100th post giveaway!

In honor of my 100th post here on this blog, I decided to do a giveaway for all of my followers! It's my way to say thank you for tagging along on this adventure. I decided to give away a $25 e-giftcard to Urban Decay's online shop, one of my most favorite makeup brands. I've fallen for their highly pigmented eye shadows that grace my face nearly every day ~*le sigh*~

I'm using Rafflecopter to help me orchestrate this event, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. The most important thing to be entered in the giveaway is to be following my blog. I've added multiple ways to enter too! As long as you have access to Urban Decay's online shop, you can enter; so international entries are welcomed! The giveaway will end on Saturday, February 9th. I'll announce the winner here soon after and they'll receive an email from me with the e-giftcard!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Again, thank you so much for supporting my blog! It's something I'm passionate about, but it'd be nothing without you lovelies :)

TTFN

OOTD: If I could...

If I could dress this nice every day for school, I totally would. As much as I love my major, this semester I'm taking pottery; probably the messiest class I'll be taking, leaving me no choice but to wear sweats to school. In spite of that, I could still see this as my future career. Other than being messy (which can be resolved once I get better at it) There's no way I could wear a skirt or a dress at the wheel--at least if I want to remain ladylike. On the days I don't have pottery I take full advantage of the fact that I will not be covered in mud :) I wore this for my school's club fair. I'm on eboard for three clubs so club fairs are always a juggling act. Lots of fun though!

D E T A I L S :

• Coat - Burlington Coat Factory
• Dress - H&M
• Leggings - H&M
• Boots - Urban Outfitters
• Scarf - Thrifted
• Belt - Gift

There are so many things I love about this outfit. Full of little details but still pretty simple, I think. I got this dress for $10 with a gift card I got for Christmas. I absolutely adore the back cut out with the little pearl fasten. I'm also wearing my favorite boots that I've had for three years now. I think they're starting to show their age, though. 

M A K E U P :

• UD's primer potion
• UD's Deluxe Shadow Box palette - Peace
• UD's Dangerous palette (2nd edition) - Evidence
• Foundation
• Liquid Liner
• Tarte Amazonian Clay Blush - Flush

I'm so excited for this to be my 99th post! Stay tuned for the 100th because I decided to make it a giveaway :D 

TTFN! <3

-Avé

Geeking out over pottery here

Yesterday was my first day of school and I just wanted to take a moment to express how excited I am for pottery class. Honestly I feel like Spongebob. My enthusiasm for learning is UNPARALLELED. lol really though, I thought about it all throughout break. I love making functional items and I can really see this as a fulfilling career for me.

The first class was intended to be just an explanation of the expectations for the class, hand out the syllabus, and that'd be that. BUT my professor being as awesome as the people in the studio have been saying, she hung around and did a demo for those of us who didn't leave early. After she left, I was pretty intimidated by the wheel. One of my friends gave me a little push to just try it, so I did. The clay flung off a couple of times but he showed me one more time what to do and really guided me. As a result, I successfully made my first cylinder!

Everyone around the studio is super helpful and nice and just awesome. They make it a great atmosphere for learning so I really lucked out. Tomorrow I'm hoping to put in a few hours of practice; looking forward to it!

BTW, this is the sweater I got from the thrift store when I went ugly sweater shopping with fiancé. It's groovy yeah? I'm in the hand building room waiting for my health class to start since pottery 2/3 is happening next door. I was going to go to the radio station for my office hours but I'm locked out ~*le sigh*~ I probably wont get opportunities like this once the semester is in full swing.

Side note: I had the most vivid dream that I was showing with Yayoi Kusama at a gallery and we were hanging out and just having a jolly good time. My dream was probably not an accurate portrayal of her personality but whatevs. I found out about her recently through my art history class last semester so her work has been on my mind. Best dream ever.

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Anyways, here's to a productive semester filled with mugs!
TTFN!<3
- Avé

P.S. Post #100 is right around the corner, I think I'll be doing a give away :3

Tune in: "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat Wanz

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Genre: Alternative hip hop, comedy hip hop
First Listen: Yesterday
Released: August 2012
Found out through: My sister
Listen to this while you: sift through racks at the thrift store

This song has already hit KC101 (our local clear channel radio station; i.e. Z100 for you NYC folk) and I don't even care; this song is effing awesome. My sister was hesitant to show it to me but she said "I found this song you might like....you might not like their other stuff but this song is about thrifting and it's really funny soooo....."

