Ipsy: January 2014

January's Ipsy bag came in today.

For those of you, who are new, Ipsy is a makeup/skincare/etc subscription service. For ten dollars a month, they send you a bag full of stuff that is supposedly based on your profile. It's only my second Ipsy bag, so it's pretty new to me.

If you're interested in Ipsy, there's a waiting list, but I think you can bypass the waiting list if you add them your facebook, and promote them, at least that's what I did, so I got on Ipsy the day that I subscribed, December was my first.

This was this months bag. I'm meh about it, I like the colors, but I don't like the design, it's sort of cheesy.

This is what was inside of the bag.

Yaby Foundation in buff. A full-size one retails for $13.55, I'll estimate this being worth about $3.00.

 

 I'm not a foundation person. I have oily, sensitive skin, and I don't like the feeling of foundation caked on, therefore I just don't wear it.

 This is it swatched on my hand, and blended it. I'll give Ipsy this much, they did a really goodjob matching the color to my skintone. 

The Pore Professional benefit. A full-size retails for %30.00, mine worth about $5.00, if I had to estimate.

It's supposed to minimize pores. As someone with rather oily skin and bad pores, I'm interested to see if this works for me, it'd be nice to make the pores on my nose much less visible.

Malin + Goetz Mojito Lip Balm. Mine is full-size, so it's worth $12.00. Lip Balm works for me, especially with the crazy Texas climate, my lips have been especially chapped lately, so this was a welcome edition to my Ipsy bag. It's true to taste, as well. 

Absolute! Make-up Cleansing Tissues w/ Pomegranate extract. A full-size package has sixty tissues and is about $6.99, mine is worth about $1.50. I'm very excited for these. Just the other day I was telling my fiance how I needed makeup remover, and sure enough Ipsy came through with them. 

Balanced Guru Body Balm. A full-size is $45.00 and mine is worth about $10.00, it's a deluxe sample. First of all, I LOVE THE SMELL OF IT, it smells like lemon pie, which is my favorite pie in the entire world. It's a light moisturizer, and since I have dry skin, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

So overall retail value: $31.50

So I definitely got over the ten dollars that I put in. It's not my favorite bag ever, but it's not the worst either. I'm just not that into skin care products, but at least some of them, I can find uses for. 

Glamour Doll Eyes: January

Glamour Doll Eyes is an eyeshadow company that make pretty funky bright colored eyeshadows out of all natural ingredients.  I've read a lot about them, and was always interested to try their products. They have an eyeshadow of the month subscription and I finally got the opppourtunity to try them.

They have very limited spots in their monthly color program. It usually opens up on the 8th of a month, and then you can choose either a one month, two month, four month, or six month subscription. The spots fill up very fast, I happened to be lucky and I snagged a spot in the two-month slot.

I got my January color of the month today.

 It fit in my tiny apartment mailbox, which made me happy. In the envelope was this.

Inside the bag was this, and I love how the laffy taffy matches the bag and eye-shadow color perfectly.  The laffy taffy did not last very long after these pictures were taken.

 

January's color was social suicide. On the color are the ingredients, the name of the color, and it also tells that all products are vegan. 

This is the color next to the laffy taffy. To me the color is the perfect Tardis blue, which makes this Doctor Who fan very pleased. It's a bright blue color with silver sparkles.

Here's a swatch on my arm, done without primer,  just put on. You can very much see how bright the color is, the silver sparkles, and how hairy my arm is. 

This is the color on my eyes. Please ignore the smeared mascara and eyeliner. This is my, I just finished school, tested pre-k students for 7 hours, and attempted to cook my fiance lasagna look. It's a really beautiful color, and it brings out my blue eyes very nicely, and I really like how it looks.

