Musings of a Muse

I’ve gotten quite a few messages over the last few days in regards to Urban Decay. Asking general questions, reviews, and such!

I think quite a few of you must be taking advantage of the sale and either participating in sprees or having cps done for you!

Either way if anyone has questions, needs a review, or close up pictures of products do go right ahead and message me, comment here, or e-mail and I’ll gladly provide you with a mountain of info in regards to Urban Decay!

I don’t only whore myself to MAC you know Urban Decay was my original crack! hehe!

The Muse wants to see your stashes! Gosh…that kinda sounds perverted…hmmm!

Oh well!

So…I wanna see YOUR collections! Show me your cosmetics, skincare, bath bits and bobs, etc…!

Send pics of your massive, little, tiny, huge, big, or giant stashes to musings.of.a.muse@gmail.com

I’ll be doing a blog entry with pictures of the collections I receive! You can send anything really it doesn’t matter the size of your collection, be it big, small, or massive!

I’m looking forward to viewing your pictures and sharing them with our other readers!

For some odd reason or another my cosmetics storage blog never made the move over from mySpace to blogger!

It’s gone and gotten lost! Oh my!

A few people have been asking after it on youTube so here it is!

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Hey guys!

Before I go to bed I wanted to post some quickie pics!

MANY MANY MANY of you asked about my storage cabinets and such after viewing my video blog and I wanted to do a few pics and some info about them!

Someone had asked if they were custom made, others messaged me asking where I got my draws, etc….!

So this is basically a blog answering everyone’s questions

Again, thanks so much for viewing this! I really just do it for my own entertainment and I’m utterly flattered when people actualy read what I type here!

Many of you also asked me what I do with cosmetics I’m currently not using! The videos I did are items I use mostly everyday! Anything I don’t use I store in rubbermaid bins in my closet! I have three, 4 draw bins in my closet that contain older palettes and make-up bits I’ve collected over my entire lifetime!

Sadly, some of these storage units will be unavailable to you in Singapore, Japan, Europe, Etc…but the good news is that some of the smaller stackable trays, containers, etc…are available on E-bay and I’m sure you can nab a deal or two!

Ok…So this little display unit is pretty funny! It’s actually a desk organizer! I converted it to a make-up organizer on my own! Basically you can store files, pens, papers, etc…in it! But I found a better use displaying my cosmetics on it! I purchased it off E-bay! If you search for shabby chic desk organizers or just desk organizers a few will pop up!

Stackable Trays! These are great for palettes, shadows, blushes, etc! I purchased these from the Container Store but they can be found just about anywhere! Helpful hint to locating them is look in the kitchen storage area! These should be laying around as they are normally used for organizing flatware! You can find these in virtually any home good store! They come in long sizes, smaller, and medium! The price here in the US ranges from $5.99 to $9.99 USD

A Happy Smaller Tray with Some MJ in it!

A Larger Tray with it’s tummy filled with Too Faced, Jill Stuart, MAC, and some Stila!

Here we are again with a desk organizer! I got this little guy off E-bay as well! Just go and type “desktop organizer” and you’ll have a ton of happy little organizers you can convert to make-up storage organizers! Yay! This one I particular love because it has two shelves and three little draws!

In this picture you can kinda see some of the little stackable containers I have! Caboodles makes these! They are sold in lots of three I THINK or maybe lots of two! They run about $9.99-$12.99 per lot! These are extra nice because they stack really neatly! I got these from Walgreens so when you guys do your next Walgreens “Spree” you can pick some up maybe!

See how neatly they stack!

This cabinet was purchased from the Lori Greiner Collection on QVC! I’ve seen these on E-bay so if you are serious about wanting to purchase one you can easily find it on E-bay! They aren’t cheap sadly! I purchased mine for $99 I THINK! But they are much higher on E-bay! Personally I believe they are worth the price! This basically swings open to reveal three trays on either side for make-up storage.

Opened!

Totally Opened!

Here’s some pics I grabbed from the QVC website for the storage unit! It’s available in three finishes which are oak, white, and chestnut!

This is irrevelant to cosmetics but I’d really just like to say that her storage units are amazing! I have many of the make-up organizers shes put out (which I’ll be showing you shortly) and I also have her jewelry armoire which I’m going to show right now! I couldn’t resist taking a pic of it because truly it’s such an amazing unit for storing your jewelry and such in! Her website can be located here, Lori Greiner, if anyone is interested!

Back to cosmetics storage hehe…

This next one is a spinning mirror vanity which is Lori Greiner as well purchased from QVC! I can’t really recall the price at the moment but again it was well worth it!

