Update

Because apparently NO ONE has received their bag from my sale, I’ll be issueing refunds to everyone on or around the 1st. Thank you for you patience in this, I’ve certainly learned a lesson.

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The Book Project Results

The Book Project was a success! All in all 12 people donated a total of 51 books!  I was so happy with the results and loved the variety of books sent!  Thank you SO much for making it such a success!  I actually let the librarian pick the winner, she picked a book ar random […]

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Merry Christmas!

What’s this?! The monsters are all missing and the nightmares can’t be found And in their place there seems to be good feeling all around. Instead of scream I swear I can hear music in the air, The smell of cakes and pies are absolutely everywhere. The sights! The sounds! They’re everywhere and all around […]

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The Morbid the Merrier!

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Wow, I woke up this morning and discovered TWO amazing companies have teamed up with TMTM!

From Evil Shades:

For a limited time when you order $25.00 or more (not including shipping) from The Morbid The Merrier  you will recieve a very special 15% Off any Evil Shades purchase coupon code!

What could be better than smelly goods and discounted ES? Nothing I tell you!

From Whimsy Beading:

Whimsy Star earrings

Whimsy will have a limited number (only 15!) of Whimsy Star earrings available in their TMTM color-way.

The TMTM custom star earrings will be dark copper beads with Jet Black Swarovski crystals on sterling silver or niobium ear wires.

My all time favorite scent is Horseman.

Fiery jack-o-lanterns, black leather boots, temple incense, and the edge of a dark Autumn wood. Opens sweet, almost caramel-foody, but after only a few minutes on the skin, it darkens dramatically, almost changing into a different scent altogether.

It’s my signature scent.  I wear it literally any time I got out, it’s in my purse, on my dresser, in my bathroom.  To me it’s a simply amazing rich leather scent that’s a touch sweet, never cloying, and a little spicy.

My second favorite scent it Morton, which was in limited supply!

Earl grey tea, creamy milk, patchouli, vetiver, dirt, wood

I will warn you – this is a dirty, morose blend. It’s very beautiful, but heavy on the earth.

Lysa has an amazing scents of style.  Her blends are multifaceted and never muddled.  They are alway morose and deep.

It’s Friday, I’m in Love!

Snake Oil

This deserves a post of its own.

Where does the term snake oil come from?

Chinese labourers on railroad gangs involved in building the First Transcontinental Railroad first gave snake oil to Europeans with joint pain.^[1] When rubbed on the skin at the painful site, snake oil was claimed to bring relief. This claim was ridiculed by rival medicine salesmen, and in time, snake oil became a generic name for many compounds marketed as panaceas or miraculous remedies whose ingredients were usually secret, unidentified, or mis-characterized and mostly inert or ineffective.

Patent medicines originated in England, where a patent was granted to Richard Stoughton‘s Elixir in 1712.^[2] Since there was no federal regulation in the USA concerning safety and effectiveness of drugs until the 1906 Food and Drugs Act^[3]and various medicine salesmen or manufacturers seldom had enough skills in analytical chemistry to analyze the contents of snake oil, it became the archetype of hoax.

The snake oil peddler became a stock character in Western movies: a travelling “doctor” with dubious credentials, selling fake medicines with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence. To increase sales, an accomplice in the crowd (ashill) would often attest to the value of the product in an effort to provoke buying enthusiasm. The “doctor” would leave town before his customers realized they had been cheated.^[1] This practice is also called grifting and its practitioners are called grifters.

As you can see, it’s a very common and OLD phrase and yet someone at the trademark office apparently thought to award it to BPAL to use.  So now, BPAL is apparently abusing this TM and they’re going after another small formulator.  Not because she’s duping their scent.  Because she has a product with the same name as one of their one million (crappy) scents.  Say what?

Needless to say, they’ve successfully made my Black List for being a bully!  You can read another opinion on it here.

Indie Style

I think the first mailing of the Awesome Box was a success!  Still, I know there are a lot of people who haven’t heard of it or indies that might want to participate.

Please, contact me via the Indie Style site, Facebook, Twitter, or email!

Upcoming Posts

The Black List

Don’t forget to submit y our entries to my Black List.  There will be two parts, my personal list as well as a list of companies complied by readers.

So far, there have been some eye-opening submission!

The Links

Don’t forget The Morbid the Merrier has it’s own site now!

BRB, doing this to all my shoes.

Oh, dear God.

Green with envy.

I almost bought these.

So Springy!  I’m already looking forward to it.

Your Turn

Have a Merry Christmas if you celebrate, if not, have a wonderful weekend!

Black Rose Minerals – A Review

Ordering

I’ve been meaning to order from Black Rose for a long time.  I’ve been getting to know the owner a little, and I adore her.  Which sadly automatically makes me hesitant.  That’s the major reason I don’t follow many people on Twitter or read a lot of blogs.  What if I like these people and have to give their company a bad review!  It’s so hard!

