Naked 2 & Smashbox BB Cream

So today was definitely a day of indulgence... I've really been wanting to try out a BB Cream and after some looking around at Sephora, I decided to go with the Smashbox Camera Ready BB Cream - Fair.

I haven't had a lot of time to see how I feel about it, but first impressions are good! For the most part, I love how it looked against my skin. It was the perfect color for my skin tone, which is tough with how pale I am. I have some pretty red blemishes around my chin that it didn't cover well, but a little concealer over it helps, and I decided to go with the BB Cream to hopefully clear up my skin in the long run.

Even more exciting was finding Urban Decay's Naked 2 Palette in the store! I've been trying to get my hands on it online since it came out, but it was always out of stock, so I was incredibly excited to FINALLY get it in the store.

 First impressions... I'm in love! The new colors are gorgeous, the pigmentation was great, and the packaging was a huge improvement from the first Naked Palette. I'm a die hard Urban Decay fan anyways, but if I wasn't a fan already, this palette would make me one!

 The colors swatch on my hand from the palette, left to right: Foxy, Half Baked, Bootycall, Chopper, Tease...

 Snakebite, Suspect, Pistol, Verve, YDK...

Busted and Blackout.

Very excited about both buys, and I'll probably end up doing more in depth reviews in the future on them.

Adele Makeup Tutorial

I had quite a bit of feedback on my Joan Mad Men tutorial saying it looked a lot like Adele. I finally decided I'm going to re-do my Joan tutorial to make sure it looks like JOAN and made a separate Adele video. I'm thankful for all the feedback and definitely know I can improve when I put more time in my videos.

What I Used:

Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion - Sin
Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV - Zypher, Skimp, Missionary, Bust, Lost
BH Costmetics Eyeshadow - Black
Urban Decay 24/7 Liquid Eyeliner - Carbon Black
Ardell False Lashes
L'Oreal Voluminous Million Lashes Mascara - Black
Rimmel Bronzer - Sundance
BH Cosmetics blush/bronzer
NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream - Tokyo
NYX Lipliner Pencil - Nude Pink
Smashbox Lip Enhancing Gloss - Illume
Revlon Colorstay Brow Enhancer - Light Brown

My Hair in a Year

Since I've been going to school, I've colored my hair countless times, bleached it to death, and even got a perm! (Hey, SOMEONE had to volunteer!) So I thought I'd show the evolution of my hair over the last year, with the photos I have available. I've brought my hair to hell and back and I'm finally at my favorite color so far.

 This picture was taken last spring. My hair was the longest it had been in a LONG time and was relatively healthy! I believe at that time I was mostly using semi permanent colors and sticking with warm brown red/violets.

And then I got this crazy idea to go blonde... Throughout my life, I've been every color under the sun, EXCEPT blonde. I've been little mermaid red, blue, black, brown, violet, orange, but not blonde. So I began the process by easing my way in to it with highlights. My hair had a ton of red in it, so I knew it would be rough getting it the winter white blonde I'd decided I wanted...

 Aaaand after 2 Sundays of having a friend give me back to back foils with 30 volume bleach, I was finally blonde. Granted, I was a brassy, multitone, fried to hell blonde.  I ended up cutting off probably a good 4 inches of hair after the second round of foils because my hair had turned to cotton candy. It was to be expected, but sad none the less.

 After toning it several times and using toner shampoo, and almost drowning myself in deep conditioner and leave in conditioner to repair my fried hair, I was almost where I wanted to be! Still a little yellow, but after a tone, it was the purfect ashy/winter white.

 BUT! Being me, I got sick of it quick and needed to spice it up, so I added some pink to the tips with Jerome Russel's Punky Colour in Flamingo Pink.This ended up being a bad idea, as the pink worked against my toning shampoo and my hair ended up turning a gross murky off yellow color after a few washes....

