Wide Headbands

I've been on a hunt for some new headbands to wear, and found a few blogs with great tutorials on making your own fabric headbands! I also found this gal on etsy who sells ones similiar. If you check out her facebook, she currently has a free shipping code!

Wide headband

Flat headband with buttons

Brazen Cosmetics: My one true love

Yippie! My latest Brazen order finally arrived! It was packaged up in a tiny box with cute red tissue paper. I ordered lipglosses during the 3/$11 deal on facebook in Muse, Conflict, Heiress. I also picked up Make Out, sample packs of the Valentines Day eyeshadow collections (one of which is now part of Brazen's regular line because they were so popular!)

More goodies! Sandi included a solid perfume version of my favorite perfume from her, Coca cupcake! It smells delicious. I wear this on an almost daily basis, it's a very comforting and foody scent.

Eyeshadow samples! The sample sets come packed up seperately in their own little baggies with stickers!

As always, the ingredients are all listed on the products; even on sample baggies! Cocoa Loco is one of Brazen's lip scrubs, it smells like chocolate and is delicious! I'll admit to tasting some when scrubbing my lips earlier.

Sandi scent me a sample of her popcorn scent with my last order, so I asked to try some of her little soaps in the scent. It's a really strange scent, I mean, I first thought "Who want's to smell like popcorn?" It's quite interesting, there's a mixture of both sweet and salty with a buttery undernote...yumm. The tiny size works out well too, I can just use 1-2 with each shower. The other sample is of her Cinniamon bun scent, which of course, smells EXACTLY like fresh baked cinnamon buns!

More beautiful packaging for the perfumes I ordered.

I ordered 5 perfumes; Choco Mallow, Chocolate Chip Cookie, Hella Vanilla, Girly Girl, Strawberries & Champagne and Sandi threw in Pecan Pie!

Now onto the swatches! These are all swatched over Hi-Fi's primer.

Top to bottom, L to R: Last Call, Vixen, Miss Independent, Tease, custom color

Row 2: Be Mine, True Love, Cutie Pie, For Ever

Row 3: unnamed, Vague, upcoming blush

With Flash: Last Call, Vixen, Miss Independent, Tease, custom color, Be Mine, True Love, Cutie Pie, For Ever
 

 

No flash

My favorites of the bunch are For Ever, Vixen, and Tease! Have you ordered from Brazen lately, or are now planning to? If you haven't already joined the facebook page, check it out! There's weekly deals on all kinds of products (including FB only stuff), and posts/teasers about upcoming products.

I have lots of FOTDS to do, lipgloss swatches and scent descriptions for all the perfumes, so expect another upcoming post on Brazen!

Evil Shades Order

I placed two orders with Evil Shades a couple of months ago during sales they were having. After waiting a little under a month for my orders which were shipped together, I contacted Andrea about it. She *very* kindly reshipped both my orders, and it arrived today! Thanks again, Andrea! :)
Shipping took a little under two weeks to reach Canada. I still have not received my other package. Lately i'm beginning to think there is something wrong with the post office; mail has been even slower than usual (almost like holiday shipping time) and i'm still waiting on quite a few packages. Anyway, I want to once again say how great Evil Shades' customer service is, and Andrea herself.

With flash, from L to R: avens blush, day dream blush, love bites blush, ravishing blush, seraphic, succubus, errinye, neritic, valkyries, drakon, souls torment, cerebus, xanthus, gryphon, acolyte, moirae, suffocation, mordant

No flash

Avens Blush - peach with a pink shift

Day Dream Blush - golden shimmer

Love Bites Bush - coral shimmer

Ravishing Blush - bright coral

Seraphic - bright pink

succubus - orange/pink with a pink shift

Errinye - copper with shimmer

Neritic - peach with gold shimmer

Valkyries - matte light pink

Drakon - bronzed grey

Souls Torment - purple with aqua shimmer/sparkle

Cerebus - strong copper with hot pink sparkle

xanthus - chocolate brown

Gryphon - brown with pink highlights

Acolyte - forest green with lots of sparkle

Moirae - bronze, more brown that Drakon

Suffocation - pink with a blue shift! This is the lipstick Bane as a shadow

Mordant - dark purple with pink sparkle

Forest Pixie

Smokey green FOTD for today, I went out shopping with some girlfriends to celebrate our last exam! I am off for a week, so expect a lot of posts from me this upcoming week. I also want to mention that once I reach 100 fans I'll be hosting a giveaway! Now, I want to ask, what would you prefer for a giveaway? Just makeup, or a mixture of some makeup and handmade items?