So, overall, I'm really pleased with my first color of the month. I mean how can I not love a company that sends me candy? They have a lot of really cool colors too, and they're definitely worth checking out if you like bright glittery eye-shadows. So check out Glamour Doll Eyes if you get a chance :)

January 2014 Birchbox

Oh Birchbox, I have a love/hate relationship with you, mostly bordering on hate, sometimes you send me stuff I really like, at other times, it's just meh :/

Fortunately, I really LIKED January's Box, it might be the first box, where I actually have a use for every product.

Birchbox is a company that sends you a box of samples every month. It's ten dollars, and you get all sorts of samples sent you ranging from hair products, to skin products,  to perfume, to nailpolish and makeup. You can tweak your profile to try to get things you want, but in my experience, it doesn't always work.

There's usually a waiting list, I think I was on it for a month before I got my first box in June.

First of all, shipping sucked this month. Usually my box gets to me in a reasonable amount of time, but it came about five days after it was scheduled to get to me, but whatevs.

Here's the pretty birchbox.

This months theme is "Go Time", birchbox says 2014 is the time to take on more: "more things to try [maybe that's why I got a perfume sample this month], to conquer, to integrate into our lives."

The inside of the box.

Nail Rock, Sequin, and I got a full-size, so it's worth $7.00. It's "The UK brand's two step system for the world's brightest disco mani." I really like sparkly glittery things, hence the name of this blog, and my quest to get shiny Charmanders in Pokemon X [I think I've had 50 non-shiny charmanders born now, and they're all named after rappers and world traded], so I am intrigued. You paint your nails with two coats of the clear stuff, then stick them in glitter, and let it dry for a twenty minutes, and you get glitter nails. I so really like the color too, it's sort of a sea green glitter :) I'm not sure how I feel about waiting twenty minutes, however, so we shall see. I do like it though.

Beauty Protecter, Protect & Detangle. A regular size is eight ounces, and costs $21.95, my sample is maybe a quarter of that? I'm not sure, it's a decent-sized sample. So I'll price it at $5.50. It's a "best selling elixir that locks in color, protects from heat damage, and adds silkiness." I like water parks. My fiance likes water parks.  Every summer we go to Schlitterbahn, and a spray in de-tangler is a great product for me [and him, he has longer hair than me] to help with heat/chlorine damage, and it's a perfect travel-size. It also smells like vanilla marshmallows, which is a nice touch. 

INIKA Mineral Eye-Shadow in Eternal Marine, "packed with certified-organic ingredients, these natural pigments stay vibrant for hours." I got a full-size, which makes it worth $20.00. I really like loose eyeshadow, and this color is really pretty.

 

It's sort of a turquoise color. I did a swatch of it, and this is the color without any sort of primer, just swatched on my arm. It's a green/gray/turquoise color, which is my favorite eyeshadow colors because it brings out my blue-gray eyes, and it goes on so nice and thick, that a little bit will go a long way. 

Juicy Couture Viva La Juicy, a perfume sample, where "wild berries flirt with mandarin and soft floral notes for a scent that's fun and happy." It's about 70 dollars. [Seriously why is perfume so expensive?]. My sample is little. I'm not sure how to price a perfume sample. Maybe $3.00?  I don't like perfume, I don't wear it, I don't like it, this is the first time I ever got a perfume sample. It doesn't smell bad, for a perfume, it's sort of fruity? It's bearable.  I can't imagine when I'll have a use for a perfume, but if I do... at least it's one I don't mind?

Burt's Bee's Intense Hydration Day Lotion, and a coupon. This is a "Birchbox find alert", where you basically get it for free, and it doesn't count towards your samples, in any way. I really like Burt's Bees, and I like moisturizer, especially in winter, when my skin gets dry, so I'm happy with it. Probably worth about $2.00 or so.

Let's add:  I paid ten dollars for this box, and got products worth $37.50, so my box really paid out this month, and for once, I like most of what I received. Good job, Birchbox.

January has been a slow month for subscription boxes. I know Ipsy shipped, but they have notoriously slow shipping. There's a few more coming. A few more I may have to tweak the credit card on it, thanks to the Target identity theft ploy, where they got my credit card number, and I had to get a new card. Hm, I should get on that.

