by Jessica Dawn

Let's talk mascara. I am in love with the L'Oreal Telescopic Carbon Black Mascara. I also love the Voluminous Carbon Black mascara, but it's a little difficult to work with, which prompted me to pick up the Telescopic mascara in the Carbon Black line. The Carbon Black line is exactly what it sounds like - meant to be a super black mascara, more than usual. The telescopic does not disappoint in this. I think it's even blacker than the Voluminous. To compare these two, the Voluminous is a volumizing more dry formula with a dense bristle wand, while the Telescopic is a lengthening, wet formula with a plastic applicator. (They do have a Telescopic mascara that isn't Carbon Black if you find the Carbon Black mascaras too black, like if you have lighter eye lashes.) Hopefully you can see from the above photo that this wand is a little different. It's a plastic applicator that has four sides. On each of the corners, it has the little spikes that a normal wand ...

I have been loving light nail polishes lately. I will fully admit that it has something to do with how horrible the tips of my fingers and nails look from playing guitar so much. I'm keeping them super short right now and they get so dry. (Does anyone have a good solution for this?) So I think dark polish looks a little silly on my nails, at least right now. Enter light polishes. Okay, so only one of these is actually a polish. The other three are what L'Oreal is calling, Magic Top Coats. These are, from left to right, Wishful Pinking, The True Diamond, The Matte Velvet, and The Shift Me. The swatches below (excuse my awful looking nails) are two coats of Wishful Pinking, one coat of The True Diamond on top of Wishful Pinking, one coat of The Matte Velvet on top of Wishful Pinking, and two coats of The Shift Me by itself. I love how light polishes give a more natural look to your nails but don't leave you feeling naked, and these ones are all really great, especially f...

This look is using L'Oreal's Infallible shadow in Smoldering Plum. I had heard these were decent shadows for a drugstore brand and thought I'd pick one up. This was a really nice shimmer plum color and it has great pigmentation. If you haven't noticed by now, I like eye shadow palettes versus single shadows, so I'm not sure I would try another shade. However, if you're looking for a single shadow that's not too expensive, I would recommend this one. It's just a really versatile shadow with great payback. For this look, I combined this shadow with a couple others from the Naked2 palette. Step 1: Apply YDK (from the Naked2 palette) all over the lid. Step 2: Apply L'Oreal Infallible Smoldering Plum precisely in the crease. Start by creating a line where your crease is. Then slowly start blending that up. If the original line gets blurred, go back and create that defined line. Just blend more and more as you work ...