Sort of a quick eye, I only used three eyeshaows to get this look.

Eyes: Brazen Ice Queen, Twisted,Defiant

Face: Brazen Perfect 10 blush, Hi-Def finishing powder
Lips: Brazen Hype lipgloss

Fairy Cowl

In between studying today, I made this cowl after eyeing one on etsy which costed a small fortune. Spring will soon be around the corner (hopefully) and I wanted a lighter scarf to wear. It's lightweight and soft, very easily to mold into different styles and could be worn with the one or two buttons.

It's basically a large rectangle; you'd need around 1/2 a yard of two different colors of fabric. I made the inside a plan dark green to match the pretty fabric on the front. Basically you cut out a large rectangle, (my dimensions were 15 1/2  inches for the Length and 11 inches for the height) and pin the two pieces together so the pattern, or the "good" side is on the inside. Sew it together, leaving a hole at one of the corners so you can easily flip it inside out. Flip it out and iron the piece, then do some top stitching and sew up that corner. I followed this tutorial on how to make the buttonholes because my machine doesn't have the option to make buttonholes. I then sewed two large buttons on the other side, which were purchased from Oruaka on etsy. If you're looking for fantastic wooden buttons for your next project, or some handmade wooden jewlery I would look into his store! All of his items are handmade with a super soft finish.

Tyropita

I just got back from dinner at my once again mentioned favorite local resturant, Park Towers. It's very home-y and a family type diner. I ordered the chicken souvlaki pita (one of my favorites) and tried these for the first time tonight. Tyropita is a greek layered pastry, made with layers of buttered phyllo pastry and a feta cheese-egg mix. I've been in love with feta cheese since eating my first Greek salad a few years back, and this is no exception! I love phyllo pastry, and combined with feta it's really delicious. It reminds me a bit of Ukrainian nalysnyky, although my mom/grandma used to make nalysnyky crepes as more of a desert food. Anyway, if you like feta cheese and flakey phyllo pastry, you might want to try this! It would make a good snack dish for parties, too.

Here's a recipe I found which I will be trying this weekend!

• 2 pounds of feta cheese, drained of any excess liquid and crumbled.
• Lemon zest
• Spinach (optional. Adding spinach makes these spanakopita)
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 or more cubes of butter
• 1 pound of phyllo pastry sheets. Completely thaw the phyllo in the refrigerator and in its packaging if it was frozen.

 If you've made baklava before, it seems pretty similiar. You can make the tyropita in a large pan like baklava, or in individual pieces similiar to making perogi (which would be more time consuming but I think better, as I love flakey baked phyllo)

 

 

Yet another neutral FOTD

My aunt is in town, and we are going out for supper tonight for greek food. This has been a very hard week; my aunt was diagnosed with lung cancer which metastasized to the liver in early August, right before I started school. We just found out over the weekend it has now spread to her brain. Tomorrow morning she has a gamma knife scheduled, and the rest of her chemotherapy and treatment is dependent on how what happens tomorrow. I wrote two exams this week, and have my last on Friday to write. I received an email earlier this week from an instructor saying a paper I wrote isn't legible to her, so I had to re-write it this afternoon. Not a good week at all. I am off next week and am hoping to relax and de-stress before beginning my second year of nursing.

 

Eyes: Brazen Ice Queen, Fyrinnae Polar Bear, Fyrinnae Half-elf Hottie, Fyrinnae Druid Werewolf, Brazen Defiant
Face: Brazen foundation in Amber, Sobe Botanicals in Icing on the Cake, Brazen Hi-Def finishing powder

Lips: Brazen La Femme lipgloss

Here's a better shot of my pashmina! I picked this up when I was in Toronto last year. I love the colors. I'm really excited to hopefully be going back to Toronto in the summer time for a vacation.