So I know it's been a while since I last posted. I went from being on winter vacation to working 30+ hours a week and being back in school full-time. When my part-time job ended, I spent the next few weeks catching up on schoolwork. Which brings us to the first round of tests this semester. Sorry I disappeared, I'll try to get back to posting 1-2 times a week. Also part of why I haven't been posting much is my workload this semester. I'm taking 4th semester courses (last semester), which are basically university level courses. Let me put it this way, every time I print out that lecture's slides, I can't even staple the papers together because it's so thick. There's just so much stuff that I'm supposed to learn in 15 weeks and I don't know how normal people can handle this amount of work, it's insane. Organic Chemistry and General Biology 2 are seriously no joke. I've never had courses like these before where the amount of content is just beyond any class I've ever taken before. And I'm also taking Calculus 2 this semester!!
So what else have I been up to? I've decided to try to budget myself a bit this year. We all know I love makeup and my collection has grown a lot in the last year. I've been working towards building a professional makeup portfolio, but had to put that on hold with everything that's going on.
You won't be getting any Valentine's Day posts from me, just cuz I think it's the lamest holiday EVER. I'm always single on V-Day and the only gifts I usually get are chocolates from my mom. It's annoying seeing every girl that walks by with a man on one arm and flowers in the other. Seriously. Go have fun at your fancy dinner while I sit at home watching a shitty romantic comedy and eating straight out of the Ben and Jerry's tub of ice cream. By the way, Chunky Monkey is my favourite flavour.
I've been thinking about doing some posts on Zombies, since I'm a big time zombie freak. Since I've never tried Special FX Makeup, I thought I'd spare us all the pain and just do a few posts on my favourite zombie movies, books, etc.
I also have a TON of empties that I'm getting ready to go over and review for you! My drawer is literally full of empty product containers and my mom thinks I'm nuts for keeping them all. She just doesn't understand how important this is for the blog :P So that'll be coming soon and I'll try to squeeze in a makeup tutorial!
New Products I've Purchased this Month
I have to say, I didn't think I bought a lot of stuff these last two months, but now that I'm actually cataloging it, I'm disappointed. But I am impressed with the amount of stuff that I bought that was on clearance. I usually never shop clearance or bother to go to clearance-type stores. So when you're viewing this long list, please be aware that this is over at least two months and some stuff was given to me.Sephora
I stocked up on Too Faced's Primed and Poreless face primer, which is my go-to face primer, though it's facing some competition. I tried a sample of Smashbox's Photo Finish face primer (I believe it's called) and it's the original one (I forget the specific name of it). I loved it. I almost bought that instead of Primed and Poreless, but the price stopped me. It's 44$ and my Primed and Poreless is 38$. I guess you could say it's not that much of a difference, but 6$ more a tube adds up. I also tried a sample of Benefit's Porefessional, which did a good job too, but I wasn't a fan of the smell. It wasn't because I didn't like the smell, I just prefer it to not have a scent.
Another product I stocked up on was the Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment in Clear. I had originally gotten a mini sample of it with a purchase at Sephora and I fell in love. It's the most moisturizing lip treatment I've ever tried and it leaves my lips feeling so soft, it's unreal. I finally made the splurge and bought myself a full-size at 26$. I admit, it's a lot of money for a lip treatment, but I assure you it is well worth the splurge!!
A new product for me this month was Makeup Forever's HD Pressed Powder. I already use MUFE's HD Foundation and Loose Powder, so I knew I had to have the Pressed Powder. Before it came out, I kept thinking about getting a Pressed Powder to put in my makeup bag, but I couldn't decide on which one to try. When MUFE came out with their HD Pressed Powder, I knew I had to have it. It would complement my HD Foundation and Loose Powder perfectly. The Pressed Powder is a pressed version of their Loose Powder. I use the Pressed Powder to touch up my makeup during the day, and for that, it's great. I haven't used it to set my makeup yet, but I will try that soon. I really like using a Loose Powder to set it and then using a compact Pressed Powder during the day for touch ups. The price on it was a little iffy for me. For the Pressed Powder, it's 41$ for 0.21oz of product, whereas the Loose Powder is 39$ for 0.3oz. So not only is the Pressed Powder more expensive, but you get less product!! Plus the Pressed Powder doesn't even come with a puff!!
