January's Monthly Make-a-Dent!

Dear darling readers,

I’m incredibly excited about this post today. One of my new year’s resolutions is to use up more of my make-up stash, because it grew exponentially this past year (and my bank account wishes I was joking about that). I want to keep buying new products, and I have a huge list on my iPhone in my Notes where I write down all the new (both new in release date and/or new to me) products I want. In order to let myself buy more, I’ve decided to participate in something called Project Make-a-Dent!

This awesome project is the brainchild of Lola’s Secret Beauty Blog, although I originally discovered it via Auxiliary Beauty. Both of these blogs are super awesome and amazing and I love reading them and you should totally check them out. But importantly, they inspired me to join Project Make-a-Dent! Basically, the goal of this project (further detailed in Lola’s original post) is to pick a few products and use them for a set amount of time, with the object of using them up or making a significant dent into them, such as hitting pan. 

My spin on this: I’m going to pick several products each month of 2015 - a small eyeshadow palette, an eyeshadow single, a blush, a lipstick (or gloss or balm etc), an eyeliner, and a mascara - and document what they look like at the beginning of the month and at the end. The ones I’ve picked for January aren’t necessarily my favorite products, least favorite, new, or old. I literally pick them at random from my collection (aka pour each of my categories on the floor, close my eyes, mix them around with both hands, and grab one. It’s very scientific). But they wound up being products I don’t use every day, and some of them are products that honestly I don’t need to keep. But I don’t want them to go to waste, and I think Project Make-a-Dent is very appropriate to use them up. My plan: use each item at least three days a week, carry around the lipstick everywhere, and see how they end up looking on January 31!

But enough talking ABOUT the project; let me SHOW you the items I’m going to be using!

A nice little collection, don’t you think? Now let me give you the product details for each of these items that I’ll be using. I’m not going to review these for you yet, but throughout the month you’ll see me review each of these and provide dupes and similar products that I’ve found in my collection in case you don’t have these specific products yourself. 

First we have the small eyeshadow palette. I’m using this palette from Clinique, which is the first non-drugstore brand from which I bought products and remains one of my favorite brands today! This is a Clinique All About Shadow Quad containing (from right to left) a Limited Edition Pink Shade which is a super glittery light pink, Hazy which is a gorgeous pinkish brownish taupe, Raspberry Beret which is a dusky magenta unlike almost anything else in my eyeshadow collection, and Chocolate Covered Cherry which is a lovely burgundy brown. As you might have gathered from the first shade, this palette is a limited edition item found in the 2013 Party Favours Set. I received this set as a gift for Christmas a YEAR ago and I think it’s definitely time for me to use it more often. Luckily, if you like these colors, all of them except the limited edition pink shade are available from Clinique as individual single eyeshadows. I like the colors a lot although they aren’t ones I reach for all the time, but hopefully this set will show some wear by the end of the month. I’ll be posting a review of this palette along with some dupes so that if you want to create some of the looks I make with this, you’ll have some options!

Second we have the eyeshadow single for the month: a L’oreal 24 HR Infallible Eye Shadow in the shade 889 Midnight Blue. This is a stunning deep black-blue navy shade cut through with brighter blue micro sparkles. I love all of the 24 HR Infallible shadows, but this one happens to not get a lot of use from me most of the time because I usually go for fairly natural eyeshadow looks, not intense navy smoky eyes. Luckily this shadow can be used very lightly and also be built up to maximum color intensity very easily, so one of my goals this month while using it will be to find different ways of incorporating it into eyeshadow looks other than using it to make a heavy smoky eye.

Next we have the eyeliner: Wet n Wild Fergie Crème Eyeliner in the shade Cocoa Richè. This is the only one of this month’s Make-a-dent that I didn’t choose randomly and the only one I chose for the explicit reason of using up before it expired. I bought this eyeliner sometime in 2014 so it’s not even a year old yet, but I rarely use it. I prefer self-sharpening pencil eyeliners to gel or liquid, and I prefer black liner to brown. So I barely ever touch this gel (or crème) product. It’s not horrible by any means, but I have loads more liners I would rather use. It wasn’t very expensive but part of me would feel bad if I just threw it away since there isn’t anything particularly wrong with it. But part of me is hoping I can somehow use the entire thing this month or if not, use enough of it that I won’t feel guilty after for wasting it. I thought it might have dried up when I opened it, but it’s definitely still working. But who knows how long it will last? Hopefully through January.

