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.