Reviews: Lush Products

Lush is a company that makes handmade, organic cosmetics. I first discovered it when my family was in Illinois at the Mall of America and the Lush store was right next to the Lego store my littlest brother had been obsessing over. Needless to say I chose to forgo the Lego store and instead check out Lush. So glad I did!
Lush was amazing, the best smelling soaps I've ever encountered and everything was made from fresh, organic ingredients and wasn't tested on animals. All the products even have a sticker that tells you the first name of the person who made the product, when they made it, and when it expires. Yes, it expires, but that's because in lieu of all the chemicals other companies might use, Lush uses fresh products that of course eventually expire.
Most of the products I have last a bit longer than a year, and this isn't a ploy to get their customers to continually buy more once their products expire, Lush does this to inform their customers how to get the most out of their Vegan products.
Now I will talk about two of my favorites from Lush (I've only been there twice so I don't have a ton of experience).  Lush's Bubblegum Lip Scrub is ten dollars for under an ounce of product but trust me, it lasts a loooooong time. What you do is wet your lips, put the scrub on, rub your lips together, and then wipe off the extra scrub. Using this scrub always makes my lips very smooth and it tastes amazing!  You don't have to be worried about poisoning yourself with only SIX ingredients! I love this scrub it lasts thirteen months and I will for sure be renewing my purchase in June!
My other product is Marilyn Hair Treatment this is about twenty three dollars for eight ounces. This hair treatment is meant for people with natural or dyed blonde hair, you use it by covering dry hair in a thick coating of the liquid, and leaving it in for at least twenty minutes, then shampooing and conditioning as normal. I only have two complaints, one, I have extremely thick blond hair so it takes a lot of this treatment to cover all my hair, and two, it smells WEIRD.  I don't know what it is but I don't like keeping it for more than the twenty minutes because the smell gets to me! When I do use it, after showering my hair is super smooth and shiny, and (luckily) doesn't smell like the treatment!
So there it is, the two products I use most frequently from my favorite brands of cosmetics, they are more expensive then other cosmetics, but that's because they take care of what goes into their products and it's all organic. I wish more people would support these kinds of brands so hopefu
lly after reading this, you are influenced to check it out, (and you'll be glad you did!).

French tip with a twist

In a previous blog post I demonstrated a relatively simple method to create the popular, "french manicure", now that I am more familiar with this style I can create new designs to make it unique. In this particular blog I will use cheap, three dollar glitter to create a twist on the french manicure.
You will need a simple base coat, (I used China Glaze's "Awaken" as my base), silver glitter, (which you can get for three dollars at Walmart for a four ounce bottle), clear polish, and circular stickers, (the same kind I used in my blog "Easy French Manicure").
First I applied two coats of the China Glaze, letting my nails dry in between each coat.  To make sure that the stickers don't take off any of the nail polish I waited almost an hour before continuing.  So next up I took the circular stickers, and cut one in half.  Center the half circle on your thumb nail, and continue doing this for all of your nails.  If the first half circle doesn't completely cover your thumb nail don't worry about it!
With the clear polish paint the top of two nails, the part of the nail above the circular sticker.  Dip the first nail into your bottle of sparkles, don't go too deep submerging any part of your nail that is not the very top. Do the same thing to your second nail you put clear polish on. When you take your nails out, do so over a trash can or outside so you don't get those pesky sparkles everywhere; press down on the sparkles at the top of your nail and let it sit for a while.  After five or so minutes take the white tape off carefully, if doing this causes some of the nail polish to be taken off that means that your sticker was too sticky, and for your other nails you will want to put the sticker on your skin first before your nail to loosen it up a bit. Repeat these steps with your other nails.
When all the white tape has come off, shake your nails a bit and blow on them to get excess sparkles off. Once some extra sparkles have fallen off you can take your clear nail polish and paint one nail at time. Before you actually put nail polish on you will want to scrap off all sparkles not at the top of your nail first. Once you do that, (and it can take a while because sparkles are annoyingly sticky), you make small sweeps with clear polish, and check the brush for sparkles each time before you make any more so that you don't stick any sparkles to the bottom of the nail instead of keeping them all at the top. When you apply the clear polish to the top of your nail, put more emphasis on the top to make sure the sparkles are all "glued" in.
And there you go, you could also do this same thing without an base polish and I think it would look good!

