Sephora 2015 Favorites Set

Over the past week, Sephora sent out gift cards to their Beauty Insiders. $5 off for Beauty Insiders, $15 off for VIB, and $25 off for VIB Rouge. Obviously, I am the top level Beauty Insider because I spend an obnoxious amount of money at Sephora. When I got the email with my gift card, I hopped on Sephora and ordered something I have had my eye on for months now, I just would never fork out the money for it. I am talking about the Sephora Favorites: Superstars 2015 kit.

This kit retails for $75,  which is a lot, I know. However, within the kit there is 7 full size and 5 good sized deluxe size items. I ended up getting the kit for $54 since I used my $25 coupon. I got this kit because there were many things I love and some I have been wanting to try forever, but if I bought them separately, it would add up to over $75! So why not get extras for the same price?

The first thing in the kit is a Beauty Blender. It seems pretty basic, but this is the best tool any makeup user could have. It makes doing your makeup so effortless, and it leaves a beautiful finish. I already own two, excessive I know, but it is always good to have backups in case if you're too lazy to clean one which is me every morning. This is full size, and on its own costs $20. 

The kit came with two full size eyeliners: a Stila Stay-All-Day Liquid Liner and a Lancome Drama Liqui-Pencil kohl liner. 

I love liquid liners, it is my preferred way of doing a wing eyeliner. I have hear great things about the one from Stila, and it is very similar to my holy grail Kat Von D Tattoo liner. Stila's liner runs for $22.

The Lancome pencil is one of the blackest and creamiest black eyeliners I have ever used! I am in love and I never want to run out, because Lancome is expensive. A+ from me. This costs $23.

A deluxe size of the Smashbox Photo Finish Primer Water was included in the box. This deluxe size cost $16 alone, while the full size is $30 which seems crazy for a bottle of enhanced water. I'm excited to try it since so many people love this. 

Next up is a Tarte duo of a bamboo brush and The Sculptor Park Ave. Princess Contour Stick. This was sort of a dud to me, but since there were so many great products in the kit I didn't mind having one dud. The stick was really orange, which isn't a good look for me. The brush was too dense to use for powders, but too small to use for liquids, so I don't know what to do with it. 

I received two mascaras in the kit: a deluxe Benefit They're Real! and a full size Touch in Sol Stretchex. I have never tried either of these, but a lot of people love Benefit's so it is great to finally try it. The deluxe size costs $12. I like and hate the Touch in Sol one. I like it for my lower lashes and hate it for my upper lashes. I honestly don't know why it was included in the kit, because it is not a top seller of 2015. I think they were just trying to get people to know about the brand. However, it must be well loved because it has 5 stars on Sephora's site and retails for $22. 

The two highlighters I got rule the kit. I am a highlighter junkie. I have over a dozen just because they are my weakness and I can't have enough. I got a full size Clinique Chubby Stick in the shade 01 Hefty Highlight. It is a pink tone cream highlighter, and it is the first pink tone highlight I own! It is very pretty. This retails for $22.

The one thing I have been wanting for EVER is the Laura Mercier Matte Radiance Highlight. The full size is $40, however I will never go through a whole highlight compact in my life since you use so little each time. I am so happy that this was included in the kit!

There was one complexion product in the kit and that is the Make Up For Ever Hydrating Face Primer. I already own and love this product in a full size tube, so I am saving the deluxe size for a backup because I do not want to go without. This deluxe size sells for $12, but it is so good that it is worth it to get the full size! 

Last but not least, the kit came with two full size eyeshadows. The first one is the Urban Decay Shadow in the shade Lounge. Lounge is a duochrome green-red shadow. I love duo-chromes so I will get a lot of use out of this. This retails for $19. 

The second shadow I am soooooo excited for! It is the NARS Duel Intensity Shadow in the shade Himalaya. I have been wanting to try these shadows since I had gotten into makeup. However this shadow is $32. Yes. $32. For one shadow. That is ridiculous! I finally got one though, for a better price which I am thrilled for. 

And that is the whole kit! I think it is so worth it for $50. Even $75 would be worth it, but to get it on sale is a plus. I could have gotten three of the products in here and spend over $75, but I got a bunch of extra and amazing products for the same cost. This kit is an A+++! :) 

Top 5 Favorite Lipsticks!

