Recent Beauty Purchases! April - May 2015

I really do try not to go too crazy when purchasing beauty products. I usually allow myself one medium priced beauty product purchase a month. And when I do that I'm usually really good about not going crazy the rest of the month. When I don't do that I tend to buy lots of little random beauty things here and there that eventually do add up...my bad.  So I went super beauty crazy in March and the end of March for my birthday. I don't think I've even done a haul of all that stuff...but most of it's been integrated into my routine so they do pop up here and there, but I was really trying to be good in April. I think I succeeded in only getting a a few things...but when I look at all the small things I got between Mid April and the end of May...ooops.

So I wanted to share them here...In no particular order because I'm terrible about remembering when exactly I bought certain things...

Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil Walkyrie I got this lip product when I went to Sephora one day hoping to buy a Nars Audacious lipstick. I was really wanting a perfect every day lip stick that was long lasting, non-drying and in the my lips but better color. I had heard a million great things about the Audacious lipsticks but knew they were super expensive and wanted to be 100% sure before I purchased one.  The woman at Sephora and I had a long conversation about my needs/concerns and she told me that actually the cheaper Nars Lip Pencils were probably the better way to go based on my needs. She helped me try on several shades and I ended up going with one probably a little darker and redder than I was originally hoping for, but it ended up being a great choice and very long lasting. Now the sad thing is it's a little darker than what I was hoping an everyday color would be and so I haven't worn it as much as I should...I am going to make a conscious effort to wear it more, but it's beautiful. (I also got a free Matte and Satin Nars Lip Pencil for my Sephora Bday gift, the Matte is in a too bright for me red but the Satin is lovely)

Twoish weeks ago I went to Ulta one day with the only purpose to buy Tarte's Amazonian Clay Blush in Fearless...of course they were out.  So I ended up instead getting a new highlighter that I've heard a ton about lately.  Laura Gellar's highligh in Gilded Honey this stuff is gorgeous. It is GOLD, like GOLD shimmery goodness on your cheekbones. I love this stuff and basically look like a gold disco ball every time I wear it- and I'm okay with that. I went back later to get my Blush and they had it in stock this time.  So I did get both.  Fearless is a bright pink I think it just perfect for summer.  It's super easy to go too heavy handed with it, but again I'm cool with the heavy makeup sometimes, although I did look a bit hookerish the first time I wore it...needs a fluffy brush and a light touch.

At the beginning of April I ordered some theBalm products from HauteLook. I'd been wanting to try some of their stuff forever but never could decide exactly what I wanted. Knowing I was looking for a brighter blush I looked at swatch after swatch and finally settled on Cabana Boy it looks like a deep plum in the pan but is really a brighter purple-ish pink.  Good for summer. I also have heard so many good things about their Time Balm Concealer, it can be used as a concealer and an eye primer. It was half off so I decided to snag it too. I hate to say it but this concealer is just a little too dry for me. I'm going to try it more in the summer when my skin isn't as dry, but I'm thinking this is going to be an excellent tattoo cover up but not much else...but I'm loving the blush!

Back Ups- I got a few back up products this month too because I'm nervous when I like things too much that they'll be discontinued...like my BB cream from Olay that I love...so I buy more when I can.  Three products that fall into this category right now are my Wet N Wild Take on the Day Eye Primer, Simple Miscellar Water, and Maybelline Instant Age Rewind.  This is my second Take on the Day eye primer, I loved my first but at the end it started to get a little special. I'm finishing up a Milani eye primer that I'm not terribly impressed with now but I have this for immediately when that one runs out.  I'm on my 2nd bottle of Miscellar Water now and this is my 3rd, I had a coupon and love this stuff, so I wanted to make sure I had it just in case.  Then my Maybelline Age Rewind this is my second, I have two others, one in a shade far too light for me but that I can use in the winter and one in a shade that's like my skin color, so this one I got in a neutralizer shade that will be hopefully a little more universal.