More Creative Easter Eggs!

This blog is a continuation of my previous blog topic, "Creative Eggs" where I showed two unique types of eggs that you could make this Easter, the scuba diver egg, and the ninja turtle egg. Now I have two more for you, a polka dot sparkly egg, and the shaving cream egg.
Sparkly Polka Dot Egg:
You'll need: Elmer's glue, sparkles, and a hard boiled egg.
Steps:
1. Pour some sparkles into a small bowl
2. Put small, circular dabs of glue on the hard boiled egg in a simple pattern.
3. Hold your hard boiled egg by its top and bottom and carefully lower the egg into the sparkles, touching one circular spot of glue into the sparkles at a time, then rotating your egg and dabbing another spot of glue into the sparkles until all of the glue spots are covered.
4. To let your hard boiled, polka dot egg dry, place it back into the egg carton for about half an hour.
Shaving Cream Egg:
You'll need:  Cheap shaving cream, a couple of different colors of food coloring, a plastic container, and a couple of hard boiled eggs.
Steps:
1. Pour a thick layer of shaving cream into the plastic container.
2. With two or three colors of food coloring, put about five or less drops of food coloring into the shaving cream, and mix it up.  Don't put too many colors in or the shaving cream will turn into a brow/gray color.
3. Once you have your colors mixed up in the shaving cream, roll your hard boiled egg around in the mixture until your whole egg is covered with some cool swirls on it.
4. DO NOT rub off the shaving cream! pull your egg out of the shaving cream and place it either back into the egg carton or on some sort of drying rack with the shaving cream on it.
5. When the shaving cream has had time to dry a bit, (wait about an hour or so), you can take a paper towel and carefully, (dabbing), take off the shaving cream from the egg.
So there you have it, four ideas to spice up your egg decorating and make Easter a little bit more creative! :)

Creative Eggs

It is a tradition in my family to decorate Easter eggs the day before Easter every year.  Usually this consists of dipping eggs into water mixed with different colors of food coloring, but this year I decided to take some ideas from Pinterest and add some new material to the tradition! So here you go, some examples of some unique ideas that are easy to do and adorable around the house!
The Ninja Turtle Egg:
I've never been a big fan of Teenage Ninja Turtles, but when I saw this egg, I had to do it!
You need: Some embroidery string, (don't use black), green food coloring, water, a bowl, a sharpie, a hard boiled egg, and Elmer's glue.
Steps:
1. Pour some water into a bowl, and drops of green food coloring until you have a dark mixture.
2. Place your hard boiled egg into the bowl, and swirl it around with a spoon until the egg is green all over.
3. Take your egg and set it out to dry.
4. Use your glue and put a long line of glue on your embroidery string, with two fingers, spread the glue on the string.
5. Once your green egg is dry, take it and wrap the embroidery string around the egg so that the string is a circle around the egg that stays.
6. Now you can keep wrapping the string around the egg, using the first initial ring as the top.  Keep wrapping until you have a thick "band" around your egg.
7. Now you can create the eyes! With your sharpie, color two circles on the band around the egg, you can also draw a mouth.
8. Now you have your own Ninja Turtle egg!
Scuba Diver Egg:
When I saw this egg on Pinterest I knew I had to do it, the egg is so cute and easy to do, it definitely won the egg decorating contest at my house!
You need: a top of a bottle, two googly eyes, hot glue, tape, blue food coloring, scissors, construction paper, a hard boiled egg, and a bendy straw.
Steps:
1. Soak the bottom half of your hard boiled egg in water with blue food coloring in it for just a minute to create a faint blue coloring
2. Cut two small strips of construction paper out, about as long as your pinkie.
3. Tape the two strips of construction paper to opposite sides of your cap from a plastic bottle.
4. Tape the other ends of the strips of construction paper to the upper half of your hard boiled egg.
5. Hot glue two googly eyes to the plastic cap.
6.Cut the shorter side of your bendy straw by more than three fourths, this will be glued under the bottom side of your cap so make it short.
7. Cut the longer side of the straw also so that when you do glue it, your straw won't stick up to much from the top of the egg.
8. Now you can glue your straw, using hot glue, put a dab of glue right under your plastic bottle's cap, and place the straw under the cap, gluing it.
9. Now you have a scuba diver egg!

