September Ipsy Bag

I received my September Ipsy bag on Tuesday, but I was too distracted to post about it.

You see, my dearest lovely friend graduated from Esthetician School on that day. It's a wonderful accomplishment, but it also meant that she was moving back to her home state of Washington. I was thrilled and proud, but also sad. There were too many emotions going on to worry about makeup.

I'm so proud of you Kristin! 

I also have to confess that this month's bag had a product that I gave away before I could get a picture of it. It was Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask for hair. My hair is short, non-damaged, and non-colored, so this was completely wasted on me. I handed it over to a friend with long hair that she dyes, so it went to a good home.

So here's what this months bag looked like after I gave away the conditioning mask:

Sorry the quality is so bad. I had a hard time with the lighting this time. 

First, let me just say that I love the actual bag. My 13 year old begged me to give it to her, but I'm keeping this one! It's buttery soft too, I've been using it as a purse the last few days!

Here's what it contained: NYX Hot Singles Eye Shadow in Rehab (Now I just have to try a smokey eye look!), Pacifica Natural Water-Proof Eye Pencil in Fringe, a Crown Brush brand Infinity Shadow/Crease Duet Brush, and Cailyn Art Touch Tinted Lip Gloss in Basic Instinct (I am in love with this lip gloss. It goes on with a gloss wand, but it looks and feels a lot like a lipstick. And the color looks great on me! I went to the Cailyn site and not only did I get a full size to try, the retail price is $19! That means the $10 I spent on this months bag was well worth it!!)

I seriously love Ipsy! Remember if you want to get an Ipsy subscription you should do me a favor and sign up through my link. Then I get points to put towards free stuff! Woo hoo!!

http://www.ipsy.com/r/69qo?sid=ipsypoints&cid=general

Northern Utah Fashion Expo

Saturday I had the opportunity to volunteer at a local event here in my amazing town.

A friend of mine, Stephanie, joined up with some other amazing people and put together the very first Northern Utah Fashion Expo. It was a showcase for local fashion and accessory designers, complete with live music and three fashion shows.

I was asked to be the person who welcomed people to the event and handed out swag bags to the first 100 people who came. It was a job I'm made for. I got to chat with a bunch of people, and met lots of new faces. I had a blast!!

I only spent two and a half hours there, the expo went from noon to 8:00 pm. I only stayed for the first part, then came home and crashed. I'm such a lightweight!

Sunday I had a terrible shock. I went to Pinterest, like I do eight or nine times a day... Only this time my home page looked like I'd just signed up! None of the boards I usually follow were there and there was a prompt to start setting things up! I went to "My Boards and Pins" and all my "Followers" and "Following"s were gone! I was freaking out!! I restarted my computer, tried logging out and logging back in, nothing helped!! I shot an email off to the help department and then tried to think about other things.

Thankfully, when I got up this morning I had an email from Pinterest. They suggested clearing my browser and cookies. I did it and like a miracle, it worked! WHEW!!

I would have been upset to lose all my followers, I get a real self-esteem boost every time I get a new one, but I was really upset about losing all the boards I follow. There is no way I would be able to remember all 800 of them! I follow some really great boards and would be devastated to never see them again.

Even that I could live with as long as my pins and boards are still there. It's a bonus to me that people follow me, the most important thing is that I use Pinterest. I use it to organize my recipes, crafts, sewing patterns, shopping lists, so much! I have basically stopped using browser bookmarks. I'm a visual person, so Pinterest is exactly what I need. If I lost my pins I would be completely lost!!

(For the sake of honesty I will say that I do have one board that I curate only for my followers, Long Hair Style Ideas. I started it when I still had long hair and considered not posting to it any more, but I have a bunch of followers so when I find something cute I just go ahead and pin it.)  

Nails

Hi.

My name is Heather and I have an addiction.

I am obsessed with nail polish.

I've always liked my hands, and I consider them by far my best feature. They're small and dainty, but my fingers are nice and slim. Usually though, I just leave my nails bare or paint them clear. If I was feeling particularly sassy I might go for a light pink or off white. My nails are kind of soft and polish chips really easily. Chipped nail polish is one of my pet peeves, so I stuck with things that don't show chips easily.

