I first heard about
Clinique Full Potential Plump and Shine lip gloss over at
Beauty Marked, a super site for beauty news. According to Clinique, these glosses not only make your lips look plumper, but also, if you use the gloss consistently over a period of a couple months, your lips will actually become (or appear) more smooth and plump on their own, with or without the gloss on. It's like getting the effects of Botox without the cost and painful injections.
It's all the rage in Hollywood right now, and every celeb has a favorite shade picked out. Nicky Hilton and Rosario Dawson have nabbed
Cherry Bomb, a golden pink, as their favorite shade, while Michelle Trachtenberg (a.k.a "The Key") went for a deeper shade with
Voluptuous Violet. New mom of twins Marcia Cross picked
Glamour-Full, a gingersnap shade to complement her red hair.
After seeing all these celebrities endorse these glosses, of course I had to check these out for myself. The colors are all made to suit any skin tone , you can't really pick a wrong shade here. My favorite of the bunch is
Braisin, a gorgeous blend of bronze and raisin colors. It's perfect for summer and I love how easily it makes me look awake (which by itself, is a difficult task these days). I don't even need a lipliner or any other lipstick underneath it, I just swipe it on, put on blush and mascara, and I'm ready in two minutes. If you're a fan of plum lip colors, you've got to try this shade.
Now, the test. Does it really make your lips look plumper? Well, for the first 10 mintues, it feels like you're wearing Blistex or Burt's Bees balm on your lips, there's a light tingling feeling you get from it. To be more accurate, it's the feeling you get after eating really spicy chili peppers
(been there, done that, the food was so worth the pain). Then the tingling disappears and your lips swell up, making you look like a smooth lip gloss diva.
The magic is over once you wash it off with soap and water. So far, I haven't used it long enough to see if it will make my natural lips look like Angelina Jolie's, but for the time you wear it, it does make your lips
appear to be big and glossy. Check it out at
Nordstrom for $17.50.
like the best is Lancome's Precision Point ARTLINER ($27.00). It's like using a fine point Sharpie to line your eyes, and it's much easier to use than those feathery wand type things you have to dip in a tube and carefully draw over your lashes. I hated those things. I always ended up drawing the line too big or too crooked. Oh, and top ONLY the upper lashes with MAC Prolash Mascara, the best hands down mascara I've ever used. Putting mascara on lower lashes is unnecessary if you've already lined them with eyeliner.
....and again! 
I've been wanting to color my hair jet black like Salma Hayek's for a long time. For years, every time I've gotten my hair colored or highlighted, it's been for a shade lighter than my natural dark brown hair. I've had caramel highlights, red highlights, I even had it colored J.Lo blonde once with disastrous results. I don't know how the Beyonces and J.Lo's pull the "tan skin with blonde hair" look off, I can't do it.
So $9.99 later, I got my hair color from CVS. The application was a little drippy, and I permanently stained my bath mats with spots of black dye, but after two days, the color finally came through in my hair. This stuff really works, and most of all, it's made my hair less dull and more shiny in appearance.
once this color wears off, I'm going to try the shade Keri Washington wears, Espresso. For under $10 bucks, it's cheap enough to try without breaking the bank. Although next time, I'm going to remember to cover my bath mats with some newspaper. The dye may be cheap, but the mats, not so much.
