Labor Day EotD (Oops I'm super late!) & More!

Thursday, September 10, 2009
Oh my! Long time, no post! I've got SO many reviews and looks and swatches in the works right now...Earth Angel Minerals, The All Natural Face, Hi Fi Cosmetics, etc. etc.! I visited my brother and his fiance for a couple days this week, so I haven't had much time to do all my photo editing and things...
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Check out my blog sale if you can too! This girl needs some money! I finally got my student loans in, but (with some unexpected large expenses this summer) I only have $25 a week to live on. That includes gas, going out to eat, mu, school parking, etc! I'm also opening up an Etsy shop soon to sell my hair bows in! I wish I could work...but 6 classes is making that impossible. Plus its super hard to find a job around here right now, especially one thats only a few hours a week!

What I used:
-Allure by Jen shadow in Iced Peach- peach, pink and shimmer
-Allure by Jen shadow in Penny- bright copper
-TSS Ghostly Story- smoky silver cocoa shimmer
-UD 24/7 liner in Underground- metallic taupe
-UD Heavy Metal liner in Midnight Cowboy- beige glitter
-Sally Hansen inspired by Carmindy Luminous Matte Powder in Fair- ghostly white
-Orglamix Blush in Sugar Loaf- pinky rosy brown
-Sally Hansen inspired by Carmindy Moisture Plump Lip Balm in Nude Shimmer- sort of a warm plummy nude color, I don't think this is availible to buy anymore :(
Sparkleeesssss! This was from Sunday, I believe (so lazy!). I actually used a lot of different products here...it was one of those days where you just keep piling the makeup on.
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Iced Peach all over then Ghostly Story on the lid. Penny in the crease. Underground on lower lashline and a bit in the outer vee. Midnight Cowboy under Underground on the lower lid.
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I really like the Sugar Loaf blush...It gives a nice natural flush, not too light or pink. I normally don't gravitate toward brown-ish blushes since they tend to go muddy on my skintone. Cheri from Orglamix picked out this color for me and I WUV it!! It really matches the Nude Shimmer lip gloss too.
What I used:
-the all natural face shadow in Forest Nymph- medium greyish green (shimmer)
-the all natural face shadow in Blue Ice Storm- very pale icy blue (shimmer)
-Aromaleigh Gothic Lolita collection in Plush Romantic- Mysterious smudged indigo with brilliant bright sparks of blue. This beauty can't be captured by camera!
-Orglamix Clover- bright cool green
-UD 24/7 liner in Gunmetal- gunmetal silver
-Orglamix Blush in Sugar Loaf- pinky rosy brown
-Aromaleigh Gothic Lolita Nourishing Color Creme in Creampuff- pale champagne pearl
Forest Nymph in inner vee and inner 1/2 of lid and crease; Plush Romantic in outer vee and outer 1/2 of lid; Clover as liner on top; Gunmetal as liner on bottom; Blue Ice Storm as highlight

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What's everyone been up to?


Fall EotDs!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009
It's actually been really hot lately but I can't wait for fall! I got some more Orglamix colors and couldn't wait to play! These are both orange based looks, pretty similar but different enough!First look- What I used:
Orglamix Mangosteen shadow- shimmery creamsicle peach/mango (yummy!)
Aromaleigh Satin Petals Frost in Marigold- A subdued coppery peach pastel with vibrant peach highlights
UD 24/7 in Zero- Black
UD 24/7 in Underground- metallic taupe
Orglamix Ginger blush- medium tone peachy bronzey slightly pinky color
Aromaleigh Gothic Lolita Nourishing Color Creme in Creampuff (not pictured)- pale champagne pearl