I've been trying to get more into serums and oils and skin care with better stuff in it. I used to be so good at serums when I was getting my monthly facials and buying all the products my facialist recommended, but since stopping those I've let it all slip.  So I was killing time in Ulta on Cinco de Mayo and not intending on buying anything, but I was testing some IT Cosmetic Serums and the moment I put this one on the top of my hand and rubbed it in, I knew I had to have it. Feel the Moment Anti-Aging, Ultra Hydrating, Sensory Awakening Primer Serum has changed my life. It smells just like one of the serums my facialist used to use, it has a deep relaxing herbal scent. It feels so silky smooth but sinks into the skin beautifully. I feel like it is very hydrating and I'm in love.  I've tried it as an evening serum and a daytime primer and I love it as a serum.  As a primer I feel like it doesn't actually fill or blur my pores so I still need something a little extra on top. But it's a great moisturizer and I'm absolutely loving it.  I did end up getting it for about $12 off because I cashed in some points for it, I don't know if I could buy it full price, but I'll keep checking on QVC because they always have amazing deals on IT products.

One of the many reasons I love Ulta is that I feel like they always have such great deals, with their buy one get one 50% off sales on Drugstore Items and their rewards program, there is never a reason to spend full price on anything. I just love it. So during one of their sales recently I got two Garnier Products.  Garnier Ultra-Lift Miracle Sleeping Cream which I had a sample of a few months back and loved. This is a great night cream and I can't wait to finish up my Olay one I'm using right now so I can use this one. The other thing I got was another serum type product the Garnier Skin Renew Dark Spot Overnight Peel. Now I know it says peel, but it's not really...it's a leave on peel and works overnight to fade dark spots (Which I don't have), to even skin tone (which I kinda need), brighten skin (yes please) and smooth texture (omg yes, my skin texture is horrible right now). So I read some great reviews on this and decided since I had wanted to buy the sleeping cream anyways, had a coupon for it, it was on sale and you can always use the $3.50 off Ulta coupon on drugstore items, I decided why not.

Bliss Triple Oxygen Facial in a Box I just saw this cute little 3 step Bliss kit on sale for $12 with 2 applications and thought I had to try it. It's basically a mini-facial you can do at home yourself. I have been wanting to do something with my Sunday nights to pamper my hair and skin and thought this would go nicely with that routine.  You get a mask, a peel and a treatment in this and it has great reviews.

Once I see them all together it doesn't seem nearly as much.  As long as I don't add up the prices I feel any better.  One thing I didn't really talk about were the mountains of Face Wipes I bought. There was a sale...I needed them and I hate running out. I can't believe it's June tomorrow. I'm going to hopefully be good over the summer and not buy anymore makeup...but I'm just trying. I already know I do need a new primer after my Maybelline one runs out, my IT one is really for hydration, so I'll probably get another one of those, but I have a coupon.  Other than that I'm going to try to limit beauty purchases to skin care this summer. I want to go it under control!

Prom Makeup 2015!

So my good friend HR Liz asked me to do her daughter's makeup for prom.  I am not a makeup artist and I haven't done another person's makeup since like...ever. I've never done another person's makeup. In high school I used to ask my mom or sister to do my makeup for special occasions, this whole makeup obsession is literally barely a toddler. So I was super flatter and terrified to be asked.

Her daughter is 15, a freshman, and was asked to PROM! I was never asked to prom. My junior year I went with a girlfriend and my senior year I wasn't asked so I didn't go...sad day. Her daughter and I do not share any similar coloring. She's fair with freckles, dark brown close to black hair and has greenish hazel ambery eyes (very pretty). Besides the dark hair we have nothing physically in common. She's wearing a beautiful black and white gown that is very sophisticated and classically beautiful. So I went to youtube for the answer.

My favorite YouTube Beauty Guru is EmilyNoel83 and a few years ago or two she did a deep and sultry look that I'm going to try to replicate.  Here are the tools I'll be using...

I'm doing Prom Makeup for a friend's daughter tonight, tested it on myself and these are the tools it requires. #prom #spring2015 #ohtobeyoungagain

A photo posted by Tyler Archer (@tyleralyse) on May 9, 2015 at 6:11am PDT

Because we don't have the same coloring I decided to utilize the BB Cream/Foundation she already uses.  This girl is advanced y'all she's using BB Cream from theBalm! I didn't even know about theBalm till like a year ago, it's good stuff. So not wanting to cover her gorgeous freckles too much I put on a very light layer of this.  Since she said she has kinda dry skin we also didn't use a primer.  Her skin is beautiful baby high schooler skin so she didn't need too much base at all.