Shiro Cosmetics: There and Back Again: A Hobbit Collection

It should be no surprise to anyone, who knows me, that I like Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit. Granted, I struggled through reading them. I managed to read all of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, but was so bored, that I said frak it to Return of the King  and waited for the movie to come out. I've been attempting to read The Hobbit, since my fiance says it's awesome, and he doesn't read, so if he's actually recommending a book that he read, I want to do my best to get through it, I'm on Chapter four, it's just a slow process...

But, I love the movies, I have many happy memories of watching them with my dad and shipping Legolas/Gimili, and Sam/Frodo, and whenever I am home, and they're on, we make it a habit to watch them together.

I've also named all my Eevee's after the characters of the fellowship and characters in the movies... Jolteon is Gimli, Legolas is Vaporeon, Elrond is Glaceon, Arwen is Sylveon, and Boromir is Flareon. I'm working on evolving Aragorn into Umbreon, Frodo into Leafeon, and Galadriel into Espeon.

Oh I also have a cat named Gandalf the Gray:

So anyhow when I found There and Back Again: A Hobbit Collection by Shiro Cosmetics I couldn't resist.

Disclaimer: I am a poor pre-k teacher. I spent my hard-earned monies to buy this makeup. I am not affiliated with the website, and this is just my honest opinion.

The most awesome thing about Shiro Cosmetics is they're nerd themed. There's a Pokemon eyeshadow collection, a game of thrones makeup collection, a Link collection, and all sorts of fun nerd-themed makeup for geeks like me.

Also, they're 100% Vegan and Cruelty free, which makes this crazy cat lady happy.

AND THEY SEND CANDY WITH EVERY ORDER AND I LOVE CANDY.

Shipping was fast, and the best part was, the envelope is small enough that it fit into my tiny apartment mailbox, and I didn't need to go into the office to get it. YAY!

The candy may or may not have disappeared immediately after I took this picture.

These are all my Hobbit eye-shadows. There are three different sizes you can get. You can get a sample size, which is about 1/4th of a teaspoon, mini jars, which are 1.0 grams each, that's the size I got, or you can get jars that are 2.0 grams each. If you get a whole collection, it's 10% off. I chose jars because with my cats and my klutziness, I figured those were less likely to make a mess of my apartment. 

Each color is labeled with the name of the shadow, and the ingredients in the shadow.

I attempted to swatch the colors... Word of advice, DON'T USE MR CLEAN MAGIC ERASER TO CLEAN THE MAKEUP OFF YOUR ARMS, I thought it was just a normal sponge, I washed the swatches off, and about ten minutes later, my arms were covered in a chemical burn. I asked my fiance what happened, and that's when he told me it was a Magic Eraser NOT a sponge. 

from l to r: War of Five Armies, When the Thrush Knocks, Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees, There and Back Again, Chiefest of Calamities, Lingered in Twilight.

War of Five Armies is the color of dried blood. It's a brown that's a cross between coffee grounds and a sword stained with old blood. It's sort of rust colored. I don't think my swatch gives much justice to it, to be honest. I really like brown colors because I can do semi-neutral looks with them. 

When the Thrush Knocks is a pretty coppery color. It shimmers much more then my pathetic attempt at a swatch shows. 

Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees is GORGEOUS!!!  It's a dark forest green with reddish and silver sparkles, and I can't wait to wear it. 

There and Back Again is a pretty emerald green color. Think Emerald City in Wicked or the Wizard or Oz.

Chiefest of Calamities is Gryffindor colors. Think Gryffindor scarlet.. It's very much an orange-red color, I normally don't like orange. It's one of the colors my mother insists upon having in my wedding, and I refuse. But this eyeshadow color has a nice pop. I think it goes on more red than orange.

