Beauty, Clothing, and Odds and Ends Haul!

I have done a little bit of shopping in the last month or so.  =]
Here are the items I've gotten:

There have been some great sales lately.  Got two comfy sweaters from Pacsun for about $30.  I am also a HUGE bookworm and two new books came out by authors I love: 

Dan Brown's Inferno and Iris Johansen's Taking Eve.

Target had the new Tomb Raider game for about $20 off so I snagged that up since I had beaten all my PS3 games. =]

Here are close-ups of the make-up items I've gotten over the past month(ish):

Here is the close-up of Tarte's Amazonian clay 12-hour blush in Fearless, Laura Geller's Balance and Brighten Foundation in Medium, and MAC's lipstick in Impassioned.

Love, Love, Love Victoria's Secret body scrubs.  They usually have a deal for 5 for $30 so I stocked up!  The scents I got were:

(From Left to Right)

Love Spell - cherry blossom and peach

 Amber Romance - amber and creme anglaise

 Pure Seduction - red plum and freesia

Midnight Dare -raspberry and sandelwood 

Secret Craving - black currant and vanilla absolute

Here is another close up of MAC's lipstick in Impassioned.  And I also got NYX's lipliner in Pinky to line my lips when I wear Impassioned.  I will do a post on Impassioned and show pictures of what it looks like on. =]

I have the hardest time finding make-up remover that doesn't leave my skin an oily mess.  But with Sephora's Triple Action cleansing water, OMG! This stuff is AMAZING! It gets all my make-up off and leaves no residue on my skin! Love this find!

Lastly, since summer has already in full force in Southwest Florida, I needed some extra help with my oily skin.  I have used Urban Decay's All Nighter setting spray and loved it, and I was running low so I decided to grab their setting spray formulated for oily skin! On Urban Decay's website they had the De-slick in a Tube on sale for about $12 so I grabbed that as well.  I have tried the De-Slick in a Tube and it is pretty great.

Well, those are the products I have purchased in the last month or so! =]

What have you guys gotten for yourselves?

XO, Alyse

Why spend $40 when you can MAKE it for less then $5?!

Okay, so if you are anything like me I HATE cleaning my makeup brushes.  I mean I clean them because I don't want to keep putting dirty brushes on my face, but it's a pain in the ass to stand hunched over the sink for 30+ minutes scrubbing my brushes.  Yeah... no fun.

I saw that a brush company had come out with what is essentially a rubber "oven mitt" with different textures to do the scrubbing for you.  The first time I saw this I was excited to get something that shorten the time I was hunched over the sink.  However, when I saw the price ($40 + shipping and handling), my excitement went away.  WHY is it so much...?  I know a hundred other things I can that money on, like food.

So I sat brainstorming on ways to cut the time down into this annoying chore. I realized that the only thing that I needed was a surface with different textures to scrub the brushes on.

I had my hot glue gun out for another project I was working on when I got my inspiration.

Here is what I came up with:

The only thing I had to buy was the plastic clipboard, which you can get almost anywhere (I ordered mine off of amazon).  I did different designs and sizes with the hot glue to give it different textures for cleaning my brushes.  I let it dry overnight just to be sure that my brushes wouldn't come in contact with still wet hot glue (because that wouldn't be good).

To clean, I just laid the clipboard in the sink, wet it and used my normal brush cleaner.  Then I swirled the brush over the different bumps and grooves.  I don't think I've had my brushes cleaner.  And this actually did cut down the time cleaning over the sink!

Mission Accomplished! =]

- XO, Alyse