National Aesthetic Spa Network Convention

One of the many awesome perks of being in aesthetics school is getting to go to the trade shows/ conventions. This year I had the pleasure of attending the National Aesthetic Spa Network convention. There was some great education, vendors and of course the swag bag which was awesome for product hoarders like me lol!

I decided to test drive my new MAC Heroine lipstick and absolutely love it! My husband however refers to it as that hideous purple lipstick! Purple has been my new obsession lately so I will put up a swatch soon with a couple of purples I've been trying.

One of the educational sessions that I thought was most interesting talked about one of the new breakthroughs in aging- telomeres. A telomere is a sequence of DNA at the end of chromosomes that gets shorter every time your cells divide. Eventually when the telomeres get too short, the cells will stop replicating.

 Telomere science has a lot of applications such as aging, skin care and cancer. I vaguely remember seeing a scientific show on tv a while back that talked about how the possibility of using telomeres to see how much longer a person would live.

In the application of skin care however, products are using a substance called TA-65 which is an extract of a Chinese herb called Astragalus. It is supposed to "turn on" telomerase which is an enzyme that lengthens the telomeres, theoretically lengthening cell lifespan and reducing aging.

I am a major nerd when it comes to skin care and love the science behind it! The CEO of one of the companies sponsoring the event did the telomere education, so I am always hesitant to take them word for word, but I thought it was fascinating nonetheless.

One of their products was included in my swag bag too, so I will be trying it out for myself!

Quick Work FOTD Featuring Estée Lauders Travel Palette

Estée Lauder recently came out with a travel palette and of course I immediately fell in love with it! 

It has 30 eyeshadows, 15 lip sticks, 2 glosses, a double ended eyeliner pencil,  4 blush/ bronzers and I believe it cost $30 or $35- either way a good deal!

I haven't really had too much of a chance to play with it yet, but my experience so far has been disappointing. The eyeshadows which were the main attraction for me just weren't as pigmented as I thought they would be. I will post a fuller review on it once I've used it more though.

Here is my FOTD using eyeshadows and gloss from the palette though:

For my eye I used: Flirty Lilac, Purple Passion and Amethyst Spark along with my trusty Clinique creme eyeliner and MAC Paintpot in Ochre.

On my lips I used MAC Angel with the Estée Lauder Praline Paradise lipgloss.

Sephora Black Friday Sneak Peek

I'm always excited to see what Sephora's offerings are for Black Friday. Here is the latest sneak peek at what they'll have this year:

 

I'll be interested in the Ole Henrikson, Josie Maran and Too Faced for sure!

 

My 1st Shellac Attempt

Awhile back, I started getting Shellac done on my nails. My normal polish is usually wrecked by the time it's dried, so to say that Shellac has been revolutionary for me is an understatement! The price however was more than I wanted to pay, so I bought my own supplies to try and do it myself.

This was my first attempt using Shellac base and topcoat with Gelish Good Gossip as the red color. I am completely in love with how the color looked on!

Pictures don't really do it justice, but it has a really pretty shimmer to it!

I loved how Christmas-y the red was, so I added some gold glitter in a fade on my thumbs to make it more festive!

Nails are definitely not my forte so I'm looking forward to being able to experiment more with the Shellac as well as starting the nail tech portion of my schooling soon!

My 1st Halloween as a Mom!

This year for Halloween, I took my nugget to Mall O Ween as Mickey Mouse and I did Marilyn Monroe. 

I would NEVER have thought that it was going to be such a challenge to draw a nose on for his Mickey costume- I think I drew it on 4 times as he kept squirming and rubbing it off!

I originally had a Gryffindor outfit and was going to be Hermione but as I was curling my hair, I thought it looked more Marilyn retro. (Unfortunately most of the curl fell out by the time I got to the mall!)

I also forgot to take a picture of my makeup while lighting wasn't horrific oops!

I recently re-found my Too Faced Boudoir pallet and have been loving it. I used Satin Sheets for my brow bone and inner corner, Sugar Walls for my lid and Lap Dance for the crease. I used Clinique gel liner (another re-find!) for the winged liner.

On my cheeks I used Benefit Thrrrob and  Hard Candy Honeymoon.

For the lips I used ELF's Matte Lipcokor in Rich Red (these are AWESOME!) and Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Wild Watermelon.

50's makeup is definitely one of my favorite looks!

Sugar Skull Makeup!

Today at school we had our Halloween party and during our clinic hours we did Halloween makeup. I've been excited about this for a while because I have wanted to do a sugar skull for forever! 

I did my look based on the very talented nancyvlp's video on YouTube.

Doing this at school was a challenge as pretty much all the makeup that we had was geared toward zombie looks, but I had fun and my client was pleased with the way it turned out!

Super Haul!!

Now that my baby is a little bit older and I can have a little time to myself, I've started pulling out my beauty stuff and getting ready for beauty school. I checked out a new mall in Tampa yesterday and realized that not only did they have a Sephora, but there was a MAC, Lush and some fabulous counters at Nordstroms too! Needless to say, I left with more than I intended too!

I had never been to a Lush before, but am really excited to try out a face and hair mask I got there. What I'm MOST excited about though is the Dr. Gross steamer. I've seen excellent reviews for it and am super excited to see how it works!

Now that everything's a little more settled, I will be trying to actually post on here. I start beauty school next week and just started a job at a makeup counter so yay! 

And just because:

A picture of my son before we went to see his little girlfriends!