In case you need a reminder, since we are almost halfway though the month, every weekday, through August 31, Allure is doing tons of giveaways – like usually 5 or six a day.  Most of it is beauty loot (duh, it’s Allure), but they have a few great designer fashion items as well. 

To get in on the goodies, go to allureaccess.com/freestuff every day.  My preferred method of dealing with all of this fun is to sign up for the alerts from Allure – text “FREE STUFF” to short code ALLURE (255873).  You will get an alert 30 minutes before each and every giveaway begins.  Perfection, if you ask me.

Have you gotten anything good yet this month?  Let me know!!

Image: Allure.com, used with permission

Post from: eBeautyDaily

More about the show here.

Image used with permission from Conde Nast.

Post from: eBeautyDaily

Just before I left out on my trip, I got an email from a rep from Seche Vite, my number one pick in the Allure article, thanking me for mentioning them. It has been a little while since I talked about Seche Vite here, so I thought I would give them one more mention. Seche Vite IS indeed my first pick of favorite beauty products. Seche Vite has quite a few different products now, but my absolute favorite is their fast drying topcoat. This was listed in InStyle a couple of months ago in their big beauty issue, and it was mentioned in the article that you can use it as a base coat as well as a top coat. It bears mentioning again that this is VERY not true – if you do this, your polish will come right off. Choose another base coat – Seche Vite has a few that are good, or use your favorite – apply 2 coats of color over it, then immediately apply a coat of Seche Vite to top it all off. Your polish will dry quicker than you have ever seen, will stay glossy and beautiful, and will last. Love it-love it-love it! Top coat perfection!

Post from: eBeautyDaily

First off, with Allure magazine. Kristen Kelly at BeautyAddict wrote a post this past week about how disappointed she was with her portion of the article, and I have heard similar sentiments from others as well, and apparently so has Gawker. Just to give my opinions here – I was not similarly disappointed, they got all my favorite products correct (they chose just about the first 5 from the 15 or so I gave them), and the quotes very close to correct, although they definitely were not direct quotes (as you can see when you read them, they are just not my voice at all). The only real mistake they made was to call me an aesthetician, when in fact I did aesthetic work a very long time ago, and chose nail care as my focus for the vast majority of my career in the salon. Their editorial staff contacted me several times to fact check and make corrections, and I think therefore came up with a pretty true article where I was concerned. However, the point Kristen made about the misinformation surrounding the Magic Eraser is very valid, not to mention a little scary, be sure and read the actual caveats on Lipstick is my Crack before you even consider using the Magic Eraser on your skin. Thank you again, Allure, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate being included in that article!!

The second issue is with a PR company that has been, well, spamming some blogs. Much ado is being made about this – Pierce Mattie claims that a young, inexperienced rep with limited knowledge of blogging etiquette is the culprit, while some of the bloggers are doubting this to be the case. Whatever the reason – if it was as the company stated, or if it just was someone trying out something new – I just don’t think it is that big of a deal. I don’t believe that they are looking to be malicious or dishonest, which, to me, is what it all boils down to. I can say that I always prefer transparency – to see them identify themselves as reps for the company and be honest and forthright in their comments – but that just isn’t the way the world always is. For every person that wants openness and honesty, there is another who thinks a little different route is the correct one. For the record, I allow some “spammy” comments on my blog sometimes, from people who are obviously connected with a company, because I think that they may sometime guide someone to what they are looking for, and I also think that my readers are very likely intelligent enough to recognize whats going on. I mean, you can all tell a “canned” press release from a real person’s heartfelt comments. Can’t you?

Perhaps we should sit back a little bit and remember that blogging is still a new technology for a great many people and give them some benefit of the doubt or at least a little time for a learning curve. This gal who made the grave mistake of spamming probably has jumped the learning curve, and hopefully the other PR companies will learn from their mistake. The long and short of it is, to me anyway, there are much bigger problems with spammers than the occasional rep with a “great idea” to get the word out about their product. Why not a huge brigade against all the real spammers leaving thousands of stupid nonsensical comments solely for the purpose of being a pain in my butt. Ugh.

NOW, back to beauty. I hope you all are doing very well, I am VERY glad to be home safe and sound!!!

Post from: eBeautyDaily

If I can possibly find the time today, I am going to finish filling out the Beauty Ballot over at Allure.com in hopes of winning a makeover weekend for myself and a friend – fully knowing that I never win anything, of course – but it is fun and a good time waster. They basically want you to list all of your favorite products and sent them in. I still have a little bit more to go to finish it, but I think I will let you know my choices when I get it all completed. The time consuming part is that not only do they want the manufacturer for each item, but the exact product name and shade if relevant. It takes a while to figure out what the rubbed off bottoms of the lipstick tube says. And maybe it will inspire Max Factor to not discontinue my favorite lipstick as a bonus. I wish!

Post from: eBeautyDaily