Holy White Teeth, Batman!

On Friday, I received a package from Influenster, containing what I was told would be a "premium oral aesthetics" product. Now of course, being as big on teeth whitening or improving as I am, I was all for it. Normally from what I've seen on YouTube with Influenster boxes, you get mainly samples, occasionally a full sized product, but not always. That's what I was expecting when I saw the box sitting on the window outside of my living room. I picked it up and it seemed really light, so I figured there really was only one product in the box, which was fine. It was my very first box from Influenster, so I was just happy to receive one!
 
Of course, being the 4-year-old child that I am, I had to shake the box like a gift on Christmas morning to try to figure out what it could be. It sounded like one product, a very small one, so I was a little afraid that it was going to be a sample sized tube of toothpaste. I was not expecting at all to find this inside the box:

What!? They had teamed up with Crest to send out a full sized kit of whitening strips! My mind was blown! I have been wanting to try Crest's white strips for years now, ever since they were first announced. This box retails for $49.99, which is not the kind of price I would pay for something I've never used or could have a negative reaction to. Yikes!

Needless to say, I popped a set of these bad boys on my teeth that same night and left them on for thirty minutes, as the directions say. When I pulled them off, I brushed my teeth to remove any of the leftover gel, and didn't see much change right away. However, about twenty minutes later, I walked into our living room to say hi to my mom and she told me my teeth looked so much whiter! I ran to the mirror to inspect, and sure enough, there was already a difference after one use! I'm so excited to already be seeing these results, and I'll be posting a video to my YouTube channel to let you all know how they're working for me.

I would like to end this post by thanking Crest and Influenster for this awesome gift, and the opportunity to try something out that I would normally never buy for myself. You have me in second thoughts about that!

Earn Free Goodies!?

Hey everyone! Today I wanted to quickly write and let you know about a site that has been RE-LAUNCHED! It's called Influenster. On Influenster, you can earn badges, badges lead you to points, and points lead you to... That's right, a box of free goodies, baby! They've completely re-vamped their site and made it so much more user-friendly and now you can actually see how well you're doing in each badge.
If you sign up on www.influenster.com, you'll also notice that you can write reviews for products, games, food, even cat & dog food that you've tried out. Don't hold back, either! They want your honest opinion.
I love what they've done with the site and now I feel so much more motivated to get those badges up to 100 points! It's like a competition with myself and I have to win!

I hope you'll go sign up or at least look around the site.
Happy point-earning!

L.A. Colors Nail Polish!

Hi Everyone! Wow, it's been a while! But I have another product review/first impression post for you all!

I had heard a few beauty vloggers who live in Canada mentioning a brand called L.A. Colors, and I wanted to try something from them for such a long time, but I'd never seen the brand anywhere where I live, so I of course came to the conclusion that it must be a Canadian brand, unavailable in the states. I was checking out my local Dollar Tree today, though, and what did I see in the makeup section? A whole fuh-lippin' bunch of L.A. Colors makeup products! I only had a small amount of cash on me and already had my hands pretty full, so I decided I'll go back and get more at another time. After I left the Dollar Tree, I went to Ross. What did I see again at Ross?! That's right, more L.A. Colors! I found this nail polish set, with 7 polishes, for $5.99 - what a steal! I had to get it.

This collection of seven polishes (or varnishes!) is called the Brites collection, and as you can see from these photos, they are all gorgeous colors! Only two of the colors live up to the name of the collection, though, which is disappointing. 

Another thing I'm not a huge fan of with these polishes is the fact that none of them are named! If someone liked a shade and were to ask me what it was, I wouldn't be able to give them a name! 

I've tried three of these polishes so far (I'm a swatching junkie), the green, orange (yellow?), and pink shades. The green and pink shades were so opaque, I was blown away. It took two coats to get a solid, smooth color! The orange shade is much thinner, and shows your natural nail through the polish after three coats. But they dry fast, so that makes up for it!

I'm very happy with this purchase and I think these polishes are going to get a lot of use. They are a very welcome addition to my little nail polish family.

Trending: Ugly Manis!

I'm going to need to fan myself off and get a drink of water after seeing that manicures like this exist - they've sent me into shock, and not in a good way!

Since when has it been acceptable, let alone stylish, to have these!? I can't even begin to imagine how hard daily activities would be with these nails; they must get ripped off extremely easily (not that I'm complaining), but I guess they would be nice in the summer to fan you off if you get hot! They do look like fan blades, after all!

Now let's discuss these... atrocities. Claw nails, really? What is the appeal of having a dagger attached to your fingertip? Heaven forbid you have to itch your eye and rip the dang thing out! They're great self - defense tools, but definitely not a girl's best friend - rhinestones or not.

Do you know of any yucky looking manicure trends? Tell me about them!