Another new product for me was Urban Decay's new Naked Ultra Nourishing Lipgloss in Lovechild. Lovechild is a cool medium pink colour. The formula felt nice on my lips and it gave a good amount of colour. It wasn't sticky at all and felt nourishing. It has the same mint smell and taste that their Lip Junkie glosses have, which I am not a fan of. In all, I liked the product and felt it was worth the 24$.
I also got another couple of Urban Decay products. I bought their 24/7 Glide-On Lip Pencil in Native and Revolution Lipstick in Native. I bought them to go together as a pair. In the tube, the Revolution Lipstick doesn't look like the pale pink it's described as, but on my lips, it definitely fit the description, and I was very pleased. The lip pencil was the perfect complementary colour to the lipstick and I was pleasantly surprised with how good it looked on. The lip pencil was 24$ and the lipstick was 26$.
MAC
I got a few things at MAC, so let's start with the permanent collection.
I bought my first Mineralize Skinfinish in Lightscapade. Remember how excited I was when I bought that Physician's Formula Mineral Glow Pearls in Translucent and thought it was like the best highlighter ever? Well this is even better than that!!! I've been using this every single day since I bought it and it's trumped all my other highlighters. I'm not really sure how to describe the colour, when you swirl it together it looks like a very pale pinky beige with a ton of light-reflecting particles. For pale white girls like me, you NEED this. It's 35$ and you get a whopping 10g of product.
I got their Lip Liner in Naked and another in Subculture. I got them to complement my nude lipsticks. Naked is a very light nude colour. It goes perfect with MAC Creme D'Nude and is the same colour as Creme D'Nude. Subculture is a darker nude with a bit of pink in it. It goes perfect with my Too Faced La Creme in Naked Dolly (the colors are similar) and it also goes with MAC Creme D'Nude if you want a lip liner that's darker than the lipstick. I'm happy I got both liners because I see them as the perfect complementing liners for nude lips. They cost 18$ each.
The one Lipstick I got is so obviously Creme D'Nude. I hear about this shade all the time and thought it was time I try it. It's a very pale nude colour with pink tones. Only pale girls like me would be able to pull off wearing this lip stick because it's that pale. And don't wear dark bronzers, I learned the hard way that it clashes horribly. The colour itself is great though. It's perfect if you're doing a smokey eye and you don't want a pale pink lip. It goes great with the liners I mentioned above, Naked and Subculture. This lipstick costs 18$, but I got it free because I Back to Mac-ed. :)
I bought a few lip glosses from MAC, which is something I haven't bought from them in ages. The first one is a Lipglass is Underage. It's almost a nude colour or a very light pale pink. It goes very well with both pinks and nudes. I can see this being layered over nude or pink lipsticks, so it's pretty versatile. It was 18$CAD.
The second lipgloss I got is a Pro Longwear Lipglass in Long Love Love. This was the first time I tried their Pro Longwear Lipglass formula, and I was impressed. The colour is much more pigmented than their regular Lipglass formula, it's almost like applying a lipstick. The formula is sticky, in typical MAC fashion, and it lasted much of the day. The colour is a medium pale pink. It will set you back 23$.
The last lipgloss I got is the Cremesheen Glass in Pagoda. It is currently being repromoted in their Fantasy of Flowers Collection (pink). The Cremesheen formula has always been a bit lacking in pigment, so I like to use it to layer over my lipsticks without altering the colour too much. On it's own, however, it looks like a very light pink sheen with sparkle. It is 23$.
