Black Friday Sephora and Ulta Haul

I went Black Friday shopping yesterday, and among stocking up on some basics and buying a ton of crafting supplies, I couldn't resist hitting up Ulta and Sephora with a friend of mine. I was super excited, and might have gotten enough mascara to last me the next year. You can also expect some later hauls from pre-Black Friday online shopping, and Cyber Monday shopping as well.


Ulta:

The It Cosmetics CC cream and the Benefit They're Real Mascara were all I got from Ulta this year. They weren't on sale but they are the deluxe sample sizes from up by the register, I think they ran at 15$ and 10$ respectively.

I personally wouldn't worry about needing to be at Ulta on Black Friday. Where I live, the place was practically empty at 7am, and none of the deals interested me.

Now, at first I really had no interest in the They're Real Mascara, but a close friend of mine recommended it to me, and I thought it may be worth a shot.

Tip: deluxe sample sizes are my favorite way to purchase high end mascaras, because in the time that they last I never actually manage to go through a whole tube anyway.

Now, the It Cosmetics CC cream. CC cream is not something I'm typically willing to splurge on. However, I have heard very good things about how full coverage this is, and am interested in seeing if this could be a one step foundation/moisturizer/spf substitute.

Sephora:

 This was so much fun to hit up on Black Friday, and I was highly amused by the amount of clueless lone men in the store. The cashiers were super friendly there, which isn't always a guarantee when you shop on Black Friday.

So, this was the Tarte 10$ set, and I fell in love with the Amazonian Clay Blushes when I was in store, even asked for this years blush palette for Christmas, so getting to pick up deluxe sample sizes of a blush and their mascara for 10$ was easy peasy even if I won't use the lip gloss.

 I haven't used anything by Too Faced before, so this was a no-brainer.  Though, I am hoping at some point to get their Milk Chocolate Soleil Bronzer, because not only is it the perfect shade, but it smells like chocolate. However, 30$ is about 3 times more than I am willing to pay for a bronzer, so it's probably going to have to wait awhile.

 Originally, I had no plans on getting these, but my current sponge (the 6$ one they sell at Walgreens) is getting old, and these looked like they have a similar texture to the Real Techniques Sponge, but in a shape I am more used to using, and in adorable mini size!.

The Urban Decay Black Magic Eyeliner Set. These are 5 double ended eyeliners, and almost all of the are in really wearable colors. This was 25$, which is only 5$ more than buying one pencil, and I get to try out 10 colors.

People rave about these for the waterline, and since I've never actually tried them on my eye, I thought I should give them a shot.





Did you guys go Black Friday Shopping? What did you get, or what would you have gotten if you'd gone?

Monthly Favorites- November 2014

Long time no see! School has been a nightmare, and on the 13th of December I will be manning my very own craft fair table, so I haven't had a lot of time to test out new products. Instead, I've been relying on and rediscovering my old favorites, and you'll see a lot of those in here.

With Thanksgiving tomorrow, Black Friday, and then prepping for Christmas, I thought now would be the best time to post my monthly favorites, before my old stand-bys get lost in the sea of new things.

Maybelline Illegal Length Mascara

 This month's mascara is a rediscovered favorite, and I have to say that after going back to this mascara I realized that I tend to prefer drug store mascaras over high end ones.

Now, this is very much personal preference. I have thick, dark eyelashes, so I don't need an extensive amount of volume, which is what higher end mascaras will usually focus on.

I am terrible about not rubbing my eyes, so aside from appreciating the incredible length it gives me, I also find this formula doesn't smudge easily, nor does it give a lot of fallout.

I also happen to have a friend who is allergic to a lot of cosmetics including mascaras, who swears by Maybelline's mascaras because they are the only drugstore ones that haven't given her an allergic reaction.