Last time I wrote about my top five favorite eyeshadows. To continue on my favorites, I am going to talk about my top five lipsticks! This is going to be extremely difficult because I am in LOVE with lipstick. I have waaaaay too many to choose from: liquid, matte, glossy, satin, cream, tubes, pots... there's so many to choose from! So here's my top five in my own collection. :)

1.) Colourpop Lippie Stix in the shade Bound

If I am not wearing any makeup, you will most likely see me in this shade. This is my all-time favorite lipstick, out of the couple dozen that I own. It is my favorite nudey pink, and it goes with basically anything that I am wearing!

2.) Kat Von D Liquid Lipstick in the shade Lolita

This liquid liner is one of my tops, obviously since it is in this post. It is a beautiful dusty rose color, and I wear it when I am in a grungy mood. I love wearing this in the fall time. It looks amazing when I am wearing colors like olive green, brown, and burgundy.

3.) Ofra Liquid Lipstick in the shade Miami Fever 

This one is special to me because it was a collab with one of my favorite youtubers: Kathleen Lights. She was one of the first beauty bloggers that I started watching, and I still watch her to this day! Not only was I thrilled that she had a collaboration, I really loved the color. It is so unique; it is a burnt orange-y brown. I had never seen a color like it, which is what makes her and the shade amazing. The formula is one of my favorites too.

4.) Colourpop Lippie Stix in Grunge

This shade is exactly what the name is: a grungy color. Its a brown, burnt reddish orange color. It is perfect for when I am feeling grungier than KVD Lolita. I have worn this many times throughout the fall season.

5.) Mac Lipstick in the shade Honeylove

Last but not least, Mac Honeylove. This is a sort of washed out nude, but since I am so pale, I can pull it off. This is my favorite nude color of all time, and it's Mac, so it feels "cool" to wear! Plus the smell of Mac lipsticks is vanilla-y so thats a plus. 

VIB Sale

The Sephora VIB sale is this weekend, and I have been waiting for this for months now. Sephora hardly ever has sales, but twice a year, in April and November, they offer their more dedicated customers a 20% discount.

Before this sale was announced, I told myself that I was going to have a "No Buy November." I even bet my manager, Jon, $20 that I could go a whole month without buying anything non-essential. We made exceptions for gas, food, and coffee, but that's it. But who could pass up 20% off? Not me, thats for sure. This is a bet worth losing, and I am okay with that.

I am $150 away from being a VIB Rouge, which is the highest level member at Sephora. That fact that I had spent over $1000 in a year literally blows my mind. Looking around at my collection, it doesn't look like I have that much, but according to every makeup site out there, I do.

In order to somewhat go along with my bet, I am only going to spend $150 at the sale. Look at me, trying to justify spending $150 on more makeup that I don't need. But hey, its a passion of mine. I'd rather work harder for more money than to not be able to do what I love: exploring the world of beauty.

Top 5 Favorite Eyeshadows of All Time

I have hundreds of eyeshadows in my collection. Literally. Hundreds. However, I have a few that stand out over others. These are my top five shades, and I use at least two or more of them each day. It's funny how I can own a variety of shades, but I always end up back at the same few, and they all look somewhat similar. Each of these shades flatter my skintone and eyecolor amazingly, and I will definitely repurchase these as soon as I hit a dent in one.

Makeup Geek - Bitten

This reddish, burgundy shade is perfect for fall time. I mean, I will use it year round, but it suites the season. I use it in my crease, my lower lashline, my outer-v, on my lid. I basically just described my whole eye because I will literally wear this anywhere since I love it that much.

Anastasia Beverly Hills - Morocco

I would describe this color as a burnt orange. This color is also my favorite for fall, but I wore it all summer since it is a bright, super warm color.

If you can not see a pattern yet, I love warm browns and oranges over everything. This time of year is perfect to wear them, even though I wear these colors 365 days a year.

Makeup Geek - Cocoa Bear

This shade is an everyday must for me. It is almost identical to Morocco, but it is more on the brown side than orange. I will pair this with any look I do; it flatters almost anything.