Ribbon and Washer Bracelet

This blog was loosely based on a pin I found, the washers were a bit bigger and the ribbon was a yellow/cream color that I thought didn't look interesting at all. Instead of a necklace, I decided to do a bracelet, but the concept can be applied to necklaces easily.
Materials:
-Small washers (whatever size you want)
-Ribbon (make sure that your ribbon will fit through the hole of your washers without folding too much)
Steps:
1. Take the end of your ribbon, (do not cut it from the rest of the ribbon because you don't know how much room you will need based on the size of your washers).
2. With a washer, take your ribbon and thread it from under your washer so that when you pull the ribbon it is on top of the washer. Move this washer down your ribbon to make room for the other washers.
3. With a second washer, take the end of your ribbon and thread it over the top of the second washer, now when you pull the end of the ribbon it will be under your washer.
4. Take the end of the ribbon and go back to your first washer, thread it back into the washer from above, and pull the end of your ribbon out from under the first washer while also pulling on the opposite side of the ribbon.
5. When you pull both of these ends your first two washers will be connected!
6. Repeat these steps, threading the ribbon through the second washer from below, and from the top on your third washer, then going back to your second and threading the ribbon from above it again. This will create the pattern, do not forget to pull tight the two ends of the ribbon each time you complete the threading of a new washer.
7. For my bracelet I threaded ten washers and left some room for the ribbon to be a part of the bracelet, and tie it off!

Comparing Pinterest and Project: Pearl String Bangle

I usually get my blog ideas from posts on Pinterest, but I like to change it up a bit and make my projects more original.  I've decided to do a "Comparing Pinterest and Project" blog post that will assess whether these Pinterest pins are as easy as they appear, and if I can replicate them.  I will do these comparisons posts once in a while to shake things up a bit.
I pinned this simple, four step bead/pearl stringed bangle because the results looked really interesting, and the pictures made the process seem like it was twenty minutes, tops...that is where I went wrong.
I was planning on using the cheap, silver bead necklaces you get on holidays, (Mardi Gras) or at games, but, neither Walmart nor Micheal's had anything like it. So I settled for a string of pearl-looking plastic beads that seem to be about the same size as the beads in the tutorial.  At Wa

lmart I found twenty silver bangles for five dollars, which seemed to be the same type of bangle in the tutorial pictures. 
With a hot glue gun I glued down the first pearl to a thin, flat bangle, and continued to glue down the pearls every three beads or so, which seemed like how it was done on Pinterest. I was a bit weary that the beads in between two glued down beads would slip off the bracelet, or move too easily. I decided that the string would probably do the job of securing the beads for me, so I didn't worry.

Once I had beads covering the entire bangle, (which only took about five minutes), I had some trouble with connecting the last bead to the first, it wasn't too much of a problem, but now the two beads are closer than any of the other beads on the bangle.
In the tutorial from Pinterest the amount of string they use seems to be pretty limitted, only a little ball of string appears to be used. I didn't think that this would be enough for my bracelet so instead I waited to cut the string from the bundle until the very end.
To start the string wrapping I hot glued the start of the string to the bottom of the bangle.  Then I wrapped as far to the left of the bead as I could, and moved like this to the middle, then to the right until I seemed to have a little triangle forming that covered the whole inside of the bangle.  After completing the space between the first to beads I once again moved to the far left of the next bead and repeated the process.  This part got a little annoying, I continually had to put all of my yarn through the bangle at least four times for each bead.  If I waited two or three wraps around the bangle to put the rest of my string through, the results often turned out haphazardly tangled. 
I was a bit misled by the four simple pictures of a tutorial that I found on Pinterest, my own project took about forty minutes, double the time I originally thought, but I do love how the bangle turned out.  It is very similar to the Pinterest model and I think that the white, pearly beads in exchange for the silvery ones make it look better!