Downsides: Only in black (though these don't look like natural lashes so that's really pretty okay), kind of clumpy, especially with regular use you will start to get too much mascara on the wand and need to remove some mascara before application to prevent this

Recommended For: eye-touchers, people who want more length than volume

Cost:This is available at any drugstore and usually in most grocery stores as well, Target has it for 7$, but drugstore.com has it listed at 10$.


Benefit's Gimme Brow Mascara in deep:

Once upon a time, when I was first learning to use makeup, I thought I needed a brow pencil. It should be noted that I have thick, natural brows, and so this was a terrible mistake: I looked like a clown.

However, I do have one sparse patch right at the beginning of my right eyebrow, and this brow mascara is absolutely perfect for filling it in. It is quick, easy, fairly natural looking, and this is a product that is super easy to travel with.

Downsides: There are only two shades, and it isn't great for people with very little brow, as it works best when it can build on existing hairs.

Recommended for: Sparse patches, people with eyebrows that will actually work with the two shades offered by benefit.

Cost: It will usually run you 22$ at a beauty store like Sephora or Ulta

Hourglass Waterproof Mechanical Gel Eyeliner Pencil

 This Hourglass eyeliner, which you may have seen in my Sephora and Ulta haul, is probably my favorite liner. It stays in my waterline longer than any other eyeliner I have ever tried, and has an incredibly fine tip so it is super easy to use.

Also, even as it does wear off, it doesn't smudge the way a lot of other liners will, which is an upside for me, but may be a downside for other people. It isn't intended for smudging.

Downsides: dries and seals quickly so not great for beginners, only comes in black, not retractable

Recommended for: detail work, use in waterline, ultra staying power

Cost: 16$ at Sephora

 WEN Sweet Almond Mint Hair Mask

 This was my very first hair mask ever, and after having tested out several others, this is my favorite. Unlike a lot of hair masks, it can be used on wet or dry hair, and because of that you will find it is more moisturizing and you don't have to waste 20-30 minutes in the shower so you can try and get your hair nice.

It smells like heaven, and is all natural, they have other scents as well.

Downsides: Expensive

Recommended for: People with problem hair, eco-conscious people, people who want a hair mask that can be used on dry hair

Cost: 58$ at Sephora, or on QVC

 Soap and Glory Great Kisser Lip Balm
This is a super moisturizing lip balm, I have it in the vanilla scent, there is also a peach one, they both look tinted in the container, but the coverage is so sheer you won't notice.

Both of these smell amazing and they have just a little bit of shimmer to not only moisturize but also make your lips look shiny and shimmery. Really a your lips but better sort of look.

Downsides: Messy application, a little sticky


Recommended for: lip chap junkies, people who take good care of themselves but perhaps aren't incredibly into makeup, an everyday nice lip look.

Cost: 10$ at Sephora

Graze Unboxing

I've been getting this box for a few months now, and I also tried Nibblr (but their snack selection wasn't for me) and I'm never sure if I want to cancel it or not. For those of you that don't know, Graze is a healthy snack box, and they send you 4 properly portioned snacks on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis.

The cost is $5 per box, and you get to go through the snacks and set them to 'try' 'like' 'love' or 'trash' Trash they never send you, try just means you're willing to try it and haven't yet, like means send it sometimes, and love means send it regularly. You can change these selections at any time.

I happen to be a picky eater, and I'm not overly health conscious. For me, the value of the box is having easy to pack, unique snacks on hand for lunches. Currently, I get the box monthly, which I find is just enough that I'll try all the snacks by the time I get my next box.

 These are my snacks for the month:
Lightly Salted Popping Corn

My Thai- Sweet chili sauce with baked soy puffs

Garden of England- Dried apples, mini strawberries, and black currants

Deconstructed Carrot Cake- Carrot chews, ginger fudge, walnuts, and cinnamon rasins

Also, they give you the nutrition facts for each of your snacks on the back of the card that they give you, as well as best by dates.

You can look around at the site/sign-up here

However, I have a referral code as well, which you can use to get your first and fifth boxes free: 3XQX2HXNP

What do you think of Graze?

