My trip to a CCO

If you read as many beauty blogs as I do, you may have heard of the famed "CCO" shops- it stands for Cosmetics Company Outlet. CCO's are owned by Estee Lauder, and they carry discounted makeup from all the brands Estee Lauder owns. At the CCO I went to, they carried (besides Estee Lauder, obviously) Flirt! (the Kohl's makeup line), Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Prescriptives, and MAC, the reason anyone really wants to go in the first place. They also had a good amount of Clinique skincare products, and skincare products from another brand I haven't heard of, American something. I didn't look closely at the perfume brands but I do remember seeing Tommy Hilfiger. The store was at an outlet mall in Aurora, IL. I was visiting one of my grandmas who lives pretty close to that area so my mom and I decided to go to the outlet mall and check it out. :) Sadly I forgot my camera at home that day so I didn't get any pictures of the store for you guys. If you go on Youtube though, some people have uploaded videos of what the stores look like. They had some stuff in boxes you could just grab off the shelf and buy, but things like eyeliners and lippies they only had out as testers, and you would have to bring them up to the counter to get them new in the box. Some of the gloss testers were gross, but it's nice that you know no one has touched the stuff you end up buying. The discount prices aren't huge, I would say most things were 20%-35% off the original price. The items they carry aren't brand new things. For example, the most recent MAC items they had were from the To The Beach collection, but they also had stuff from as far back as the Heatherette, Fafi, etc. collections. They had lots of discontinued items too! I decided to go ahead and buy my very first MAC products :) Right now I am out of town AGAIN for another family thing, but I will do swatches when I get home. I got a mineralized blush, a Superglass, a Lipglass, a liquid liner, a Slimshine lipstick, and a lipstain. The total of these items was a little less than $70 after tax. If you have a CCO near you and you like MAC or any of the other brands they carry, it is DEFINITELY worth your time to go, even if you have to drive a while. Here is a link to which outlet malls have a CCO store. The same outlet mall also had a Lancome Company Store. They had Juicy Tubes and this amazingly cool discontinued product I'll show you later for 55% off, so I got three items for about $20. I also went to CVS yesterday and grabbed a couple clearance lippies from Revlon that were 75% off. They were less than $3 each. If you haven't heard by now, CVS is having their beauty clearance sale. You can find out some great information about it over at Noveau Cheap. At the one I stopped at, I don't think they had finished marking prices, but I did see a LOT of Revlon stuff on sale. So here was my total haul for the week, and everything was purchased at a discount price! If there is anything else I can think to add about the CCO I will, and if there is something you'd like to know that I didn't mention, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to try and remember :P

NYX lipstick & lipgloss swatches

This is the longest I have ever gone without posting in my blog! I have been so busy lately, and I have really missed blogging and reading everyone else's blogs! I thought I'd do swatches of the NYX stuff I ordered from Cherry Culture when they were having their Black Friday sale, along with the few that I already had. It is a real PITA to try and decide what colors to order, since the Cherry Culture swatches are so incorrect and useless. While I was searching for swatches I found this blog. It's really great, and there are lots of swatches of different NYX products. Go follow! I have 3 of the Round Lipsticks in the colors Georgia (618), Watermelon (616), and Tea Rose (628). I think I used to have a couple others that I either threw away or gave to friends because the colors didn't work for me. Kitty likes lipstick :3 From left to right: Georgia, Watermelon, Tea Rose Georgia and Watermelon are frosty, and I feel like they're harder for me to pull off. I fell in love with Tea Rose though, it is almost an exact match to my natural lip color. I got one Diamond Sparkle lipgloss in Rose Sparkle (01). It is kind of metallic and I don't think I could ever wear it out without using a lip scrub first. All of the NYX Girls Round Lip Glosses I have are very pretty, but they have this artificial lemon smell that I don't like. It reminds me of pledge. From left to right is Strawberry (11), Sparkle (05), Kiss (20), and Ballerina Pink (36). I hope these swatches were helpful, and I'm looking forward to blogging regularly again :) How were your holidays? What did you give/get for Christmas? I got a dolphin Pillow Pet, some Bruce Willis movies (love him), 2 Wiimotes for our old broken Wii I'm taking with me to Texas (the disk reader doesn't work, but my brother just downloads games and puts them on a hard drive ;P) Hello Kitty oven mitts, and these Nikes that I asked for. I even got a cute scarf from my manager, so it was a really nice Christmas! Did anyone get any cool makeup? Are you hauling from the new MAC collections? I haven't been here in a while, I must catch up on everything!!

