Make Your Own Eye Shadow Palette

Okay before we go into this tutorial there are a few things that I discovered while doing this! 

1. Cutting the plastic is not for the faint of heart. It reminded me of Christmas when you have to cut toys out of all the annoying thick plastic, yuck!
2. To de-pot my eye shadows I used a VERY flat, flat head screwdriver and just kind of shimmied them out. I have heard of other people using a strong paring knife but you just need something strong with a  flat edge. You do need to be careful because most of them were glued in and the more glue they had the harder and more likely to break they were. Just shimmy them out slowly and carefully
3. Some of the eye shadows were easier to de-pot than others. If you feel like the eye shadow is starting to crumble, keep trying at your own risk! I did loose a couple of eye shadows, although non of them were my favorites so they were worth the risk! 
4. Originally I wanted to put my blushes in too, but I found that trying to de-pot something as big as blush didn't work too well and there were some casualties. :(

Besides all my disclaimers, I LOVE my new palette! I am always using tons of different eye shadows at a time and it's so nice to have them all in one place. I also love that there is plenty of room for all my applicators. Plus I think I'm sort of a makeup hoarder and this makes it look like I have a lot less than I actually do! Muahaha! So here are the easy steps to create your own palette.

P.S. You can click on the pictures to make them larger!

So what do you think? Will you create your own eye shadow palette? Let me know how it goes!

Hair Color Fun

I LOVE fun colors in hair. I had hot pink ends a few months ago and I loved it! Every time I glanced at my hair in the mirror it made me smile. I loved the way the color looked in braids and up style's. However, I felt like it wasn't always appropriate. I felt weird about it in church and I had a job interview where I tried to hide as much of it as possible. So I found some techniques for getting some fun color without having to wear it everywhere!

Use oil pastels

College Fashion

First pick a section that you would like to color and dampen with a spray bottle. Next take the section and color with an oil pastel (I suggest using a small children's book and piece of scrap paper as something sturdy to "draw" on). You can seal the color in by flat ironing or curling on low heat. The color should rinse out after a wash or two! If I had blonde hair I would love to try Lauren Conrad's peachy ends, so pretty!

Use yarn

A Beautiful Mess

I LOVE this idea! It's SO easy and the color combinations are endless. Just section off the hair above your ears and secure. Take small sections and tie yarn around the hair and knot. Release the top half of your hair and finish with a fun style. I love the yarn with the fishtail braid!

Poor Mans Product- Tool Edition

Infrashine Flat Iron: Buy Here

Using good quality tools is so important to getting the style you are after. Straightening your curls with a less than amazing flat iron isn't only hard on your hair but takes more time and effort on your part. My favorite flat iron is the original black Infrashine flat iron. I have used many different brands of professional flat irons and this is the best I have come across. I bought one a little over six years and up until 2 month's ago it has worked just as well as the day I bought it. Now keep in mind that I use a flat iron much more than someone who isn't a hairdresser. I would leave it on all day sometimes, it had been dropped and used often. However, a couple of month's ago I dropped it and one of the ceramic plates came loose. Even though it STILL heats, it's pretty unusable. I was pretty sad when my trusty flat iron that lasted so long, finally bit the dust. 

 Andis Flat Iron: Buy Here

Now let's keep in mind that I had purchased my Infrashine in my wonderful early college day's. I was living at home and working two job's whose income was solely used to buy myself fun things :) Nowadays no such income exists so I set out on a journey to find a cheap, but just as amazing flat iron. My journey was long and annoying, but after returning about 5 different flat irons I found the most unlikely yet AMAZING straightener! It was the one I was least expecting to work well and turned out to knock my socks off!  I bought it at Walmart for about $16-17. The one trick I found with this flat iron is to keep the heat turned all the way up, otherwise your hair snags in the plates (which is the main problem I had with all the other irons that I tried). But I felt it was definitely a worthy opponent to my Infrashine. 

So while someday I would love to be reunited with an Infrashine, the under $20 price tag of the Andis is too good to pass up!