For her eyes I took just a little bit of peach Pixi concealer to hide some of the blue under her eyes, not much we're talking about 15 year old dark circles which I wouldn't even bother to cover if I had them, but alas I have 30 year old dark circles, they're here to party.  Anyways back to the pretty girl- next I used an ELF eye primer on her and spread all over from lash to brow.  I tried to explain things as I went along about why I was doing certain things and Celeste tried not to seem too bored with my explanations ;)

I usually like to do something else while eye primer sets so we moved onto her face for a minute. I took the beautiful Park Ave Princess Palette from Tarte to warm up her face.  Because she has such pretty freckles in the center of her face we really only needed to bronze up her hairline and a little around her ears and neck.  I explained it all along the way and even tried to explain contouring before I realized it really didn't matter- this girl needed no contouring.  Then I went in with the pale pink blush in the palette showing Celeste how pretty it looked with her skin.  Then just a little champagne highlight from the palette on the tops of her cheeks and down her nose.

Next I broke into the eye shadow. I used my giant ELF palette with a million and one colors and my small Wet N Wild trio in Walking on Eggshells. I used the trio first with the pearly cream color under her brow and the shimmery pink all over the moving part of her lid.  Then I moved on to the ELF Palette monster. I found a medium shimmery taupe that wasn't too brown or too grey (definition of taupe anyone?) and added that on top of the pink over 1/3 of her lid starting from the outer corner. I was really trying to leave the inner and center corner bright. I put a pretty even layer of this color then decided we needed a dark shimmery brown for the outer v. I put just a touch of that shimmery brown in the outer corner and smudged some on the lower lash line as well.  At this point I stressed to Celeste the importance of blending out the eye shadow, blend, blend blend, I probably said a hundred times. Lots of back and forth from eye to eye to get it right.  When I was satisfied with the outer corner I took a little more shimmery pink to the inner lid and center to make sure it was sparklie enough!

At this point I commented on how still she was being and that she was being so good with keeping her eyes still and everything and she said she'd had a lot of practice being the guinea pig for her little sister.  Her little sister loves makeup too!

Then it came time to do the eye liner. Since I knew she was going to be dancing the night away we decided liquid eyeliner was probably going to be the best choice. I am not normally a liquid eye liner person and felt incredibly nervous doing her eye liner but she put her trust in me and I just went really slow and made it work.  After the first layer my beautiful subject did share that she usually wore a pretty thick eye liner which is a drastic contrast to what I normally do, which is an eyeliner you can barely tell is there.  So I went back in and thickened it back up.  For mascara I was definitely not going to try that on my own so I just had her apply her own mascara and come back to me for the rest.

She asked me to fill in her brows a little, and they didn't need much. She had recently had them waxed so the shape was perfect, but I added a little wax to hold them in place and then filled in a few sparse places. The final step was lips. I brought two shades for her to chose from and she went with the deep red NARS sample I got for my birthday.  It looked gorgeous on her, perfect choice.  Once her lips were applied I sprayed her down with some NYX Setting Spray and she was ready for the ball!

Before starting I asked Celeste a little about what she usually wears and she said maybe eye liner and mascara but that's about it, sometimes a BB Cream, but she seemed to have a pretty low maintenance makeup thing going on.  So while working on her I tried to keep that in mind so as not to go too overboard.

This was such a fun and scary and exciting project for me. It was fun to research prom looks and to help a little girl transform into a woman.  I should have taken a before picture, but one of my friends said I made her look 25...so I'm going to call it a success.  She looked gorgeous and was happy with the look which is the most important thing. I don't think I'll run out and start my own makeup artist business anytime soon, but if any of my friends want me to do their makeup now, I am way less likely to say no.

Makeup Madness Part 4! Lip Products!

I didn't think I had that many lip products...

For someone who very rarely wears lipstick this was kinda shocking to go through. And there are actually 3 missing from the picture! My cat Bellatrix loves to play with lipstick and lose them all over my apartment.  I know exactly which ones are missing too and they're ones I love...so she better find them and put them back with the rest of my makeup or I'm going to be super upset.  So what we have here are 59 lip products and I am getting rid of a lot. Like more than any other Makeup Madness yet...especially since Makeup Madness 3 was a huge failure...