Ipsy Unboxing- November 2014

Alright, so this is this month's bag after just pulling it out of our signature pink padded envelope. The theme is girl meets glitter, and I really love glitter, but I am not loving this bag, so I'll probably just pass it on to someone else. 

 Here's what all the items look like once they're out of the bag. 

Little Temptu highlighting liquid, this one is white, I've received  more gold/champagney one in the past.  On the right you can see a swatch of what it looks like on the hand, though off camera it looks pinker than I expected.

Next is this Be Delectable hand cream in the scent lemon and cream. It looks like it is full sized, and for those of you that like safety seals, I had to remove one in order to smell it. I don't really like lemon, but there is still good quality lemon and bad quality lemon, and this smells exactly like a lemon dessert. I am passing it onto a friend who I know loves lemon, I think she'll love it.  

(This is half of a full size, value 5$)

 Next, I have this clarisea powdered salt based exfoliant. This is actually pretty cool, because instead of putting the exfoliating product in some other solution that may or may not break you out, you are supposed to mix a little of this in with some water or into a little of your preferred cleanser, which personally seems much safer as someone with sensitive skin.

Next, this Starlooks sparkly eyeliner in Ultra Olive. The end cap looks much more gold but in the swatch you will see it is quite obviously olive green with some gold glitter. After it dries, it is pretty smudge resistant, I was very impressed.

Also, I adore getting out-of-the-box eyeliner colors in my subscription boxes, because I never purchase unusual colors for myself, but I still really like owning them.

(This is full size and goes for 13$)

Last, but not least, J Cat Wonder Lip Paint, which I am so so excited about. At first I thought the color was going to be way too dark for me, but a single layer gives a very pretty sheer look, so I think I'll be keeping this. I've heard a little about this product and have been wondering if they are dupes for the OCC lip tars. I can already tell you that the color range is not the same, if you really love to mix colors or you need a neon yellow, you will need to go to OCC, however I think these could be a cheaper alternative for the more everyday colors and everyday uses. 

(This is full size and goes for 5$)

That's it for my Ipsy bag, I love getting my Ipsy bag, and this month was great as usual. The value of these bags are incredible, just the products I worked out the value on add up to 20$ which is twice as much as you pay for the bags. I will use these all myself/ will be giving them as holiday gifts, so this month was a super win. I may be purchasing the hand cream in a different scent now that I know how high quality these are.  You are welcome to leave any comments you have below, and today's prompt is:
What subscription boxes do you get?

Birchbox Unboxing- November 2014

 This month, the outer packaging came in a cool red box, because this month Birchbox partnered with an aids awareness group called RED.  The box underneath is still the same though, as you can see here.

I know that a lot of people haven't seemed to like Birchbox, but this is my third month now and I'm really liking it. Some months, I even like it more than my Ipsy.

 When you open up the box they use red tissue paper, and the front of their card has an explanation about how November is a month for giving (a notion I really like because that is a very sweet take on the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday), and that's why they partnered up with RED. The back has all the items on it, but I try to avoid looking at those because I like to be surprised.

 Initial view when I opened up the box, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a snack in my beauty box.

 I'm still pretty weirded out that there is a snack in my beauty box, but I already know I like these. It wasn't a flavor I had tried before, but I ate it last night and it was just as delicious as all of Justin's other packets.

I take these for afternoon snacks, and I bring them backpacking with me. I recommend giving them a shot if you like nut butters. They have chocolate peanut butter, chocolate hazelnut butter, and chocolate almond butter, as well as honey peanut butter, and honey almond butter, and then also just peanut butter and almond butter packets.

So, I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but it wasn't what I was expecting, and I don't think I want it to be a continuing trend.

