NOTD: China Glaze V

I think this is my absolute favorite color ever. This is China Glaze's "V", five...or Roman numeral five. Now I wouldn't say that it's orange but it's more of a salmon/peach/coral color. The flash may have made it look brighter than it really is but I'm in love. This color looks amazing when your wearing a shirt that is any shade of gray, brown or green. It's a creme color that goes on darker than what it looks like in the bottle.

Tomorrow is your last day to get this for only $2.25! If you have a Beauty Club card ($5) at Sally Beauty Supply, you'll get any CG nail polish for $3.25 but for the month of February, there's a $1 off coupon (limit one) right by the China Glaze rack. I went to two locations this month but the second store didn't have the coupons. =( Luckily, I grabbed an extra one at the first store. I had picked up "Go Crazy Red" on Valentine's Day...for only $2.25!

Peek Into My Daily Traincase

PIC HEAVY!!

Meet my Rockstar Caboodle that I got from Tar-Jeh for only $19.99. It's one of their smaller sized train cases and this one has black lace overlay while the others are either plain black, silver metal or pink metal. They all come with a latch that locks but I never lock it anyway. I've had it for 8 months and it's very durable and sturdy, however, I don't hold it by the handle because it's too heavy to support it that way. Instead, I always grab it from the bottom. The dimensions are 9.5" x 6.5" x 7.5".

This is my daily train case that I open up everyday because it contains my favorite eyeshadows and blushes, mascaras, eyelash curlers & eyeliners. Take a peek... =)

You can fit 12 5g-sized sample jars in each tray or 5 10g-sized jars & 5 5g-sized jars in each tray.
Here's the left side with all Everyday Minerals blushes and eyeshadows (2 foundation colors I use as contour). I lined the top trays with non-slip padding because I got tired of straightening out the jar labels every time I opened the case. Yup, I'm anal!

The right side

Here's what fits in the second tray on the right side. Who knew?

In the bottom are more favorite eyeshadows, mascaras, TFSI, eyelash curlers & my Anastasia brow powder duo. If you see something you want to know the color of, just ask! =)

Closeups

Many of the items in the bottom are stacked on top of each other. If you do this, you can cut out non-slip padding and put them under your eyeshadows so that they don't slide around everywhere. The downfall of this case is that you have to dig for stuff on the very bottom so I keep my less used items there.

So after doing this post, I can't believe how much stuff this little Caboodle holds! And it's no mystery that I love brown, green, and peach eyeshadows ;)
Visit Amazon to browse through more Caboodles.


While we're on the topic of Caboodles, peep my old school one! Remember these? LoL

I keep my reject makeup in here that I can't seem to throw away (a lot of Bare Minerals foundation), extra empty e.l.f. compacts & three Back 2 MAC items (I need 3 more).
Do you have a Caboodle?

Top 3 Most Hated Beauty Rituals

NUMBER ONE

I wish I was lucky enough to apply a tinted moisturizer or brush on some loose translucent powder and head out the door but nope. I need full coverage and since I use mineral makeup, I need a little time to buff it in to look flawless.

You girls who don't even need foundation are so lucky!

NUMBER TWO

Removing nail polish is not my favorite thing to do. I usually sit there and rub and rub.... Then sometimes I have to go and get another cotton ball. But what hurts the most is doing my toenails. OUCH! My neck and my back! >_<

NUMBER THREE

I hate brush washing day. It's just not fun and I tend to waste a lot of water too but I'm trying to be more green.

I usually do it once a week but now I've split it up into two days a week- one day for face brushes and another day for eye brushes.
















See! All clean and dry now and back in their dust-free home... =)

WHAT ARE YOUR MOST HATED BEAUTY RITUALS?

NYX MYX

Are you ready for more swatches? I bought more NYX only because Cherry Culture had that Valentine's Day special where everything was 20% off, so it was like I got free shipping. I also picked up 3 more Circe's and 1 more Natural lipgloss as backups, because you can never have too much of your favorites, right? =) Click here for those swatches.

Olive Grove has a light golden peach, a light pale sage & a mid-tone olive. Iced Mocha (where have you been all my life?) is a cool-toned taupe brown. All of these are shimmers and are swatched over a NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencil in Cottage Cheese. [Love this look: olive on the lid, golden peach on the crease, pale sage as highlight and on the tear duct area. Bam! And add some Iced Mocha to the outer V if you want.]
Simple Olive Grove Trio Look

Hightlight: pale sage (middle color)
Crease: tan peach (left)
Lid: olive (right)
For more oomph, add Iced Mocha to outer-V!

Chambord is shimmery while Smokey Look (peachy-nude) has subtle shimmers in it. The middle two lippes are mattes.
Sierra is a peachy terracotta color that's really pretty. As for Cocoa, I don't like it on me because it's too much of a dull purple-pink. I wanted to get Pumpkin Pie or Snow White but they were out of stock. =(

I need to stop buying lipsticks.