Lorac Mega Pro 2 - Cinnamon

This shade is perfect to place all over the lid. It is a warm copper-brown and very shimmery. It works for an everyday looking brown smokey eye, which is my go-to. This shade with any of the shades above work the best together.

Buxom - Silk Sheets

This is my all-time favorite brow bone highlight. It is an opaque cream color which makes my eyebrows look extremely lifted, which is a look I love.

This one is especially cool because the brand Buxom allows you to customize your own palette with 6 different colors in it. That is how I discovered this shade.

Flapper Halloween

Flappers had a signature look. They rocked smokey eyes, thin red lips, cheeky blush, and thin brows. They did not have the fads of sharp contours and highlighting so bright you can be seen from space, which is what I like. I took the classic flapper makeup and put my own twist to it. And I am here to show you how.

I had pictures of everything that I did, step by step, but somehow, they got deleted. So there’s that…

Before I did anything, I moisturized my face with First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Cream. It is important to moisturize before you do your makeup, especially if you are putting a lot of products on it like Halloween.

For this look, I used one palette: The Lorac Mega Pro 2.

To start off the look, I primed my eyelids and set the primer with the shade Porcelain. Priming your eyes will ensure that your look will last all night long, and setting it will make every other color blend so much easier.

Next I took the shade Ash and blend it into my crease. It doesn’t matter how messy it gets, because it will get cleaned up in the end.

Next I took the shade Gunmetal and placed it on the inner 2/3 of my lid. Then I realized Gunmetal was too dark, so I put the shade Sandstone right on top of it. After each step, I took the blending shade, Ash, and blended it into the crease once again to get rid of the harsh lines.

To deepen the look, I took the shade Black Ivy and placed it on the bare part of my lid. Since Black Ivy is a shimmer black shade, it wasn’t as dark as I wanted, so I took a matte black shade and placed it on top. Next I blend, blend, blend!

Make sure you always blend to the best of your ability when using black shadow! That is the most important thing when it comes to black, since it is so intense. As you can see, it is blended very messily. However, that is okay because the next step is to take a makeup wipe and create a sharp line following your lower lashline.

Now that there is a sharp line, it will be so easy to create a sharp wing. I used the Maybelline Eyestudio Gel Eyeliner using an angled brush. This isn’t my favorite way to apply eyeliner, but it suites the flapper look much better because gel liner is much softer than liquid eyeliner.

Now that my wing is sharp enough to cut a bitch, I took a black matte shadow again and blended it inward from the wing. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not! It’s just blending the black gel liner into the eyeshadow.

The eyes are basically done! I did my normal complexion routine. I used a primer, foundation, and concealer from Maybelline.

Flappers were not into the fads of big, bold brows. Usually when I do my eyebrows, I slightly over draw them to make them appear a little bigger. Flappers waxed their eyebrows to ultra thin lines, and then penciled them in. To mimic the appearance, I just filled in the sparse areas in my eyebrows.

Next, I took pink blush and placed it only on the apples of my cheeks. Flappers did not do the contour, blush, highlight that is the rage right now. They only wore blush, so that is what I did.

To finish off my eyes, I just put mascara on. Flappers did not do anything to their lower lashline, such as smoking it out. If this were a normal look, I would imitate the lip on the lower lashline using the same colors. However, I am trying to be true to flapper’s makeup as possible. On Halloween, I am going to wear false lashes to make the look even more dramatic, but I do not have any at the moment.

To finish off the look, I did my lips. Flappers had small, petite lips. They did not overdraw their lips to look like Kylie Jenner. In fact, they didn’t fill in their lips all the way. To mimic their lips, I took a red lipliner and partially filled in my lips. I lined right underneath the lip line. I focused the thin part on the outer portions of my lips. My cupids bow and lower lip, I filled in entirely.

For the lipstick, I recommend a liquid lipstick. They tend to last far longer than a regular lipstick, which is great for Halloween and being out all night.

And that is the completed look! Happy Halloween!

A Place For Me: The Beauty Community

Everyone has their own thing, and mine is makeup.