So the criteria I used to get rid of lipsticks and lip products was if they were expired- 2 -3 years- ewww. If they smelled I got rid of them and then if  attacked my lips or made them too dry.  So here's what I got rid of.

25 products. Oh I also got rid of colors that made my lips look dead and that I know wouldn't work for my sister either. I got rid of some glosses because I don't like lip gloss and I got rid of all the baby lips because they were all retired last year when my lips had a horrible reaction to EOS lip balms and these. Every time I would wear these or the EOS stuff my lips would puff up and look like I had lip injections- seriously not a good look for me- it was also painful.  The lip balm in the upper left I got in an Ipsy bag and can't get it open, but I remember disliking it.  The ELF moisturizing Lip Color was really disappointing, loved the formula but the poor thing is frosted! Hello 90s, not the look I'm going for.  The rest were just old so bye bye.

So like the eyeliners and jumbo pencils before them I decided to put my lip products to the swatch test...

PS Lipstick swatches are much harder to get off than eyeliner... Anyways aren't they pretty. So yes the lighting is bad but you can see I don't really stray outside of certain color familys.  What I ended up keep were a variety of terracotta/my lips but better colors, some brownie nudes and some reds.

So as you can see I kept 34 + the missing three and three I have at work. I'll break these into categories.

Lip Balms/Chapsticks- I love the plain generic Chap Stick I currently have Cake Batter (delicious) but Cherry is my favorite and I always have it on hand. I have another Cake Batter at the office.  I have two NYX Butter Balms that I'm undecided on, I may end up getting rid of these soon because i never use them but I'm going to give them a try before I make my decision.  I'm currently loving my Lypsyl I have one at home and one at work and it's a beeswax lip balm that has some good staying power. I'm almost done with one tube and will probably purchase more when it runs out. I have three rosebud salves- shoot it's missing from the picture too! I have two tubs and one squeeze tube. Thank god for the squeeze tube! I love it. It lives in my purse and I have a tub in my purse as well. Then a few assorted ones I'm not in love with but I leave them in every room of my apartment so I always have hydration for my lips if need be. I always have to have a balm or something on my lips or I'll go crazy.

I don't have a lot of lip liners because I'm lazy and don't like to line my lips.  The three I have here are all nudes one from ELF, one from Palladio and one from NYX. Nothing special about a single one, the Palladio is getting old so I am going to try to finish it up first, I want to wear more lipstick and notice a drastic difference when I wear liner...so goal.  I also have an ELF exfoliating lip scrub pictured here as well that I use infrequently. I like to have it around in case my lips do ever need scrubbing, but I usually use so much chapstick that I'm good. Another random one is my Too Faced Melted Lipstick in Chihuahua this is a gorgeous nudie brown that's a little darker than my lips, gorgeous and creamy but fades weird. I also have a baby sample of Palomino from Bite beauty, fabulous formula and it's a super hot pink...we'll see if I'm ever bold enough to wear it.

Regular Lipstick. So I don't have a lot of repeats in my regular lipstick stash. One of my missing ones is actually a pair of the Rimmel Kate Moss ones, I have the red cased one here but I have a black cased one too that I love and am heartbroken that it's missing.  I am also missing my two Victoria's Secret Very Sexy lipsticks from a hundred years ago, yes they're old and expired but I want to always have them because they're beautiful- don't judge.  So in here are most of my Red lipsticks, everything from brick red to bright hot red and then deep red burgundies. I have two beautiful brown nudes that are great for falls or when you want your lips to have that dead look that's a little special.  Two are YouTube Made me Buy it's- the NYX in Alabama and Wet N Wild's Fergie Bebot Love were YouTube recommendations and I love them. 

Jumbo and micro sticks. Man these have really piled up lately. Two months ago I had no NARS Velvet Matte lip pencils and now I have three! Two were my birthday gift from Sephora and one I bought in Walkyrie a gorgeous brick red that looks fairly natural on me...they last forever and are super easy to apply, I like them a lot. I have two Revlon Matte Balms in Elusive and Standout, these are gorgeous too and pretty hydrating. I also have a Revlon Balm stain in Honey another YouTube Made me Buy It. Then I have two L'Oreal Glossy Balms in Lovely Mocha (so pretty) and My Babydoll (which I haven't worn on my lips). I also have a coral-y color from Tarte that I haven't worn but it's a dark dark coral really pretty, but I got it in a winter kit and haven't had a chance to play with it yet, it also came with a gloss I'm willing to try. 

