ZOYA Lovely Spring Season 2013 SWATCHES and bottles!

I quickly received my ZOYA Lovely Spring collection the other day and just got to taking pictures of them all. I have to say, these are my FAVORITE colors so far from Zoya (besides their Ornate collection, holographic glitters are GORGEOUS). Anyways, today is Christmas Eve and I'm waiting to go to my Aunts house for a party, so what better time to update my blog?

WARNING: THESE PHOTOS AREN'T THE BEST QUALITY! I'm figuring out how to use my mom's Camera (shh...don't tell her.)

The above picture is the whole Lovely (get it? because it's lovely and that's it's name?...I'm funny) collection, and boy they named it right.

From Left to Right- Piaf, GeiGei, Julie, Blu, Neely, Jacqueline



This is Piaf, it's a fresh forsythia soft yellow metallic. The subtle silver shimmer in this polish, GeiGei and Julie makes it that much better.

This is GeiGei, it's a blushing cherry blossom soft pink metallic. This is the perfect baby pink color as you can see in the photo!



This is Julie, it's a soft wisteria purple metallic.



This is Blu and this is where my camera gets crappy. This looks as if it's a smokey blue, but alas, it's not. This is actually a creamy bright baby blue. The description given by Zoya is that it's a lucky hyacinth blue cream. I tried to lighten it as much as I could without distorting the color to something that it's not, and this is as close as I could get...



This is Neely, again the camera did a crappy job picking up the color. This again looks like a smokey light green, but it's not, it is a mint green color. Zoya describes it as the earliest spring green creme. I know they're trying to keep with the whole spring theme, but calling it a mint green would have worked all the same...and lastly we have:



Jacqueline...which is a very confusing color. In bottle it looks like a pale mustardy color, but on swatch it almost seems off white. Zoya describes it as the perfect magnolia nude creme. I'm very excited to wear this one as weird as it seems to me :)

Here is the swatch of all the colors:



This is in backwards order: Jacqueline, Neely, Blu, Julie, GeiGei, Piaf.

 

I will be doing real life swatches (as in on my fingernails) and reviews of these colors (how many coats, how thin or thick the formula is, ect...) AFTER the holidays! I hope everyone has a merry Christmas :)

 

 

*These polishes were provided for reviewing purposes.

Dino Lingo Italian!

So I was introduced to Dino Lingo which is a Language Learning Program for Kids through the Influenster program, and I was told to watch a preview of their videos and write a blog on the topic. Wow was I impressed with this series. For starters, I watched the French video on their Youtube page www.youtube.com/dinolingo



Then I thought, you know, my nieces will be learning both French and Spanish in middle school as part of our towns curriculum, so I decided to check out the Italian version and was pleasantly surprised with them. Growing up, I was used to watching Muzzy in our language classes, and to be honest, they were just so cheesy and boring I wouldn't pay attention. These however, would have caught my attention.



I personally took Italian in highschool and LOVED IT! I thought it was such an awesome language to learn, and used to try and speak Italian with my grandfather who is Italian and refers to himself as a "Guido" (Because of Jersey Shore of course...) which ironically was his fathers name :)

ANYWHO, back on track, this program seems AMAZING! Dino Lingo is an award winning language teaching program designed for small children aged 2-7. Crazy as it seems, my 10 year old niece would LOVE this program as well. I think it'd be easy and interesting for both of my nieces to learn.

Each full home education set comes with a TON of things. One of which is a 5 DVD kit that includes colors and numbers, food (fruits and vegetables), playtime (toys, vehicles, house objects), verbs, nature, family, body parts and clothing. This goes above and beyond as to what Muzzy used to teach us. This set also includes 150 learning flashcards to help your children practice their lingo. The cards go in the same categories that are shown in the DVDs. Also an Italian vocabulary book for kids, which is considered a guide book to the DVDs which I find is AWESOME! So while they're watching these DVDs they can be filling out their vocab books. Another thing included is an Italian poster kit for kids. These posters are of colors, numbers, body parts, clothes ect. there are 10 posters which have the most important 150 words kids need to know! A world map, italian flag, coloring book, guide booklet for parents, and plush dino toy are also included. This set retails for $148.95 with FREE shipping! This is a STEAL for a full home education set, and would be great if you'd like your kids to get back to their italian heritige.