To finish out the eye products, I’ll present my least exciting of the bunch: mascara. The one for January is a sample of the Clinique High Impact Mascara in the shade 01 Black. I honestly almost never buy mascara, because I get so many samples like this. And I have at least 3 other samples of this exact mascara in my collection at the moment, so I honestly have no idea how old this mascara even is. It doesn’t smell off yet, and it still works fairly well, so unless I have major problems with it I’ll just keep using it until it’s gone. I probably won’t do a full review of this product, as it’s just okay and not my absolute favorite mascara, and because I honestly find that mascara is just kind of boring - 90% of mascaras that I own work exactly the same for me. They’re a key part of getting ready for the day for me, but they just aren’t all that versatile to me.

Now to one of my favorite make-up products: blush! This is the NYX powder blush in the shade Pinky. I started 2014 in possession of 3 blushes. Just 3. I ended 2014 with…more than I should have. But they’re so much fun! Some of my favorite blushes that I picked up this past year were the NYX powder blushes. I always kind of turned up my nose at NYX and ELF products; I figured that items that inexpensive would look cheap and not last long, so I avoided them. But after getting into the beauty blog scene I realized that some NYX and ELF products, particularly these NYX blushes, were getting rave reviews. I knew I had to put aside my prejudices and pick up a few.  Pinky wasn’t the very first NYX blush I ever bought, but it was one of the first, and definitely not the last I’ll buy! (Must...have...ALL...the...colors...) I love the shade of Pinky - a bright, bold hot pink that I have to sheer out if I put too much on, but it's so pretty it doesn't matter. I have so much blush that I need to use some of them up, and I have a feeling this one will last a while, but it doesn’t hurt to try making a dent in it! Also, I managed to break the lid of the case, since it is pretty cheap plastic, so I want to make sure that an unsecured lid won’t have adverse effects on the product inside.

And finally, my favorite type of product of the bunch: lipstick!!! I have a (not so) small obsession with lipstick, which I’m sure will be very obvious from my posts in the coming months. The one I’m using this month is the Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in 011 Stormy Pink, which is one of their Matte colors. While I am absolutely in love with Revlon’s Super Lustrous line and I have a horrible, wonderful goal of owning EVERY SINGLE ONE, this is one I don’t use very often. It’s a very bright, Barbie pink and it’s very matte. And like many mattes I’ve tried, it can definitely look patchy. However, it doesn’t look so bad far away - it’s close up where you can see that the color isn’t even. And although this isn’t a color I normally wear, it is a happy color that can really brighten up my face, something ideal to combat this cold, dreary, cloudy month. I apologize for the state of the lipstick - it gets soft when I keep it in my pocket, unlike most of my Revlon lipsticks, and so it keeps trying to break. I’m going to try to keep it in one piece this month, but if it breaks off does that count for making a dent?

That’s all 6, guys! Here’s a picture I took earlier today wearing all of the products. They don’t actually look that bad paired up together, although I don’t know if I’ll wear all of them together every time, especially the eyeshadows. And I’m definitely still trying to get the hang of gel liner - it got a little crazy today.

Also, sorry my hair’s a little ridiculous. I took these after coming inside from the cold, and I’d been wearing a hat. Here’s the hat in case you wanted proof:

It’s from Gap and was a Christmas present and it’s just so warm on my ears and super cheerful with all of its colors!

If you’re interested in joining Project Make-a-Dent, feel free to blog about it or even just tweet about it with or without photos on Twitter. Just make sure you include #projectmakeadent and @lolassecret so everyone who’s been participating can see your goals! 

We’ll see how these look by the end of the month! Let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter!

Yours,

Julia :)