Mascara: The 3 month rule.

One of the most commonly advertised "rules" for mascara is that you're suppose to throw it out after 3 months. The reasoning behind this is that bacteria gets in the tube and can infect your eyes.

Is this a genuine issue, or is it a marketing scam to get you to need to buy more mascara, thus giving cosmetic companies more money?

I believe its the latter.

Lets look at this bacteria issue for a moment.

1) How would it get inside your mascara? Every tube of mascara I've seen has a tiny opening with a rubber stopper that prevents too much product from getting out, and basically anything else from getting in. You can't put any dirty fingers inside, and you're probably not going to spit in it or blow dirty air inside or something. The only place the applicator wand touches is your eyelashes. I can only speak for myself, but I usually put on eye makeup after washing my face, so theoretically I don't have germs in my eyes when I put my mascara on. On that note, your eyes don't make bacteria all by themselves, and they have a natural way of flushing out anything that isn't suppose to be there (tears!).

2) If it did get bacteria inside, so what? There's bacteria in the air, which gets in your eyes. Its on our fingers, which come into contact with ours eyes and mouths all the time. If you get an eye infection I think its more likely that it'll come from your fingers then your mascara. I got pink eye once when I was 10, and I never used any form of eye make up back then. I haven't had any eye infections since then and my current mascara's are between 2 & 3 years old.

3) Don't we do the exact same thing with lip gloss? We put the same wand on our lips and back into the tube everyday. As long as it doesn't go bad people generally use the same lip gloss for several years or until its used up. If there is bacteria its not going in our eyes, its going in our mouths which to me sound a lot worse. No one's telling us to throw out our lip gloss after 3 months because it might make us sick.

I think its pretty illogical to think your mascara is going to breed some horrible bacteria after 3 months. Like I said above, all of my current mascaras are a few years old and I haven't had any problems. I have yet to have one dry up. I've only in my life used one mascara up and that took a few years and was one with the lash primer on one side & the mascara on the other so it was half what you get in a normal mascara. There has only be one mascara that I thought went bad, but it was 5 or 6 years old and I didn't remember if it smelled bad to begin with or not.

This is just my opinion. You don't have to hold onto your mascara until the end of the world like me, but don't toss out something that still works great and waste that money.


This look here was done with my 3 year old Maybelline Great Lash mascara, it still looks great right? Look no germs...

Small Fyrinnae haul: new primer and eyeliners

Fyrinnae has a new gel primer and they finally have their liquid eyeliners, which I have been wanting to try for ages but didn't want to spend $10 on and chance not liking, in a sample size. Primer sample is $1, eyeliner samples are $3. I will do a in-depth review of each item next week. For now here are pictures and swatches.

The sample liners are a bit smaller then my pinkie finger, 2ml. The full size are 10 ml.
The brush, while very small works great, in fact I'd say the short bristles help you have more control of placement.



You Want Me: purple with blue flashTurquoise Tease: shiny tealFlattery: neutral reflective brown, great great color!

MAC FF Haul

I got my FF haul from MAC a few days ago. I got the lipsticks Chatterbox, Lovelorn, and Angel. Those are my first MAC lipsticks. I also ordered Prep + Prime SPF 50 but they sent me a fluidline instead. I emailed them about the problem and they emailed me back in 15 hours and said they would send me the P&P free of charge and I could keep the fluidline, which is awesome. I'm glad that MAC has such good customer service.

Coastal Scents Haul; glitter and gel liners

I felt like getting some fun glitter in Christmas colors to use during the next 2 months, and it took me a while to realize that Coastal Scents has 1 teaspoon samples for under $1.50. So, I got red, green, & gold plus a red and gold eye shadow. The Crystal Teal was a free sample.

I also had to try their gel liners. They are half the price of MAC and HIP (just $7!) and they have more then the basic black/brown/navy/purple colors. I got Sky Line and Turquoise and I love them! They dry fast, a little bit goes a long way, and they are really bright. To apply them I got the black handled taklon liner brush, which is very thin and applies liner really well.





L-R: Sky Line and Turquoise

Review: Wet N Wild Mega Liner in Turquoise

Dramatic eye emphasis in a single-stroke
Long-wear, quick-dry formula applies thick or thin
Fast-drying, non-caking color glides on smoothly, resists running
Liquid eyeliner formula is perfect for detailed, pinpoint perfect applications and true artistic interpretation.

Quality: 5 out of 5
Packaging: 5 out of 5
Size: 0.12 ounces
Price: $2.99
Where To Buy: any drugstore

Firstly, the color is called Turquoise, but its actually green. I don't get how WnW made this mistake, but whatever. Secondly, I love, love, LOVE this eyeliner! It is the prettiest shade of green.

PROS:
-The little brush is fantastic at getting thin, smooth lines with little effort.
-Said little brush is good at getting a nice wing, something I've never been able to get before.
-The color goes on super bright the first time, and it dries quickly.
-It doesn't fade or come off during the day. Even at the end of the day it hasn't moved when the rest of my eye shadow is a oily mess in my crease.
-It washes off easily with just water.

CONS:
-The only thing that bugs me is that the bottle is so small. If you're a person that wears liquid liner everyday and if this was a staple color (like brown or black) then it probably would be used up in 3-4 weeks.

Over all I adore this liner, I adore the color, and I plan to get the blue, brown, and black Mega Liners.

top: tkbtrading Mermaid's Gold
bottom: NYX Purple

This was my first time using, so I was a bit more sloppy.

