UD Naked Palette: GET ON THE LIST!

Hello Ladies,

Today just got a whole lot better. Remember this post about UD Naked Palette being slightly redesigned and released? Well looks like Urban Decay had kept their word and started contacting people who put their names on the list to be notified when Naked Palette becomes available. How do I know you might ask? Because I was one of those people who put my name on the list :) And I just got an email few minutes ago. And I also ordered me a Naked Palette!

As you can see only those people on the list are able to purchase the palette, and probably not even all of them but some. So I would say it is worth putting your name on the list, since looks like UD will be contacting those people first. Or you can just wait until new Naked Palette hits the stores, whenever that will be.

From the image it looks like I will be getting one of the old Naked Palettes (without a brush), and I only paid $44 instead of $48, but I honestly don't care. I want the eye shadows, and everything else I already have from different brands.

Are you on the list? Or will you plan on waiting till it appears in stores again?

~ Lyuba

Trendsetting in Tokyo Looks

Hello Ladies,

My mood is a little better and I've finished cropping my photos, so to celebrate such an occasion I will do a double post today!

I finally put aside Stila's Moscow travel palette and naturally picked up the Trendsetting in Tokyo since I'm obsessed with almost everything Japanese. I will do an actual review tomorrow, but for now here are some looks I created with this palette in the past few days.

Yup, that's the same hat as seen in my flapper makeup look

Friday: 
First time I picked up the palette and was pretty excited about trying it... but I wasn't so excited about actually using it. I am not really happy with this look, but my makeup buddies at work liked it quite a lot so maybe I'm too hard on myself?

Used the cheek color here, I think it's pretty natural looking

Saturday: 
Since the colors were not applying as well as I hoped for, I decided to go for a simpler look by only using the lightest colors in the palette. I added a little bit of black for the accent. Again, it turned out MEH :(

Sunday: 
This is my favorite look but it also took the longest to create. I'm not very fast in putting makeup anyway, but with this it felt like it took FOREVER! The color just wouldn't blend! Not a good thing in my book. 

So what do you think? Should I keep trying to come up with looks that work using this palette?

~ Lyuba

Meet My Kitties: Mittens and Echo

Hello Everyone,

I'm feeling a bit down today for no apparent reason, enough to not want to do anything makeup related :( I've been trying to edit photos for couple of posts for a few days now to no apparent progress too. So in order to cheer myself up, I will talk about something that makes me very happy, aka my kitties. :)

Echo & Mittens, 3 and 4 mo old

 
Be warned, the post is very IMAGE HEAVY :) 

How I Choose Which Blogs to Follow

Hello Ladies,

I've been thinking about this for past couple of weeks, namely about how I choose which blogs to follow.  I usually make a point to check out the blogs that other people follow, but I do not always end up liking what I see.

The information below is what I look for in a blog, what I enjoy reading about and by no means is intended to offend anyone.

Shamelessly using my lovely readers as an example ;P 

When I come across the blog I might possibly like, I read it, and read it, and read it. The "older posts" button becomes my friend for a while, and when I get tired of reading I either click or don't click the "follow" button. Here is what I look for:

Overall look/design
Obviously this is the first thing I look at because I like to read the content, instead of getting distracted by the design, or my personal pet peeve... the ADs! And I'm not talking about little banners off to the side, that just sit there and don't interfere with the content, no I'm talking about those 90%-off-day-in-London ads smack in the middle of the blog. I don't know if they show up by themselves, or some bloggers sell space for  those ads but I find them extremely annoying. And distracting. Or blog clutter, when excessive features are used. There is one blog that always shows up when I google any new US drugstore products, it's great to read an occasional review but I will NOT follow it because it's pretty much has everything I listed above (I don't remember what's the name of it, so can't point to it nor do I really want to). Overall I like a somewhat minimalistic design in blogs, but not always. For everyone it is going to be different, but as long as I can read the blog and not get distracted I am happy. 

Jump breaks
I could have put this one under the overall design, but I hate jump breaks so much that I feel they deserve their own  category. I feel that the use of jump breaks sometimes is ok, I use them myself for exceptionally long posts with lots of pictures. But several times I came across blogs that use jump breaks in every single one of their posts. Did I mention that I like to read pages after pages of blog before I follow it? Then imagine my frustration when I have to open up every single post to read it! Or open it in a different tab so I can read it. Then press the back button so I can go back to the blog. And more often than not I accidentally close the tab instead of hitting the back button because I'm so used to having lots of tabs. So when I see an excessive use of jump breaks, I do not even bother with reading the blog. I'm gone probably never to come back again.

Content
Easily the most important part of the blog, although I will not follow the blog regardless of the content if items above do not appeal to me. It is also probably the most personal and different thing for anyone out there. What I like to see and read in blogs is not going to be the same for everyone. I like reading reviews and tutorials, I also love to see FOTD/EOTD posts. I stay away from blogs primarily about nail polishes, because I can't relate to those much (I have gel nails, so I don't use nail polish a lot). I don't like blogs that only post about upcoming products but never actually review any of them. Or ones that have bad photos.

Shall we talk about photos now? Very briefly of course, because there are volumes written about good photos. It is essential to have good photos in a beauty blogger world, something I struggle with myself. So if the photos are terrible (come on, crop tool IS your friend you know) most of the time, I usually don't want to look at them... or the blog. 

I also don't like V-blog, I much prefer photos because I can't make myself sit still through the video. But that's again a personal preference. 

Proper use of punctuation, grammar and capital letters is also a must. I've seen couple of blogs that look like they are written by someone who never even heard about above things. Come on, start your sentences with a capital letter! Is it too much to ask? Maybe I am not the one talk, considering that English is not my first language but maybe I am. Because I still put an effort into what I write, sometimes more than native speakers.

These might not seem like a lot of requirements, but I feel they are very important (at least to me).

So what do you think? Am I being too picky or too demanding? Do you have anything YOU look for in the blog that I didn't mention?

~ Lyuba

EOTD: 3 Looks from Moscow

Hello Ladies,

I've been playing with Moscow palette again. Instead of doing a separate post for every look I decided to group them all together. So get ready for LOTS of photos :)

Monday: 

I wanted to try something different and I think I've failed. Shouldn't have used Matryoshka on the brow bone, it doesn't look beautiful or right. But lesson learned, and I won't do that again.