Lingered in Twilight make me happy. It's an amazing dark teal color with shimmer... think a starry Rivendell night, and that's the color. I cannot wait to wear it. 

from l to r: King Under the Mountain, Attercop Attercop, Riddles in the Dark, and Farewell wherever you Fare.

King Under the Mountain is a silver sparkly color, and I did an awful job trying to make a swatch of it. I apologize. It's a dark gray earth color with silver sparkles. 

Attercop Attercop is a black base shadow with loads of blue shimmer and glitter. It will look awesome on me with my blue eyes... and it sparkles.

Riddles in the Dark is a greenish black with gold sparkles.

Farewell Wherever You May Roam is a brownish gray and perfect for a neutral base.

from l to r: A Regular Bears Meeting, The Wandering Wizard, The Last Homely House, An Unexpected Party, and Not Drawing Room Fashion.

A Regular Bears Meeting is a dark reddish brown.

The Wandering Wizard is a light grayish blue, although I think it's more blue than gray, at least that's what it looked like when I attempted to swatch it. It will make a nice highlighter color :)

The Last Homely House is brownish with a slight shimmer of green. I like the color, but would think that a color invoking Elrond and Rivendell would be more of a light gray/white/blue color with silver sparkle like the waterfalls of Rivendell.

[I've just gotten to the part in The Hobbit, where they got captured by Goblins]

An Unexpected Party is a tan color with a slight greenish shimmer.

Not Drawing Room Fashion is an awesome gray color. I freaking love gray eyeshadow, I have silver in my eyes, and gray eyeshadows really bring out the silver, and it almost matches my Oil Slick 24/7 eyeliner pencil perfectly.

Sorry my swatches SUCKED!! I'll get better, I promise. And these were just color on my arm, no primer or anything, so I'm sure the colors would look brighter with primer.

I really like these colors. A lot of them I can use for neutral looks that may even be school acceptable, and the other half are all beautiful shimmery and glittery colors. I'm excited to see what sorts of looks I can come up with.

And I highly recommend Shiro Comsetics, they have some really awesome colors, and they have great service, and the stuff gets here fast!!!!

Product Reviews

So... no new boxes lately although Birchbox notified me that they mailed my box, and my order from Shiro Cosmetics should me here pretty soon, as well, but I do have some product reviews from previous orders that I've blogged about here.

Now, I don't always have a use for all products that I receive, I don't like wasting things though, so some of the makeup colors that I plan to never use, usually the very bright red lipsticks or nailpolishes, and any sort of foundation makeup, get donated to my co-workers, and then some of the skin and not so girly products, I give to my fiance.

Disclaimer: I use my own hard-earned money from teaching to buy all my subscription boxes, I spend almost as much on those, as fiance spends on Magic the Gathering cards :P Nobody paid me to try any of these products, and my opinions are my own :)[or my fiances']

The Midnight Monarch hand lotion that I got, last month, in Birchbox has made its way to my fiance since I prefer the Julep hand lotion. It's been cold, for Texas, not really for me and my NJ roots, but for my students, and my fiance, and his skin has gotten dry and chapped. So I donated this to his cause. Fiance says he likes it. It's large sample, and it's been lasting him for awhile, which is nice, so it's good for more than one use. He says it's made a noticeable difference in his skin, his skin is far less dry, and the lotion makes it silky, so this hand lotion meets his stamp of approval. 

The Green Tea Facial Blotting Papers are great. Both fiance and I love them. We both have oily skin, especially within our T-Zones. These papers smell like green tea, which is nice. And they're very good at what they do. They're also great to use with makeup because I find that they don't disturb my makeup at all. 

The Double-Step Foot stuff came in the Diamond Mystery box that I got back in November. Fiance inherited that too since basically all I do is wear Uggs, no matter what the season is, and didn't really have a need for it. Fiance loves the stuff. He loves how it smells because he loves Peppermint. It's all he ever orders from Starbucks- Peppermint Mocha Frapachinos or Peppermint Mochas. He also tries to put peppermint in anything he attempts to bake, like those cookies he mailed me back when I lived in Jersey, which were delicious. And if he drinks tea, it's peppermint tea. He also tried to have a garden of mint since we moved in together, but every time he tried to garden, his plants died.  He also likes how smooth it makes his feet, and he says it keeps his feet clean and makes his feet feel fresh. So far, this is his favorite product, out of the unisex products that he's inherited. 