She was so right about this track. Added bonus: I like their other stuff too! "Thrift Shop" has this kinda swanky sax riff for the loop with a nice, easy beat. The lyrics are clever, relatable, and absolutely hilarious if you frequent Goodwill. Wanz singing the chorus is the cherry on top.

TTFN! <3
Avé

P.S. First day of class today! *stoked*

Big Bummer, Revlon.

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of helping out one of my friends purchase new makeup since the world of cosmetics is still new to her. I love makeup so this outing was so much fun! Plus her company is always  welcomed. She ended up snagging a couple of NYX crayons and eyeliners that I might invest in myself. (I got some makeup brushes for myself, too :3)

I couldn't help but recommend my two favorite brands, Urban Decay and Revlon. I love the quality I get from both companies' products (Urban Decay being far superior, obvs) and last I checked, they were both on PETA's "no animal testing" list. The outing reminded me of a couple of reviews I've been putting off so tonight I was all set to write a couple of reviews. I just wanted to double check on Revlon's status; I was so disheartened when I found out that after 20 years , Revlon declined to answer PETA if they were testing on animals and is no longer on their good guy list. I'm assuming this happened sometime last summer.

When I went to Bamboozle three years ago, PETA had a table and of course was displaying a horrific video of animal cruelty in various ways. I've heard some disturbing things about PETA and I'm not really 100% on board with this organization, but I did take their nifty pamphlet of companies who do and don't test on animals. This was about the same time that I was really getting into makeup but still didn't want to splurge so I honed in on the two drug store brands that were on the good list and that were easy to find: Revlon and Physician's Formula. I really liked the results from Revlon so I really just stuck with that brand, since It's nice on my wallet.

So once I found out this womptastic news I went through a mental list of all the products I use and checked PETA's constantly updated database. I didn't see Benefit, Aveeno, or Milani, but I was happy to see everything else on the no-testing list. They give a very thorough explanation of both lists and even have PDFs that make looking up a company super easy.

SO am I going to throw out all of my animal-tested make up?

Oh gosh no. I can't afford to replace everything that I have all at once and that would be a huge waste and I HATE waste. I'll use up what I have until I can afford to start looking for a good replacement. I'm most crushed about my foundation which is SO GOOD for the price and I literally JUST bought it. 

What I WILL do is no longer support any of the Revlon or other products that test on animals (that I'm aware of) on this here blog or any other interwebs I partake in. I'll commit to the best of my ability to only purchase beauty products with the bunny :3. I think the only thing other than my Revlon stash and a few select other items is my deodorant, so it's not too bad.

Hopefully Revlon will speak up and just let everyone know one way or the other rather than silence. HOPEFULLY they'll get back on track. I mean 20 years of a commitment to no animal testing to just throw it all away? That's what drew me as a customer in the first place. ~*le sigh*~

I'd really like to know what you all think about animal testing. From what I get it's a personal choice like being a vegetarian, yenno? But just like meatless mondays, every little bit helps.

TTFN!<3

-Avé

P.S. Have you seen Jacqueline Traide's social sculpture performance for Lush on this issue? I saw this floating around tumblr and I'd have to say I really applaud her. (WARNING: graphic images)

Drawing I Show and Tell

This is some of the work I did in my drawing class. Not all of the pieces are photographed yet, but here's what I got so far :) Everything is chronological. We started off the semester with boxes (not shown) and line drawings. Then we moved on to blocking the different areas of light and dark, followed by paper studies, followed by drapery studies, then facial features, and lastly models. then we did two still lives on grey paper for our final (one not shown...yet...). This was a tough class for me to commit to because I've taken drawing I a few semester back at a previous school, so it was easy to slack off. I thought that taking it again would be better for me because I wasn't confident in my drawing (I also was too lazy to fill out the paper work to transfer credits from yet another school, ha). I was fortunate enough to have a tough professor who was more confident in my abilities than I was and didn't let me get off easy. He really took his job seriously!

TTFN!<3
-Avé