Now that has all changed.

It started with my darling friend Kristin raving about Nail Thins on her Facebook page. I'd seen them on Etsy and even had some saved in my favorites, but wasn't sure about actually buying them. Once I got the endorsement from Kristin (my make-up guru) I just knew I had to try them.

Nail Thins are these little decals that go over your nail polish and come in about a kagillion different designs. I was immediately sucked in with the Harry Potter set. I mean, come on... I had to have those. They are super easy to use, and they look amazing.

Remember how I said my hands are small and dainty? Well, freakishly tiny would also be accurate. The Nail Thins I got were too big for all but my thumbs. (Insert sad face here.) This is not where the story ends though, no way. I messaged Jenny, the Nail Thins lady and mentioned that I thought it would be cool if she offered smaller sizes for little girls and people like me. Not only did she agree that it was a good idea, she also sent me smaller replacements FOR FREE!! Seriously, you guys need to go get some of these.

Anywhoo... The nail thins look cool on their own but they really "pop" when they're applied over polish. The Harry Potter decals got me thinking, and I thought it would be super cool to get blue and bronze so I could have Ravenclaw nails. (Because Pottermore put me in Ravenclaw and we all know that Pottermore is the authority on such things.) One thing led to another and I found myself collecting enough shades to have all the Hogwarts houses. I don't have a picture of my first attempt, because it was such a complete disaster, but I am undaunted and will try again!

The next step to my complete addiction came in the form of more peer pressure. My friend Bethany (who I met through Kristin!) posted on her Facebook about a site called Ipsy.

Ipsy is a really cool subscription beauty service. You fill out a profile on their site, and for $10 a month they will send you a cute little make-up bag with 4-5 different beauty products. I'm going to dedicate a whole blog post to them in the future, so stay tuned for that. The part that's relevant to this post is that in my first bag I got a bottle of purple polish, Odette by Zoya. It's completely unlike something I'd normally buy, but it looked really good with my skin tone. One more step on the road to addiction.

I also invested in some decent base coat and top coat. They definitely add to how long it takes to do my nails, but my manicure now lasts at least a week. When I was just using two coats of polish I'd be lucky if I got two days! Spending time doing my nails doesn't seem like such a waste when I can get it to last so much longer! Plus, having so many coats of polish on my nails makes them stronger. I have far fewer rips and breaks. Such a nice bonus!

Add in all the cute nail ideas I've been finding on Pinterest and you end up with a full blown obsession. I've been to Ulta more times than I'd like to admit, and my polish collection has grown to alarming proportions. I've been having a lot of fun coming up with new polish combinations! I plan to post new pictures when I'm particularly proud of my creations, consider yourself warned. My addiction has also affected my children. Today I forced Betty to sit and let me do her nails! Is there rehab for cosmetic addictions? (I'm actually updating this while she's drying between coats. If her nails turn out cute I'll try and get a picture.)

Even Joey is getting in on the action. He wanted blue nails, so he got blue nails. For the record, I didn't force this on him. He practically begged me to paint his nails while I was doing mine.

This is what my nails look like today. I started with one coat of OPI Natural Nail Strengthener as a base coat. I then did two coats of Essence Color & Go in 146 That's What I Mint! (It might look blue in the picture, but it's actually pale green.)

When that finally dried I did two coats of OPI Let's Do Anything We Want! (Muppets Collection! Woo! Love those Muppets!) This particular glitter polish was rather hard to deal with. There are large white pieces that want to settle to the bottom of the bottle. I had to shake up the bottle between every nail. You can see those white chunks best on my pointer finger in the picture.

The Cardinal Rule of glitter polish is that you want to dab on the first layer of glitter. If you brush it on like regular polish you won't get an even distribution of glitter. So, that's what I did. Once the first, incredibly thick layer was dry I added another layer.

This all took hours. Letting things dry between coats is a total pain, but at least smudges don't show with glitter polish! My normal M.O. is to surf Pinterest while I'm letting coats dry. Thank goodness I can still work my mouse with wet nails!! I waited until the next day to add two layers of OPI Top Coat.

I really like the mint green and pink sparkle. It's got a cheerful, Sprintime-y look that I'm kind of craving right now.