Every hobby has its own community, whether you are into makeup, playing video games, watching sports, go hunting, or even watching Friends; there is a place to go where you will find people who enjoy the same things as you do.

The beauty community is an amazing group to be a part of. Although I might not be active, such as having my own account, I keep up with everything. I am always keeping up with new products coming out and new techniques being taught.

Everyone who is a part of the community has the greatest personality. Everyone has such kind hearts, and they all promote loving each other. I have never heard any of the women I follow hate one another. They all are there to pick you up when you are down, and there to keep you in the best mood ever. The way that everyone treats each other in this community encourages me to be a better person each day.

Ever since I have been into makeup, I found myself in a better mood. Before, I did not have a “thing”. I did not have people who were into similar things to me, since I did not have something to share.  Now I have so many people to share my interest with. I can comment on someones instagram and get so many replies about how they like a certain product. They can give me their likes and dislikes, which help me decide what I want to purchase next and vice versa.

I have felt my confidence grow since I have been a part of a group. Now that I have friends who share a common interest, I know that I can never be alone, even if I may never meet any of the girls I talk to. I have been such a happier person, and I hardly have any bad moments. If I am in a bad mood, I can get online and watch my favorite youtubers and read comments and my mood is lifted instantly.

In the beauty community, I am never alone.

Do What You Want!

When you wake up in the morning, there are several things you need to do: get dressed, brush you hair and teeth, and eat breakfast. Getting dressed before you leave your house is essential; you can’t walk around naked in public, unless you want to get arrested or something. It is something you have to do in the eyes of society.

Society has the image of women all wrong. They say that women are ugly if they do not have a face full of makeup and a stick thin body. What happened to being a nice person? Or having morals? What happened to loving someone’s personality over their looks? It seems like society has forgotten all of this. As long as you’re thin and pretty, everyone will love you!

Wrong. If you are not into wearing makeup, then don’t wear it! It is as simple as that. So what if everyone on earth is raving about Kylie Jenner’s lips and how to use makeup to do it for yourself? If you don’t want it, don’t do it just because everyone thinks you should.

Wearing makeup should not feel like putting on clothes in the morning. You should not be spending an extra 20 minutes in the morning doing something that you do not want to do. If you want to spend that long, then do it by all means. But if you feel like you have to wear a full face of makeup to be “normal” in today’s world, you have it all wrong.

Wearing and doing your makeup should be enjoyable; it is an art. It takes time, effort, practice, and money to be able to have amazing outcomes. If you spend hundreds of dollars and hours of your time for someone else, think of all of the other things that you could be doing for yourself. You could be bettering yourself, making friends, studying for class, even watching Netflix!

However, if you are like me, and don’t give a sh*t about what society says, do what you want. Some days I will wear a full face of makeup. Some days I will walk out the door looking like I just woke up. I do my makeup when I feel like it and how I want to. I will wear purple lipstick if I wanted to, and society in general would be like WTF is she wearing, even though they say girls should wear makeup. But that’s a different rant for a different time…

Makeup Dos and Don'ts

Everyone has been here, whether you only wear mascara and lipgloss, or you are a celebrity makeup artist. Everyone makes mistakes, and doing makeup is not easy. Makeup is an art that takes practice to perfect. I am not saying I am perfect, because I still make mistakes in the makeup world. But throughout the years, I have learned some tips on how to make your makeup go on better and look amazing every time!

Here are some tips that will help you get ready in the order you would use them. These tips had helped me through the learning process. I hope they can help you too.

Disclaimer: If you do any of these and they work for you, do not get offended. These tips are very helpful to some, but if you like to sharpie on your eyebrows, go ahead! You do you, boo. If you feel confident doing so, keep doing it! Don't let me, or anyone else, tell you have to feel beautiful.

1.) DO use a primer

Priming your face is so important! It makes your foundation and powders last so much longer than they would without an primer. Some of my favorites are the Hourglass Mineral Veil Primer, Smashbox Photo Finish Primer, and a cheaper alternative is the Maybelline Master Prime Smoothing Primer.

Rub in the primer of your choice in your t-zone and wherever you have visible pores, and it will make a hell of a difference.

2.) DO NOT use the wrong shade of foundation!