NOTD: Minty Fresh

Today I'm wearing Sinful Colors' "Mint Apple" on my nails. As you can see by the wall behind my hand in this photo, I've been maybe overly obsessing about mint lately. I was on the hunt for the perfect mint shade and thought I'd give this a shot. It's about 4 shades darker than what I was looking for, so this was a "settling" purchase, as I couldn't find the shade I really wanted.

However; I really do enjoy this polish, more than I had originally thought I would. Considering how ungodly pale I am year-round, I think this color compliments my skin tone almost as well as a plain black polish does, but it also adds a little "girl" factor with the light tone and subtle shimmer.

One thing I love about this polish is how quickly a thin coat of it dries - you can get a whole manicure done much faster than if you were to certain other polishes... I won't name names!

One thing I dislike about this polish is that it is so thin. It feels as if you'd need several coats to get an opaque color (the nails in this photo took 2), but looks are deceiving. 

Maybelline Color Tattoo Eyeshadow

I recently purchased one of Maybelline's Color Tattoo cream eyeshadows from my local Wal Mart. I was very intrigued by these because they're said to be comparable to Benefit's Creaseless Cream Shadows, which I've also tried.

I found the CCS to be the exact opposite of its name - "creaseless" my hind end! BUT I had heard so many good things about Maybelline's shadows that I had to try this out - and for $14 less than what you pay for Benefit's product, what a steal would that be!? 

I spent a few hours trying to decide which shade I wanted to get - I didn't want to buy multiple shades in case I hated them. But eventually I decided on Tenacious Teal. The second I got in the car, I ripped this bad boy open so I could swatch him and see what he looked like. I was delighted when I saw how shimmery and pigmented it was! Not to mention I was absolutely drooling over the color! 

Now, as I was testing this shadow in multiple ways, I was constantly comparing it to the Creaseless Cream Shadows, and in almost every test, it surpassed the quality and comfort by a mile.

It's much more pigmented, it doesn't feel nearly as heavy on the lid, it blends ten times more easily, it doesn't crease nearly as fast, and the color selection is so much more fun! They also make a fantastic base!

All in all, I am in love with these shadows and I feel like until I have them all, my makeup collection will have an empty space in its heart.

I highly highly recommend picking these up at your local Target or Wal Mart as soon as you possibly can. You will not be disappointed!

Julep Maven!

Wow, long time no blog! I'm back, though with a very special post that might just make you very happy! If you're reading this today (June 7), you have a one-up on my YouTube audience - pat yourself on the back for that, you snazzy thing, you! 

I want to tell you lovely people about a little subscription service for your naily bits called Julep. I came across this service while perusing the YouTubes one day and I thought "Meh, it's just another one of those 'give us all of your money and here's some junk' services. Buh-bye!" But I did come across a coupon code to get an introductory box for just one penny, so I went ahead and caved in and became a Maven.


It took less than a week for my box to arrive! I ordered it around 11PM Saturday night and received it today, Thursday. It came in a very classic black box that simply had "Julep Maven" printed on the side.

I won't lie - I was excited to receive this box. I took the style quiz at the start of sign-up and it told me I was "Boho Glam." Except I'm not. So the exciting part of this was, I didn't have to be stuck with "Boho Glam" for the rest of my life! I was able to look through all of the intro boxes and choose which box was right for me, which was "It Girl." The colors were more fun and vibrant, and downside - it was the only box with three polishes.

When my box arrived, I opened it to see two cards; a welcome to Julep card and a summary of my box. Underneath those cards was something every girl wants to see: cute, frilly packaging!

My polishes were wrapped in bubble wrap, inside a pink gift bag, which was tied by a black ribbon to two orange and white toe dividers. Precious! I was super impressed by the fact that the polishes were wrapped so carefully in bubble wrap and they weren't broken or leaking.

I'm sure by now you're thinking,"OK when is she going to show us the colors that she got?! That's the only reason I'm here!" Calm down! Calm down! 

The first color - the one I was most excited for - is Jessica, which is a gorgeous Robin's egg blue cream shade. All of their polishes have women's names. That's actually kind of cute! But there isn't a Hayley shade... Julep!

The next color I got in my box is Brooke. I'm a little bit disappointed by this color, considering how excited I was to get it. I was expecting a very opaque, glittery purple to use as an accent color to Jessica. Instead it's a very thin, verrryyy sheer polish - although I'd call it a topcoat - with no real glitter to it, just a little shimmer.

The final shade in the box is Mandy, which is described as a fresh, bright coral pink. I didn't really see that in this polish to be 100% honest. All I saw was a very pinky red. To me, a coral color has a lot of orange in it, which this did not. It's still really pretty, though!

All of the shades together.

(L-R: Mandy, Jessica, Brooke)

Thank you as always for viewing or reading or whatever exactly it is that you do! 

Please subscribe and stay tuned on my YouTube channel for not only my full review of these polishes and the service, but four (4) coupon codes to get crazy deals on these boxes!

Xoxo