This one reminds me of pumpkins and sugar! Even though orange is the main color, it looks very neutral and not-trying-too-hard. I used Mangosteen (the perfect creamsicle shade) on the outer 2/3rds of the lid with Marigold in the inner vee and as a highlight. I didn't want to go too Halloween-y (lol) so I only put Zero on the outer 1/2 of my upper lashline. Next I put Underground on the bottom lashline and I LOVE it! I feel like its a totally underrated UD color...The Stereophonic 24/7 kit is worth it just to discover this color! I swept Ginger (which is basically a tailor made for redheads and/or frecklies blush!) on my cheeks and finished with a swipe of Creampuff. Creampuff is awesome, by the way. The perfect nude shade except all yummy smelling and feels like a chapstick! Second look what I used:
-Orglamix Ginger blush (as a shadow and blush)- medium tone peachy bronzey slightly pinky color
-Orglamix Fig shadow- plummy purple shimmer
-TSS Sunflowers and Sugar from the Leo collection- shows up as a tiny bit buttery gold infused with serious blue, lavender and pink iridescent shimmer
-Aromaleigh rocks! sonic lip tint in noreservations- A clear vivid watermelon shade

This look reminded me of fall leaves! I meant to grab Mangosteen but ended up with Ginger and started swiping! A great mistake though...Ginger looks fab on eyes too! Then I blended Fig in the outer vee and underneath as a liner. Next I took Sunflowers and Sugar and put it in the inner vee and as a brow highlight. I used Noreservations lip tint...which is MUCH darker than I normally go, but I really liked it! Nice to step out of the box once in a while!
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Are you ready for fall yet? Any favorite fall makeup changes?

Etsy Crack: Allure by Jen Review & Swatches

Tuesday, September 8, 2009
I feel like I just found an unknown treasure. I'm more excited about this company than I've been since I discovered The She Space!!
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Allure by Jen is a small mineral makeup company on Etsy. 10% of her sales (not profits) go to help the needy. The owner Jen is a mom of 3 with a baby on the way! I talked to her a couple times and she's very sweet and informative! I know her due date is soon though...perhaps even this week, so she may not be shipping that fast for the next couple months. I would wait a month for this stuff though, it's so great! The shop is stocked with all of your mmu needs- from 15 (!!) gorgeous shades of blush to a vegan friendly hot chocolate lip scrub! Yum!
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Honestly, her products are quickly becoming holy grails for me!! The Yellow Concealer is the ONLY thing that covers my dark circles without looking too "fake". Iced Peach shadow is amazing as a base for me- it evens out the blue-ish color I have on my eyes near my nose. Cupcake is a cute pink blush thats colorful, but not over the top. The mineral veil made my pores disappear! Oh, so many good things!
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The prices are really great and different sizes are offered! That's great for junkies like me since I will never use up a 5 gram jar of shadow, let alone 10 gram! You can try out 5 samples (of any powder- base, cheeks, eyes!) for $0.50! They come with 1/4 tsp of product, which is a TON for samples!
Color Descriptions:
-Statue- sparkley gray shadow/eyeliner (satiny)
-Penny- copper color (uh-mazing! satiny)
-Incognito Green- color shifting green glow (more on the yellow green side, very unusual!)
-Iced Peach- delightful mixture of peach, pink and shimmer
-Tangerine- bright and happy orange (heavy shimmer, no sparkle!)
-Cupcake blush- muted pink
-Sparkle and Shine- dusty pink color with definite shimmer, sparkles of green and blue, can be used as a highlighter or a blush (sorry for the crappy swatch!)

Ugh this is a horrible picture...I can't believe I'm putting it on the internet! But for the sake of makeup I will ;P Okay so I put makeup on my whole face except my forehead. I wanted to see if my skin really did look better with it...OH EM GEE! It really does! My skin is waaay less shiny and my pores are completely shrunk! You can still sorta see my dark circles, but they are much lighter and less purple than normal. The best part- nothing conceals my freckles! I don't know how this even works...Great coverage, but without hiding my true skin? What kind of black magic is this?!

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Also wearing UD 24/7 in Stash & NYX jumbo lip pencil in Frosted (frosteed lol) beige
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Has anyone tried Allure By Jen? Have you ever gotten all squee and excited about finding an awesome new company? Let me know if you try her out!