I still struggle finding the perfect color. Mostly because I go from tanned, medium skin to super pale skin from summer to winter. If you can not find the exact color of you skin tone, do not go darker! Go lighter. If your face looks paler than your body, you can always use bronzer to warm up your face, while if you face is darker than your body, you walk around looking like an oompa loompa... trust me, I've been there.

In the summertime, I wore Maybelline Better Skin foundation in the shade Classic Ivory. You'd think ivory would be really pale, right? WRONG. It is so dark on me that I had to immediately go buy a different shade.

2b.) DO NOT forget to blend your foundation down your neck!

This step is crucial when you wear foundation. There is not a single foundation out there that will match your skin tone 100%. In order to make your makeup look as "natural" as possible, just take your brush and blend a drop down your neck, on your jawline, and over your ears. Yes your ears, if your color is off by a tad, your ears will look different that your face!

3.) DO set your concealer.

Undereye concealer is one of the best things for lazy girls who are hard to wake up in the morning. Those dark circles under your eyes can disappear in seconds if you know how to apply concealer correctly. Take a shade lighter than your skin tone and apply it everywhere you want to cover up (dark circles, acne, etc). Once it is blended out, take some sort of powder, like a translucent or a yellow toned color, and apply it on top of the creme. This will set the concealer in place and it will not crease and wear off as quickly.

Some good powders are the ELF Translucent Powder, Laura Mercier Translucent Powder, and my personal favorites, the banana shade in the Marc Jacobs Mirage 40 palette and the banana shade in the Kat Von D Shade n Light Palette.

4.) DO NOT sharpie on your brows.

I love having bold brows. I fill in my eyebrows every day, even if I'm just going to work. I feel much more confident with strong brows. However, there was a time when I did not know how to fill in my eyebrows correctly.

To fill them in as natural as possible, use the correct color! Use the color of your brow hairs, or even a shade lighter. You do not want to create a new brow with the products you are using, you just want to enhance the shape. Although, I do cheat a little and draw on the tail of my brow, since I barely have any.

I use the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz and Dipbrow Pomade, both in the shade dark brown.

5.) DO invest in good brushes.

Having the right face and eye brushes can go a long way. No matter how much money you invest in fancy eyeshadows and foundations, if you do not have the proper tools to apply them with, they are almost worthless. Makeup brushes last a long time, with good care of course.

You do not have to spend a fortune on brushes from MAC or Sephora brand! Cheaper alternatives are all over  and they are amazing quality! I get my brushes from Real Techniques, ELF, and an online brush store called Morphe Brushes. If you are into makeup, check out Morphe,  you won't regret it!

6.) DO NOT be afraid to be yourself.

If you want to wear purple or blue lipstick one day, and then the next day wear a green smokey eye, DO IT! Don't let society tell you that you can't! You can do whatever you want with makeup. Makeup is there to make you feel beautiful, and if blue lipstick makes you feel hot, do it!


Thanks for reading this week! Be sure to check back next week for my favorite fall makeup tutorial. :) xoxo

Happy Birthday To Me!

My 18th birthday was Thursday, September 24th, and I decided to treat myself with a lot of goodies. I went online shopping on multiple websites, I went into Victoria's Secret, and I splurged at Sephora. On top of all of my treats, my boyfriend decided his birthday gift to me would be to take me shopping, and how could I say no to that?

Instead of listing off everything I got, which some people would bitch about and say I'm a snob who is bragging, here is my top five favorite things I got for my birthday.

1.) Marc Jacobs Instamarc Light Filtering Contour Powder in the shade 40 Mirage Filter.

Such a long name for such an amazing product! I was not expecting to ever buy this since Marc Jacobs' products are so expensive. However, I saw so many people rave about this contour duo, so I decided to check it out. It took me a lot of research to decide if I wanted to spend $50 on one palette, but I had more pros than cons in this case.
Every time I use this palette, my face looks flawless. Contouring comes so easily with this powder. It also has a yellowish banana shade, which is my most loved color to set my face with.

