A Very Beauty Bounty

So I am still loving the blue nails, but I promise to swap out later tonight and show you No.5 aka I Love You from Sinful Colors. I am thinking of doing it over a *gasp* Avon color I already had on hand.

In the meantime, I thought I would share the results from my beauty hauls that I got my two best friends for the holidays this year. Maybe you could get some good gift ideas from it, who knows?

First of all, I picked up these adorable Chinese takeout gift boxes at Target for $1 each. Inside, they are jam packed with some of the coolest new and old products I have become fascinated with as I have started this journey.




There are 12 products in each gift box. So maybe I went a little overboard, but I thought they'd get a kick out of it. It will be like having a dress up party for grown ups.

1. Glazewear Lip Shine from Avon in diamonds, a nice sparkly clear coat for on top of their favorite lip colors.

2. Zoya's new Hot Lips lip balm in Starlet and Babydoll. For myself, I got Purr. This is a really nice formula, and I got them all for free during a promotion last week. Now, they are $6, but very worth it, especially if you plan on stocking up on polish already this Friday.

3. Stila Lip Glaze. Sephora has a three-piece set for $8 if you are a beauty insider, and I split it up with one for each girl + my own. The formula is very nice, though a little sticky, but the flavor literally makes me want to eat my lips. Each color smells exactly like its namesake, so it is definitely worth a try.

4. Benefit Lust Dusters, also on sale right now at Sephora for three colors for $10. I got both sets of three, gave one color from each set to the girls, and kept one for myself. These little pots are filled with glitter that give a nice highlight around the eyes, cheeks and face. They make you like like a fairy, and I love it.

5. Also from Avon, I bought Glimmersticks Eyeliner in green and blue, giving one girl blue and the other green. I fail majorly at eyeliner, so I cannot vouch, but they were affordable for the kits and offered a fun splash of color.

6. Forever 21 introduced a new beauty line this month called Love and Beauty, and I was quick to pick up the only mascara in the box, a colored mascara I bought in Jade and Blue, both were around $3.80 and made a good match for the glimmersticks eyeliner I bought them each from Avon.

7. Also from the Love and Beauty Line, the next two products in the pic are eyeshadow duos from the collection. For less than $3 each, they are worth a try, though I did not pick up any for myself, so I cannot give my stamp of approval yet.

8. At the top of the pic is a product I picked up from a quick trip to Sephora before a movie last weekend as a splurge. The beauty store has these nail patches on clearance right now for $5 each. There are 14 pieces, which is only enough for one application, though they supposedly last for 11 days. I picked up this dark red, a baby pink and a sparkly black for myself. Unfortunately, I took a hot shower not too long after application, and a few came off. The ones that stayed on though looked really nice, about the equivelant of four layers and a top coat of polish.

They are easy and fun to put on, but not worth $5 for a mani, but they will make a fun addition to the kits.

9. My absolute favorite item in the kit was also the most expensive. Urban Decay's pocket rocket lip gloss. It retails for $19, but I got it from urbandecay.com with a coupon that brought it to $13. They come in colors named after men, have a holographic pic of a male (clothed and in underwear ... front and back views) and a strip of pheramones to rub to "attract the opposite sex." There is a lot of product in the tubes, and the colors come out very nice on the lips. But most of all, I think the smiles on my friends' faces will make this splurge worth it.

10. The last product in the kit is Change Artist Nail Polish from Avon, on clearance for less than $3. The colored polish is on one end. It's not the best formula, and does not wear well on its own, but when you add the polish on the other end, it changes colors, and then a top coat finishes it off niceley. I got my friends lavender and teal, and I kept a steel grey for myself.