The website is self hosted, which I like.  It’s a little amateur, but it’s really easy to overlook since it’s easy to use and navigate.  The categories go down the left hand side and then the submenus are easy to work with on the main screen.  I REALLY like that they have an integrated cart on the screen, so you can always see what your working total is as you browse.  The listings are complete with swatches, shade descriptions, and ingredients.  You can also choose if you want a sifter or not, which is a great option for those you don’t like them.

During the Black Friday sale I ordered:

Dusty Trails

Minky

Starfire

Dot

Shipping

Shipping came to $1.75, which was insanely fair.  My order was shipped quickly and it arrived quickly.  Black Rose is a local (to me) company, so I love that.

Packaging

I was really happy with how my package arrived.  Everything was well wrapped inside a bubble mailer.  My shadows were wrapped in a little Christmas cello bag along with a bunch of little goodies and some samples, as well as my invoice and a little note.

Product

Each shadow comes in a standard 5 gram clear jar and is completely labeled with the company name, shade, ingredients, and the weight.  I really like that even the samples are completely labeled and include if the product isn’t lip safe!

I like the formula.  It’s smooth and blends really well.  It lasts and doesn’t fade over a good primer.  I really like Dusty Trails, it’s more of a plush finish and looks amazing on it’s own all over my lid with a little pink, Dot, in the inner corner.  I was so surprised with Minky!  It’s really lovely and I wear it mostly as a liner.  Starfire was unexpected as well.  It’s got a delicate shift to it that I love.

From left to right: Dusty Trails, Dot, Starfire, and Minky

The descriptions and the swatches were fairly accurate.  I’m always impressed by that because I really do realize how hard it is to get good shots, it’s why so many of my posts have a few different swatch pictures.  Depending on lighting the shadows can look very different.  I think my own complaint is that the are not quite as pigmented as other shadows, but they wear amazingly well, it’s not as if they are all base.  They foil beautifully!

Click to embiggen.

Would I order from Black Rose Minerals again? Yes.

✔ The shadows I tried were really nicely formulated and wore well.

✔ The prices are incredibly reasonable.

✔ Shipping was quick and my order well packaged.

✔  The owner seems to sincerely care about her business and the products she makes.

Price: 5/5

Packaging: 5/5

Shipping: 5/5

Products: 4/5

Customer Service 5/5

Overall:  .75/5

Step right up! Step right up!

Due to popular demand I will FINALLY be compiling a list of my personally ‘Black Listed’ companies!

The list will be comprised mainly from my personal reviews, but I WILL be accepting submissions from readers as well as close friends!

Know any shysters or scam artists?  Repackagers or unethical glitter-mobsters?

If you have a company you’d like submitted, please email me at contact.gothique [at] gmail.com and let me know.  Please include the company name, a link, and a description of the reason you think they should be included in my list.  Include links to your reviews and pictures if possible and please use BLACK LIST in the subject line!

PLEASE make sure you have a valid personal grevience!  Things like ‘bad photography’ wouldn’t really qualify them, you know the drill.  I’d like to keep things as civil and factual as possible!

Melisandre was a hipster.

Oh, my religion is so obscure,

you’ve probably never heard of it.

Killing people with swords is so mainstream.

 I use shadows.

The Inspiration

Melisandre is a beautiful woman with a heart-shaped face and red eyes. She always dressed in red. Great heat emanates from her body. She is full-figured with copper hair.^[19] She always arms herself with numerous powders hidden in the many pockets of her red robes that make smokes with various powers, such as truth, lust, fear, and murder. She learned at an early age that the more effortless the sorcery appears, the more men fear the sorcerer, and so always tries to hide the difficulty of her magic. She keeps guards about her to send the message of power, but does not believe that she needs them, as R’hllor will protect her.

Melisandre is annoying.  Without giving away any spoilers, she wants to kill everyone because she’s a crazy zealot.  She’s so obscure I can’t help making fun of her. Hence the inspiration of this look!

The Makeup

Red shadow with this is a must.  Cue the amazing red tutorial from Lisa Eldridge.

For the red shadow, I chose Poison Poinsettia.  It’s such a gorgeous red that works with my skin tone and it’s easy to work with.

The PERFECT perfume for this is Diablo from TMTM.  If you’ve read the books, you know.

Diablo – The devil, indeed! Fiery cinnamon paired with blood red roses and incense.

The Accessories

The main piece I wanted for this was this huge red pearl bracelet with graduated sizes beads.  It’s big enough on it’s own that you don’t need to wear much else.  Originally I had bought some mini pearls to make a few accent bracelets, as you can see above, but when I was done, I realized I just didn’t need them.  I’m just wearing my usual spacers in my ears for this, nothing much more is needed.

