Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Jumbo Eyeshadow Sticks!

My obsession with makeup in the form of jumbo sized pencils continues! These are called "sticks," but we all know what they are. :-D I got some sun in Florida, so my arm isn't the wonderfully pale canvas that it usually is. So the really light colors don't show up as well as they usually do. I kept fiddling with the settings trying to make my arm look less dark and it wasn't until a few minutes passed that I'm like, "Oh yeah dummy. You have a slight tan. That's just how your arm looks right now." I am going to do more extensive testing on these guys tomorrow and the next day. I want to test them out against Urban Decay's Jumbo Eyeshadow pencils and NYX's Jumbo Eyeshadow pencils. I want to see their wear time and if I can find colors that look comparable to Urban Decay and NYX. I guess this will be more of a first impression type post. The first thing I noticed was the smell of these guys. They smelled very plastic and "not good for you." I haven't noticed that too much with any of the other products that I've gotten from e.l.f. The 2nd thing I noticed was that these really are jumbo. They feel very large in the hand. I haven't used them to create an eye look yet, so I don't know if them being very large will be a good thing or a bad thing. Common sense makes me think that in a super quick rush it will be good to cover your whole eye lid, do a quick large crease and then scram. Common sense also makes me think that it won't be good for intricate, multi-colored eye looks. I'll just have to see. They went on very smoothly and they were very pigmented. After I let them set for a several moments they didn't smear a whole lot. They smeared some though. I also really packed on the color much more than you would on your eye for the swatch pictures, so I kept that into consideration. Just based on the pigmentation, the ease of use and the amount of product you get for the price I'd recommend them right now. My story may change after my wear test, so stay tuned. :-D

Rachel Knows... I'm Back!

See anything fun in there?! If you can look past my janky, homemade lightbox then there is a lot of fun stuff in there. It might not look like a lot of stuff, but it is, trust me. Ha-ha! The amount of pictures and time that it is going to take to get these all done is boggling my mind at the moment. It took me 45, yes 45, minutes to unpackage all of this stuff. Some of that time was getting the little plastic wrapping off of the lipsticks and things like that. Even with the perforated lines they add to the plastic wrapping most times I still have trouble getting plastic off of things. It didn't help matters that I just cut off all of my nails yesterday. Oh and I have a story to tell about those Wet n' Wild eyeshadows. Ai yi yi is all I can say at the moment. Well I'll be working diligently to try and get some content up on my blog. It has been way too long and I hope you guys are excited to see some of these swatches and reviews! See you soon!

Rachel Knows... A Huge Haul List! What to expect in the coming weeks!

So this is a list of items you can expect to see swatches and reviews of in the coming weeks. A few of the Wet N' Wild Long Last Lipsticks became backordered pratically the moment I ordered them so no telling when they will get here. Leave a comment if there is a product you'd like for me to swatch or review for you. See you guys later!

Rachel Knows... Hoooooold your horses!

Y'all! I'm married! I will be leaving on this weekend for my honeymoon. I just ordered two huge orders from e.l.f. and Drugstore.com. They should be here and waiting for me when I get back. I got well over 100 pieces of makeup. So there will be posts and swatches galore when I get back. Just hold tight for me gals and we'll get back to business soon. :-D

Rachel Knows... It is My Wedding Week!

Everyone that addresses me this week is saying, "Happy wedding week, most beautiful bride in the world!" HA! Just kidding. That's what one of those fudged up Bridezilla girls made everyone do though. I was just letting y'all know that I have been so unmotivated to do the swatches for the $1 e.l.f. eyeshadow quads and that is the last product I've bought that I haven't put on the blog. I don't know why just thinking about doing those swatches just makes me get ticked off. I think because they aren't the best quality and I'm going to have to use mixing medium to get it to show up and then I'm going to have to wash my arm off like 20 times and I don't want to just have a post with just swatches, I want to have an eye look to go along with it, but thinking about doing 20 or so eye looks just exhausts me to think about it. I'm being lazy, but I just can get myself in the mood to swatch them. I am also on a spending freeze or whatever it is called because every penny is going towards our Honeymoon. I have SOOOOOOOOO many things I want and am going to get as soon as this wedding and honeymoon is over, so just bear with me and I'll get back to posting regularly soon. My wedding is on Friday and then our honeymoon is the Friday after that. We'll be gone for 7 or 8 days. So give me a few days to recuperate, make my orders for the stuff I want and then I'll get back in gear on the blog! See you soon! :-D

Rachel Knows... Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain!

These balm stains are awesome! I have been looking for something that I could wear for my wedding that would last throughout the whole shebang and that wouldn't dry my lips out since everything on me from my head to toes is constantly dry. I've seen chatter about these across the internet and I have been interested in them for a while now. The only thing that kept me from getting them a while ago is their price. When you get used to getting everything from e.l.f. for mostly $1 and other things on there for $3 and then you get into makeup that is priced at $9 apiece you feel like you're just throwing your money away. So after looking for sales for a while that would match up with payday, I finally found one that was "Buy one Revlon product get the other 50% off." This made some of the balm stains still cost $4.50, but it was better than paying full price for all of them. I can tell y'all that I actually wore and tested these out. I wanted to get used to them since I was going to wear it for my wedding. I tried on all of the colors, but I didn't take pictures of my lips because I'm pretty sure this isn't going to be a regular thing for me to try on all the lips products. I only got 6 colors anyway. These are pretty moisturizing. They aren't going to replace Chapstick or natural oil by any means, but compared to the old lip stains that I tried when they first came out years and years ago, these are oil slicks. They are pretty pigmented. They smell minty, but they don't tingle on your lips which is a good thing in my book. They really do last for hours. It looks and acts like a lipstick, but if some of the product gets wiped, drunk or eaten off of your lips then they still are stained in a good way with the product. The leftover stain is somewhat of a different color than the original balm stain though. I don't know if it does some sort of fancy chemical change when it gets mixed with your lips DNA, but it is definitely a different color. The only two complaints I have about this product are that A) The leftover stain is quite different from the original color and B) Most of the colors are too bold and wild for my taste. Out of the 6 colors that I bought I am only keeping two of them. I am wearing Honey for my wedding (more than likely) and Smitten is just a really pretty light berry color that doesn't look like a berry for a specific season, it just looks like a nice year round color. If you wear lipstick a lot and are into bolder colors then I'd suggest that you pick these up. They really are a great product. I just wish the colors had worked better for me because I really love these balm stains.

Rachel Knows... Makeup Organization!

My collection quickly outgrew the train case it was in. I couldn't find anything in it. It was a jumbled mess. I wanted to be able to have things in separate containers without it being spread out everywhere. I knew I wanted them in baskets, but I didn't know what kind. I went to The Dollar Tree to find something and these cute purple baskets for $1 a piece were perfect. I had trouble finding something to put everything on, but this bathroom organizer turned out perfect. I may quickly outgrow this, but for now this is doing the trick. How do you store your makeup? Did I find a bargain at $39 or do you have something cheaper that works better? Let me know so I can know what to use in the future. :-D