Hey guys. So it has been quite a while. Again. I know, I know, I'm terrible at being consistent with blog updates, but my life has been pretty hectic the last few days, and because of that I haven't really had the time or energy to come up with new blog post ideas.

That being said, I couldn't miss an August monthly favorites post! Although I was mostly working this month and didn't have too much time to play around with makeup, I still have quite a few faves, as you can see.

I picked up the Kiss Flirty lashes back in May during the CVS clearance sale, but never really got around to wearing them. A mistake on my part, because THEY ARE GORGEOUS. I really hope they weren't on sale because Kiss is planning to discontinue them, because in that case I'm going to have to scramble to stock up on them. Either way, they have tapered ends and the super full, mink lashes look.

I found quite a few e.l.f. Sunkissed bronzers at my local Dollar Tree, much to my delight, and I picked up a couple. These are less of a bronzer than they are a pretty, subtle golden highlight. I'm totally obsessed with them, as well as the price! I've noticed that this shade is a little hard to find nowadays on the e.l.f. website since it's being recognized for its highlighting powers.

My fave eyeshadow palette for the month was the City Color Spice Me Up palette, which I picked up at a local shop in the mall I worked at over the summer. It's definitely a very warm-toned palette, full of spicy-looking shades, and I'm super excited to use it more, especially going into fall. The eyeshadows are pigmented without being chalky, and they blend very nicely. The palette was also only $4--how can you beat that?

My two favorite lippies of the month were the LA Girl matte liquid lipstick in Fleur (beautiful orange-brown shade), and the Milani Color Statement lipstick in Matte Naked. I've been leaning more and more towards neutral nude lipsticks lately, for some reason.

I found the Milani Liquid Eyes Aqua liner at the Dollar Tree over the summer, and I was so excited! Unfortunately, it was the last one left and it had been sneakily hidden behind a stack of LA Colors products, but I am super happy to have it, nonetheless. I love using this in my waterline for a pop of color. I can't wear black in my waterline because it closes my eye too much and creates the appearance of really small eyes, so this is a cute alternative.

And finally, my last August favorite is an eyeshadow pigment from Jesse's Girl in Kiwi Rose. Alone, this pigment isn't very opaque, but layered over a NYX jumbo pencil in Milk (or any sort of light base) it looks phenomenal. It appears white in the jar, but it really has a yellow-green shimmer/duochrome to it. I used this in my recent makeup tutorial up on my Youtube channel (shown below).




And... that's all for my August favorites! Thank you so much for reading, and for all the support I have gotten this far. Be sure to leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you all. In the meantime, I will be working on putting up more content soon. I've already had some outfits styled and planned...

Hey guys!
I know, I'm guilty of always disappearing. I've been pretty busy lately, and I'm actually finishing up my last few two weeks of high school (I'm almost there!). After school ends, I'll actually have plenty of time to work on blogging and youtube and whatnot, which is very exciting (the question is, will I ever survive to the end?)

I received this Campus Voxbox from Influenster. I haven't received a Voxbox from Influenster for over a year, so I was excited to try a new one. This voxbox, as you might have guessed, was made for college students, which I thought was nice because I've been hearing so much about college (going to college in the fall) that I might as well be a college student (kidding of course, but not kidding about the senioritis).

There are quite a few things that come in the new Voxbox, and I can see that Influenster has really amped up their game. Two of that stood out to me the most were of course the Sour Punch candies (I'm a sucker for sour candies). Needless to say, those were finished in a disgustingly short amount of time. I've never seen the chewy candies before--they kind of remind me of Spree.

Sweets aside, the Voxbox also came with a packet sample of L'oreal's new Advanced Straight hair line which claims to keep your flat-ironed hair straight for a couple of days. I try not to flat-iron my hair because I want to get it into prime condition for another bleaching (I'm switching hair colors, by the way. Hopefully), so I just will use these as regular shampoos and conditioners. I've never really tried any of L'oreal's hair line, but I honestly don't see much difference when it comes to commercial shampoos and conditioners. I do, however, love hair masks, but that's a different story.

The Voxbox also includes a full-sized Softlips cube which I was quite excited to try. It's pretty much like an EOS lip balm, except in a cuter (but more annoying) cube packaging. I found that it was hard to get the lip balm to close right without accidentally shaving off a little bit of product each time. That being said, it works better than my EOS lip balm, so that's a plus.

I've always used Walmart's Equate version of the Apricot scrub, so I was intrigued by the actual product itself from St. Ives. It's pretty similar to Walmart's but I swear that the exfoliating beads inside are just noticeably smaller. Maybe it's just me. I think I prefer the St. Ives one better, and it's not expensive, either.