- This was technically a bonus item, so in that regard it's pretty cool. This is a full size packet, however you get like 10 in a pack for 12.99$

 So I peeked on the website about this item, because Birchbox said I was going to be getting a body butter and, while I do too like body butters, I am on the hunt for the most nourishing winter skin body butter for my friend and I wanted to see if this was a good candidate.

It's a pretty good body butter, it doesn't smell medicinal like other super nourishing body butter samples I've gotten, but it also doesn't work as well as the medicinal body butters. Also, the reviews raved about how good it smelled, and it has an okay scent, it's unoffensive, but I wouldn't say it's super great in my personal opinion.

Full Size- 34.46$
 I wouldn't pay that much for it, but it should be noted that you get a ridiculously large amount of body butter for your money. The full size is 13.5 oz

 This is another deep conditioner/hair mask style product. I did have to look this one up on the card, because initially I wasn't sure what it was. I haven't tried it yet, but I certainly will.

Full Size- 25$

 This is a pretty good sample size, it isn't like the teeny tiny tubes you sometimes end up with that feel poorly packaged (since, let's face it, packaging is very important when you are trying to assign a high value to scented liquid).

This perfume is exceedingly floral, it does smell high quality, it doesn't have an alcoholy or signature perfume smell (do you know what I mean?), but it is straight up floral, and not for me.

Full Size- 68$

 The first thing I thought about htis particular product, is that it is very small. I know this is a really nice brand, and that it is just a face product, so this will last me a long time, but that is all I think about.

It's actually a pretty cool looking product though, I haven't fully tested it out, but I swatched it and it matches my skin tone (and has magic self-adjusting stuff which I adore more than I should), it's got good pigmentation and some impressive coverage, it also has SPF 40.

Full Size- 32$

This is a full size eyeshadow/eyeliner stick, I haven't tried it out, because today was a snow day, and so I put on frost princess makeup instead, but I did swatch it. It is a very blendable, silvery shimmery brown color. I think it will make for a gorgeous winter brown.

I'm pretty excited about it, but I haven't actually worn it yet, so we'll see how it goes. I have issues getting a lot of eye crayons to stay on my lids, so we'll see. Technically it says this could be a l,iner, but I don't think it has anywhere near enough of a point for that.

Full Size- 15$

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this box, I'll be using most of the things in here, and I might even purchase a couple of these in full size. Physical value wise, it is worth way more than 10$, and even to me personally (what I would pay for the samples I end up using), this is well worth it.  What do you think about Birchbox?

Eclipse Concealer Palette First Impressions and Swatches

 Today, I got the Coastal Scents Eclipse Concealer palette, and I thought it would make a good first impression Friday post.

So here you all can see the case and what it looks like when you first open it. It contains 3 correcting shades,1 highlighter, and 11 concealer shades. Something that was mentioned in another review I saw was that this contains mostly concealers with pinky undertones, which I definitely agree with.



So people with olive undertones especially may not like this concealer palette as much, or if you are buying this to work on a variety of people, this palette doesn't cover those skin tones.

However, the vast majority of white women should be able to use this palette just fine, and I did purchase mine for the purpose of concealing, correcting, and contouring, so this suits my purposes well.

 The swatches correspond to the rows on the pallette, so this is the first row, the second image is the second row, and the third image is the third row.

I always swatch concealers and foundations on the back of my arm, because it's about the same color as my face.


While pretty pigmented, as a concealer should be, I layered the lighter shades on pretty thick so you would be able to see them, they sheer out nicer than this.

The formula is a drier cream concealer, which is good because I tend to like that better for facial concealing, but it's still easy to use under the eye area.

This also came in a recent Glossy Box I think, but you can buy it from the Coastal Scents website here.

You can get a lot of these in the single pots for your own palette, but currently they don't have the highlighter, the correcting colors, or the darkest colors available.

Clinique Chubby Sticks- Mini Review + Swatches

If you don't know, I have a love affair with Clinique's Chubby Stick formula, particularly with the color Super Strawberry. When I went to Sephora last week, I found that they had a chubby stick family with four different colors of deluxe sample chubby sticks for 25$.