There are also smaller sets such as the basic set which comes with 5 DVDs, 150 flash cards, dinosaur poster and parents guide (Retail $99.95); the poster set which comes with the 10 posters, world map, and italian flag (Retail $59.95) and lastly the plain DVD set which just contains the 5 DVDs (Retail $89.95).

The Dino Lingo program comes in 30 different languages. Yes, I said it, 30 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES!!! That's ridiculous! Everything from Greek, to Portuguese, to even Fillipino!

To buy the Dino Lingo Program go to dinolingo.com/

The Influenster Program

For anyone who doesn't know, there is a website out on the interweb that goes by the name of Influenster.com and my god, this is the best site ever. It's a site in which you can sign up completely for free, and give awesome reviews on products any where from food, to makeup products, to video games, to movies, ect. Now the cool thing is, is that you have this thing called an Influenster score, and it's on a scale from 0-100, and it's based on all of the other Influenster members and your badges, the higher your score, the better chance you HAVE to score.

What's there to score you ask?

Well they have these things called Vox Boxes. What are they? Well they are these cool little boxes that are filled with things for you to test out and review. No big deal right? Wrong! These boxes come with the HOTTEST new products that interest YOU. This is why you earn these Influenster Badges with different categories such as Bow-Wow which you unlock if you have Dogs, or Catnip if you have cats, or even Blushing Bride if you're getting married! (And if you are,  congrats to you!) Now please, don't be greedy, and only sign up for the badges that REALLY interest you! For instance, I'm not going to be getting married anytime soon, so I won't be filling out the Blushing Bride survey, because I'd like for the people who really ARE getting married to get the boxes, catch my drift?

So here is an example of what's actually inside a vox box...this is my first one which I most recently received (November 21st, 2012) and it is the COLLEGE Vox Box!



 

Now with a Vox Box, this is NOT about just receiving these absolutely FREE products, it's about being an Influenster, trying them out, writing reviews (such as this) and telling friends and family about them, if you like them. In this Vox Box I received ImPRESS Press-On Manicure in Holla!, NYC New York Color Show Time Glitter Eyeliner Pencil (WOO, mouth full!) in Show Time Black, Necco Tropical Wafers (Which haven't even hit store shelves yet mind you), Pentel R.S.V.P Pen, and Mint Energy Sheets. I've currently used all of these products and have even written reviews about the ImPRESS Manicure and the NYC Glitter Eyeliner which you can see in my previous posts.

Now in order to receive said Boxes your influenster score needs to be UP! You need to be an active member on social media sites (something that I personally enjoy) and also on Influenster.com itself.

Also, something cool about the new revamped Influenster.com is that they've come out with new Expert Badges. You can only choose 5 of these expert badges to begin with, so be careful (stupid me didn't realize that and I chose 1 I don't really care for, but oh well!). But these "expert badges" will allow you to get into even MORE boxes!

But just because you have a badge does NOT mean you're going to get a box, you still need to qualify for it. And to qualify, your badge scores and influenster scores need to be high, and you need to have some social activity. If you do qualify, and receive it, and do all of the mandatory tasks, brand challenges, ect, you have a much higher chance to keep receiving them (because some people I'm sure take the products and run.)

I hope this gave you a little insight to this AWESOME awesome program, and I hope you will want to join. It will NOT be a waste of time, I promise you that.

NYC New York Color Show Time Glitter Eyeliner!