 The Quick Dry Drops that I got in my January Maven Box have also been used [by me, not my fiance]. I painted my nails yesterday with an undercoat of Stevie, which is a color I got in the holiday secret store, it's a bluish sparkly slate gray. I topped it with Geo, which is the holographic glitter nailpolish I received with the Diamond Mystery Box in November.  It's a purple glitter with huge holographic chunks. I used the quick-dry drops afterwards. They went easy, all you need it one or two drops. My nails were pretty dry about five minutes later. My nails then survived putting on and taking off both jeans and belt without any chipping,which is a first. I don't really like the smell. It's like a chemical lemongrass-ish smell, that lasts for a good hour or two after you use them, but by the morning, the scent was gone. These are my nails this afternoon:

They're pretty much the same as when I painted them, so the quick-dry drops give them a pretty good protective coat as well, since they lasted through an entire day of teaching pre-k. I'm very happy with these drops, and can even ignore the smell since they really do do what Julep says they do. Two thumbs up from me.

I dislike this Eye Glaze Fierce from Girlacktic Beauty.I tried wearing it. I think it goes on much to thick, and the color is very dark. I also really don't like how it smells. I wore it one night, and just wasn't impressed without how it looked. It felt heavy when I put it on, and I prefer my makeup to be light and/or weight-less. I also had trouble blending it with any other color. 

Magnetic Force Nailpolish from Color Club. I love it. The formula goes on really quickly, and I only needed one coat. It's a pretty magenta/purple color with swirls of silver in it, and I topped it with Aviva, which I got from the Julep Naughty & Nice box that I got in December. It had great staying power. It lasted on my nails for about a week with barely any chipping. I wish I had taken a picture of my nails when they were like that.

Vasanti Brighten Up! [enzymatic face rejuvenator]. I got a sample of this in my November birchbox. It's an exfoliate. I really like it. I can feel it exfoliating my skin as I put it on, and I've been using it for about a week, and my skin's been looking great. It's been much less red. This also didn't irritate my skin like most other facial products I've tried. The sample I got was also generous. I've been using it for two weeks now, and I still have some left. I'm contemplating ordering a full-size bottle of it, once the sample runs out. 

Coola Classic Face Sunscreen in Cucumber. I got this back in my first ever birchbox, which was in July 2013! I got the sample right before fiance and I went to Schlitterbahn in New Braufels for a before-school-starts vacation. It was a hot August day in Texas, and the sun was strong. I used this when we went to the park. My face didn't burn at all [although other parts of my body did, my poor shoulders], and it was cool and refreshing when I put it on, which felt great in that Texas summer heat. Once it gets to be summer, I'm totally buying a full-size bottle of this, especially since over the summer, I sit at the pool and read on my kindle and because fiance and I are so going back to Schlitterbahn.

And that's it, from me, for now. Back to my quest to evolve every Eevee. So far I've got Jolteon, Vaporeon, Flareon, Glaceon, and Sylveon. I'm trying to get an Umbreon, but I can only play my game after 8 pm for that to happen :P

I really want a caramel steamer from Starbucks.  I wonder if I can convince Mr. Fiance to bring me back one from work :P

Julep: January 2014, the boudoir collection

Julep's speedy shipping always astounds me. Technically, this was the LAST box of 2013 because it arrived on New Year's Eve, but the apartment office was closed, so I couldn't pick it up till today. But I always get their boxes early, like before the month they're meant to be for starts.

Anyways, HAPPY 2014, I hope everyone has an awesome 2014, and it brings everyone lots of happiness and good things. As for me, I'm just hoping 2014 is better than 2013 was. 2013 wasn't bad, but it wasn't the best year for me either,  so hopefully 2014 can kick it's ass.

