Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Spring Fever VoxBox

*I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.*

Hey everyone! Remember my Beauty Bloggers VoxBox review from back in October? So recently I got sent another box to review: the Spring Fever VoxBox! This is a little out of the way of my usual nail art tutorials, but I hope you all enjoy! There were some great products in this month's box!

If you're interested in receiving products to test and review, sign up for Influenster! It's fun and easy and it's always really exciting to open up a new box and see what the products are.

Here's the box everything came in. So cute!


And here's what I saw when I first opened the box. It comes with a little cheat sheet that names all the products, gives a little information about them, and tells us the price.


Onto the products!

Secret Outlast Clear Gel Antiperspirant/Deodorant
Retail price: $4.59


Okay, so I know it's a little strange, but I was actually kind of excited to try this one out. I have been using the same scent and brand of deodorant for years, and it's probably time to mix things up just a little bit. So the first thing I noticed about this one was that... it's gel. And that deodorant I've been using all my life was roll-on. It's pretty pathetic, but I had no idea how to use gel deodorant. So that took longer than I'd like to admit to figure out. The next thing I noticed was the smell: I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was really worried people would notice the smell if they were close enough to me. It wasn't bad, just... noticeable. And then I remembered that I'd used the same scent for forever and I was probably just noticing this one because I wasn't used to it. After a couple days I couldn't smell it anymore, so hooray! I didn't do any serious exercise with it on or anything, but I was never, ya know, smelly, so I guess it did its job. Wooh.

NYC New York Color Applelicious Glossy Lip Balm
Retail price: $2.99


Yay! Lip balm! Anyone who knows me knows I have a serious lip balm/lip gloss addiction (and oh, speaking of that, guess who left a stick of gum in a bag with seven of her favorite lip glosses? Now all my pretties are covered in melted gum *sigh*). So yeah, I was pretty ecstatic when I found a lip balm in the box.  I read some reviews before trying it, and they weren't all that positive, so I didn't have the highest hopes. But then I tried it for myself, and I was pleasantly surprised!
My favorite part would probably be the smell. It's a very fresh apple smell. Which is what you'd expect with the name, of course, but I still really loved it. I also loved the way it looked. I didn't get a picture, but the main lip balm color is red, and in the middle is a pink apple. Very cute! I believe there are ten different shades of this style of lip balm; mine was Big Apple Red. It's also shaped like lip stick, which makes it very easy to apply. Speaking of lipstick, another thing I loved about this: the color! I'm a very less-is-more person when it comes to makeup in general. The most you'll ever see me wear is mascara and a teensy bit of eye shadow if I've got something important. Which means... no lipstick for me. Tons of women look great in it, but for whatever reason, I think it's just too much on me. And since this was a lip balm, it wasn't bam-in-your-face color, but it had a great pinkish-red tint that looked really great without overdoing it. Other than all of that, it's pretty moisturizing. It's a little bit softer than most lip balms, but that's not a bad thing. I definitely recommend this one if you like a lip balm with a great smell and a hint of color.

Broadway Nails imPRESS Press-on Manicure
Retail price: $5.99-$7.99


Being as picky about nail stuff as I am, I was pretty skeptical of this one right off the bat. Come on. Press-on nails? I mean, I think acryllics are fine and look great, but these kind of ones can only bring trouble. But being the open-minded person that I am (well, sort of) I tried them out! Here are some pictures of what they looked like.



They were pretty easy to apply and everything. Before you stuck them on, you were supposed to clean your nails with a little wipe that came with the package. Turns out it was just rubbing alcohol on a wipe (so nothing too fancy here!). Anyway, then you pealed off the plastic tab on the back, exposing the adhesive, and stuck them on. They were pretty strong once they were on my nail -  I doubt they would have just fallen off randomly or anything. However, there were a couple problems. First, they were really, really short. I had to file my nails pretty low to put these on, and there was still some nail sticking out. This would be great for you ladies with shorter nails, but they didn't cut it for me. Another problem was that they didn't follow the curve of the nail bed as your nails get longer. So although they were touching my nail near the cuticle, there was a significant amount of space between the real nail and press-on nail at the tip, as you can see in the pictures. I can't emphasize enough how annoying this was. I wanted to test these out for the full week (the amount of time they're supposed to last) but I couldn't make it past about of half hour. I kept getting my nails caught on hair, clothes, you name it. So I gave up. Although, I have to hand it to them, these WERE pretty difficult to remove. I had to rub acetone around the edges and let it soak for a couple minutes, and even then I had some trouble getting them off. I'm saying that's a good thing though!
Overall, this might work for someone with shorter nails, but I probably wouldn't recommend them to most people.

