Expired Makeup: How long to keep and when to toss....Part 3

Hey everyone!! I hope y'all are having a great Sunday afternoon! Thanks for sticking with me throughout this new series, its been really fun! So this is the last part of this "expired makeup: how long to keep and when to toss" series and I will be covering lipsticks, lipglosses, and lip liners. So lets get started!

The first thing I'll start with is lipsticks. These are good for 2-3 years if kept tightly sealed after each use and stored in a cool place. As always, if the product starts to smell funky, dry out or change color, TOSS IT! 

Next is lipglosses. Again, these are good for 2-3 years if kept tightly sealed after each use and kept away from extreme temperatures. And I know I probably sound like a broken record, but if the product changes color, smells funky or dries out, TOSS IT. 

And finally, is lipliners. As already stated above, these are good for about 2-3 years if kept in a cool place and kept tightly sealed after each use. 

And if you missed the last post about writing the date you opened the product on the label tip I gave, here it is again. 

Remember that, once a product is opened, it starts to deteriorate. If you're like me and tend to have a lot of products on hand, open them, try them, and then move onto something else, you may want to write the date that you opened the product on the label. That way, when you pull out a mascara (for example) from 2003, you know to toss it. 

Well, that completes this series on expired makeup! Thank you so much for taking time to read each of these posts, it really means a lot to me! Have a wonderful weekend and I'll be blogging again soon! 

Daily Nuggets....

• Passed my Psychology final that I took on Friday!!!! :D 
• Just got back in town from celebrating my 19th birthday with my family and friends, it was so much fun!! 
• I did some shopping on my birthday last week (thursday, the 22nd) so I'll be filming and uploading a birthday haul of the products I picked up really soon (hopefully) on my youtube channel! http://www.youtube.com/user/Mariahsierra94 please subscribe if you haven't already, it would mean a lot to me! :) 

Expired Makeup: How long to keep and when to toss....Part 2

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are having a wonderful Saturday evening! This post is part two of my three part series on expired makeup. Today, I'll be covering eyeshadows, eyeliners, and mascaras. So lets get started!

The first one I'll start with is eyeshadows. Eyeshadow will last between 2-3 years as long you keep them well sealed and away from extreme temperatures. The exception is cream eyeshadow and those usually start to go bad around 12-18 months. Again, if any of the products change color, smell funky, or dry out, no matter how old they are, toss them out. That's a definite warning sign that something's wrong with them.





Next is eyeliners. These will last between 2-3 years as long as they are kept tightly sealed and away from extreme temperatures.

And lastly, is mascaras. This is one product that goes bad faster than any other cosmetic. Part of the reason this happens is because many users pump the wand in and out of the tube, allowing air into it which mixes with the chemicals and causes bacteria. Professionals say to toss mascara out after only four months even if you only use it a handful of times. You can probably get six months of wear from a mascara without any issues if you are careful not to pump the wand and keep the tube tightly closed after every use. Four to six months is such a short time, but better to be safe than sorry. Overall, the shelf life of a mascara is about 4-6 months at the most.


Remember that, once a product is opened, it starts to deteriorate. If you're like me and you tend to have a lot of products on hand, open them, try them, and then move on to something else, you may want to write the date that you opened the product on the label. That way, if you pull out a mascara from 2003, you know to toss it ;)


Well, thats it for the second installment of this three part series on expired makeup! I hope y'all enjoyed this and I hope it was helpful for you. Regardless if you're new to makeup or you're a veteran, it is always nice to have a little reminder every now and then :)

I hope you have a great night and I'll be blogging again soon! Please stay tuned for the last part of this series coming hopefully next week which will cover lipsticks, lip liners, and lip glosses :)



Daily Nuggets....

