Julep: April Secret Store

One of the perks of being a maven for Julep is that every month, you get access to the Secret Store, which is a collection of discounted nailpolishes and makeup and beauty polishes, and the store is only open for 72 hours.

I rarely ever order from The Secret Store, the exception being around Halloween because I love Halloween, and Christmas because I loved the glittery Christmas colors.

However, I made an exception this month.

from l to r: Evie, Monica, and Dianna.

Evie is a bright pink color with a golden sunset glitter shimmer. This is the reason I bought something from the Secret Store. It was on sale for $2.99, and I thought it was a sign. 

Part of having a clinical illness is that no one can understand how you feel.  No one does until you get a chronic illness or cancer or some other illness that truly changes your life forever.  Life isn't the same and its hard to get by following all the same rules everyone else does.  

 

I don't want to get into this on my beauty blog. But I have a clinical illness and because of it my entire life is changing, even my ability to bear children in the future. I'm currently undergoing IVF, so maybe one day, I can have a biological child, even if I may not be the one, who is able to bring it into the world.

 

I always wanted a daughter. I even picked out her name, it's Evelyn Deirdre, or Evie, for short, so when I saw this color on Julep, I thought it was a sign. I want it to be a symbol that we can do this, we can fight everything, and get the daughter that we always wanted. And that's why the color Evie was so important to me.

 

Monica is a dark pink color with purple, blue, and pink colored glitter throughout it. You can sort of see the glitter in the picture. It was another $2.99 steal.

 

Dianna is sort of the color of Tiffany's blue boxes, just slightly lighter.  But it's still basically a robin's egg blue color. It's a very nice pastel blue color. It's a color I'm considering for my bridesmaid dresses in my wedding.

 

So that was my very small Secret Store purchase. They were all colors I never received in my monthly maven boxes, and it is a nice perk of Julep to have an opportunity like this for their members. They don't always have things I want in the Secret Store, but it is nice having an extra shopping option. After all, you can never have too many nailpolish colors :)

Julep: December Secret Store

Nothing makes me more happier than seeing a gigantic black box in the office of my apartment complex with the words JULEP on it.

This contains all the things I bought from the secret store back on December 1st, and considering it's rather cold, by Texas standards, and even for me, or maybe it's the fact that my kitten peed on my North Face fleece and I was forced to wear a hoodie, but all the ice-themed colors seemed appropriate to get in the mail today.

I ordered three sets: Edgy Neutrals, Ice Queen, and Trophies.

Unfortunately I don't really remember what belongs with what, so I do apologize, but I do have colors :)

Logically I suppose I should've kept things rubber-banded together, but that still wouldn't help me know what belongs with what.

The one non-nailpolish item I bought was mascara. I have an obsession with mascara. Therefore, I am eager to try Julep mascara. I like the fact that their tube is clear, so I can actually see how much mascara I have left.

From l to r: Alaina, Gabrielle, and Stevie

Alaina is a repeat for me, I've gotten it before. It's a gray lavender like-color. It's nothing special. But it's not a disappointment either.

Gabrielle is a medium toned purple. I like it. I like purple colors.

Stevie is awesome. It's a shimmery gray-blue color, it reminds me of black ice [and the time I fell on black ice, in Philly, waiting outside a My Chemical Romance/The Used concert]. Stevie will get a lot of use.

another Stevie and a Joanna

I've already fan-girled over Stevie, but Joanna is pretty. It's the color of shimmery icicles. Like a gray white shimmer. This will also get lots of wear.

Icey/Wintery colors are the bane of my nailpolish existence.

from l to r: Sylvia and Missy [and one of my three cats, Ajani, greatly obsessing over my nailpolish collection] 

Sylvia is a repeat for me [I suppose that's what happens, when you go to a website, and just fangirl over pretty winter nailpolish collections without actually reading what colors they contain], but I do like it. It's almost like a dark neon purple, sort of. 

Missy is as silver, as moonlight cascading off of a sidewalk in the middle of a winter night, I love it. 

from l to r: Zelda and Oscar

Zelda is silver polish with silver glitter. Again, I like silver polish, so I can't really complain about having another shade of silver to add to my nailpolish collection.