Photos I nicked off the QVC site:

My pics:

Next up…

These draws were purchased from the Container Store. The right side is an entire unit that is not detachable. It contains 10 small draws housed in one unit! The other larger drawers on the left are stackable units. They are one unit with three draws per a unit. You can store about 35 shadows per a draw so it’s really alot of storage! These cost $14.99 Each and the 10 Draw Unit is $39.99.

This guy is a mini wooden shelf I got off E-bay! If you search “wooden wall shelf” you’ll find alot of similar items that you can convert to cosmetic storage! You can’t see it but it’s rather deep and the pigments go back three rows!!!!

Top of the shelf!

These two units are also purchased in the container store! Not sure of the price!

And finally this is one of my favorite organizers! This is by Lori Greiner as well! I have 5 of these total! Some of them reside in my spare bedroom and some are in my bathroom! They are an amazingly great organizer! I believe they are $39.99 on QVC but I’ve seen them on E-bay for far lower! Have a sneak around and I bet you can nab a deal! I emptied one of them out because I wanted you to see how much room it has inside!

I hope I answered everyone’s questions about storage units and such!

For a youTube video of my storage solutions please check out the label MuseTV and it’s listed under there

PJ from A Touch of Blusher sent me this fantastic link!

I adore seeing how other people store products and just generally like to see what they have in their stashes! Dunno if this makes me nosy or curious!

This blog has some great pictures of vanities, stashes, and storage! When I view other girls stashes (why does that somehow sound perverted?!) I feel less lonely in my cosmetic ocean (without a life vest)!

Last week I had posted a blog about a lovely little lady, Eru, who had posted an awesome youTube video featuring some great Japanese brands!

In particular one item that was featured in the video were some rather interesting press eyeshadows from Eye Majic! At the time I had thought these were a Japanese brand but another lovely lady, Mag (Whom I just found out today has a gorgeous blog of her own! Do check it out as she has some great eye looks up that she’s done) pointed out these are from an Aussie based company and were featured on Oprah!

I was quite excited as that meant I wouldn’t need to go too crazy trying to locate these interesting little press shadows!

Some quick google searching located the shadows and I was able to purchase them from Mirenesse’s website! They don’t have all available colors but they do have a nice handful!

Well I guess basically the moral of the story is if you’re eyeshadow retarded these are the way to go!

Shadow application is a snap. It’s a no brainer obviously. The hard part comes when you are working with 2, 3, 4, 5, or more shadows. Blending is an art form that truly needs to be practiced and perfected! Even those who are trained at it sometimes screw up! Blending is what makes an eye look! If you can’t blend, you have nothing to work with. So..if you’re using a pink and a blue and you begin the application…you need you be able to blend these colors so they appear to merge together to create one look! You also need to avoid creating an entirely new color while blending

The purpose is to merge the colors while keeping them seperate not merge them so they become an entirely different color!

I know many girls that are unable to accomplish a good shadow look for their eyes and find it extremely difficult to apply. I’m ok with it. I love to dabble and I create some nice looks from my dabbling around. Some people don’t do so well in the dabbling department and would love an extra hand. Look no further. Here in lays the solution to your problem!

Eye Majic Eyeshadow Slides! Wahoo! A simple way of applying a highbrow color, a crease color, and a base lid color! Three shadows, one complete look, no difficult blending skills required!

How freaking cool is this? You’re excited I can tell!

So I got 7 of these slides and I haven’t yet tried them but I did see Eru’s nifty little video and they looked cool enough which in turn made me want to try these out! I don’t particularly have need of these because my blending skills are pretty good but I wanted to give these a whirl for quick looks!

Basically the general idea of these is slipping the slide onto your eye, sliding the color off, and blending with your fingertip! Done. Perfect eye color!

If you’re of Asian descent you’ll be happy to know these work perfectly on exotic Asian eyes! My mate tried one and she looked positively adorable! Sadly, she refused me to take her pic! Sorry girls!

She applied it herself and did her own fingertip blending so I can’t say how the texture is on these or ease of application but this isn’t brain surgery so I think we should be ok!

As I was saying I got 7 slides and the colors are quite interesting! They range from light pastels to some nice darker evening looks! The one she ended up using was a smoky eye one which is in the picture below! All in all for about $2 per a slide it’s a bit on the costly side for one look…but if you’re not so great with a brush this is your easy escape to an interesting eye look!

I’ll follow up with a review after I’ve used my first slide for now I leave you with some interesting photos of these unique little shadows!

Enjoy!

I’m a true girly girl in ever sense of the word! I love cosmetics, I love bath products, I love new shoes and gorgeous clothes, I love all girly bits and bobs! Anything that’s pink and shimmers is always appealing!

