collections: Spring Cherry and Amande.

Cherry blossoms always remind me of my time in Japan, which make the Spring Cherry my favorite collection. It features an EDT, shower gel, moisturizing gel, hand cream and soap. This would definitely bring add some Spring spirit in my beauty ritual.

UGG provided us a chance to experience some Arabic nights in a beautifully set up tent where we could get ourselves a henna tattoo together with some Moroccan deliciousness. Since it was Lisha’s B-day I fetched her some with special b-day sprinkles on top.

I got myself a triangle emblem on the inside of my wrist. Can you guess where it is from? If you want to get your own henna tat, go check out Henna Treasure in Ghent.

Another must-stop shop is Rituals which has released a new skin care range based on botanical extracts. The range is divided into 4 sub-collections: anti-ageing, sensitive, hydrating and cleansing. I received 2 products to try out at home, which I’ll try to review asap. One of them is a gel cleanser and I’m curious if it’ll be able to beat my current favorite, the Purity Made Simple cleanser by Philosophy. I guess we’ll have to wait and see..

Swarovski brought their ‘Tropical Paradise‘ collection along for us to wear and take pictures with in their awesome picture booth. Tropical Paradise was inspired by Nathalie Colin’s (Latin America Creative Director) travels in South America from the celebratory atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro’s legendary carnival to the authentic and natural universe of the Amazon rainforest, resulting in an array of statement pieces in vibrant colors.

I went for the collection’s signature piece; the handmade oversized Tangara bib necklace because its nothing like the necklaces I own and it’s so damn shiny & colorful it awakes my inner magpie. And sometimes this magpie dreams of being a bird of paradise. Too bad I wasn’t allowed to take it home. Other favorites included the bejewelled cuffs and cute flamingo’s.

Apparently there was some miscommunication in the amount of crazy we were going to put into our pictures. I demand a second round! At moments like these I really miss the Japanese purikura (= purinto kurabu aka Print Club) sticker booths. Why don’t we have them here??

Something I wasn’t expecting to find at TBY3, but was perhaps the most interesting booth (for bloggers and other social media enthusiasts) is the one by Happy Metrix. Happy Metrix is an app that lets you create easy-to-use dashboards to collect data from various sources (Twitter, FB, Instagram..) to get a nice overview of your stats in order to make it easier to interpret them and use that knowledge to improve your blog. Just connect all of the websites to your HM account and with one click you can keep track of all of your online activity and progress.

I don’t think I need to explain why this is nice tool for bloggers. The numbers will tell you all you need to know. They’re currently still looking for beta testers, so head over to their site and sign up!

Pics by me and Jan Opdekamp.

Thanks to UPR and cooperating brands for this fun afternoon! For more pics and videos check out the FB page.