So that's about it. I love the jumbo stick format for lip sticks and clearly enjoy the ones that have more of a balmy texture. My biggest problem with lipstick is even if I don't wear liner after an hour or two it looks like that's all I have one. I drink coffee or water all day and so a lot of lip products rub off. I'd prefer to only have to touch up once after lunch. So I'm really picky about my lip products. This is why I usually don't wear any, but I do enjoy the way it looks so I am trying to wear them more often. So we'll see.  

These last few items are just not for me, so I'm going to see if my sister wants them. The two ELF products are a great texture but the lip balm is too thin for me and the lip color is all wrong, but looks like my sister. The Liquid Lip thing was in an Ipsy box and is fabulous, but messy. Also the color would probably look better on my sis.  Same with the Hikari lipstick I wore this once and it started off a gorgeous deep red but faded to a hot pink on me. It's a good brand so I felt bad getting rid of it so I'll see if Hail wants it. If not these will also see the trash.

I feel really good about this purge I feel like I'm really only keeping what I want/can use. So yay! I don't know what I'm going to do next but here are Blush, Bronzers & Highlighters and Eye Liners. 

Beauty Trash! Or what other people call Empties!

So I have been wanting to do this blog post FOREVER! Like when I started my blog I thought ooh I can't wait to do an Empties post. But...I didn't have any empties...so I started collecting them. And kept collecting them. And then the Sephora bag overflowed and I noticed one of my cats playing with an empty cotton rounds bag on the floor and decided ENOUGH! So In the future I promise not to wait 6 months but honestly I don't go through anything other than makeup wipes monthly- so maybe we'll try every 3 months...

Makeup Wipes! I've gone through more than just what is seen here but some actually made it into my real trash over the last several months. I probably go through 2 packets of makeup wipes a month.  Prior to Marchish maybe Februaryish my go to makeup wipes were the Target Brand Up and Up Exfoliating Cucumber $3, scrubby, not too wet and perfect. Love them! I used 1 to 2 daily and they were great. Then a Target Cartwheel Coupon came through for the Neutrogena Makeup Remover Wipes and they were even better! Not scrubby, a little more expensive $4.99 but they worked so much better a little wetter but I feel like they actually cleaned better.

Then in January I met the Simple Miscellar Water that I wrote about here .  And I started using it with whatever cotton rounds I had at the time and discovered there was still makeup on my face after the face wipes! Gasp! I believe we've talked about my dislike of getting my face wet and actually cleaning it outside of the shower so I know my face is probably gross when I just use my makeup wipes.  but I started using this Miscellar water and life changed. I love this stuff. I basically soak a cotton round (or two) in this and rub it all over my face and neck and remove all the stuff the makeup wipe leaves behind. This miscellar water also lightly hydrates and I don't feel like I have to immediately put on moisturized right afterwards which is awesome. Since starting to use the Miscellar water I've gone through probably three cotton rounds packets, but like I mentioned one fell victim to my cats. But I'm really liking this system and will continue to purchase all of these things. When the Neutrogena is on sale I'll buy it but the Up & Up still work fine and with the Simple water I feel like everything works better. I just finished that first bottle of Miscellar water on Wednesday so I feel like lasting 4 months at $6.99 (I always find coupons for this too) is a perfectly reasonable price.

I was so excited to have actually finished some makeup things! I feel like I have so much makeup that I'll never get through it all, but I'm really working now on getting through my products.  So here we have my first BB cream that I ever loved Oil of Olay Fresh Effects BB Cream in Light Medium. I have to order this stuff online now and it's really cheap $7-8 depending. This was the first BB cream I started using at the end of last Spring when I was still blonde and getting into all this makeup stuff. It offers virtually no coverage, but is very moisturizing, smells great and works to somewhat even out my skin tone. As an added bonus of all the things it doesn't do it has SPF 30.  I am on my second tube and use it combined with other BB creams or tinted moisturizers. I still like it for light days. I may repurchase it because I do like mixing it with other things.