The extent of my girly nature ends when it comes to doing my nails! I’m a big time nail biter! I bite my nails constantly! It’s a terrible habit that’s difficult to break! Not only is it terrible but it’s down right disgusting!

This weekend I went away a few days with some friends and decided that I’d get all glam and do my nails. The good news is that it made my chubby little fingers look long and lean. The bad news is it drove me nuts all weekend trying to relearn how to use my hands with such long nails on the tips!

Last night, after getting home, I began the intricate surgery of removing these bloody things! It obviously wasn’t going to be an easy procedure so I went to bed very unhappy!

This morning I came to work with what remained of these nails on and promptly sat in the washroom for the better part of the last 30 minutes popping them off one by one because I am unable to work with these freaking things on!

I give huge kudos and props to those of you who are able to function day to day with long nails! As for me I’ll stick to my bad habits and keep chomping away at the bit…!

Hello there!

I have quite a few fans on youTube that really enjoy my videos (Why they do is beyond me but thanks guys!)! These girls really have some incredible ideas for new video blogs that they want to see!

Someone had a special request for Must Have Beauty Staples! Items that I love, adore, and generally always have on hand!

This is a video blog of some of those items!

I hope you all find it helpful in adding additions to your must have items!

Many thanks for the great ideas!

If you have a suggestion for a video do comment and let me know what you’d like to see!

MuseTV Presents: A Special Request of Must Have Beauty Items

Those lucky enough to live in California were able to partake of the pagan ritual (I’m kidding it isn’t pagan but sometimes the general idea of a huge cosmetic sale and a buncha girls running to grab everything they can could possibly appear cult like to the non cosmetic whore) of this sale were able to nab some AMAZING deals! We hate you all, ever last stinking one of you (I’m kidding of course but damn I love drama)!

Sigh. Now that I’ve expressed my dislike for people that got super deals at this sale I shall go on

Well, the bad news is I wasn’t able to nab any of the deals as I wasn’t anywhere near California during this massive sale! They had palettes for $8 bucks each!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! $8 bucks???! That must be illegal in some states!

God, I’m so depressed right now.

Anyway, the good news is that some of the palettes were pretty rare and although people paid far less for them during the warehouse sale it’s obvious they’ll end up on E-bay for heaps more!

But in a way that’s good news for the avid collector because if you happened to have either never nabbed these palettes before or want to add something special to your existing Stila collection now is a good time to search on E-bay and see what sort of deals you can nab!

I’ve seen the following deals:
Spring Trio Duos for $19.99 which were originally $25 (They probably paid $8-$12 for it but still that’s a good deal at $19.99)
Wicked Special Edition Kits ranging from $19.99-$24.99 (Can’t recall the original price of these but they have been long gone and they are now popping up all over E-bay)
Spring Ephemeral Trio for $34 (I was just asking my lovely mate Haru about this and now several have popped up on E-bay! These are going for about the original price they were in Asia which isn’t a bad deal at all in my humble opinion! During the sale these went for $8 but I still think $34 for the palette is quite the steal)
Various Stila Girl Trio Shadows Ranging from $9.99-$14.99 (Can’t really recall the original price of these but at these prices that’s a deal as well)!

Many deals are to be had on E-bay and even though some people are profiting from the sale (Hey it’s a dog eat dog world I guess!) I still think it’s great to nab some good deals at the moment as many of these items are difficult to find at the moment and now the market is saturated with great vintage Stila!

I wandered over to visit my little friend Eru’s blog on myspace and she had thee most awesome youTube video up!

I don’t wanna steal her thunder and post her video here so if you’d like to see it visit her blog here.

Many brands I’ve done blogs on are featured in the video! You have to be sure to watch the complete video because at the end they feature awesome press on shadow! Now I’ve seen press on before and I can even get some here from Cargo! But these are amazing as they contain not 1 color but 3!

The Japanese are so innovative in all things and something as mundane as press shadow that has three shades just flips me out! Really a cool product!

If you aren’t familiar with press shadow here are ones that Cargo has released about two years ago or so:

Now the general idea of the color cards from Cargo are beauty simplicity at it’s best! However, this isn’t nearly as simple as the press shadows featured in the video! The Cargo cards are meant to be used with a brush or a fingertip! The ones in the video take this a step further by allowing you to press them onto your eye area, slip them off, blend with your finger tip a bit and PRESTO! gorgeous shadow!

This, my friends, is why Japanese brands get my money a majority of the time! Superb!

Do check it out and if you have a myspace account I’m sure Eru would appreciate your comments about whatcha think!

‘ello ‘ello friends!