TRIVIA- I used to pronounce NYX as n-y-x until I found out that Nyx (knicks) is the Greek goddess of the night, which is the same name on their mega shine glosses. Many of their lipsticks are a name of a Greek god, goddess, monster (etcetera) like Circe, Alecto, Medussa, Hestia & Ceto.

*~Amazing Lipsticks~*

I found some new HG lipsticks and I'm so excited. These are the Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Color Comfort Lip Colors which are pretty pricey for a drugstore lipstick at $9.99 each but they are definitely worth every penny. Luckily, Long's Drug has a BOGO coupon in their ad this week so you can get 2 for the price of one. You can find these at most drugstores and at Ulta.com, where they have some really good pictures of all 21 colors.

"Just one application saturates your lips in high-impact color and pampering moisture. Color Comfort Lip Color features our new gel-cream formula with spherical pigments for superior adherence, texture and lustrous shine. Experience advanced lip-color performance that's ultra-comfortable and long wearing."

PACKAGING: A satin dusty-sage green with a shiny inner tube. The closure snaps a little loosely though.

PRICE & QUANTITY: $9.99 for 2.0 grams of product (Made in Italy BTW)

PIGMENTATION: Freaking awesome! If you have dark pigmentation on your lips, these will cover it right up.

FORMULA: Again, freaking awesome! Imagine the creaminess of a NYX Round lipstick but super moist with a very sufficient shine/gloss so you don't really need to apply lipgloss over it, unless you want a high shine. Forget MAC Cremesheens (although I still love 'em, lol) but these are a bit cheaper.

SOME INGREDIENTS: Sweet almond oil, grapefruit extract, cocoa butter, paraben-free

COLOR DESCRIPTIONS: Rosy Brown (my love!) - the perfect neutral pinkish-brown creme; Seashell Nude - not so nude to me; it's rather dark but it's a rose-pink with subtle gold shimmer

Here's my "killing-two-birds-with-one-stone-two-faced" lip swatch...
IRL they are slightly darker, the flash washed them out a little.

And arm swatches...

Behold the moistness & shininess =)

FINAL VERDICT: "JUMPING FOR JOY"

(Sorry for the slightly blurry pics. My clumsy self dropped my camera on my table a few days ago and I don't know if it messed it up. It's all good though; I bought the extra warranty!)

Review: Maybelline Define-A-Lash Volume Mascara

I officially HATE THIS MASCARA! So let's get to it...

I am reviewng the Maybelline Define-A-Lash Volume mascara and this is the Waterproof version in Very Black with the blue wand and clear blue tip on the cap.

PRICE: Around $7.49 @ drugstores
PACKAGING: Cute pink tube with a shiny cap
BRUSH: Rubber with concave sides and a tapered tip, which I prefer over the rubber Christmas tree shaped brushes that are wide at the base and taper down to the tip. The Maybelline brush is easier to use and covers all your lashes including your tiny inner lashes and bottom lashes. The brush is probably the only thing I like.
FLAKING: Surprisingly no flaking for a waterproof mascara, which I've come across many times
FORMULA: No clumping. It does thicken but it's nothing spectacular. As for lengthening it's meh. =/ But after 2 coats, sometimes I feel like I have to grab a lash comb.

The color is a dark black but the flash just washed it out to gray.

So what's wrong with it? Look at the picture below. First of all, I don't have a problem about my lashes sticking straight downward and I like to curl my lashes at the base so that they curl straight upward; I don't like to crimp curl them.

After applying this mascara, the tips of my lashes stick straight up and act as they should. But after a few minutes I look in the mirror and notice that a few of my LASH TIPS ARE CURLING DOWNWARD, which has NEVER HAPPENED to me before with any other mascara. At first I thought I was trippin', but after a few more tries the same thing happened to me on a few random lash tips. It's WEIRD! I don't know what's happening. All I know is that I wasted my BOGO choice and should have got something else.

THE VERDICT: Hated it!

NAILS: Coral, Orange & Grey + CNY Special

Here are more nail swatches! I swear I haven't trimmed my nails since I've started doing these but I'm going to cut them in half soon. These are 3 of the 5 Carolyn New York nail polishes from my "Collective Haulie" post...

Korean Fruit & Flower Stand is so bright that it's almost a neon color and I love it! It's a pinkish-coral creme.

Amber Street Lights is definitely one of my all time favorites because of it's shimmery rusty orange loveliness. It's such a summer color and I can't wait until the weather warms up.

Sunset on the Hudson is a sheer peachy-pink with gold shimmer. It's a very wearable color that actually does remind you of a sunset.