Monday Fun: TSS Utterly Fab Fall & Palladio Lip Stains Swatches

Monday, September 7, 2009
Ugh! WORST lighting ever! All of the colors are slightly darker than they appear here. Flicker and Burn is amazing...perfect for eyes, lips and cheeks!
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Color Descriptions
Glee Club Dropout- intense salmon copper iridescent twinkle with layers of gold and copper
Percieved Indeed- taupey rose with definite traces of cocoa shimmer
Far From Famous- sheer cocoa mauve shimmer with hints of berry
Heroes Prevail- sheerest pale mauve with golden twinkle
Fail to Exhale- iridescent taupe fused with multiple layers of color that play off the light
Starlit Serendipity- sheer cement bisque shimmer with traces of bronze
Castles of Glam- sheer blackened raisin with flecks of iridescent opalescent blue and purple
Flicker and Burn- vivid peach rose with a hint of coral
Bohemian Bonanza- cocoa rose shimmer with hints of copper
One Thousand Faeries- amazing hot pink shimmer fused with copper, gold, and pink twinkle
Proud and Patriotic (from A Tribute to Our Troops collection)- shimmering metallic navy with layers of multi-colored twinkling stars


Again, these are slightly darker than you can see! And OMG that is my skin! It's like pure white haha it's slightly embarassing!
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I did the Palladios at Ulta over the weekend. Honestly I wasn't all that impressed as they are very drying and marker-like, just like those horrendous Cover Girl ones. They did last a very long time but none of the colors appealed to me at all. Have you tried them?

EotD Crazy for Serina

What I used:
-Allure By Jen Shadow in Iced Peach- mixture of peach, pink, and shimmer (OMG I love this so much!)
-Morgana Minerals shadow in Serina- a sparkling plum pink in with a dark grey background
-TSS Crazy for Crabs from Cancer Collection- iridescent plum with a hint of navy and twinkling bits of violet, pink, and crystal
-Fyrinnae lip lustre in Romantique- semi sheer soft warm pink with gold shimmer
-Allure by Jen blush in Cupcake- muted pink color

I love this! It was so cute and fun :P I think this was Saturday, I just went shopping and out to my fave mexican restaurant with my hubs!
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These colors don't really make sense together...which I sort of love. At Ulta, I had 4 girls ask me what brand I was using (they thought it was Urban Decay...too bad my purple liner was $4.00, not $18!!).
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I swept Iced Peach all over my eye area, including right between my nose and my eye. I have very thin skin there and my veins show through, making it look purpley. This is a HOLY GRAIL color for me now! It evens out my eyelid and is a soft highlighter without being all shimmery. I'll be reviewing Allure by Jen soon, but I can't help but to gush about this!
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I used Serina in my crease very soft and blended it inwards so there wasn't too much. Next I brushed on Crazy for Crabs as a liner dry and (I think?) put Zero on my waterline to darken it a bit. Curl lashes, layer on mascara. Done with eyes!
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Last I used Cupcake blush sort of on the sides of my face instead of the apples. It really slimmed my roundish cheeks out. You can see it best in the picture below (even though its blurry). Then I slicked on some Romantique lip lustre! I have half of a lip ring on in this picture :P I couldn't get my segment ring to pop in, I ended having to go to the tattoo shop to get them to do it. The guy had to use plyers (!!).

I hope you all had a great Labor Day! Mine was...stressful. I didn't smoke though, my husband was like holding my arms down so I wouldn't punch anyone.

Morgana Minerals...Use at your own discretion!

