Recent Purchases

I haven't been blogging, partly because I've been busy with school (OK, and Diablo 3) and partly because my tablet broke, and how lame is a beauty blog without any pictures!? I got my nail polish that I was talking about in my last post, and trust me, my nails look fabulous (you'll just have to take my word for it). I've got Bold Gold on my right hand, Blue Blaze - which is totally silver - on my left, with the black and white polka dot (looks more speckled) top coat, and I even used a base and clear top coat on these puppies. Aside from some minor chipping, they look rad!
Today I wanted to blog about some stuff I just bought. I've been on kind of a spree lately, and I'm going to have separate posts for my Bath & Body Works stuff and my Philosophy stuff. I just now (like, a minute ago) spent $38 at Sephora.com, but I couldn't help myself! I did it for ...

A perfume sample. Of course.

So I had like 482 Beauty Insider points. I didn't spend $482, since I just got my BI card in December. I had 50 left over from the 250 free ones they gave me for the holidays, and you get 50 for your first online order, and I bought some moisturizer when skin care was 2x points, and, naturally, some fragrance when it was 3x points. I was saving up to get 500, because ... well, because marketing. I'd been reading about the 500 point rewards, since that Peter Roth skin care set was in the online store FOREVER, and then the new set last month was ANOTHER (anti-aging) skin care set, and I really was hoping to be able to spend 500 points on some wildly glamorous overpriced makeup brand. VIBs still tell legends on places like the makeup addiction subreddit about 500 point sets by Smashbox and Tarte, brands that are out of my price range for blind buys. Today, I got an email telling me of a new 500 point reward, and yes, I got excited.
Turns out it's a makeover. And you get a bag with a sleep mask in it.
Now, I guess if I had some big event coming up that I knew I wanted to look my best for, and if I wore a sleep mask (does anyone wear a sleep mask? I think the only time I've ever seen one in use was on I Love Lucy), then that would be a cool perk. Except, can't you go into Sephora anytime and have them do your makeup? I guess this makeover is more thorough?
Now, what would be an awesome variant on this reward would be if the makeup bag came with deluxe samples of, say, three of the products that were used on you during your makeover, instead of a stupid sleep mask (I mean, really?).

The point of this rant is that I have been hoarding points, hoping for a fabulous 500 point reward to come along. The 100 pointers haven't been particularly interesting to me, either. I've been jealous of the little 100 point cologne bottles (if only there'd been an Eros or a Spicebomb among them!), and I wondered why the only mini women's fragrance they had was a 250 point Chloe Love Story (I know this makes me a fragrance philistine, but I don't get the original Chloe at all, and I had a card sample of Love Story and found it pedestrian). Well, today there was a 250 point mini of Nest Indigo, in the cutest little bottle. The only Nest fragrance I've smelled is their White Sandalwood, which was soooo dirty-smelling, but this one has a nice description and also how could I pass up that little bottle? With the pretty flowers!? Come on, I had to have it!

From the Sephora Website

So I put it in my bag, and I got a 100 point sample of Marc Jacobs eye crayon, and I got three free fragrance samples (Atelier Mandarin Glaciere, which is a spiced orange that sounds really nice; Givenchy Ange ou Demon Le Secret, which I had never heard of before but looks awesome, plus has that amazing name; and LacosteEau de Lacoste Noir, which I got because it was the only other fragrance sample available. I definitely don't want to smell like watermelon and chocolate, but maybe my boyfriend will like it?), and then I looked at the specials and saw there was a code to get two deluxe acne-fighting samples, one by bareMinerals which I have decided I loved, and then the website had to spoil my fin by making me put things that cost money in my bag. I bit the bullet and got Flash ($10 for free 2-day shipping for a year), because I'm never going to not buy things from the Sephora website, and it's wonderful to not have to spend $50 every time I do on account of I'm too cheap to pay for shipping. So I bought a bareMinerals full-sized matte foundation. For $38, I got that, four new tiny perfumes, two makeup samples, a new eyeliner, and free 2-day shipping for a whole year. I am of the opinion that the 100 point samples are generally going to be better than the 500 point samples, unless you go to the store all the time and know what they're going to have and can be there immediately to get it. Personally, I will gladly take two mini perfume bottles over anti-aging skin care samples, and I hope they get more mini women's perfumes in soon.