And lastly, I got a few of the limited edition items from the Fantasy of Flowers Collection. From the pink side of the collection, I got the Mineralize Eyeshadow in Great Beyond. Out of all the eyeshadows, I saw myself using this one the most, and I liked the colours in it. All the mineralize eyeshadows in this collection come with 4 eyeshadow colours in the compact. I was hoping I would love this, but I thought the quality fell a bit short. It wasn't as pigmented as it could have been, especially the grey shade. I was expecting more from it. I found the purple tones just kind of melted together when applied and didn't really stand out on their own. This is a product that I wouldn't repurchase, unfortunately.
My last item from the Fantasy of Flowers Collection is from the green side. I got the Fluidline in Sassy Moss, which is a bright emerald green. When I first swatched it, I was worried that the colour wouldn't be build able, as it looked a little on translucent side. Applied, however, I was glad to see that it could be layered to build about 80% opacity. I also just loved the green colour and knew I had to have it. I have this obsession with the colour green. I wore it alone as a winged eyeliner and it looked amazing. I was super happy with this purchase and it's only 19$.
Illamasqua
I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, so I'll mentioned it here. I went to Illamasqua to pick up some of their pigments!! I got their Pure Pigments in Beguile and Android. I don't know why they call them pigments, because to me, they are glitters. Beguile is a multicolour glitter with a white base and Android is a shimmering silver/grey glitter with a grey/black base. I tried Android out over MAC eyeshadows (I did a smokey eye) and I used Too Faced Glitter Glue as my adhesive. I gotta tell ya, Glitter Glue is THE best glitter adhesive EVER!! I tried applied the glitter using Urban Decay's All Nighter Spray and it was horrible. The glitter clumped up and creased horribly in a matter of an hour. But with the Glitter Glue, it held all day long, didn't budge or crease at all. The adhesive you choose plays a big role. I was really impressed with Android, it was super sparkly and everyone was impressed and asked me what I was wearing. I'll do a tutorial soon doing that look and I'll explain it detail how I applied the pigment. I bought the pigments from the Illamasqua Boutique that is in The Bay. The pigments cost 25$ there compared to 31$ at Sephora.
I also got a ton of their Nail Polishes. I got Nomad, Viridian, Creator, and Facet. So far I've tried Nomad and Creator and I am MORE THAN IMPRESSED with the quality of these nail polishes. Seriously, the formula is just AMAZING. With one coat, the polish is already opaque and with two, you're done. You don't need three coats. Nomad is a beautiful glossy light jade green. Creator is a glossy black with silver sparkles. Usually nail polishes with sparkles are a pain to get off, but surprisingly, it wasn't that bad to get Creator off. It wasn't a massive pain like some other polishes. Viridian is a metallic medium/dark green/teal. It looks amazing in the bottle, I'm just hoping it looks amazing on my fingers. Facet is from their latest collection (says my mom who bought it) and it is such a strange and unique colour I don't even know how to describe it so I'll list the description from Illamasqua website: "grey crystal". That description is nowhere near close to explaining what it actually looks like. They cost 17$ at The Bay and 22$ at Sephora.
Nicole by OPI
I've never tried a Nicole by OPI polish before so I decided to buy some colours from the Modern Family Collection that was on clearance at Target. I bought Candid Cameron, which is a weird green/blue metallic colour that looks like there might also be some yellow in it. I also got What's The Mitch-uation? which is a beautiful dark metallic blue based purple colour. I don't watch Modern Family, I got these nail polishes because I was curious to try out the Nicole by OPI formula.
Essie
You all know how much I love my Essie polishes. I picked up Chinchilly, which I had been mad eyeballin' for a while now. It's a pretty greige colour, more on the grey side than beige. Ugh I just tried to open it to look at the colour and I cannot get it open. Crap. I hope someone in my house can or I'm going to be pissed. Here's a story about the next polish I got. It came out in the Fall 2013 collection and I went to at least 5 stores and that shade was sold out EVERYWHERE. It was insane. A couple of weeks ago, I'm strolling through Pharmaprix and what do I see on the rack? I SEE IT!!!! And I got so excited. Turns out, Essie just made the most popular limited edition shades permanent!!! And it turns out mine was among them!! The shade I'm talking about is For The Twill Of It. Yep, that beautiful green/purple duochrome metallic shade!! The one I'm currently wearing :) I'm going to do a tutorial on it so you can see the amazement that is For The Twill Of It. They cost 10$ each.