Schwarzkopf Professional OSiS Dust It
Retail price: $23.50


Since the use of this one is probably less self-explanatory than most of the other products, I'll use the description from the cheat sheet:
"OSiS Dust It is a multi purpose mattifying powder that adds incredible root lift, texture and control."
There were also two other possible products by Schwarzkopf Professional, but this is the one I received. I don't have much to say about this one, but it didn't really work for me. I applied it to my roots and everything, but I didn't get any volume, and it left my hair kind of sticky. I might have been doing something wrong, since I rarely use fancy hair products like this, but it's a thumbs down for this one!

Tastykake Kandy Bar Kakes
Retail price: $4.49 per box


Hooray! FOOD! I was pretty dang happy about finding this wonderful little item in my box. I mean, who doesn't love cake? Plus, it's peanut butter flavored. Plus chocolate. My favorite flavor combination in the entire world (seriously, I have an extreme weakness for peanut butter and chocolate. I eat an unbelievable amount of DQ Reese's peanut butter cup blizzards every month and I'm not ashamed of it). So I really have nothing bad to say about this one. I mean, it's cake. It's made up of two layers of chocolate cake with a creamy peanut butter center, all covered in a solid chocolate layer. The flavor wasn't as peanut-buttery as I expected, but it was still amazing. I tend to dislike packaged cakes and brownies and stuff like this because they're never as good as the box makes them sound, but this was just so darn yummy. I felt a little guilty eating the entire thing in one sitting, though; the entire cake is a full 280 calories. Geesh. So I'm going to say that you should stick with your healthy fruits for the most part, and spoil yourself with this one on a few special occasions.

That's all, folks! I hope you enjoyed reading my reviews. Are you signed up with Influenster, and if you are, have you ever gotten any boxes? Which products here would you be interested in trying, and which ones would you skip? Let me know in the comments! 

*I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.*

Friday, May 17, 2013

Great Gatsby Nails

Whew! It's been a while since I last posted, hasn't it? I've been having one rouughh week. But nail polish makes everything better, right?

 So any of you fans of The Great Gatsby out there know the movie came out last week. I love the book and was totally pumped for the movie, so I designed some Great-Gatsby-themed nails to go along with it. Enjoy the tutorial!



You'll need:
- base coat
- gold polish
- striping tape
- black polish
- green polish
- makeup sponge
- blue polish
- dotting tool
- glow-in-the-dark top coat (optional)
- top coat


Start out with a base coat. First I'll go over the main nails. These are based off of the movie's theme picture. Paint all but your ring finger gold.

Orly - Luxe

Now apply two vertical stripes of striping tape on each gold nail. You can also cut up little pieces of regular tape to use, but it'd take longer. And warning: applying the tape for this one takes a LOT of time. Make sure to set aside a good hour or two for this design!


Now use more striping tape to create three upside-down V's on each nail. Hopefully the picture explains it better than I can:


One nail at a time, paint over the gold and the tape in black, and quickly peel the tape off. Make sure you hurry or the black will get stringy (which happened to me a bit because I was having trouble working fast).

Sally Hansen - Black Heart

Hooray! That's the hard part. Onto the accent nail, which is a representation of the famous green light. Start off by painting the nail solid black.


Now use your makeup sponge to sponge on green, like in the picture below.

Essie - Mojito Madness

Paint about half of the nail blue, leaving a little bit of the green showing.

China Glaze - First Mate

Now right in the center of the green, overlapping the blue a bit, place a solid green dot. If you want to have some fun with it, use a glow-in-the-dark top coat to make the light shine, literally!

Wet N' Wild - Fantasy Makers Glow in Dark

There you have it! Add a top coat, and then clean up any stray polish with a brush dipped in acetone. You're good to go!




And for fun, a picture of my nails in the dark! I'm really loving the glow-in-the-dark thing. 


That's all, folks! I really hope you enjoy this one. It was really fun to have random people recognize these as Great-Gatsby-themed nails. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you definitely should, and don't forget to wear this design when you go! :) 

If you liked this post, make sure to follow here, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! :)

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

NOTD: Newspaper Nails

Ello there! So wow. It's been over a week since I last posted. I have a few tough weeks coming up but after that, I solemnly swear that I am up to no good I will make an effort to post more than once a week. Woot! Onto the post!

So yeah, no tutorial again. I've really been in the mood for re-doing some stuff I did months ago for the sake of nostalgia (and to see how much I've improved). Today I did some newspaper nails, as remembered from this extremely old tutorial I did over a year ago. But I figured it was a little boring on its own, so I added some accents in red (Using OPI Cajun Shrimp, of course. What else? Hehe!)

Time for the pictures!




 Sadly I forgot to take pictures right away, so these are a little scratched up. Nothing too bad though! So for the polishes, let's see: I used China Glaze White on White for the background and OPI Cajun Shrimp for the red. I've used that polish so many times I really think I should go ahead and do a real swatch of it eventually. Maybe I'll get to that soon... hmm...

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! As usual, if you liked the post make sure to follow here, on Facebook, and Twitter to see when I make a new post!