First post! Makeup Haul (Ulta & NARS)

I felt a haul was appropriate for my first official makeup blog post, because I kind of have an addiction when it comes to purchasing makeup. I just want to try everything.

So Ulta had a "21 Days of Beauty" sale, and everyday they had discounts on a couple products, some even marked down to 50% off! There is unfortunately no Ulta store near me, so I was forced to buy online. To get free shipping you had to spend $25, and I like using that as an excuse to buy more makeup I don't need.

This little guy is the reason I ordered from Ulta in the first place. This is the Tarte clean slate 360 creaseless eye primer. My eyes are very picky about eye primers, (Urban Decay Primer potion is too drying). But when the makeup artist at Sephora used this on me last July, I knew this was going to be my next eye primer purchase. Ulta's 21 Days of Beauty sale had it for $10 (instead of $19).

The Smashbox Photo Finish Light primer is supposed to be the best-of-the-best. I have yet to find a holy grail primer. Most of the ones I have tried are good, but not great, so I decided to give this one a whirl. This is a very expensive primer, so I was glad to see the travel size on sale for $10, marked down from $17.

My next two purchases were from the brand NYX. NYX makeup is very reasonably priced, but rather hard to find. I have only seen it sold at Ulta, Nordstrom Rack, and Urban Outfitters (and the selection at Urban is very minimal.) These are the jumbo eye pencils, that can be used as eyeliner or all over the lid as an eye base. I already have one in the color "Milk" which is just a matte white. Seeing as these were buy 1, get one 50% off, I had to try more colors. I decided to try "Strawberry Milk" and "Iced Mocha".

Here are the swatches. Strawberry Milk is very pink, so I'm not sure how I'm going to wear it yet. I have Benefit's Eye Bright pencil that I sometimes use in the waterline to "brighten" my eyes, but this pencil may be too pink for that. I think I'm going to try Iced Mocha as an eyeliner on the upper lid. Two of these pencils would normally be $8.98 ($4.49 each) but with the sale I got them both for $6.74.

These little beauties are the newest additions to my brush collection. The pink brush is a blush brush and the gold brush is a powder brush. I currently own the Sigma Make Me Classy Travel Kit, (which is a great kit for beginners) but l felt it was time to expand my brush collection. I had heard great things about these brushes, and at buy one, get one 50% off, I knew I had to get them. The gold brush was $10 and the pink brush was $4.50 (50% off).

So I was very proud of myself for buying all those products on sale and decided to completely defeat the purpose of saving money by splurging on this. This I had to purchase from Nars.com because I could not find it anywhere in store. 

The name of this trio is "Ramateulle" and the reason I ever wanted it in the first place is thanks to this video by MakeupByTiffanyD. This is where watching excessive YouTube beauty videos becomes a problem. Because you want everything these girls talk about. And then you spend $45 on eyeshadow. (I know. I KNOW. I don't want to talk about it.)

But let's be real here, HOW COULD YOU NOT WANT THIS? It's beautiful. I've never seen a trio with colors like this, and that's why I was instantly drawn to it. I can't wait to try it out. 

Natural light swatches with no primer.

Natural light swatches with a primer. (Sorry the darkest color is kind of messy. I'll get this swatching thing down eventually.)

Welp, I hope you enjoyed my first blog post! I wanted to thank one of my very best friends, Kailey, for finally making me do this. Because her response when I brought up the idea of starting a makeup blog, was "Oh my god. I'd read it everyday."

Thanks for reading!

- Sam :)