• Been busy studying for my Psychology final next Friday! 
• Went and got a massage tonight. OMGosh I was so tense in my shoulders and neck from being under a lot of stress, but this helped me relax ;) 
• Trying to decide what to do for my birthday next Thursday, hmmm.... :) Watching Beauty Broadcast Live in the morning and going to Sephora and Ulta in the afternoon sounds like a great idea! :D 
• Going to get Panda Express for dinner tonight, YUM! :) 

Expired Makeup: How long to keep and when to toss.... Part 1

Hey Everyone! I hope y'all are having a great Wednesday afternoon! I wanted to do a three part series on expired makeup products and how long you should keep them for. This first part will cover foundation (liquid, cream, powder, and mineral) blush, face powder, and bronzer. So lets get started!

With liquid and cream foundations, the shelf life is about 6 months to 1 year. If the foundation is unopened, it can last for years. Although it depends on if your foundation is water or oil based. If it's water based, the shelf life is about a year and if it's oil based it can last up to two years. The only thing is if the foundation gets too old, bacteria can start to grow. But if at any time the foundation starts to change color or smells funky, TOSS IT!

Now with powder and mineral foundations, the story is a little different. With these types of foundations if the package is kept tightly sealed after each use and stored in a cool place, it should NEVER expire! Although, keep in mind that all foundations should have an expiration date on them, so pay attention to that as well as if it changes color or develops a funky smell it needs to be tossed!

Just remember that even though mineral foundation should never expire, you can introduce bacteria into it from your face and the brushes used. So I would err on the side of caution and toss mineral foundation after a year to two years just like to the regular stuff.

Next is cream and powder blush. Now you have some leeway with blushes, but usually powder blush lasts up to 24 months and cream blush lasts up to 12 to 18 months. The one thing you want to be careful about is if you use your fingers to apply cream blush because you can introduce bacteria into the product and cause it to go bad before the expiration date. As already stated, if cream or liquid blush starts to dry out or smell funky, toss it.

Onto bronzers. Cream bronzers the shelf life is 12 to 18 months and powder bronzers the shelf life is 2 years.













Face powders, the shelf life is about 2 years.

And lastly concealers last about 6 to 12 months.

As stated numerous times in this post, if any of these products start to smell funky or change color toss it! And also please note that natural cosmetics will have a shorter shelf life because they don't have chemicals in them to extend their shelf life, so toss your natural cosmetics sooner than others.


Well, thats it for this first part of this new series on expired makeup! I hope this was helpful for those of you that are new to makeup or even those that aren't, a good reminder is always helpful :) I hope y'all enjoyed this and please stay tuned for the second part which will cover the shelf life of eyeshadows, eyeliners, and mascaras.

Have a wonderful day and I'll be blogging again soon! (And hopefully getting some new videos up soon too!)


Daily Nuggets....

• Passed my 4th Psychology exam for college!!!! :D Now to just study for the final..... :) 
• My birthday is next Thursday, yay!!! Can't wait for what this next year has in store for me! 
• Have had an elevated headache for the last few weeks :( praying its nothing going on with my mechanism in my head that drains my spinal fluid! 
• Starting my music fundamentals class on August 26th! SUPER excited!!! 

Z Palettes!!!

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are having a great night! I just wanted to quickly share with y'all my thoughts on the highly popular Zpalettes! I think these are a great idea for storing, traveling, etc. with any of your makeup products that have bulky packaging. I love how customizable they are, in terms of how big of a size you need    as well as the range and variety of colors to choose from!

And also the prices are not bad for one of these! The smaller size costs $14.00, the large size costs $20.00 and the Pro size costs $25.00. They each come with 10-20 metal stickers (depending on what size you get determines how many metal stickers are included) and you can put them on the back of your products that don't already have a magnetic backing on them once you have "depotted" them from their original packaging.

So y'all can get an idea of just how many products can fit in each size, here are some pictures directly from www.zpalette.com:

 This is the large size and it can hold 28 MAC shadows.

This is the Dome palette and it can hold 4 MAC mineralized powders and 6 Milani mineralized eyeshadows.

This is the pro palette and it can hold 6 Cargo shadows/blushes

This is the small size and it can hold 8 Stila eyeshadows.





Now, depending on the size of the products you put in these palettes will obviously depend on how much space you have left. These are just examples from the website so you can actually see what these can hold. There is one more palette called the 4U palette and here's what it can hold:

This is the 4U palette and it can hold 15 products.