Some Eye(brows) of the Days

You might have noticed it's been almost a month since I've posted an EOTD. Since I started blogging I got a little self conscious about my eyebrows, because I'd never waxed or plucked them or anything. So finally about a month ago, I decided to pluck them a little bit. I'm pretty sure it's impossible not to mess up your brows the first time you pluck, because you really don't know when to stop. I didn't pluck enough at first, then I way overplucked. I kind of suck at filling in my brows, when I even bother to try, so that's why they will probably look different for every EOTD I do until I figure out what works for my face. They don't look too bad anymore, and I'm sure no one is paying attention to my eyebrows IRL, so it's really not a big deal. This EOTD is from a couple weeks ago. The lid color is Hi Fi's "Fear the Nobodies", with some gold glitter liner from Collection 2000. A few days ago I did my most overused color combo of yellow and green. The chartreuse is Juvenile by Concrete Minerals, the green is Parrot Green by Barry M, and the purple is Nightshade by Evil Shades. These were all nearly-matte colors, so they don't look as blended in the pictures are they were IRL. I'll end this post with a couple music videos by my favorite band, Foxy Shazam, because I'm seeing them live on Friday and I'm really excited! :D

My Stila lippie collection

I took advantage of the Stila warehouse sale a couple weeks ago, and ordered myself a few new lippies. None of my Stila lippies have been bought at full price- I've gotten them from Beauty Ticket and Haute Look for discounted prices, and from the warehouse sale for really cheap too. I think I might start having heart palpitations if I ever actually went to Sephora and paid full price for something. :P I decided to swatch my collection for you! On the left are two swatches of the retired Lip Glaze color, Melon. On the right are swatches of the Barbie Loves Stila Lip Enamel Luxe Gloss set- Joy, Tickled Pink, and Happiness. Here's what the Barbie set looks like. I haven't worn any of the lip enamels yet, but when I swatched them they were almost impossible to get off my hand, so I'm going to guess the staying power is pretty damn good! The lip glaze is nice, but I can't imagine buying one at full price. There is really not a lot of product in it. More swatches! On the left of my hand is Long Wear Lip Color in the Shade Serenade. The middle and right are High Shine Lip Color in shades Louise and Michaela. The High Shine lip colors are apparently discontinued, but they pop up on Beauty Ticket and Haute Look from time to time. It's too bad, because I LOVE them- I love sheer lip colors (as you can see, they are both pretty sheer), and these are also really moisturizing. Here's what the packaging looks like- if you see this, I'd snatch it up! The Long Wear Lip Color is awesome. It is such a great shade for me, and I love the texture and feel. This is something I'd actually pay full price for! *gasp* Right now I am really loving what I've tried of Stila's lip products. I'd like to try their Lip Rouge, Lip & Cheek Stain, and the 24K glosses. Which Stila products are your favorites?

Latest Darling Girl order

As promised, here's swatches of what I ordered recently from Darling Girl Cosmetics. Eyeshadows: Scarecrow, Groovology, Felicity, & aqua liner in Designated Driver Scarecrow is even prettier in person than in all the swatches I've seen! It is such a complex and unique color, this one is a MUST HAVE. I also love Groovology, it's my favorite shade of purple. Felicity was a free sample and isn't listed as far as I can tell. It's a beautiful silver, and turns a little bit pink in the right light. Designated Driver has some holo glitter that didn't really show up in the swatches, so here's a close up where you can kiiiinda see it. The container it comes in is teeny! It's only $3, so I think the price is fair, I just think I'll end up losing this every time I get it out. Here's a comparison picture. I got a sample of the new cream liner in the shade El Diablo. It's a neat reddish brown. It felt kind of stiff to the touch, but when I used an angled eyeliner brush to try and swatch it, it was actually just fine. Here is what I was most excited about, the cream blush samples! I got Barbie Girl, Mad About Mauve, and Glow Baby Glow. The top swatch is applied heavily, the bottom is sheered out a bit. Here's a better image of Glow Baby Glow. It's applied heavily on the lift, sheered out on the right. What an awesome highlight! I seriously love it. I love Barbie Girl too, and I'd like to try out Impetuous. I also got a mini sized liquid kiss gloss in the shade First Kiss. I got samples of the salmon and lemon correctors too, but I couldn't get my camera to capture them accurately, so I don't have pictures. Sadly, like every concealer I try for my dark circles, they don't work for me. I need to stop complaining about Benefit's Erase Paste so much since it is literally the only thing I've ever tried that doesn't end up making me look cakey, jaundiced, or like I didn't even use concealer at all. For normal people without horrendously bad circles and extremely weird, bumpy, and sensitive under eye skin, these might work for you, but they don't cut it for me. See anything you like? I'm lemming all the new tinted lip balms from the Naughty and Nice collection.

Sneak Peek at the Darling Girl Naughty & Nice collection!

I got my most recent order from Darling Girl Cosmetics today, and Susan kindly included some samples from her upcoming Naughty and Nice collection. The collection should be going live tomorrow or Monday, but possibly later because Susan is sick (feel better Susan!). The top row is two colors from the Nice collection- Whisper and Exposed. Next to those is the Liquid Kiss in the shade Painted Whore. First applied heavily, then lightly. The bottom row is from the Naughty collection- Dirty Talk, Sex Kitten, and Peep Show. Aside from Whisper, which is a gorgeous highlight/all over wash color, these are all pretty sparkly, which you couldn't tell in any of the pictures I took. Sex Kitten is especially nice with holographic glitter. I also really like Exposed, which is a brown with a green shift. In case anyone is wondering, Sex Kitten did not stain my hand as some red shadows tend to do. I'm looking forward to the release of the rest of the collection! Tomorrow I'll be posting reviews & swatches of the rest of my order.