Beauty Goodies & Why So Expensive?

This afternoon when I woke up from my post-flight nap, I was in the mood to tidy up my room, and settled on cleaning out some of the bags stored in my closet which contain some of the stash of goodies I've picked up on my travels. I just love buying makeup & beauty items, but being the hoarder that I am, I hardly ever actually get around to using most of them. It's such a shame because there's some really great items out there.

Beauty haul!! :)

Being that I'm pretty much a novice at anything complicated when it comes to applying makeup, my current range is pretty limited and I don't really get too adventurous with my makeup. I decided that I will have a little giveaway soon of some products. Since I saw today that my blog has 41 followers, once it gets to 50 then I will have a giveaway. I have three lots of items planned for giveaways so there will certainly be more coming if I can get my blog revamped and a bit more interest in it.

In the photo above, the row of nail polishes at the bottom is a local brand I picked up in Bangkok called I-Hana. I hadn't seen them before so I took the chance to grab a few. The range of colours was amazing from glitter polishes to metallics and even matte pastels. Wish I'd thought to take a photo of the table setup as everything was in colour-spectrum order and it looked really cool! These six are marked for giveaways or gifts for friends but I will definitely be picking up some for myself next visit so I can try them for myself and see how good they are.

Other items in the photo include a Heroine Make (Japanese) mascara I've been wanting to try for ages, cute animal-shaped hand cream pots from Etude House (Korea), my regular CoverGirl foundation and Nivea moisturiser and my two newest O.P.I. polishes. I love that you can get 2 for $25 in duty free in Aussie airports, when normally they retail between $20-25 each in Australia.

I really do think that we pay far too much for makeup in Australia; I didn't know any better until I visited the US where I bought a NARS blush for $26, and my sister's MAC foundation for the same price. Both retail for well over $65 in Oz and I cannot find a decent reason why that should be the case! Importing products does not cost THAT much that things should cost double to triple the price in certain countries. Anyone know why this is the case, I'd love to find out! Luckily for me, I can travel often enough that I can stock up and save when I go to the US.

What foreign products do you love but don't buy because of the markup in Australia?