I also found some red metallic polish (Reel HIm In from Orly)  that matched exactly.

If you wanted to really commit, you could use Manic Panic’s Pillarbox Red to emblazon your hair.

The Rest

Unlike previous Style Diaries, most of this look is in the clothes, rather then the accessories.  When I saw these red jeans, I had to have them.  They are Old Navy Saucy Red Rockstar Jeggins and they are amazing.  I actually had to get them in Talls, just so they were long enough, though.  I’m very tall.

In fact, the whole outfit is from Old Navy.  The sequin tank and cardigan I found on clearance.  I paired them with some oxfords, which I would honestly never wear, but they seemed to go with the hipster theme.  I’d stick with some Vans or ‘Verse.

Cravebox

The other day I received my first Cravebox.  I signed up after running across a link… someplace.  For the life of me I completely forgot where I found it, although I know it was on Facebook.  I sighed up and was charged on the first, via Google Wallet.  I promptly forgot about it until it was delivered.

We’re delighted to present you with your very first Cravebox! Cravebox is your monthly introduction to crave-worthy products.

This month’s Cravebox, “The Holiday Pamper Me” box, is focused on helping you take a moment out for yourself since we know that the holidays can be a very hectic time.

From the luxurious and moisturizing mèreadesso® Beautiful Body Balm to the tempting Baci truffles and decadent Perugina chocolate bars, we think December’s Cravebox is sure to delight many of your senses! And just in time for the holidays, you’ll also notice that some of the things in this month’s Cravebox are perfect for gift-giving. Enjoy the box!

Of course, when you sign up, you have no idea what’s IN the box, which is one risk of subscriptions like this.  Although everything is nice, I won’t eat the chocolates and I was expecting more then… pens.  It was packaged very nicely and wrapped well.  I was sort of lead to believe that it would be more of a beauty focused box.  Reading through the emails I have saved now, the wording went from beauty and more to including beauty, food, home goods and others.  It did alter a bit.  The pen polish that I got is a great shade, though, and I’ll certainly use the pens!  I’m always collecting them to stash away.

You can see a full list of the contents here.  All in all, everything considered, it was a great deal for 10$, shipping included.  I know first hand how difficult it is to coordinate a project like this!

Did you try Cravebox.  What did you think?  My affiliate link is here, if you’re interested in giving it a shot.

It’s Friday, I’m in Love!

Hiatus

I’m extending my hiatus a couple of days into next week.  I have so much to get caught up on and deal with, but I’m motivated!  I have SO many amazing new posts to get to, I’m excited to get things finished so I can get back to swatches.

Giveaways

I’ve done some serious thinking about this the last week.  I had to dig into my budget to come up with more funds then I would have liked to replace a TON of ‘undeliverable’ packages from the post office and it got me thinking.  I’ve given away literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of prizes in the last two years.  Most of which I paid for myself, including the shipping.  Things have happened that make this a difficult splurge now, considering so many of the prizes ‘never arrived’ and I’ve had to replace so many, probably needlessly.  I’d like to think my blog has more appeal then the promise of free things.  I will continue to have the occasional donated prize, but I won’t continue to purchase mass amounts of items to giveaway.  I’d rather use those funds to find new and amazing products and companies to review!

Coming Soon

I have so many amazing things lined up to post!

A mega swatch post from Morgana in which I review colors and compare formulas.

A gorgeous collection of swatches from Persephone.

New collection swatches from Geek Chic.

A review of Innocent Twisted.

Another GoT Style Diary as well as two winter/holiday themed ones.

 Your Turn

What have you been up to this week?

 

Hiatus

Due to circumstances beyond my control (and the weather) I’ll be on hiatus until Friday!

Kiss my Sass

One of the places I wanted to try again has been Kiss my Sass, previously known as Suds and Sass.  They’ve since phased out their perfume and scented products and are focusing on cosmetics.

They had a generous Black Friday sale and so I ordered a few mini sized items to try!

From left to right: Raspberry Snow Cone blush, Jar of Hearts, Bubbles, Meteor, Sailor’s Kiss eye shadows, and Sweet Escape lip glaze

I ordered mostly pinky browns and maybe a taupe there, but that blue was amazing.  It’s very pigmented, though, and stained my eye when I wore it.  You can see from the swatches below, the colors on the site were really accurate!  Sweet Escape I expected to be a bit more berry, but it’s still gorgeous.  Bubbles makes a great base, with Meteor in the crease and then Jar of Hearts in the inner third.  Jar is a stunning shade that has a great clear pink highlight to it.

All in all the shadows were really nice to work with and really well formulated.  I love the blush, too.  There is no shimmery or sparkle to it and it wears like iron.

Have you tried Kiss my Sass?

Last Call

This is the last week to participate in The Book Project

!

So far we’ve donated 22 books and I’d love to make my goal of 50!