Until midnight on Valentine's Day, Carolyn New York is offering two sets of specials for $15 each. A bottle of polish is regularly $7.99 so this is truly a value pack. Each set comes with a free bottle of cuticle oil and a free top coat. I don't really like their top coat though because it's fairly dull-looking but I love their rubber-handled bottles. (Click pictures to take you to the website)

RED & PINK HEARTS COLLECTION:

• New York Harbor
• Cheating in Queens
• Poppy Chulo
• Street Fairs
• Catholic School Girls
• Citrus Cuticle Oil

BLACK & GRAY HEARTS COLLECTION:

• Blackout in the Bronx
• Mugged on the 6 Train
• Brownsville
• Hillside
• Hangin' on the Stoop
• Lavender Cuticle Oil
  

I love how they included a "dark hearts" collection for those of us who are single! LoL.

Oh, and if you noticed my "Sunset" nails picture on the sidebar, that's Amber Street Lights on the tips, Sunset on the Hudson as a base color and for the stripe I used an old discontinued bottle of Revlon Top Speed in Spice. It was a little goopy so the stripe wasn't smooth but I liked how it came out. =)


*UPDATE*

Can you believe some anonymous dimwit left me a RUDE COMMENT about how I should cut my nails because they look CHEAP and FAKE. What a JEALOUS BIATCH!!!!! That's the only negative comment I've got about my nails in my whole life. No more anonymous comments from now on.

This one's for you!

Handball Courts is a lighter grey than Hangin' on the Stoop, but this is more sheer (I had to use 4 coats, 2 thin & 2 thick) and it has subtle shimmer in it. Hmm...Hello Kitty "On the Prowl"?

Scandalous Eyeshadow Magnet

If you frequent YouTube, you may have heard about a fairly new cosmetics company based in the Los Angeles area called Scandalous, which offers an eyeshadow base called the Eyeshadow Magnet (5g). I bought mine on ebay but if you're around the L.A. area (shoutout to the Southland), you can buy it at the Stoneridge Mall in Downey or at the Montebello Mall in Montebello for $14. If you order from ebay, you'll have to pay $3 for shipping. EDIT: It's now available at their website.

The texture of this base is VERY RICH, creamy, thick & sticky. This matte, rich cream is a light ivory color but after blending it out on your eyelids, it will basically look like a soft white base but not a stark, pure white. My label says "light" but I don't know if it comes in other colors.

THE INGREDIENTS: Mineral Oil (Paraffinum Liquidum), Petrolatum, Isopropyl Lanolate, Ozokerite, Beeswax (Cera Alba), Disteardimonium Hectorite, BHT, Propylparaben [+/- (May Contain): Titanium Dioxide (77891), Iron Oxides (77491, 77492, 77499), Talc (77718), Kaolin (77004)]

The ingredients that stuck out to me were Ozokerite, which I've never heard of but it's just a mineral wax or paraffin, and Kaolin, which has oil-absorbing properties. So I wondered if this would crease easily since it has mineral oil as it's first ingredient and plus the label claims to be smudge and crease proof. Hmm...we'll see...

THE PACKAGING: I hate the screw top lid because the plastic threading is a little rough and will stick to itself, making it hard to open. A flip top lid would be better. The labels are "homemade" because the Scandalous label is just printed on a sticker.

LET'S DO SOME SWATCHES!

I'm going to use 6 different bases that range from low end to high end products.

I'll also use this same eyeshadow color over all 6 bases.
This is from my new Too Faced Eyeshadow Insurance Policy Palette.

Here are the 6 bases. The TFSI is invisible. (Click pics to enlarge)And swatched with Lucky Charms

SWATCH RESULTS: Judge for yourself. I think because the NYX and Scandalous bases are white, they make the color of the green eyeshadow more true. But since the elf and MAC bases were more of a lime green color, they tweaked Lucky Charms to a green with slight yellow undertones. TFSI definately needs an extra base over it to make the color pop; I rarely use this by itself anyway. The Physician's Formula base came out pretty good. So I don't think one base stood out more significantly than another. I was kind of expecting a MAJOR difference with the Scandalous base but I don't see it. Do you?

Here's some swatches from a previous post that were done over the Scandalous Eyeshadow Magnet. They're gorgeous! =)

APPLICATION TIP: I think I used a little too much the first time I tried it. Instead of swirling your finger onto the product, which might pick up too much, just tap your finger into it a few times and apply it to your eye area. Then blend it out well with your finger or a brush.

CREASING: First of all, I have oily eyelids. I've tried this product without Too Faced Shadow Insurance underneath it and it definitely creased. But after using it over TFSI, I had no creasing as long as I didn't put too much Scandalous base on top of that. You'll have to get used to the consistency and figure out how much is suitable for you.

RECOMMENDATIONS: I wouldn't say that it's a must-have but if you want to try another base just for the heck of it, then you might want to give the Scandalous base a shot. I actually like it better than the NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencils because for me those products are too soft, creamy and oily. They always crease on me before I leave the house in the morning even with TFSI under it.

THE VERDICT: WORTHY, BUT FOR ME, NOT A MUST-HAVE