Black History Month may be over but that doesn’t mean I can’t show my BOMBs some love! Even in 2017, you’d be hard pressed to find brands that cater to women of all skin tones. Especially the luscious chocolate ones. That’s why it’s so important to embrace, celebrate and support the brands that do. And what better what to do that than celebrate the #melaninmagic of brands created by black women themselves? Yaaaaaas, honey!
(more…)
Now that we’ve got all of my January empties out of the way let’s move on to my faves, shall we? The plan was to get my faves and empties up together. But having a jam packed birthday weekend and then a crippling sinus infection the following week really threw me off. Way off. I’m talking mouth breathing for 4 days straight and putting my pants on backwards for an interview off. LOL!
Needless to say, January was a very long month but a lot of good came from it. Like ringing in the New Year and spending my birthday and Valentine’s Day with my amazing boyfriend. And trying a handful of new products that turned out to be the bomb.com. There’s nothing better than love and good makeup, right?
(more…)
There’s a ton of reasons to make all of your beauty purchases at Ulta but the best one is the rewards program. Hands down! Racking up points at Ulta doesn’t just get you deluxe samples or impossibly hard to get mega sets. Shade but no shade. Sorry Sephora. I’ma let you finish but Ulta has the best rewards program around! Instead of getting deluxe samples of goodies you’d essentially receive for free elsewhere Ulta rewards you with dollars off your next purchase. The more points you have the better!
I’ve been spending up a storm over the last few months at Ulta but it’s all paid off because I was able to score almost all of the new limited edition holiday sets and palettes on my list without breaking the bank. I let my points stack up to 2,300 and redeemed them for $133 off. Talk about win! I couldn’t wait to grab a grey bag and fill it up with my top holiday picks so far this year.
(more…)
Let’s take a quick break from all these incredibly tempting new fall and holiday collections. Shall we? I don’t know about you but my head is spinning from all the newness in the beauty world right now. It’s so overwhelming! Lately, I’ve been finding myself spending and spending on more and more makeup that I don’t need. But I love shiny new things so I can never quite help myself.
I’ve been trying to keep myself a little grounded a little bit by exploring some old goodies in my collection and showing lots of love to the newer stuff that I’ve been buying and it’s been helping. Somewhat. Last month, I found myself reaching for a few of the same products every time I did my makeup. Which is nice because I got a chance to really appreciate some products that deserved lots of love and attention.
(more…)
Everyone has a favorite YouTuber or two and one of mine is MakeupShayla. I don’t always have the time to watch her YouTube tutorials but I often live on her Snapchat when I’m on the go. Whether she’s getting ready for an event, showing us footage for an upcoming tutorial or just hanging on the scene with her friends I hear Beyonce’s Formation play in my head. Baby she slays! MakeupShayla slays everything that she does from her amazing style to her insanely gorgeous makeup looks and I’m obviously not the only one that noticed. Tarte (along with her thousands of subscribers and followers) also picked up on MakeupShayla’s unique brand of black girl magic and decided to collaborate with her to create a deeper version of Tarte’s original Tarteist Contour Palette. And, honey, it slays just as hard as MakeupShayla does!
(more…)
If I had a dollar for every palette that I swore I didn’t want or need I’d have enough money to buy the next new palette. Probably 3 times over. LOL! I’m quick to try (keyword here) to resist the next new, hot eyeshadow palette but sometimes it just happens. This was definitely the case with the new limited edition Tarte x Grav3Yard Girl Swamp Queen Palette. When it first launched online, my initial reaction was, “Who the heck is Grav3Yard Girl??” I soon learned that she’s a wonderful YouTube vlogger with a lot of personality and now a smokin’ hot palette to share with her Swamp Family and the rest of us makeup junkies.
Finding brands that you love is a great feeling but sometimes that love can blind you from seeing the beauty of other brands. I used to be a supreme MAC junkie but eventually I grew out of MAC and started trying other brands. Since I’ve started working for Ulta, I’ve discovered the beauty of Tarte, Too Faced and now Smashbox. I used to walk right past Smashbox without even noticing but I’ve come to realize that their products are actually pretty good. In fact, Smashbox is a seriously underrated brand that deserves a lot more love!
(more…)
Anastasia Beverly Hills isn’t just the queen of brows anymore. She’s slowly but surely becoming the queen of highlighters too. The saga first began with her beautiful line of Illuminators. Now, she’s kicked it up a notch with her iconic Glow Kits which I think every makeup junkie needs to have in her stash. If not both, at least one! I just knew That Glow would be mine until I laid eyes on Gleam and realized how amazing it looks on my brown skin. I ended up adding Gleam to my collection first in hopes of skipping That Glow since I have so many gold highlighters. But there was no way I could resist That Glow for long. It’s too superb!
(more…)
There was once a time when limited edition MAC products would fly off the shelves in the blink of an eye. Literally the second a limited edition collection went live half of it was out of stock before MAC could even send out an email or text message. Now a days, it seems that MAC has learned their lesson and upped their limited edition inventory. Or people just got tired of the rat race. Either way, it’s a great thing that limited edition MAC products remain in stock a lot longer now because everyone can get a chance to enjoy them. A few months ago, MAC whipped up the Future MAC Collection which featured funky shades and futuristic designs to help you channel your inner time warrior. The star of the show was the Otherearthly Mineralize Skinfinish with its out of this world orb-like design that houses 3 sparkling highlighters all in one sleek black compact.
Don’t you just love trying out new brands? I do too! There are certain brands that’ll always be my go to for certain products like Too Faced for eyeshadow, Anastasia (or Becca) for highlighters and ColourPop for lipsticks. Every now and then, I like to branch out and see what other fish are in the sea. Just for a little more variety, you know? After months of playing and swatching Smashbox products here and there I finally got a chance to get my hands on a few products and I’m pretty happy that I gave them a chance.
(more…)