Following a self imposed no buy diet for the first half of the new year, was the discovery of a handful boxful of products I have yet to photograph or review. And here I was worried the diet would affect the posts!

Some new polishes to add to the roster are the Milani One Coat Glitters. The polishes are super dense and undeniable pigmented.I used two coats to create an even layer on my nails and was blown away. The glitters are the best glitters I have seen so far, and are a great balance of grainy, glitter, and pigment saturation. The polish is also not watery and wishy washy like a lot of glitters can get - there is no such thing as one coat and it's still see through with these bad boys. The only exception is the rainbow confetti polish - but that's not really a color if you think about it. The colors are so saturated that even applying a top coat is pointless after five seconds - the polish swallows up the shine.

Bronzers are the perfect addition to any makeup collection year round. When it is warm, you can use it to fake a tan (being that we're all slathered in SPF and hiding in the shade - well I am!), or brushing on some during the colder months to fool coworkers into thinking you took the weekend to have Tahiti adventures.

Personally, my secret has been to apply bronzer lightly instead of blush. It adds a tint to the skin reminiscent of a tan, and adds angles and shadows where needed. If you check out videos on Youtube, you'll also see that you can add bronzer on each side of the nose to add shadow and slim it out (if that's the look you're going for). The technique is most helpful to mavens with round faces, much like myself.

A bronzer is very multifunctional. You can use it all over the face, as a blush, or to define angles when contouring. For the best effects, you can even use two different shades; one for all over and one to contour with.

I decided to try out some more drugstore brand bronzers as I started to hit the pan on my more expensive shades. The first on the list was the Milani Tantastic face and body bronzer.

The packaging swivels out to the side to reveal a baked bronzer with golden, bronze, and pearl shades swirling together. If you're anything like me, the packaging will confuse you for a bit.

It has been a pretty heated Twitter discussion about where to get the holographic polishes from Milani. To clear things up, only CVS drugstores carry these babies. This is a tried and tested fact courtesy of 40+ drugstore checks by yours truly. If you are outside of NY, you might find these in other drugstores... and if you do, let us know! I am not sure if they are limited edition or not, but something tells me they are. There are only six colors, and if you are having trouble getting to a CVS, or have no such drugstore nearby, they have the polishes available for purchase on their website.

I finally got my hands on all colors, and while I wait for my nails to grow back to decent swatching shapes, here are what the colors look like:

Any favorites?

Share

So I've finally gotten down to organization again as my shopping rises and my belongings multiply. After a trip to Pearl, Staples, and eBay, I think I'm ready to take on the task.

• from Pearl: pack of 12 storage cups (they're for paint but they are also perfect for storing pigments, etc.), various sized containers (for powders/mixing)
• from Staples: labeling tape, magnetic tape (w/a dispenser how efficient!)
• from eBay: two 28 pan eyeshadow palettes (this is good for depotting and pressing pigments, plus this is the generic size that fits the Urban Decay, Milani, and MAC shadows and it's cheaper than the MAC pro palettes $6 before s/h). This is the seller I got it from: jolieeeee

I should've gotten more palettes, because I got super excited and decided to make one palette strictly Milani and one strictly Urban Decay - it makes it much easier than storing each stinkin' e/s pot by itself.

Of course, I went to YouTube for instructions. The Milani shadows are super easy to depot, they have a hole on the bottom that you can stick a tack into and it comes right out. The Urban Decay ones are the same as the MAC.

Here's how I did (click on images for larger pictures):

First I started with the Milani.

This was fairly easy to do. Only thing was that you had to push really hard with the thumb tack. I used Vanessa's advice (Nessassary Makeup) and reused the label stickers from the e/s packaging to put on the top flap of my palette so that I wouldn't be confused about the colors or color names. So far I am organizing them by the shadow number that comes on the packaging. Once I fill up the whole palette, I might have to redo it by color. Stay tuned!



and then the Urban! Man I had so much trouble with this one. It snapped my box cutter, and I cracked my shadow twice - thankfully only at the top though so it can still be used.

This is basically the same as depotting the MAC e/s pans and the directions are the same as well. I didn't have much luck finding too many other videos on Urban Decay e/s. The video that I saw tells you to use snippers to cut away at the pot once you separate it from the packaging, whereas most other ones tell you to use a flame - after I tried to snip away, I used a flame and realized I like that much much better.

And this is the end result:

I went a little crazy with the labeling - my labeler had a candy wrapper option!

I decided to keep these two palettes as brand specific, and will probably buy another palette to load in the rest of my shadow stragglers.

And you? Have you done any depotting/organizing recently? How did it go?

Check out the poll at the side - I want to know what ya guys think I should do about my hauls. I've been on a shopping frenzy this month and the Swag Attack end of month entry might be a million pages long.

The word is in: Blue is the new Black. Who came up with that phrase anyway? (Some window shopping for you? Why of course, click here for Bergdorf's take on the shade's of blue for spring in costs that will cause your wallet to go plenty shades of red.)

Hey kids

In the month of February, I have been to two birthday parties. Both for cute lil' one year olds. One for a girl and one for a boy. I find it funny that as I think about these looks they are both using similar makeup. Of course, of course - inspiration boards as well!

Take a look and tell me what you think. Don't forget about the contest up above y'all!

So yesterday was Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras (Wikipedia: Fat Tuesday). This was the first time that I did anything or was involved in anything. My coworker treated the whole staff to King cake (another tradition I was unawares to). She also treated us to beads (no topless acts included). The colors of the beads inspired an EOTD - below.

Still getting used to the right way to photograph as well as edit and post, so bear with me! :)




What did you do yesterday? Do you have any Mardi Gras stories/looks?