Avon & NYX haul

I got soo lucky today! I went to Forever 21 looking for this dress, they didn't have it but they did have their Brillant Buy $12.50 skinny jeans and they had tones of them. Usually they only have a small pile but they had a couple shelves full. I never got them before because they would never have any sizes over 28 and usually I'm a 29 (aka 5/6) in Forever 21 jeans but when I tried those on they were too big so I got the smaller size. I don't think I shrunk I just think those particular jeans run big. Anyways, I got those jeans for really cheap and I'm happy about that.

Then after Forever 21 I headed to the MAC counter, and I passed by a shoe store that carries a selection of NYX single eye shadows. I wasn't planning of buying any, I just like looking at them because this store only had the really bright pretty ones. Then I saw a basket on the bottom shelf with a bunch of NYX trios and a sign with 50% OFF CLEARANCE and I just about wet myself. So I grabbed only 4 trios expecting them to be around $3.50 (there wasnt a price anywhere) each but they were only $2.50 (and I almost wet myself again). On Friday I am totally going back to get what ever colors are left (if there are any left).






Just to show, the single e/s Ocean is the same as the trio Ocean (but this one is a tiny bit greener).


And last but not least my Avon haul which took its sweet time coming. I got a purple & green eyeliner, Classic Rose & Ravishing Red lipsticks, straightning balm, and curl refreshing spray.

My 100th post! Stash pics. Part 1

Aright, this is what its all about. I present to you my hoard of make up. This is just my eye and face make up. I will do my lip stash in another post. If you have questions about anything just ask. Click on the photos to make them bigger.

the blush stash

Avon blushes Swoon & Cool Plum
Jane Blushing Earth Sheer, Blushing Petal, Blushing Blossom

WnW Mega Illumitating blush Catwalk Pink, Strike A Pose Rose, Spotlight Peach, and Rose

eyeliners and mascara, I forgot my two cream liners but whatever

my eye shadows, I left out a few cheap palettes I never use

Wnw, MAC, Aziza

Aziza palettes, the stacked trios are from the clothing store Charlotte Russe

my Stila e/s and L'Oreal hip duos

NYX Ultra Pearl Mania pigments

NYX single e/s

Avon, Lancome, Clinique, Estee Lauder

ELF stuff

Jesse's Girl & random pigments

NYX trios, Maybelline roll on e/s, my Fyrinnae pigments

my pride and joy, my About Face/shespace stash

and where most of my eye products are stored

Avon Haul

I got a few things from Avon today. A Glimmerstick waterproof eyeliner in Pearly, the 3 in 1 pencil sharpener (works great on my NYX jumbo e/s pencil, good thing because my most used one was completely flat), and 4 glazewear lipsticks that are labeled on the last photo. I'm already planning my next order, I think I'm going to try some of the hair products.

And my entire Glazewear lipstick family! Don't they look happy?

They have some really good sales right now. The Glazewear lipsticks are 2 for $6.99, the Glimmersticks are $2.99, and hair styling products are 2 for $6.99, plus a tons of other things are on sale too. These sales are good until June 5th. One of the things I love/hate about Avon is that something is always on sale.

Free shipping code is Ultimate815, good on orders over $15.

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Ebates

Who doesn't like a rebate? With ebates you can get back a certain percentage of your purchase from select online stores, granted it isn't much (usually 4-5% back) but if you shop online a lot it adds up. This works with Sephora, Target, Avon, Macy's, and about 900 other other stores. You can also earn money by referring other people (that's what I'm trying to do right here baby, support my shopping habit). Ebates will send you a check or deposit what you earn into your paypal account 4 times a year. I just got mine, that's what paid for my Avon haul. To sign up follow the link below, create an account just buy entering your email and creating a password. Making a purchase at any store they support before June 30th will give me $10, and you'll get $10 just for signing up. Then you can refer more people and get cash for that too, plus rebates for your online shopping. It might sound like bull but its not at all, I've been using this sight for 4 months with no problems. I wouldn't promote anything that wasn't totally genuine.

http://www.ebates.com/referral/0508bonusosu.htm?referrerid=zmiCm03v2roZ9LYxZ3dLeQ%3D%3D

Now if only I could remember to use the site, I didn't for this Avon haul *hangs head*.

Review: NYX Jumbo E/S Pencil, NYX Candy Glitter Liners

Here are my rave reviews on NYX Jumbo E/S Pencil, in Yogurt & NYX Candy Glitter Liners.

Quality: 5 out of 5

Packaging: 3 out of 5

Price: $3-$4

Where to buy: Cherryculture.com

Cruelty Free: Yes

Overall: 5 out of 5

This is Yogurt. I got it saturday, been wearing it ever since. It last 8-9 hours on my oily lids before it starts to crease.

These are some of my poorer e/s. They don't have much pigment dry, even over UDPP
Here I used them over UDPP, the NYX e/s pencil, and with a mixing medium. The mixing medium was the most vibrant, but after it dried it was flaky and if I touched it with my finger a lot of pigment came away. When I touched the e/s over the jumbo pencil little to no pigment was on my fingers.

Edit: I've gotten Pacific and Lemon since and they work just as well, incase anyone is wondering about other colors.

Quality: 5 out of 5

Packaging: 5 out of 5

Price: $4

Where to buy: Cherryculture.com

Cruelty Free: Yes

Overall: 5 out of 5

NYX Candy Glitter Liners

Crystal, Lavendar, Blue, & Jade. The first two are great with softer looks. Blue and Jade really pop. Mostly the glitter stays put, though there is a tiny bit of fallout. Wait for them to dry because they'll get on your brow bone if you're not careful. The applicator brush is really fine so its east to get thin lines.

Hope that helps. Have a great day everyone.

xox