EDIT: Okay, see down there where I write that the customer service is poor? That isn't exactly what I meant! It was more of a packaging/presentation thing. I did reply to Morgana Minerals about my review (which was a little snippy, I know!) and can say that she really DOES care about her company! I let her know that I didn't contact her about anything since I didn't want to get "special" bloggette treatment (you all know it's there!). All I can say is that I wrote what happened although my newly non-smoking status could have biased my bitchiness a bit. I'm not changing it though since my brother will beat me up ;) And since I apparently have no morals, I most likely will get more samples...the colors are gorgeous and really thats all that matters!
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The first thing I notice when I start opening up my package is "wow, this stuff is really dusty". Dusty? Not in a "mineral makeup gets dust everywhere" way but in a "this has been sitting on a shelf for six months" way. Then the $1 samples I ordered are "messy" and the labels are handwritten. I'm not sure why but I find this…sort of rude? I shop at a lot of small mineral makeup companies and the special touches are what makes people come back, you know? For instance, when I got my allure by jen products, I knew for a fact that they came from a mom of 3 that was also 8+ months pregnant and everything still was nice and clean! To me, that is a sign that you care about your customers and you care about your product.
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Now I really just wanted some samples but since there was stuff on clearance so low, I wanted to get some of that too. I picked up 2 lipglosses, a lip sealant, a green concealer, an "indigo" gel liner and a fan brush along with a few samples.
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Okay. Time to review. I guess I was a little confused on the gel liner. I thought it was Morgana's product, but it is just "distributed" by them. I think it may be Indelible, but I'm not sure. Anyways the color on the site is "deep blue" so I'm thinking navy and its pretty much black…add to that its so dry that it crumbled when I put a brush in it. Basically it’s an unusable black gel. I was going to swatch it, but I couldn't even get it on my hand!
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The next thing I ordered was supposed to be a mint colored concealer in a tube with a doe foot wand. I wanted this because I wanted something easy for when I'm not home and need to cover up my splotchiness. Instead I got a cream concealer in a jar…NOT so easy to pop that open, grab a concealer brush and use it. It's a very light mint green and does an okay job. Nothing great, but I will use it since I paid for it. MUST be set with a powder or it slides off.
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The lip sealant got me all excited! I've been drinking a lot of water since I quit smoking and my lipstick just comes right off. This, again, is not their product either. It is Stolen Kisses, so this doesn't really have anything to do with Morgana personally. It REEKS of alcohol. I dumbly ordered this without checking the ingredients, which are: alcohol, alcohol, more alchohol, some crazy chemicals and even more alcohol. Ugh. No thank you! I did try it out with my NYX jumbo lip pencil and it lasted maybe an hour longer than usual, if that. The stench of rubbing alcohol right under your nose is SO not worth it though! Yuck!
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The lipglosses are nice. After washing off the dust (yes, wash, it was that bad), I did try them. They last a fair amount of time…maybe a couple hours? The colors are pretty but I'm becoming more increasingly concerned with the chemicals I'm putting into my body. I'm a bit of a wikipedia fiend, so I checked out a few of the main ingredients. Number one is Polybutene which apparently is an additive for engine oils and grease and as an extender in putty used for sealing roofs and windows. Yum! Then lanolin oil, and yeah I know that’s made from squeezing sheep's wool. It's their hair grease. Next up is Petrolatum, aka Vaseline, and then a loooong list of lake dyes and other stuff that it "may contain". Well I don't know…I think I should just become vegan (at least in makeup). Potentially consuming sheep grease doesn't make me feel pretty...Does anyone have any good info on vegan makeup?
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Starlight Mauve on top...Lilac Mist below


The fan brush is ginormous and stiff. I washed it and it didn't shed, but I'm not even sure what to use it with. That one's my fault though!
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Now on to the piggies! By now, I've basically set myself up for disappointment. I think "these are gonna suck…what a waste of money". I swatch the first one, Aqua Mauve. "Oh its pretty, but nothing special", I think to myself. (ha do you see the English teacher coming out?!) The next color, Serina, blows my mind- it's beautiful, delicate, special and pretty. A lilac neutral slightly bright purple but with a brown base and lush hot pink sparks! I swatch the next- Godiva, another winner. Each color just gets prettier. I am shocked and pleased and also kind of mad.

Dilemma time. Do I order again? Do I try more colors and hope for a better package? Or do I go with my morals (yeah, I've got beauty morals!) and only order from companies with good customer service? This is just like Archetype. I love their product and hate the way they run their business. It pisses me off. If I could create these beauties, you'd be damn sure I'd print some f*ing labels and clean my shit up before I ship it. Oh, and I'd probably return customer emails *cough* Archetype *cough*. So who knows what will happen? Most likely my vast disappointment in Morgana will keep me from ordering again…unless, of course, I hit "sample baggy plastic", then I'll have to! And they DO have free shipping on samples…(my morals suck).
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Samples are $1 for 1/8 tsp, 5gram jar w/ sifter $5, 10 gram w/ sifter $8, 3 gram refill bag $7.50 (?? I don’t get that?)
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Have you tried Morgana Minerals? Good or bad experience? Do you have "makeup morals"?