2.) Nars Lip Gloss's in the shades Chelsea Girls and Baby Doll

I've never been a lipgloss type of girl. I tend to lick my lips a lot, and I'm always drinking water, so it never stays on. Even wearing lipstick is a pain, sometimes. However, I wanted to try something new. I've heard nothing but good things about Nars Lip Glosses and Lip Sticks, but I never tried them until now. I ordered Chelsea Girls online with my first order, and Brandon bought me Baby Doll for my birthday. 

Since I have gotten these, I don't think I haven't gone a day without wearing one or the other! I will definitely be getting more in the future. :)

3.) Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade in the shade Dark Brown and Clear Brow Gel

Since I have gotten these two products, my brows have never looked better. To be honest, the dipbrow is very hard to use if you do not know what you are doing, so I wouldn't recommend it to beginners. But if you already do your brows, you need this in your life! It makes your eyebrows look bold but natural. Then putting the brow gel over top of it, it locks your hard work in place. I've tried other brow gels, but this is the best I've ever used.

4.) Ofra Long Lasting Liquid Lipsticks in the shades Miami Fever and Mina

This purchase was very special to me. It is a collaboration with one of my favorite beauty youtubers, Kathleen Fuentes, aka Kathleenlights. I own everything Kathleen collabed on, such as eyeshadows and other lipsticks. When I found out she did it again, I was so happy! I wasn't too sure about the color at first, but now that I have it, I am in love. It is the perfect fall lipstick shade, and I know I am going to wear it to death. 

5.) Marc Jacobs Twinklepop Eyeshadow Sticks in the shades Volver and On The Verge

Another Marc Jacobs product, I told you I splurged. I was not expecting to get these, but as I was walking around Sephora it's like a lightbulb went off in my head. I remembered I heard someone on youtube talk about these, and I loved the swatches of them. So I headed over to the Marc Jacobs stand and swatched them for myself. I was instantly hooked and I knew I needed all of them. But there were way too many and at $28 a piece, I would be broke forever. So I got two, and I do not regret my decision one bit. 

Jaclyn Hill: My Role Model

It all started with Jaclyn Hill. I found Jaclyn’s channel when I was watching a tutorial for winged eyeliner when her video popped up in the recommendation list. Her thumbnail intrigued me, so I watched it. Her video was a different take on how to apply winged eyeliner, which I was trying to master at the time.

Her voice, her style, her everything pulled me in forever. That day I binged watched all of her videos, and I learned more and more about her. That was the day that my obsession became real. Everything that she talked about, I wanted. Most of the products I bought when I was first starting off were based off of her.

When Jaclyn’s channel started growing, I saw no change. Many youtubers let their subscriber count, and the money, get to their head and change their personality. But Jaclyn is 100% genuine, which is why I love her so much.

What really amazes me is how someone with her past can influence so many people. Jaclyn was extremely poor after high school. She married her husband, Jon, at the age of 19. She would tell stories about how they would literally only have a stick of butter and cheese in her fridge. She always told herself that it was only temporary and that things will be better. She would say, “I want to that Michael Kors purse, so someday I will. Just not today.” And now that she can afford what she has, just by putting herself out there on youtube, inspires me so much.

Jaclyn is extremely successful from youtube. So many companies have reached out to her, good and bad, and she let’s her subscribers know the bad. She doesn’t lie for the money involved, which is hard to find in beauty youtubers. But then a company like Becca Cosmetics reaches out and asks to collab (which is the greatest thing in the world, BTW). Jaclyn created her own highlighter called Champagne Pop, which my lovely boyfriend, Brandon, bought for me just because he knew how much Jaclyn and beauty means to me <3 Anyways, Sephora sponsored this collaboration, which is crazy because it’s Sephora and what makeup lover doesn’t love Sephora?

If somebody can go from having an empty fridge to having their face on a wall in Sephora and still be the same person inside and out, that is saying something about their character. Jaclyn is truly a role model; lifestyle and beauty wise, I want to be like her.

September Ipsy Bag

Ipsy is a monthly makeup bag subscription in which I am subscribed to. The service is only $10 a month, while the bag is usually worth well over that! You receive anywhere between 4-6 deluxe sample sized products, and sometimes a full sized item is thrown in the bag.

Long story short, I really enjoy the bag and I recommend it to anyone; makeup lovers or makeup starters.