Easter Nails

Since Easter is rapidly approaching, and I haven't done a blog about nails in a while, I decided to do an Easter-inspired nail tutorial!
Materials:
-three different kinds of nail polish, I used Essie's Fiji (pink), bikini so teeny (blue), and bond with whomever (purple.
-a pencil, with an eraser in tact
-a flat head pin
-black nail polish
Steps:
1. paint all nails the lightest color you have, for me, that was pink.  Do however many coats until the color is solid.
2. Wait until the base coat is dry, then, very carefully take one out of the two other colors you have and make a slightly curved sweep across the nail. Once you have done this, fill the rest of the top of the nail by making vertical brush strokes until the space is filled.
3. Do this to another nail, or all nails if you want
4. take the flat head pin the poke it through the eraser, now you have a makeshift doter tool!
5. to create the ears for the bunny, touch the head of the pin to the nail polish brush. You don't have to wait for the second color to be dry. Make the first dot at the height the ears will go to, and dot your way down, do the same for all other ears.
6. Clean off the doter and lightly touch the head of the pin to the black nail polish brush to make the eyes of your bunny, you don't want too much because then you will have a "bubble" on your nail and it will take a very long time to dry!
7. Make a dot at the top middle of your nail for the nose, then, using the side of the head of the pin, create the long, thin lines for the whiskers, repeat this to make thicker lines.
So a pretty simple tutorial, and all colors I used are pastels, (again staying in touch with the Easter spirit), and all of them I got at Ulta for about eight dollars. An even easier solution to using the pin for the eyes and whiskers is to buy a nail art pen, I have one by the brand of crayola that I found at Target.
Have a happy Easter!

Toothpaste Cap Art

In my blogs I've done a lot of "artsy" stuff...mostly involving crayons.  Well this blog is a brake from wax and results in the same creative results!
Materials:
-A toothpaste cap
-Any color of paint, (I prefer to use tempera paint)
-White paint
-A sheet or two of paper
-Small plastic container
- Clipboard
- Ruler and pencil
Steps:
1. Clean up your toothpaste cap so toothpaste won't mix with your paint
2. With your plastic container, put some paint in, not so much that it covers the entire bottom of your container, probably half that, (If you are using tempera paint, don't fear, the paint will wash out of your container)
3. Place your paper on your clipboard, and with your ruler and pencil, draw a faint straight line across the top of the paper so you won't start out a row of lopsided circles
4. dip your toothpaste cap lightly in your plastic container, then, with your finger or another circular object, sweep the inside of the cap to get rid of excess paint that will botch your design, sometimes when you pull the cap out of the container, the whole bottom is covered with paint, and, (like blowing bubbles), blow on this paint to "pop" the extra paint.
ALWAYS CHECK THE BOTTOM OF YOUR CAP BEFORE YOU MAKE THE CIRCLES
5. Now you can start creating your design, lightly "stamp" the first circle of your first row on your sheet, when you continue doing this, have a little space between each circle, do not overlap; if you ever form an open circle, just follow the pieces of the circle as best as you can, and stamp again!
6. After you have completed your first row, (which for me includes about eleven circles), drop about two drops of your white paint into the container, and mix, wipe off the toothpaste cap which includes residue from the previous row.
7. Every three rows or so it becomes necessary to pour out a bit of paint, because it becomes increasingly harder to change the color of paint with just the two drops from the white paint when the volume of the mixture increases constantly.
8. For me, I decided to use two sheets of paper to continue my pattern, and in that case i simply taped them together.
This is a fairly simple blog that I hope to expand on in the future, of course it is going to take me a long time to get enough toothpaste caps for six different colors I hope to use!!