 Which was cool, cause I didn't make a very good blonde anyway and now that I had such light hair, I could go the bold red I love! My inspiration was originally Mad Men's Joan Holloway, but it was short lived. (Like everything seems to be with my hair!) When I first went red, I had to cut quite a few inches off due to how porous my ends were, which made them a lot darker than the rest of it.

 But after some much needed TLC and trial and error, I've found my perfect color cocktail and am in love with my current color! My hair is for the most part all healthy again, (Still fades more on my ends than the rest due to the bleach underneath) but I'm using only semi permanent color. I've had to darken the all over color to match the color I get on my regrowth, since I've sworn off bleach for the forseable future.

I use Wella's Color Touch 6/45 which is a Dark Blonde Red Red/Violet. My natural hair is a dark brown, but picks up the red really well, so I don't have to worry about matching the regrowth to the rest of it anymore. It's simple, bold and vibrant, and I LOVE it. We'll see how long it lasts ;)

Ray Charles

Aaaah, Chiddy Bang makes me happy :)

Drug Store Makeup Haul

Me + Walgreens = Danger!!!

I know a lot of these have been reviewed to death by now, but they're all 1st time buys for me, so I wanted to do a haul. There are a ton of new collections out for Maybelline, L'Oreal, Revlon, etc. and I wanted to show what I got/first impressions.

First off, I bought the Maybelline DreamLumi touch Highlight concealer in Ivory. I usually use M.A.C concealer to even out my complexion, but I wanted something lighter for under my eyes. I've used this product twice so far, and for now I love it! It's hard for me to find concealers that are lighter than my foundation since I'm so pale but this one did it, and I like that it doesn't get cakey/crease under my eyes after time. So far so good!

Now this again, I know has been reviewed to death but these next two are actually my first ever Wet'n Wild buys in YEARS. I haven't bought from this brand since my highschool days when the makeup was definitely less than awesome. After hearing so many good things about these shadows, I finally decided to see how the brand has improved, and goodness, I'm in love!

First up is Wet'n Wild's Color Icon Eyeshadow Set in Comfort Zone. I LOVE this palette! I've only used it once, but after swatching all the colors, they're beautiful! My favorite by far is the bottom on the green side. It's a super gorgeous red/brown/green multitone color that looks amazing on the eye. I really didn't have any misses from this palette. All the colors are gorgeous. The only downside is that they're SO creamy that there tends to be a little fallout when applying, but at $4.99 a set, I'm not complaining!

The second palette I bought was Blue Had Me at Hello. Another great set of colors, but this one had a few misses for me. The main upset was the consistency of a few of the shadows. For the most park, the upper 2 shadows on each side had the same creamy consistency as the last palette, but the bottom 2 colors on each side were a bit dryer and not as opaque. The blue/black glitter color was mostly black, where I really hoped it would have the same multitone effect as the above palette, but didn't. The top 2 right green/blue colors are beautiful though. Again, not complaining for the price!

Lastly, I bought a ton of the L'Oreal Infallible 24 HR Eye Shadows... I bought 3 at Ulta last weekend and LOVED them, so I had to get 4 more on my Walgreens run.

 Amber Rush

 Bronzed Taupe

 Perpetual Purple

 Continuous Cocoa

 Eternal Black

 Iced Latte

Midnight Blue

I haven't had a chance to use all these colors yet, but I've used Bronzed Taupe and Continuous Cocoa together and they looked really nice together. I used Bronzed Taupe as an all over wash and Continuous Cocoa as the contour.

Today I tried out Iced Latte as an all over lid color and it was beautiful! It really reminded me of Urban Decay's Naked Palette's "Virgin", which I'm in love with. I've been trying to find something comparable to it, since they don't sell it individually, and this came pretty close.

All the colors swatch really opaque and blend surprisingly well. I was at first worried that they would be hard to work with due to the odd consistency, but so far I haven't had any problems. They work well with brushes or just fingers.

I'll stop now... I can talk ears off about makeup, so I'll leave as is. All in all, it was a very successful haul, with no regrets! (I tend to get bummed when I spend that much in a Walgreens!) but everything was worth it :)

Until next time!