Eyeliners! I went through two eyeliners in dark brown. One was the Milani Liquid Eye and this is a mechanical pencil that was great. It's super dark, looked like a liquid or a gel, was super easy to use and stayed all day.  Well when I finished this I bought another- but Milani changed the format and put it in a wooden pencil that you have to sharpen.  I hate it! It's too creamy and just becomes a smudgy mess. I will not be repurchasing again. Luckily I mostly use gel now, but I liked a pencil for easy low-maintenance days.  The other pencil was the Milani Define a Line in Dark Brown. But this one wasn't as dark brown as the Milani. I liked this one fine and enjoyed that it had a smudger on the end, but probably wont repurchase either because it wasn't dark enough.  So two products that I wont rebuy- yay!

I went through a Mascara! Well I didn't actually go through it, but after 3 months it started to get chunky and became sad...it was my Tarte Lights Camera Lashes a beautiful $21 mascara from a brand I love. I got this in my Holiday Tarte set and fell in love. High End Mascara is where it is at my friends. This mascara has a real bristle brush instead of all those plastic brushes I normally use and it's fantastic. Your lashes but better. I will totally buy this again...when it's on sale.

I also went through an eye shadow primer.  Wet n Wild Fergie Take on the Day Eyeshadow Primer This was the first eyeshadow primer I ever bought! I got it at the beginning of last summer and it lasted me till mid February. It's cheap at $4.99 from and drugstore and it works great. I feel like there was still some product left in it but it started to separate and not work as well towards the end. I've already bought a replacement because I've tried some other primers like Milani's and ELFs and they just don't work as well.

One ELF Primer that does work well though is the ELF Studio Hydrating Undereye Primer. I think I've mentioned in previous posts that I didn't realize this stuff worked so well till I stopped using it. I love this stuff. It's super hydrating and I feel like it helps my concealer not look cakey under my eyes. I always notice when I don't use it. And the only reason I don't use it is when I forget. I've already started working on my second tube and love it. 

Next up moisturizer! I love moisturizer. I think I've mentioned all these things before but here we go again.  Cetaphil moisturizing cream this stuff is amazing and since January I've gone through these two tubs and am half way through a third. The bottom tub is larger size and actually got me through January and February. The top tub is the regular size and got me just through March. My April tub is also the larger tub so I expect it to take me into mid-May and by then it'll be time to start using regular lotion again.  I love this stuff, in the winter my skin literally drinks it up and at $11 a tub I'll keep buying it.

The Neutrogena Deep Moisture Night Cream  is something I miss. I'm using a new night cream that doesn't work half as well so I will be repurchasing it when this it's finished. This stuff was awesome, lasted about 8 months and at $12 that's not too bad.  It's so thick and creamy that you don't need much at all, it spreads evenly and soaks into your skin overnight. I would wake up and my skin felt hydrated and not tight at all. The only downside to this stuff is it isn't really made for age defying just hydration.

The Olay Beauty Fluid is something I've used for years off and on. It's really light but hydrating and really good for under makeup.  This also doesn't have any age defying ingredients so I have switched to something else, but if I wasn't started to get older I'd still probably use the pink beauty fluid again.

And last I have these sad little samples of products.  Two I liked and 4 I could do without. I really liked The Body Shop's Vitamin E mask. I just used this as a lotion at night and it was fabulous. I may one day buy more of this, but this little paper packet lasted about a week because you didn't need much for the way I used it.  I also loved the Ganier Night Time Moisturizer- this actually does have anti-aging stuff in it so I may debate getting this instead of my other Neutrogena night cream, because I remember really loving this stuff. Hydrating and if it helps with aging fabulous.

Now the stuff I didn't care for...The Body Show's Tea Tree Clay Mask, way too drying for my face, just not for me.  The Philosophy brand Renewed Hope   which is supposed to be a moisturizer but did anything but that on me. I know some people love this stuff but it's cool that I don't because it's pricey.  Another item I had super high hopes for was the First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Cream one the smell was awful and two it made my hands itch. I don't know what's in it but my body said no.  This stuff too is super expensive and so I'm happy my skin likes the cheaper lotions and creams from the drugstore.

So there you have it. My beauty trash from the last little while.  I'll probably do this again at the end of summer. Hopefully by then I'll have finished more makeup.  We'll see!