Canon/Nikon Giveaway!

Big thanks to the SnapKnot wedding photography directory for offering this great camera giveaway! Click that link to enter it for yourself!

Spontaneous Look, Electric Green and Purple

 

Just playing around after getting home from work, its a little messy since I was just winging it but in the end I liked it.

Products used:
Sleek i-Divine Acid Palette
Starlet and Makeup Forever Eyeliner
Stila’s Stylish In Seoul Palette
Urban Decay Big Fatty Mascara
Milani Double Impact Blush
Sephora Bronzer (I don’t know the shade name)

Lemme tell ya, its the best shampoo ever! A review of Mane N Tail Original Shampoo

So sorry about missing last month’s Ipsy bag, got rather swept away in the holidays, I hope you all enjoyed yours as well!

I’ve got a quick post I’m doing here today reviewing Mane ‘N Tail Shampoo, which my dear friend Fallon told me about. She told me it was a good shampoo for hair growth, and while I’m not sure that is the specific type of product it is (the bottle says its for healthy hair, no word about whether or not its specifically for hair growth) it still produces some excellent results.

To give a little back story, about mid March 2012 I got compelled to chop off all of my hair (it was almost down to the middle of my back, a great length of hair) and opt for a sassy bob cut. The initial results were quite cute.

Before cut:

After:

So as you can see, I cut A LOT of hair off, and after a week I already regretted it. Because of the length, getting my flat iron in there was difficult, and while I wasn’t using a very good heat spray at the time, my hair tended to fluff way out and look completely silly. I recut my hair myself once (first time was by a professional) and then decided to grow it back out.

The road to recovery regrowth was not looking good, and I had a crappy length of hair for several months, pretty much all through summer. As I have curly hair naturally and I don’t always feel up to straightening it out (usually takes a while), I wear my hair curly quite often. With my hair this short, and only slightly grown out, it looked pretty… Well… Odd.

Eww.

Well okay, its not THAT bad, but I certainly was not fond of it. This was in July, so about two months since I last cut my hair.
Along with the decision to grow my hair out, I had decided to stop dying it as well to let it get a well deserved break.

I had looked into methods of growing your hair out faster and caught wind of a supplement called Biotin. Its fairly cheap, and it recommended on the bottle to take one a day, and there were 60 capsules total. In retrospect it probably wouldn’t have hurt me to take two a day, but whatever. I noticed a very small improvement in the rate of my hair growth, pretty negligible honestly, and my fingernails got less brittle, so that was cool but not what I was going for.

In comes this shampoo my friend tells me about. Like I said I took Biotin every day for two months and saw maybe 1/2 an inch of new hair,  so about when that ran out I gave Mane N Tail a shot. I figured I couldn’t go wrong, it was so cheap for a giant 32oz bottle (about $5.49).

You can probably guess by the headline, my experience was excellent. Now for more pictures!

I apologize for the look on my face, lol. This is back in mid August, my hair has grown a little but not a lot.

September…

And then after using Mane N Tail twice, November. Not a totally great comparison because my hair is straightened here, but in the previous photo my hair only stretched to be maybe 1/2 inch or less than how it looks there.

And sorry for the poor photo quality, but now in January…

So you can see in these photos my hair was growing at a rate of maybe a 1/2 inch a month, now its more like 1 inch to an 1 1/2 an inch each month and I am pretty stoked. I expect my hair will be back where it was when I cut it in a couple more months and I have to say I wish I had gotten a hold of this stuff sooner.

Now I think the length I gained in the last to comparisons does need a little explaining because the last photo is crap and the one before it I had a hoodie on which made my shoulders look closer to my hair than they really are. Looking at my hair myself so far I’d estimate I’ve gained about 1 1/2 inches of growth after using this shampoo from mid November to the beginning of the new year. Compared to my barely-1/2-an-inch-a-month regular growth, this is quite awesome and exciting.

Other perks of this stuff is that my hair has indeed become very healthy and shiny as a result of using it. I’m not too keen on the scent, but its definitely not bad. I imagine you might get even better results if you use both the shampoo and conditioner they offer, but I couldn’t let go of my Sleek N Shine (so many Ns replacing ‘ands’!). Another fun fact, this stuff is also for animals! Weird, right? There’s a set of directions for use on fur or manes on the back of the bottle.

The con of this product is the consistency. Its literally like gooey snot, its so weird and its difficult to get worked into a lather initially because of this. I usually just slap it into my hair because there it can be busted apart more easily than in my hands. I theorize the reason for this weird texture is due to the fact that it has hydrolized collagen in it. Good for hair, bad for texture, haha!

So that is about it, thank you for reading and I hope this helped you!

In the comments, tell me about the products you’ve used to grow your hair faster!

Sleek iDivine Palette, Acid + Swatches

Hello again! Two posts in one day, yes! Finally got my Sleek palette, so a promised I’m doing a review and some swatches.

I played with the shadows briefly, I really REALLY love the neon and technically illegal (lol) colors, they have pretty nice payoff especially with my eyeshadow primer (Too Faced Shadow Insurance). The swatches I did are on bare skin, no primer, and sadly as a result you can’t see the white shadow at all.

I did notice when I was swatching that the matte shadows were not quite as strongly pigmented as the shimmers, I don’t know if that’s because they are matte or if its Sleek’s formula. But as I said, I was able to apply them and build them up pretty bright on my eyelids with primer. The white shadow though, is sadly still pretty weak on the eyes with primer, I would suggest using it to set white eyeliner.

So enough talk, let’s see the pictures!

Overall I am happy with it, its SO worth the $12 plus shipping I paid and I do plan on buying more palettes from them in the future. One recommendation I have for you if you are planning to buy Sleek palettes is to go directly to their website. Ebayers are selling these palettes as well but they’re going for over $20 which I think is silly and I’m glad I didn’t get mine from there!

That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Ipsy November bag + Party Look

Hello again, long time no post!

I got my Ipsy bag for November a couple days ago, much earlier than last month! And for the record I’d like to say that I am so glad I resubscribed because I got yet another fantastic bag full of goodies.

There were some discount codes included on post cards like always, I did not include pictures of them but basically they were 25% off codes for purchasing the products featured in this month’s bag.

So let’s dive in!

Chella Eyebrow Defining Gel – I was super excited to see this product because I have been needing to get better with doing my eyebrows and was already planning on getting myself some clear brow gel. This is pretty nice, its really easy to brush your brows into place and the gel is not super gloopy or crusty when it dries, and it lasts a pretty long time as long as you don’t rub your brow.

The Balm Meet Matt(e), Matt Batali – A nice little sample size dark grey almost brown color. Really good color payoff, this is really nice for both doing subtle enhancements to your crease or more dramatic smokey looks.

Starlet Black Eyeliner – This is a very nice eyeliner pencil, in glides on very smooth but is not too soft, its a very nice dark black. This pencil will definitely be getting lots of love from me.

Bare Minerals Marvelous Moxie, Dare Devil – I definitely love this gloss, its a little thick for my preference (I like to be able to rub my lips together, your lips more like stick with this stuff) but the color is lovely. Its not as dark as you would expect and I like to use it with a nice plum colored lip liner. The color definitely reflects the trend of deep plum lip colors for fall this year that I keep hearing about, and it has a nice smell of fall spices and clove. Probably the best smelling gloss I have ever used.

Tini Cosemetics Nailtini, Millionaire – I have to say WOW this is sparkly! Its a sheer gloss with varying sizes of gold colored sparkles. Its very chunky and needs a lot of top coat to be smoothed out. I love it though!

So there’s my brief reviews and pictures for this month’s Ipsy bag, I can’t wait for next month!

Also, I decided to participate in the make a look section of Ipsy’s site where you use all the products you got in your bag to make a look! I made a formal party look, sans the super perfect hair and nice clothes, haha!

Thanks for reading!

Ipsy October bag – First review-type post!

My Ipsy October bag came in last week and I have been meaning to make a post about it but I got a little caught up in my birthday and a halloween party.

So first of all this bag was AWESOME! Lots of makeup, it made me super happy haha.
Included was the cute little bag you can see in the picture, 4 eyeshadow samples from Coastal Scents, a full size matte black marker eyeliner by Be A Bombshell, a gorgeous cool red full size Lip Bomb by Mirenesse, a sample size mascara by What’s Your Type? and a Pequi Oil hair treatment from Couture Color. Also on the back of the card is a bunch of discount codes to buy the products included in the bag.

I actually subscribed to Ipsy back when it was still MyGlam, and I got the February bag and was super disappointed. The bag was cute, but I found most of the products to be of little use, though I was excited for the NYX Roll On Eyeshadow. I unsubscribed and shortly after they closed new subscriptions which made me kind of sad. They reopened back in September and naturally I jumped on the moment I got the email and boy am I glad I rejoined!

I’m gonna give kind of a small review for each product in the bag here.

Mirenesse Lip Bomb – I LOVE this stuff, I am obsessed with lip glosses and liquid lip color and this is a rather unique product to me. Its creamy, feels like you’re applying a lip balm and it even smells a little minty like a Burt’s Bees product. The color is AMAZING I was expecting a hot pink but the color is a bit darker when applied so it comes out looking more red. This one is definitely gonna get some love from me for a while.

Be A Bombshell Eyeliner – I have been wanting to get an eyeliner like this for a while but so far its been tricky to get used to. The tip is just like a marker, very stiff, and the eyeliner goes on very smooth it doesn’t pull at all and makes a nice dark and crisp line. Its hard for me to get used to because it has no bend to it and its quite different than the liquid eyeliner I currently own. Its a great product though and I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it one day.

What’s Your Type Mascara – This is pretty nice, I only applied it once right after I got this bag so I don’t have a lot of details to give. It applies nicely, doesn’t get super gloopy (is that a word? lol) and works like… A mascara! My one true mascara love is Urban Decay’s Vintage Big And Fatty Mascara, but I would use this product also if ever I needed to.

Couture Color Pequi Oil Hair Treatment – I haven’t used this yet,  haha! I have never used any kind of hair treatment before so I can’t give a detailed review on this aside from it smells good.

Coastal Scents Eyeshadow – I really like these colors, they’re rich and creamy and shimmery and remind me how much I need to go get an 88 palette from them already. XD

So that’s about all I have to say, sorry there weren’t more pictures. >.<
I look forward to the November bag and I hope its just as awesome. 😀

Thanks for reading!
-Raven

Dramatic Cat Eyeliner

I was trying out some crazy cat eyeliner I had seen in a picture online and took some pics of it. Its not as clean as it should be but not bad for the first try with anything like that. Sported some nice orange lip gloss, and my beloved Mockingjay necklace I bought recently. I couldn’t help but pose with it, don’t my lips look fiery? XD

Original look:

Source: No idea, lol

First post!

Woo first post on my new makeup blog! WordPress is annoying but it will do the job, and free ain’t bad, lol.
This is a look I did a while ago, just trying to break in the new blog so it doesn’t look all empty.
I bought Sleek’s iDivine Palette in Acid a couple days ago, I can’t wait to do my first swatch and review on it!