Finally, they also included the new Jergens Instant Glow tanning mousse. As someone who is quite fair and prefers to be quite fair, I laughed when I saw this. I think I probably would go with bronzer if I ever wanted to be tan (very unlikely), but I actually tried this out on my friend because it just so happened that I was working on makeup for a show and the characters needed to be sun-beaten Marines. Like any self-tanner, it worked fine and though it was a bit streaky where she didn't blend it properly, it did work and it did last for a few days.

That's pretty much all that was in the Campus Voxbox! Overall, I loved the candies and I'm quite a bit of use out of the St. Ives scrub. The rest were nice additions, too, and knowing the typical college student, I think that Influenster made good choices of what to include in the box.

Thanks for reading! Swear that this week will be the last week of only product reviews and inactivity.

I've had synthetic brushes before that were too shiny and plastic-y that can't pick up powder products, an example of which is pictured below. Though these MINITURTLE brushes are synthetic, they work beautifully and have none of the plastic-y cheap feel that inexpensive synthetic brushes sometimes have.

Hello friends,

A few weeks ago I was sent the Valentia Even Glow Vitamin C serum to test and review, courtesy of Valentia and Brandbacker. 





I'm finally writing this review, which is quite frankly overdue, but I've been very busy the last two weeks because of the start of school (which I will probably get into in another post).

But now for the review! 

I was excited to try the serum because Vitamin C serums are definitely receiving lots of attention and love in the beauty world, recently. I have lots of hyperpigmentation and scarring from acne (I had a really bad acne problem less than a year ago, which I finally managed to clear up over the summer! I'm probably going to write a post on this sometime soon), and I've been trying different ways to clear it up. 

The entire summer, I've been using Pond's Clarant B3 cream to correct my dark spots and even out my tone, which I've noticed to be working very subtly. However, I still had lots of hyperpigmentation to fade.

When the Valentia Even Glow serum came, I was impressed by its glass bottle and high-end  packaging. With metallic gold sides, the packaging definitely looked and felt great.

The Vitamin C serum claims to even skin tone, boost collagen production, and reduce wrinkles.

It comes out a pale yellow color, and smells very citrus-y, of oranges. It is liquid and quite easy to spread. It does feel a little sticky immediately after applying, sort of like how orange juice feels on your face. After a little while, it soaks in quite nicely.

Over the past 2-3 weeks, I have seen a dramatic difference in the evening of my skin tone, and fading of my dark spots. Granted, I have been using this with my Ponds dark spot cream, along with a small sample of Exuviance's OptiLight Essential 6 Serum to help fade my hyperpigmentation, but the combination has definitely been working. Both the Ponds and Exuviance are a little drying, so I know that the Valentia serum has been at work because my skin has been very supple and moisturized!

I can't speak for the anti-aging factor it claims to have, since I don't have any wrinkles, but I hope it'll help in the long run. 

I'm not a big fan of the price: I think it ranges from $30-40 on Amazon, which is a little out of my budget for skin care products, but I think you pay for the quality (and the packaging). Most Vitamin C serums I've seen seem to be similarly priced (hopefully this will change).

Overall, I love that this product is made of natural ingredients, so I can feel a little less guilty when it comes to putting chemicals on my skin. 

Find it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJD8NLY

It feels really weird to blog again. I've tried over and over to start blogging again, but somehow I haven't been able to really put my heart into it. Maybe it's because I'm not at home right now, and I don't have a regular schedule as of right now. Life has been pretty hectic, and at the same time I feel like I've been slowing down in terms of productivity.

And now I guess I begin with my review.

I purchased the Kiss 100 Full Cover Nails in Active Oval set at CVS. I've been wanting to do my nails in a cat-like stiletto/almond shape for the longest time, so I thought I'd give glue-on nails a try. 

These were very easy to figure out. I'll admit that I spent quite a bit of time shaping them, but granted, that may be because I had a very particular shape in mind, and these nails were nowhere near that shape. Also, I still have quite small nails in comparison to average, so these nails don't fit me very well without a lot of trimming. 

After trimming and painting though, I am very happy with the results! I won't lie, sometimes the nails do pop off (it's usually the index fingers). I won't blame this on the glue as much as how long these nails are on me (they're seriously a good centimeter longer than my finger). I can put up with losing a nail from time to time (though trying to find them after they've fallen off is a bit of a pain. 

All in all, I'd recommend these nails if you're looking for pretty fake nails to save some money with! I spent around $8 on these in CVS, and I know I have seen them around in other places for cheaper.

Good luck!