The Quest for Color Show

I'm not a big nail polish person. Some people are totally into it, some people create amazing pieces of nail art and post gorgeous pics of it on their blogs. I'm the person who always thinks, "Oh yeah, nail polish," and smears some on fifteen minutes before I have to run out the door and always ends up leaving chunks of it half-dried on my backpack and shoelaces. I currently own six kinds of nail polish:
1. Maybelline Express Finish in Racy Red - probably my favorite formula, actually does dry in 50 seconds which comes in handy for a confused slob like myself. The color is a fantastic bright 50's red. I also used to have this in a darker burgundy, but I guess I lost it :(
2. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Black Diamonds - I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this or where I got it; I vaguely remember finding it on deep discount and buying it, even though I am pretty loyal to Maybelline. This is a charcoal with silver sparkles that is really cool. It's thinner and doesn't dry as fast as Maybelline, but I usually find this in my purse and put on a coat while I'm on the Max anyway.
3. Sally Girl - This one doesn't have a name, but it's purple and blue glitter in clear polish. It's a tiny little jar from Sally Beauty Supply that I got for probably 99 cents. It's not me at all, to be honest, and I think I bought it a few years ago and wore it once or twice. All of the above polishes were bought around 2011-2012, as far as I can remember.
4. & 5. Maybelline Color Show Brocades Emerald Elegance and Crushed Crimson - I found both of these last Christmas at The Dollar Tree, so that was awesome. These are glitter polishes that go on really thick and don't flake glitter everywhere. They have a combo of large and small chunks of glitter, and the polish is colored as well. The green is a little harder to pull off than the red, and I did not give myself an X-Mas manicure with these.
6. Maybelline Color Show Bold Gold - This is the polish that turned out to be my signature, for some reason. I just love it! I bought it after the Racy Red, because I was surprised by the quality. Granted, the Express Finish is made specifically to be fast-drying, but Color Show dries pretty rapidly as well, and is fairly long-lasting for cheap drugstore polish. So I picked this up for $4 a couple years ago on a whim, and I wear it off and on, and then it seems to be gone or drying up and I decide, "I really like this polish, I think I'll get more." So I go to Target, my one-stop show for cheapo cosmetics, and they have a clearance going on and their nail polish sections are depleted, but they don't appear to carry Bold Gold. So I go to Rite-Aid, the store I originally scored this nail polish at, and again, plenty of Maybelline, no Bold Gold. So I look to other brands, and even at Sephora, and I notice that not only is gold nail polish kind of hard to find, flat metallics are practically non-existent! Formula X does have a line of matte metallics that are nice, but the closest color was Ambition, which was gold the way Captain Kirk's uniform is gold, which is not a color I want on my nails. All the other gold metallics were shiny and textured.
As I searched for Bold Gold, I realized how much I really liked it. It had been an impulse purchase. I remember thinking, "Gold nail polish? That's totally disco, and no one I know wears it." It ended up being a flat, subtly shiny, cool gold that I loved, but didn't think much of and wore only occasionally. Using it up was bittersweet; I have never used up a nail polish before, as I generally move around a lot and lose them. Just having the stability to be able to use up a whole nail polish is an amazing feeling, and it's so strange to think I haven't had that in my life to this point. On the other hand, I really want my Bold Gold!
So obviously my next stop was the Internet. To my surprise, this line is still listed on Maybelline's web site. I had long ago peeled off the label on my jar, but Bold Gold is part of a line called "The Holographics," purportedly featuring "color-morphing metallic pearls." This line has four ratings on Maybelline.com, with an average of 2 stars. That's not a reflection on the quality of the polish, but rather the fact that the marketing is absolute BS. I haven't tried the other colors in the line, so maybe some of them do "shift from shade to shade depending on the angle," but Bold Gold sure doesn't. It doesn't do a damn thing except sit there and look fabulous, and it is exactly one color: Bold Gold. Some people don't like the thickness, or the almost matte sheen of this polish, but I love it. I found it for $4.50 on Amazon and bought a couple more bottles, along with some base and top coat and a couple more Color Show polishes that I'll show off here when they arrive.
Now I just need to stop biting my nails!

Victoria's Secret Sampler Reviews: Fearless

My friend SmelloKitty and I had a very fragrant holiday season! For Xmas, I got her a sampler of perfumes at Victoria's Secret. We're reviewing them together and posting our thoughts here. There are ten scents altogether, so look forward to reviews of all of them!

The first scent we tried on was Fearless. It smells really different on each of us, but we both agreed that it lives up to its name! It's bold, fresh and fruity. SmelloKitty picked up on the woods first, while I smelled flowers (Fearless is iris, orris root, and black currant). On her, it stayed nice and fresh; on me, it started to smell like cologne or men's deodorant. After about fifteen minutes, it dried down, and turned into something completely different! The black currant came through and the scent became almost candy-like. It's fruity and a little bit spicy, rich and mature but not stodgy. It smells modern, but not cheap. It's a lady-like scent with a slight masculine edge from the woods, the kind of perfume that's perfect for a modern woman who won't back down and faces life ... fearlessly. 

Welcome to my smell blog!

I am a person (not really a bear, sorry) who loves smells. I’ve been obsessively reading candle blogs lately, and I thought it would be fun to start my own! My little mascot is the Smell Bear, he’s cast-iron and I found him at the GoodWill for like $1.50. My plan for this blog is to sporadically post reviews of stuff I buy (or sample) that smells good: candles, lotions, perfume, etc. I shop at Bath & Body Works a lot, but I also buy stuff other places sometimes. For example, the Smell Bear is holding a Stella Mare votive in Amber that I guess I will review right now!

So I found these little candles at Fred Meyer’s, where they were on sale buy one get one free. I think they were $3 each, and I picked up 4 of them: Amber, Sandalwood, Vanilla Cinnamon and Lemongrass.

The Amber one is a beautiful gold color, and has a pure, warm amber scent that is so nice. I can’t find a picture of it anywhere, and I already burned it, so here’s a link to the Lemongrass candles on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Stella-Mare-Votive-Candle-Lemongrass/dp/B00B03WX88/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1416779270&sr=8-2&keywords=stella+mare+votive+candles
I had never heard of Stella Mare, and they don’t even have a finished website! I think they are local to Portland, which makes me feel good about buying them (even though I haven’t bought any more yet). They are soy candles, and they come in pillars, jars in multiple sizes, and diffusers. So that’s nice. The smell of this amber candle was fantastic! I’m only familiar with amber as a base note, but it is just a warm, rich smell that’s hard to describe. This candle has surprisingly good throw for a votive, and it burned for a while. I burned it in concert with a Cranberry Pear Bellini candle from Bath & Body Works to warm it up a little, and I also burned it with the Sandalwood votive for a relaxing blend. So if you see Stella Mare candles in Fred Meyer’s or Ulta, give them a try. I’ll be reviewing the Sandalwood votive later, and when I burn the other two, I’ll review them too. Smell you later!