2014 also means about one year till my wedding!!!


I'm sad that break is almost over. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to school. My first graders matured a lot after Christmas break, last year, which was great, here's hoping that Pre-K students do the same.

Mostly over break, I've done this:

Caught 9 different Eevees, so I can have every single Eeveelotion in my current Pokemon X game, which I just got on NYE, and I think I've already played it for 50 hours straight!

 

I will be very sad, when my video-game time is cut in half once the school year starts. 

But anyhow, onto the box:

This month, I didn't really do any upgrade. I wasn't impressed with any of the polish colors, really, and I was just like "meh" but didn't want to skip a month because I want my joules.

For those of you, who are new to Julep: It's a nailpolish subscription site, where for about 20 dollars a month, they send you a variety of nailpolish and makeup/beauty products. There are different profiles, your profile gets picked based on a quiz you take, but you're not stuck being that profile forever, at any month, you can change to any of the other boxes [or upgrade to the full collection] of you like what they get better.

 

I'm "classic with a twist", which means I get two nailpolish colors and one beauty product every single month. I've been a member of Julep since March 2013. 

 

As a Julep Maven, you do get some pretty awesome sales, and they have some pretty nifty mystery boxes, and they do have a variety of nailpolish colors and makeup products to choose from that are usually highly discounted during their sales, which are usually monthly sales. There's usually one mystery box sale per month, as well. 

 

If you're interested, you can click my referral link here

 

This is the inside of the box, and let's hope Julep is right and 2014 will be my year.

 

January is the "boudoir collection," which promises fancy finishes & top drawer products.

In the box I found the following:

Orange Sponges, which I assume are this month's extra. Not sure what I'm going to do with them, but hey, they were free.

This is Julep's TADA! Quick Dry Drops. The directions state to wait one minute after your final coat of polish, then apply 1-2 drops per nail. The liquid smells good, sort of lemony and flowery. I'm interested to these drops. I always look for speedy ways to dry my nails, and I usually opt for sticking my hands in the freezer for two minutes, this seems slightly easier, and less colder, although the freezer method does work extremely well for me. I shall try these next time I paint my nails.

My two monthly colors: Mona & Abigale. 

Mona is a dark bluish gray color. It reminds me of cumulonimbus clouds on a stormy day/night.

Abigale promises a silky finish. I shall let you know what that means after I try it. It's a light pearly pink color with a nice shimmer. 

Overall, I like these two colors. They will get worn eventually. I don't think they're my overall favorite colors ever, but they are nice, and they won't just collect dust, in a corner. 

The other day, I painted my nails with Nellie, which was an It Girl color that I received in my Naughty & Nice mystery box that I ordered back in December. It's very much a neon fuchsia color, in my opinion. It goes on very nicely. This is only one coat of polish. I very much like how it looks, and it's barely chipped, and I've had it on my nails for about three days, already.

I've also been playing with Naked 3 by Urban Decay. This is a look I did the other day. The eyeliner was sort of a dark turquoise color, it was Zeppelin, which is a 24/7 eyeliner crayon from Urban Decay. I used the white shimmer eyeshadow that I got from my Ipsy Pop Beauty Smokey Trio bag back in December, and I used the colors: Mugshot and Darkside from the Naked 3 palette, and it gave my eyes a nice silvery gray sheen. And the Golden Rose Sexy Black Mascara that I got from my December Wantable box is amazing. It makes me look like I have eyelashes, and it's really easy to apply on my bottom lashes, which up until I got that makeup had always been a challenge for me. 

My birchbox has recently been sent in the mail, so I'm sure that will be arriving soon, as it arrives pretty early in the month. Upcoming boxes are Ipsy, Wantable, some eyeshadow I ordered from Shiro Cosmetics, and Nerd Block, which I just started ordering this month. 

Anyhow back to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey