*Gift

Hi there! Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas! 🙂 I thought I would share what beauty items I received for Christmas this year. My friends and family were super duper generous this year and I was so excited and grateful for all that I received!

Apologies for the boring banner. I didn’t take a consolidated picture of all my products before I broke into a lot of them. Isn’t that the biggest beauty blogger problem though? Waiting to use a product before pictures are taken? Haha, I digress.

Hello! As everyone is gearing up for the holidays, I feel like I’m slowly getting back to my blog! 🙂 It’s been a nice feeling! I’m gonna take it back a month or so ago to Black Friday! This year, I was actually in the US for Black Friday, but not really for shopping. I went down for the weekend with my boyfriend to check out a football game. 🙂 It was a great weekend trip and I managed to get some shopping done!

*Purchased and Gift

So because I’m a terrible beauty blogger, I made a Sephora purchase before the current VIB Rouge/ VIB sale *collective gasp*. In my defense, I didn’t know when the sale would be (which continues to reinforce the idea that I’m not a real good beauty blogger). Also recently I celebrated one of those things called a birthday. I didn’t receive very many beauty gifts, but the one I got was a doozy and thought it would be nice to include it in this haul!

1. BITE Beauty Luminous Creme Lipstick in Mauvember

So this puppy right here was the sole reason I decided to make an online order. I thought that this lipstick would be available ONLY online but apparently that isn’t true. When I first saw this, I DIED. BITE is probably my favourite cosmetic brand and the fact that they have this Canada Movember exclusive is just amazing. So far I really love it. I would like to say though that I’ve seen a LOT of different swatches of this. I would NOT say this is a ‘my lips but better’ shade as it leans so much more plumy. Swatches are at the end!

2. Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Palette

So this is what I got from my birthday from my boyfriend’s parents. A very generous gift indeed. I actually was going to buy this anyways. It’s so pricey for so little product, but I thought it would be worth it. I don’t own any Hourglass powders and this seemed like the best ‘starter pack’. I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks (mostly the blush and bronzer) and LOVE it. They have been the longest lasting powders that I’ve ever used and diffuses so well. I also notice that it’s really light and is totally travel friendly. I hate to say that I recommend this. #sorrywallets

3. Hourglass Veil Mineral Primer

I bought this back in the spring thinking that it would be a complete rip off but I really really like this primer. I was trying so many different primers and this is one that I’ve stuck to. It’s such a small container for the price, but it lasted me for a couple of months. During the summer it worked really well. I’m usually a slick ball and this made me less…slick-y. I’m curious to see how this will wear over the winter months.

4. Kat Von D Tattoo Liner in Trooper (Limited Packaging)

I’ve noticed that my beloved Tattoo liner has been running out and I decided to get the limited edition packaging. I thought it was a bit of a waste just because it’s the same product, but makeup lovers love limited packaging, amirite?

5. Samples

Here are the samples I got with my order. So far I’ve used the Touche Eclat (really liked it for under eye circles), the Bumble and bumble shampoo and conditioner (nice but wouldn’t repurchase), and the Boscia BB Cream (a bit of a weird consistency but decent enough to use up).

Swatches

Thanks for reading! Have an amazing day!

*Purchased

I blame it on the beauty bloggers. After months and months of seeing hype over Colourpop, I decided to place an order. I knew I wanted to try the matte lip colours along with their eyeshadows. Also because my blush collection has been growing at an exponential rate, I decided to grab one as well.

First let me just say that Colourpop is one of the cutest companies ever. The packing box unfolds to the super cool brand design which was perfect for my blog shots. They also included product cards which were actually super helpful. They also had a hand written thank you note, and I think I died.

Anyhoo, back to the haul. Swatches at the end!

1. Super Shock Eyeshadows and Blush

 
I definitely had a specific colour scheme in mind with either darker greys or sparkly bronzes. Here’s a breakdown of what I got:

3

• A dark grey-brown with a micro glitter sheen
• Pigmentation is great, 
• I’ve been using this for the outer corner

Nillionaire

• Gold-bronze glitter
• This was the only shadow that came broken. Nothing tragic though, I was able to tap it back together
• My least favourite shadow. The pigmentation isn’t amazing and mostly all you get is glitter. I wouldn’t mind the glitter if it also came with that beautiful bronze base

To-A-T

• A matte light brown
• One of my most used and most favourite
• PERFECT for a lid colour

Party Time

• A matte purple-y grey
• Pigmentation is okay
• Good for the crease or outer corner

Cheerio

• Berry pink blush
• Very happy with this. The colour is perfect. 
• It contains a bit of glitter, but unnoticeable when applied to the cheeks (a good thing)

2. Ultra Matte Lipsticks

I was pretty positive I would get Bumble, but I wanted another to add to my collection. I ended up going with Beeper, a very Kylie Jenner-esque pink brown colour. Of course as expected, these were drying, but I love the look of them so I don’t mind.

Bumble

• A warm berry coral lip colour
• Perfect colour for work or the weekend
• I think it’s the perfect in-between for a nude lip and a bold lip

Beeper

• A matte brown with a tinge of pink
• This was actually a lot browner than I expected, but will definitely still use it

Swatches

All in all, I’m super happy with my purchase. I guess one of the only negatives I found about Colourpop was that I can’t depot them and put them in my Z Palette or they’ll dry out. I guess it makes sense due to how buttery they are. Pigmentation on most powder products was so so. If you’re going for a big impact, I would suggest Makeup Geek for a similar price range. With that being said though, these are pretty inexpensive, and even with the terrible dollar and shipping, I can see myself making another order.

Have you tried Colourpop? What are some of your favourites?

Thanks so much for reading! Have a great day!

Hello! So about a week ago, I had the pleasure of going to IMATS with one of my other makeup-obsessed friends, Leah. If you don’t know, IMATS is an international makeup convention primarily targeted towards makeup artists or students. It also caters well to beauty enthusiasts as I am neither a MUA or student. The deals are great and the variety is wonderful. It was both our first time going, and let me just say, it was a complete blur. I was in a makeup induced coma and completely loved it.

We had carefully planned out our route and had prepped as much as we could. We were going the Sunday, and were able to get there about an hour before it opened. The day before on Saturday, I had the pleasure of having lunch with some beautiful Canadian Beauty Bloggers so I was able to grab some intel from them. My main takeaways were that Morphe was gonna be a complete mess and BRING CASH! Since we had an hour before it opened, we were able to go over our plan again. Leah was gonna dash to Morphe and I would go to Make Up For Ever. We’d meet up after these two.

Once we got in, the anticipation boiled over, and we were able to shop up a storm. We were both able to go to our respective booths and complete our purchases within 15 minutes of IMATS opening. Not too shabby. Afterwards we kind of wandered around to other booths we wanted to visit. We both grabbed some awesome stuff with some great deals.

I set myself a limit of around $150 and I came just under that at around $120. I didn’t go crazy (which I very well could of), but I feel like I’ve bought so much makeup recently that I wanted to keep it as cost effective as possible. Here are the goodies I picked up.

1. Make Up For Ever

Make Up For Ever probably had one of the best deals at the convention with 40% off. I LOVE the MUFE HD foundation, but since it’s discontinued, I wanted to grab a bottle of the Ultra HD. I’ve heard some not so great reviews of it, but I still wanted to try it. Maybe I’ll do a comparison post of them both. I also got a mini size of the HD powder. I wanted to get a bottle of the Banana Powder but couldn’t find it anywhere! I thought I could try this one though as I’ve never ever used a translucent powder before!

2. Farleyco

From Farleyco I knew I wanted to grab another bottle of the Volume Extreme Colab dry shampoo. It was so tempting as they had some new scents such as Tokyo and Paris, but I stuck to one that I knew I love which is Rio. I was also so happy to see the Zoella bath and beauty line. They didn’t have her new stuff, but I wanted to grab the body wash. So far I really like it!

3. NYX

NYX was probably the longest we waited in which was around 30-40 minutes. I’ve been searching for the NYX Micro Brow for what feels like forever and finally found it. With the new NYX store opening in Toronto, the branding was pretty specific and targeted which was nice! I just started using this as my Brow Wiz just ran out (perfect timing!) and like it so far. I got the colour Black which I thought might be too dark, but I think it’s pretty decent!

4. Crown Brushes

If you go to IMATS, I feel like you NEED to get some brushes. And that is what I did. I hit up Crown brushes which were super affordable and had a great array of choices. I have one Crown brush from an ipsy bag and really like it! Also, funny enough, I got a Morphe brush from Crown. I didn’t know they had them and actually had no idea it was a Morphe brush until I took it home!

5. Bio Seaweed Gel Manicure

I’ve been going nail polish-less for a few weeks now just because I have not had time. Bio Seaweed Gel was offering $10 manicures so I jumped on that. I’m gonna do a full post on my first Gel experience in another post soon!

And there we have my first IMATS experience. I had such a fun time and I look forward to going back to IMATS next year!

Did you head out to IMATS? Get any great deals?

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

*Purchased

Hi there! So one of the biggest pieces of beauty news as of late is that H&M has released a full beauty line. H&M has always had a few pieces here and there like nail polish and maybe a few eyeshadows. They were usually found right at the checkout and never really piqued my interest. When I first heard of this new line/department, I was definitely curious along with the rest of the internet. I ended up trekking out to the retail location to check out their displays and what they had!

Just a warning this will be a very picture heavy post! After all this you can check out what I picked up from the line!

When I first entered the renovated H&M I actually couldn’t find the beauty department. When an employee led me over, I was actually surprised how much smaller it was than I expected. It wasn’t really that small or anything, but it was in a corner of the women’s section. Maybe I was expecting some sort of Sephora or something, I don’t know haha.

 

All in all, a really decent selection of everything under the sun. Price-wise, think drugstore. Most things I saw were around $6-$15 with some exceptions. Not so bad considering that I think the drugstore is somewhat getting out of hand with their prices.

Now to what I got:

1. Pure Radiance Powder Blusher in Rosy Brown

I honestly couldn’t resit solely because of the packaging. After playing a bit and swatching, I would say it’s kinda meh. The pigmentation isn’t amazing, but I guess the box does say ‘sheer glow’. The packaging is super pretty if not a little cheap and plasticy feeling. I can definitely get over that though. I’ll have to try and experiment with this one!

2. Aqua Liquid Eyeliner in Fireworks

Just cause I can’t get enough of eyeliners. I was a bit disappointed with this actually as I didn’t realize, but it has flicks of glitter in it. Meh. But happy that it has a little brush liner which are usually some of my favourite applicators. I’m curious to see how it wears and if it flakes during the day.

3. Lip Fixation Primer

4. Medium Shading Brush

The brushes were what I was most excited for. I wasn’t leaving until I grabbed one! I would equate their two brush lines sort of like elf. The white handles were double ended and a bit cheaper than the black ones. I dislike double ended brushes just because I find them a bit hard to store. So far I’m impressed with the brush. It’s super fluffy and soft. For $6 bucks, why not!

All in all, I’m happy with my haul, but I think I was a bit trigger happy. The quality doesn’t feel mind blowing, but still a good price for some things. I deliberately steered clear of the eyeshadows and lip stuff just because I had a Colourpop order coming (and a haul will be up soon). I think it will take a while for the beauty community to get a real good grasp of how they feel about the H&M stuff just because it’s so vast with soooo many different offerings. My first impression is that it feels like a nice drugstore quality. Nothing awesome, but if you see something that piques your interest then try it out!

Have you tried any of the H&M Beauty stuff? What are your thoughts on the line?

Thanks for reading, hope you have a great day!

Hello hello! Hope you are having a completely wonderful day! I was thinking recently how much I’ve been posting! It’s been crazy! I’m not doing anything really right now so I’ve had lots of time to execute blog posts. 🙂 In a couple of weeks I’ll be starting my full time job which means I’ll probably have less time to read/write blog posts. (Side note, ALMOST cleared my bloglovin’ roll! I can’t believe it!) I’m just going to enjoy the last bit of time that I have to write and then take it as it comes. I’ve never really been into scheduling posts, which probably isn’t the best. Lets see how it goes in the next couple of weeks. 😀

And now what I’m sure you’re here for! A haul. *u*

So I was the +1 for one of my very good friends Leah for the VIB Rouge Points Event Party. She actually just started a beauty blog after my pestering! I’m sure she would really appreciate if you showed her some love, so I’m just gonna leave her blog link here. 😉

Leah had just made VIB Rouge so she had never been to an event either. I didn’t know what to think and didn’t want to have a lot of high expectations (just in case). After having experienced the event, I can say that it was very well done and I think we both enjoyed ourselves a lot! They had a lot of refreshments and chocolates which was soooo awesome.

I should have brought a bigger bag so I could have grabbed more of those Godiva chocolates. YUM. Another really cute dessert that they had was a VIB Rouge cake pop!

So now that it’s established that I consumed my weight in free goodies, lets get on to what I ended up getting!

1. BITE 250 Point Perk

So I had not heard about this anywhere and was so happy to see it! It’s a 250 Sephora point perk reward for BITE, one of my fav makeup companies. It contains a lip gloss and lipstick both in the colour Bellini. I wore these both today and I am so impressed. It’s regular amazing BITE quality. The pigmentation is UNREAL. Love love love. It also came with a mini mirror that I’m not sure will get much use. Oh well, it’s still stinking adorable.

2. Formula X Delete To-Go Nail Polish Remover Pads

Leah and I were both looking to buy the Josie Maran nail wipes but they didn’t have them. Instead I ended up buying these just to try. I didn’t have a super great experience with the Sephora branded nail wipes (which can be read about here) but I do think highly of the Formula X brand. They were expensive at $18 CAD, but I know I will use them up. Lets see how well these will work on my latest glitter nails!

3. Josie Maran Bear Naked Wipes

Whilst looking for the nail wipes, I stumbled upon these wipes from Josie Maran from the same line. I’ve been living without face wipes for much too long (about a week…haha) so I decided to grab these. I tried these last night and actually really like them! It says on the package that the purchase of this product helps support polar bears. That’s a plus too!

4. NARS Eye Shadow Primer

Soooo everyone and their mother loves this. I’m almost done my Urban Decay primer potion and I thought this would be a great option! Can’t wait to try this out and see if the hype is real!

5. BITE Matte Creme Lipstick in Mulled Maple

So this was the only thing I knew 100% I would get. I’ve seen this on so many people’s blogs and knew that this is the colour I would go with. They didn’t have any more on the display but THANK GOODNESS there were 2 more in the back. Leah ended picking this up too cause fate right?

6. Urban Decay De-Slick

It’s crazy, whenever I check for the full size of this, they are ALWAYS sold out. It’s probably cause it’s amazing! You can read about my comparison of this and All Nighter here. I think this small size will suffice though since summer is almost over ;____; unfortunately.

Now I’ll show you some of the free stuff that I got at the event. The major thing that I knew/hoped we would be getting is a cosmetic bag filled with free samples.

The bag doesn’t impress me all that much. The design is cute but the material is a fabric similar to a reusable grocery bag. I’d be scared to put liquids in this for travel cause they would definitely soak right through. I’m pretty happy with the size and variety of samples though! I can see myself trying just about everything.

We also got a door prize freebie thing right when we entered

Both are a great size and I can see myself trying both!

So all in all I had a great time. During the event they also had ‘masterclass’ tutorials where the employees demonstrated different trending makeup techniques. We stayed for a few of them and the employees seemed super grateful haha.

Thanks so much for reading and an extra special thanks to Leah for bringing me as her +1 for this event!! 😀 Hope you have a wonderful day!

*Gift

Recently, I got the chance to finally attend a Canadian Beauty Bloggers (CBB) meetup/de-stash! I’ve been apart of the group for over a year, I think I joined very close to when I started blogging. I’ve never been to a meetup before, so It was very cool to meet folks that I see online or read their blogs!

After my Great Makeup Purge, I picked out some things that weren’t too old that I’ve either never used or used very gently. Going to the dinner I didn’t really know what to expect but everyone was SO nice. I felt so awkward, I don’t think I managed to introduce myself to everyone, so I hope I didn’t come off as rude!

After dinner there was a de-stash where everyone laid out the makeup and beauty products they brought for people to pick. Some MAC brushes were presented and those went really fast! I’m so happy with the things that I picked up!

• amie Petal Perfect 2 in 1 Cleanser and Toner
• Urban Decay Eye Shadow Primer in Sin
• Essence Nude Glam 08 Peach and Cream Nail Polish

• Essence Silky Touch Blush in 80 Autumn Peach
• Milani Baked Blush in Rose D’Oro
• Mary Kay Mineral Cheek Duo in Ripe Watermelon

• Dior 5 Couleurs Designer in 808 Purple Design
• Clarins Waterproof Eye Pencil in 05 Aquatic Green
• Maybelline Colorblur in 45 I’m Blushing and 10 Fast and Fucsia

So with this meetup I probably just about doubled the amount of blushes I have now. Everything I got I’m so happy with! This was such a fun event where I was not only able to physically meet some other awesome bloggers and also de-stash / ….re-stash? Haha! I can’t wait to attend another meetup soon!

Sorry for the shadows in my pictures. I got a new white plastic side table and thought it might be a good place to shoot pictures, but I might just stick to my comforter!

Thanks so much for reading, hope you have a great day! 😀

*Purchased

These past few weeks have been really good for shopping and not so great for my wallet. What can I say? Here I have a collective haul picking up some things that I’ve either been looking at for awhile or refills.

1. Wet N’ Wild Lipstick in Wine Room

When everyone was posting PR swatches of the Wet N’ Wild lipsticks earlier in the year this is one colour that I wanted to have in my collection. I have NOT seen these in store since last year which is insane. Whenever I see a Wet N’ Wild display there isn’t a space for these lipsticks or they are completely sold out. So when I randomly wandered through a Wal Mart and was able to find this I snatched it up!

2. Kat Von D Ink Liner in Trooper

I was so deceived by the packaging in Sephora, I thought this was a white liner, haha. After using my Tattoo liner for awhile, I realized that Kat Von D also has this Ink liquid liner. I pretty much only bought this so I could do a Versus post on Ink vs. Tattoo. #beautybloggerprobs I’m excited to see how this compares to my holy grail Tattoo liner.

3. Milani Baked Blush in Luminoso

 I blame this purchase on Ling haha. Scratch that, I should say the entire beauty blogging community. I don’t have many blushes and everyone and their dog are raving about this. I’m excited to try it out!

Here are some swatches of the 3 products above:

4. Urban Decay De-Slick Makeup Setting Spray

I ran out of my De-Slick and had to go out to Sephora to pick up a new one. They didn’t have the bigger size unfortunately, so I ended up picking up another small version. I LOVE this and highly recommend it if you have oily or combination skin.

5. Ban.do Agenda

After seeing Zoe and Vanessa with their Ban.do agendas, I fell in love. It was a bit expensive, but it is literally the cutest thing ever. All the pages are so beautifully designed and there are STICKERS in it! 😀 I have a new job that starts in August and so does this agenda. I thought it was fate, haha.

6. Sephora Living Proof 500 point Perk 

When I was picking up my De-Slick, I noticed they had this Living Proof perk available. I thought I might as well use up my points on something I would eventually end up using. My rule for 500 point perks is to not redeem if there’s a mascara in it haha. This kit is really cute, it comes with a ‘limited edition’ shower cap. It will actually be useful because I don’t have one!

And there we have it! I had every intention of actually buying the Jaclyn Hill x Becca Champagne Pop highlighter but my trip to Sephora didn’t go exactly as planned…Oh well. I guess I saved around $50 haha.

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great day!