This will be another COLLEGE VOX BOX post from Influenster :)

Story goes, I received a College Vox Box from Influenster to try out and review. If you don't know what Influenster is, it's an awesome program that sends you things to review and try out. You receive things called Vox Boxes that contain a number of items that are related with the theme. Mine of course was all about "pampering" after a long day of classes. If you'd like to join Influenster you can go to their website (Influenster.com) and sign up from there. You will take surveys and earn badges that will place you into these campaigns.

ON TO THE REVIEW! This review, by the title, is from NYC (New York Color) a brand I absolutely adore, and it will be for their NEW Show Time Glitter Eyeliner! Now I'm going to firstly say that I don't wear makeup. At 20, I JUST started wearing mascara, so I will be gradually working my way to get to use this properly. BUT I have tried it out on my hands and I did try it out on my eyes (not used to the look of eyeliner, so I was a little shocked).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] #944 Show Time Black[/caption]

Now because of the fact I don't regularly USE eyeliner (or actually have tried it out for that matter...) I'm not sure how to compare it to other brands. All I do know is that from testing it out on both my hand and eyes, I've found that it does go on VERY smoothly and I was completely satisfied with the fact that you're actually able to see the glitter in the eyeliner. I was thinking you know, they would barely be in there and it was just a marketing ploy, but oh no, I was completely wrong, they are in there and you can SEE them!

This is from the Vox Box introduction card that is sent in every box:  " Missing the Spark? Get it out there with Show Time Glitter Eyeliner Pencils. Create jewel-encrusted eye looks with these long-wearing glitter-infused rich colors. No doubt you will be dazzling."

Boy were they right about the long-wearing, although not for the eyeliner itself. The glitter pieces stay on your skin (or eyes) for a LONG time. I was still seeing bits of glitter on my eyes for a few days after taking it off (which by the way comes off with water, IE. not water proof.)

At $2.49 a pencil, for a makeup/glitter fanatic, you literally can not be beat. NYC remains to be one of the most outstanding drugstore brands I've ever used.

These new Show Time Glitter Eyeliners can be picked up at drugstores and mass merchandisers nationwide!

Product Website: www.newyorkcolor.com

Broadway Nails ImPRESS Press-On Manicure!

Hello everyone and welcome to my first post on my new blog! I'm hoping to get a camera for Christmas, so for right now I'm going to be using Google Images and crappy iPod Touch quality pictures :)

I'm part of the Influenster group where you get a chance to receive Vox Boxes that contain products that you get to try out and review. I recently was chosen to be apart of the College Vox Box, and inside of it I received the new ImPRESS Press-On Manicure Nails in Holla!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="280"] Holla![/caption]

Let me tell you, I LOVE these nails! Not only is the design beautiful, but they're long lasting and they really are fast & easy like the package says. The package comes with 24 nails in 12 different sizes, but unfortunately I have very naturally long and wide nail beds, so I was unable to use them for my thumb and middle finger, BUT when contacted on the company facebook about this unfortunate problem, they informed me that in the next year they'll be coming out with bigger nails for longer, wider beds. AMAZING! I'm a nail art fanatic, but most certainly will be purchasing them.

Now if you play these right, you might be able to get 2 uses out of them. I was able to put them on my nieces hand, and the ones that I could fit on my fingers and still have a few left over.

Overall I believe that these nails are worth the $5.99 for colors or the $7.99 for patterns. You can purchase these nails at any drugstore, K-mart, Walmart, Target ect.

TIPS:

• Make sure your nails are cut and CLEANED! The ImPRESS will NOT stick to oily nails or nails with dirt fragments on them.


• For added time wearing them, add a little Nail Glue to the beds of your nail, it will make them last longer.


• Some people say they aren't numbered, but they ARE, if you can't see the numbers (they're usually near the tips) then take a pencil and lightly rub it against it so it will show better (the pencil can rub off)

HAVE FUN with this product! I know I did :)

 Product website: http://www.impressmanicure.com/