It's really moisturizing but not thick or gloopy, and all the balms give sheer but distinct washes of color, which Clinique refers to as an almost-lipstick.

They are really a great product, but they get kind of pricey (19$ for a full size one), and there are so many colors. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to do some lip swatches and show you what they look like.

On camera, I find the colors aren't quite as distinct as they are in real life though, so keep that in mind.

  

 These are my bare lips, so that you can see the difference between my lips with and without product. I tried to take all the pictures with similar lighting and in a similar position 

 Curviest Caramel- stick on the far right, a sheer nude color, and I actually really like it, because it is a lot softer than an opaque nude lip, and a lot of girls can get away with this, even if you are too pale to do a traditional nude or it is difficult to find your particular nude shade.







Super Strawberry- most definitely the darkest shade I will wear on a day-to-day basis, but it also makes me feel really glamorous. This is a deep pink color, the tube just to the left of Curviest Caramel

 Broadest Berry- In the tube it is a deep purple, and this is how it swatches on the lip. A little too dark for me, so I passed it down to my mom who tends to wear darker colors than I do.

Mega Melon- a coral colored lip, it leans a little more towards orange when swatched on the hand though. I'm not sure about coral lips, I really like how coral clothes look on me, but I haven't quite gotten into the coral lip look.






These are all the colors I have to swatch, though there are quite a lot more of them available. If I were to recommend it for someone, I would say it's best for people with low maintenance makeup or lip routines, the lip chap addict in your life, anyone with a purse that more closely resembles a bottomless pit, and anyone who isn't sure about intense color, or doesn't want to use a mirror to apply their lip color. Though, looking back on it, that is probably the majority of girls.

 As for the packaged set, they are good sized lip products, and I think they cover a really wearable range for the vast majority of women, as it is a pretty neutral lip palette.

Comment below with your holy grail lip product. 

Ulta and Sephora Haul

Technically, I went to the store for Christmas presents, but hey, I bought myself some stuff too.  I might do some more expanded reviews and maybe a makeup look with most of this stuff a little later once I've tried it all out. 

 Probably the least exciting for you guys, but these are my new hair clips. I clip my hair up all the time, especially if I haven't showered that day or I'm at home hanging out, my hair is probably up in a clip.

 Rouge Underground airbrush foundation, I saw this at the store the last few times and finally broke down and bought it. I'm excited to try it out.












Deluxe Sample Chubby Stick Set, because I did finally get a new Super Strawberry, but I wanted to try some others as well, so this little family set was perfect.

 I've heard lots of good things about this product, so I went ahead and picked it up today,

 Hourglass super slim waterproof eyeliner pencil. So I was originally looking at getting the Urban Decay 24/7 liner, and I had swatched it on my hand and decided a color and everything, and then I thought to ask an employee for the best waterline liner.

She suggested this one and got me the sample to try out and so I did the swatch next to the Urban Decay one, let them set, did the smudge test, they were both fine, and then I licked my finger and rubbed at them and the Urban Decay came off instantly while the Hourglass one stayed on. Bonus, this one was cheaper.

I'm looking forward to testing  this out, because I tend to have really watery eyes, and so nothing stays ever.

Estee Lauder Double Wear Concealer, actually this is from Macy's. I had a gift card, and so I got this for 44 cents, which is how I justified buying another concealer for myself.

 Look at this little teeny hairbrush I got! My hair hates to look brushed, no matter how many times I brush it, it looks like I just woke up.

 Actually, this was a free Sephora Point Perk. I mentioned in a previous post that I was running out of my Green Tea Moisturizer, and I thought I would give this one a shot.

My lip balm addiction is real guys, I have an infinite amount of lip products, and now I've added this one to the pile. There is a peach one too, that I think I might like better. I picked this one up by accident, but the vanilla bean is good too.