Oscar is another repeat. Gold glitter. I'm pretty sure these came from the new neutrals.

from l to r: Clio and Missy

Clio is blue/gray/silver glitter, when put together, somehow it has a sort of purple/pink tone, I really do like it. Very winter-like. Very glittery. Two thumbs up.

And I've already talked about Missy.

So overall, I wound up with quite a few repeats, but the new colors that I got, I really do like, and I feel like their the perfect colors for the upcoming wintery season. As for the doubles, I can always gift them. 

Mmm winter... My favorite ever season.

Julep: Halloween Secret Store

First, of all, let me preface this by saying, I LOVE HALLOWEEN, AND I LOVE FALL!!! Unfortunately, living in Texas, there's NO SUCH THING as fall.

But anyhow, if I'm going to blow my money on makeup at any time during the year it's from Halloween to Christmas because those holidays are my favorite time of year. I love the colors, I love the sparkles!!! I especially love Halloween, I have a million pairs of Halloween earrings, and I literally wear them up to Halloween, which my pre-k students love.

So needless to say, the October secret store, got me excited!

I forget the name of the packages I spent all my money on, but here's the nail polish colors I indulged on:

from left to right: Glenda [a silver cackle], Tracy, Karen, Amity, and Cleopatra.

Glenda, is your typical silver cackle, I admit, I haven't tried it yet. I've never actually done cackle nail polish before, I used to have a bottle of black cackle, but en route from NJ to Texas, the bottle had an unfortunate accident in my car, but I definitely like silver better than black.

Tracy reminds me of Van Gogh's Starry Night. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's a deep blue color with glitter. It goes on nice and thick, and reminds me of stars in the sky, not that you really see many stars in Texas.

I LOVE KAREN, I painted my nails with it this week, and one of my pre-k students told me that it looked like pumpkin pie. It's a nice smooth, pumpkin colored nailpolish. It's also thick enough that I needed only one coat. My pre-k kids love it, therefore it gets two thumbs up, a pat on the back, and a stamp of approval.

I wrote Amity about two weeks ago. It's a pale silver white color. The color is so light that it took me several coatings to even see the color on my nails. I love silver, but there are better silver polishes to use that I don't need to use one hundred coats of it to show.

I have not tried Cleopatra, but the black latex intrigues me. Perhaps I should try that with Glenda. I do love black nailpolish, and considering it's called black latex, I'm sure it's a very thick black nailpolish. I shall let you know when I try it.

With one of my nailpolish packages, I got this:

A silk skull scarf. I've tried it on, it will be a nice accessory for a Halloween outfit I can wear to school next year.

and this:

Halloween nail decals. Mind you, I am way to lazy to actually figure out how to put these my nails. I spent all day chasing four year olds, when it comes to being home, I want to do nothing that involves using my brain such as figuring out how to use nail decals. But they are very cute.

This was one of my add-ons:

A pomegranate sugar scrub. I love sugar scrubs. This one smells very nice. But it doesn't meet my sugar scrub expectations. The sugar itself, isn't thick enough, and it doesn't blend well on wet skin in the shower, and it doesn't leave my skin silky like the Victoria's Secret or Philosophy ones do, but it was only three bucks, and I do like the smell.

On the Halloween nailpolish note, I picked these up for 99 cents with my Walgreens card:

First of all, I LOVE SINFUL COLORS, they're only two bucks, and I find their nail polish is better quality than some of the more expensive stuff like Sephora brand. I have almost every color of theirs, and I always buy colors I don't have.

From l to r: Call You Later, Faceted, Black Magic, Glow in the Dark, and Citrine.

I've tried Black Magic on my toes. I didn't really like it. It's supposed to be black with orange sparkles, but I found the orange sparkles got lost in translation from the bottle to my toes, and it was mostly black and not very glittery, which is a sad face :( It's also very hard to get off your toes!

I used Glow in the Dark on the dollar  skeleton gloves I bought from Kroger to make the bones glow in the dark, and it worked beautifully, and my pre-k students thought that was the coolest thing ever.

I currently have Citrine on my toes and I love it. It's bright and screams fall to me and reminds me of foliage in NJ and pumpkins. It also goes on smoothly, and I found I only needed one coat of it.

I'll let you know about the others when I try them.