The first product I saw when I opened my bag was an eyeshadow trio from the brand NYX. NYX is one of my favorite drugstore brands out there, so I was pretty thrilled when I saw that I was getting this trio. The colors are just my shades: a shimmery bronze color, a shimmery copper shade, and a matte black. I haven’t had a chance to wear the colors on my eyes, so I don’t know how these particular shades perform. When I swatched them, they showed up decently. This trio will most likely end up in my school makeup bag so I can touch up throughout the day.

The second product, which is my favorite product in the palette, is an eyebrow powder trio from the brand Pixi Beauty. The trio comes with a light taupe, a medium brown, and a dark brown. I honestly have no use for the taupe colors, but I have been loving the dark brown for my eyebrows. My brows haven’t been looking this on fleek in a while! I will definitely repurchase this powder once it runs out. The full size only retails for $12, so that’s a plus.

The third product I got in my bag was a full sized lipstick from the brand City Colour Cosmetics in the shade One Night Stand. This shade is a really pretty burgundy-wine color. I wore it once so far, and I wasn’t that impressed. The color was beautiful and I don’t have a color like it. However, it did not last on my lips for long at all. I wore it to work, and I took a drink, and it was basically gone. I will try to make it work, but I will probably choose my other brands over this. But it isn’t so bad considering it was full size and they retail for $4.99 apiece, which is half of the bag.

The fourth product I received was a deluxe sample of the First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Cream Intense Hydration - that is a huge name, but the product is amazing! This deluxe sample is 2oz, which on Sephora retails for $12. This is basically a lotion for any dry spots on your body. Last night I put some on my hands and my cheeks, which is where I have pretty dry skin. I woke up with super smooth skin! This lotion is going to be my holy grail product in the winter for my hands: they get so dry that they crack and bleed, yeah TMI. I am most definitely buying the full tub of this stuff come winter!

The final product I got in my September bag was a 1oz sample of Octavio Molina Hair Aceite de Argan which is an argan oil for you hair. This product claims to make your hair less frizzy and shine like no other oil will. If this is true, I will love it, because have you seen my hair? It’s pretty rough. I haven’t tried this yet, but I have high hopes. 

If you’d like to sign up for ipsy, use my link! :) https://www.ipsy.com/new?refer=2wbqb

Why Beauty?

Beauty has not always been a passion of mine. Before this last year, I had the slightest clue of what it meant to use a crease brush, to get my nails “filled in”, or that red lipstick looked pretty decent on me. My junior year of high school, I branched out of my normal makeup routine, which was mascara and foundation, stolen from my mom, which was way too dark for me.

I started watching youtube videos of beauty gurus with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I would watch them with awe. I’d think to myself, “how did you do such a perfect winged eyeliner on your first try?!” I would attempt to recreate what I saw on screen, only to result with a black mess all over my face.

After months of playing with the makeup taken from my mom’s dresser, I got a hang of doing my makeup. My eyeshadow always got compliments from the girls at school. I decided I wanted to expand my own collection of makeup. So on Black Friday of that year, I made my first major purchase: the Urban Decay Naked 2 palette. I used that palette to death for months and months until I got pretty dang good at doing my makeup.

I started to collect more and more makeup and watch hours of youtube videos. After spending that much time on watching videos, I decided I wanted to make some of my own, and so I did. I made my first youtube channel a few months ago and recorded around a dozen videos.

Once school started, I ran out of time to sit down and film and edit. When I found out that we were assigned to keep a blog, with a topic of our choice, in english class, I was so excited! I was thinking to myself, “I’m just going to turn my youtube into a blog! That way I have to keep up with it.” And that is exactly what I am doing.

I chose to do my blog on everything beauty because I have a passion for it. I have already done things blog/vlog related in the past, and now that it is an assignment, I have no problem doing it. I can definitely see myself keeping up with this blog, even after my english class is over. The assignment will obviously be my motivation to keep up with it during the semester, but my passion will be the motivation for when it is over.

I hope that everyone reading this can see my passion through my words, and maybe even learn a thing or two while you’re here. :)

Until next time!

- xoxo Brittany