Sleep is at the pub(I made that up! We don’t have pubs in New York! Pssstttt… Jonny doesn’t believe it but I’m trying to convince him! Help a girl out! Tell him yanks don’t do the pub scene!). Sleep is……..at the drug store picking up some beer for me, oh my I made that up too as I don’t drink! Wait wait a good excuse will come to me soon!

Pause for effect…………………………………….

Sleep is playing strip poker with Tammie and her juicy nipples! Wow…those of you who have no idea who Tammie is or her juicy nipples may have stumbled onto more than you bargained for! Eep ….I’m bracing myself for the family and friend phone calls tomorrow morning! Oh my how very unladylike of me to say juicy and nipples in the same sentence! And to think this originally started out in my feeble mind as being a blog about cosmetics! Oh brother!

I swear blogging is alot like talking to yourself. It’s all rather calming! I imagine as long as I don’t answer myself back I should be safe from the and the little men in white suits and all that stuff!

Oh..I am babbling aren’t I?

What was this about again……..

OH yes! I remember now!

Face of the Day Picture!

Without further delay I bring to you a new look:

What I Used:
Bare Minerals Glimmer in 2000 on Highbrow
Bare Minerals Glimmer in Bloom on Lid
Bare Minerals Glimmer in Azure in Crease
My Trusty MJ Mascara

Super simple one! It came out crap because I rushed it and just wasn’t into doing it! I normally put most of my heart into creating the looks but today I was just feeling tired! It came out alright for something rushed and done in a sloppy manner though!

Suggestions, Comments, Questions? My little ears are perked and at the ready!

I got around to using my #227 brush! Which is a freaking gem! I have to thank Leesha for that rec! She’s always saying how great the brush is in her you tube tutorials that I caved and purchased it! Holy cow! Great brush! I normally use the #224 or the #217but I think the #227 can possibly take over both of those brushes in my beauty arsenal! It’s really quite a little multitasker! Strongly suggest you grab one for yourself!

Most expensive brush in my collection. Why you ask? Because I freaking had to buy it twice!!!!!!!!

Funny story about the brush….I popped over to Macy’s to buy it after I left work the other day. So I’ve been sorta shit this week and I was just doing a quick run for the brush! I got there and my lovely boy Deanie (I guess gay men can get away with names like Deanie don’t ask me I dunno! I love him so lay off!) got me the brush! So I shell out my money…$32 bucks and change! Good price for a killer brush like this! I leave the store and I’m walking down 42nd Street and passing along Herald Square and I notice the bag feels freaking light. I dropped the bloody brush. Gone. Finished! Disappeared! I retraced my steps all the way back to the bloody MAC counter and didn’t find it! Some lucky girl is blending her heart out with my brush! I hope whoever found it is enjoying it! Anyway, to make a really long story short I ended up buying a new one! So this is probably the most expensive freaking brush in my collection! I’ve spent $55 on a brush, I’ve spent $30, I’ve spent $25, but never freaking $65 plus dollars! Oh lord! Someone shoot me in the forehead and put me out of my misery!

Anyway I’m babbling….I believe sleep hasn’t come home yet…damn Tammie and her nipples…..

I shall watch my telly until it decides to drag it’s sorry arse home! I’m putting my foot down this time! When it comes home I am not letting it out of my site for a good long while!

I’d like it to be known I’m a snobbish bitch. Yes I am and quite proud of my little self too!

Today’s rant is about E.L.F.

Pray tell, who the hell buys (or even thinks about) buying cosmetics that cost a $1? This is WRONG in so many ways! WRONG WRONG WRONG!

When you’re 12, 13, or 14 years old you have an excuse to purchase make-up that costs a dollar but when you’re in your older teenage years and into your twenties the excuses have RUN out!

If you’re buying $1 cosmetics it’s probably best just to strike a match and burn your money.

Get ye a job and stop buying cheap make-up for the love of god and all things holy!

Rant over.
That is all.

A friend of mine had mentioned this to me in an e-mail this weekend and it’s quite the most exciting news I’ve ever had the pleasure of spreading!

They have put it on their blog and I was just reading the details with feverish excitement!

The blog they posted has predicted that if it is released in the US the pricing might be slightly lower than it would be in Japan and truly I couldn’t be more excited to 1. Have local access to Jill Stuart Beauty Items and 2. Have them at a cheaper price!

Happy Days!

I leave you with pretty Jill Stuart Porn from my Collection:

Happiness is the perfect shade of blush!

Gorgeous isn’t it? It’s on the top of my must have list! Just the name makes me wriggle in excitement!

Bare Minerals Fruit Cocktail Blush