Chanel
More nail polishes galore. My mom bought me a ton of Chanel nail polishes. The newest ones are 563 Vertigo, 603 Charivari and 219 Black Satin. Vertigo is a dark grey with a very slight red sparkle to it. Charivari is a dark purple. Vertigo and Charivari are both limited edition shades in the Notes de Printemps 2014 collection. Black Satin is your typical black nail polish and is part of the permanent collection. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to try them out yet, but I will soon.
NYX
I finally got my hands on the famed Jumbo Eye Pencil in 604 Milk. My Target has been out of them for AGES since they first opened (which was months ago) and every single store I've been to has been sold out of Milk. I was perusing the empty NYX section when I found one very beat up Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk and I thought to myself, holy crap it's here just for me! Unfortunately, the asshole at the cash wouldn't give me any type of discount even though I was buying a damaged product. I mean, come on, it's kind of ridiculous that they made me pay full price for a damaged product. I know NYX is cheap to begin with, but 5-10% off would have been nice. I was kind of disappointed. I mean, the lid is cracked to shit and the pencil has been lightly used. This means I had to disinfect the hell out of it when I got home. Not impressed Target!!!
Winners
So for those of you that don't live in Canada, Winners is owned by the same people who own TJ Maxx in the USA, so it's very similar to TJ Maxx. Now, I NEVER shop at Winners. I only went in because I had a 40 minute lunch break and I was tired of perusing the same goddamn stores. I have to say, I was shocked. They had NARS. They had Deborah Lippman. They had OPI. They had Seche fucking Vite! (which, by the way, NO STORE CARRIES IN CANADA). They had China Glaze! (which also no store carries in Canada). I was in makeup and nail polish heaven. The only downside that because it was all on clearance, it meant that it was severely picked over. I wasn't willing to buy 6 bottles of varying red Seche nail polishes just to get the Seche Vite it came with. But I did score some great stuff from NARS. My mom threw out my receipt, but I have a general idea of how much each item cost and/or how much I saved.Blush in Desire (paid 25$, retail is 33$)
And it wasn't even used!! I have this blush in my Adult Content cheek palette and I love it, so I figured I might as well get a full-size for super cheap!
Illuminator in Copacabana (paid 25$, retail 36$)
Unfortunately, there was a huge chunk missing out of the tube, but saving 11$ kind of made it up to me. I mean honestly, even though it's missing a bit, it's still going to take me 5 years to finish the tube.
Nail Polish in Night Breed (probably paid 15-16$, retail 21$)
Again, there was a bit missing (you can tell because of the way the sparkles stick together on the side of the bottle), but the brush and nail polish itself were in good condition, so I got that too.
Big Sexy Hair Volumizing Treatment (paid 17$, retail 27$)
Everytime I see a new Big Sexy Hair product, I get excited. There is nowhere in Montreal that has the full line of products, so I have to buy bits and pieces from different stores. Which is why I get excited when I find a new store that has their stuff, especially when it's a new product. I haven't used it yet (unfortunately I washed my hair the night before I bought it, which was this weekend), but you're supposed to use it after you shampoo in the shower, leave it in for a few minutes, and then wash it out. It's supposed to give you more volume.
So that's it for my New Products this Month!! I know it might seem like a lot, but bear in mind that this was collected over two months and that this wasn't one huge shopping trip. I can't wait to use my new products in tutorials for you guys!! I'm so excited about showing you MAC Mineralize Skinfinish in Lightscapade! It's a beautiful highlighter!! And I'm excited about showing you the Illamasqua nail polishes!! The quality is just amazing and I think everyone needs to try it.
So that's it for now, I'll try to post a review/tutorial of Essie's For The Twill Of It soon as well as another Empties and Extras post, since I really need to empty out my drawer. I hope you enjoy this post in the meantime! I'll also be back to posting makeup tutorials in no time.
Steph xo.
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