What is also cool about these is you can mix and match different products to put in these. They don't all have to be just eyeshadows, blushes, face products, etc. You can (depending on how much space you have) put for example in the large palette, maybe 18 shadows and 10 blushes.


I hope this was helpful for those of you that are interested in the Z palettes! I think these are a great investment if you're a frequent traveler or even if you just want to get rid of bulky packaging in your makeup collection, I think these would benefit you also! :) have a great night everyone and I'll be blogging again soon!


Daily Nuggets....

• Getting ready to spend some girl time with my college girls Bible Study group tonight! 
• Just came off a very busy (but fun!) weekend, so I'm a little tired :) 
• Spent most of the day in my Psychology class, I've got my first exam this Wednesday! 
• REALLY hoping to get some new videos uploaded to my youtube channel this week! Again, I am SO sorry for not being consistent in my video uploading, but I've been extremely busy with school and summer commitments. I hope you understand and thanks for continuing to watch despite the infrequent uploading! ;) 

25 Things you don't know about me tag!

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are having a wonderful Tuesday morning! It is supposed to be 110 degrees today where I live, so I hope everyone else is staying cool :)


Anyways, I was reading my friend Emily's (emilynoel83) latest blog post  "Tips for starting a blog!" yesterday and I noticed she was going to do a new vlog on the "25 things you don't know about me" tag. I thought that might be fun for my readers, so I thought I would do it too! Lets get started:

• 1. I'm a devout Christian 
• 2. I play 3 instruments (piano, keyboard and guitar) and I'm a singer as well
• 3. I was homeschooled all throughout grade school, middle school and high school
• 4. I am an only child
• 5. I've lived in the same house for 19 years
• 6. I've known my best friend for 16 years
• 7. I've never dated anyone
• 8. After college, I'll be working as a certified music therapist
• 9. I am very family-oriented 
• 10. I was born 24 weeks premature, I weighed 1 lb 5 oz
• 11. All together, I've had over 30 surgeries. 15 or more of those have been done on my brain
• 12. I spent the first 4 months of my childhood in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit)
• 13. I had my first brain surgery when I was 2 days old
• 14. All of my hospital stays combined, I've been in the hospital a total of 1 year or more
• 15. I've been blessed to have the same brain surgeon for 19 years
• 16. I have a 1 year old Chihuahua/dachshund mix 
• 17. I was a tumbler in gymnastics starting at the age of 5
• 18. At age 3, I was a Ballet dancer
• 19. At age 7, I was a Jazz dancer
• 20. Also at age 7, I was a soccer player
• 21. From the age of 7-18 I was involved in 3 different choirs, one of which I am still involved in today. 
• 22. I've been singing for almost 14 years. 
• 23. I've been playing guitar for 9 years. 
• 24. I have several different nicknames people call me.  
• 25. I call my best friend "sissy" because she's like the sister I never had. 

Whew! I have to say coming up with 25 things that people might not know about me is actually really hard ;) But anyways, I hope you enjoy this little peek into my everyday life from childhood to now adulthood. I hope y'all have a wonderful day (stay cool wherever you are!) and I'll be blogging again soon! 

Daily Nuggets.....

• Started my Psychology class today, very interesting stuff actually :) 
• Will definitely be going to the pool today, as I said where I live it is supposed to be 110 degrees!!! 
• Hopefully, I'll be able to get some new videos up this week for y'all! I'm sorry its taken me so long, but college has been crazy! 

Small CVS coupon haul....

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are having a great Thursday morning! I just wanted to quickly share with you a small coupon haul from CVS that I did over the weekend. I had a list all set up and I knew two of the things I wanted to get were a couple of the eyeliners that my awesome friend, Emily (aka Emilynoel83) had mentioned in her "Eye Makeup Dupes: Liners and Palettes" video. So lets get started!


The first liner I picked up is the Maybelline master drama cream eyeliner pencil in Bold Brown #415. I had been wanting to find a couple good brown liners from the drugstore because my most favorite one is from Stila and I didn't want to pay $18 again for another one. I'm planning on going to Ulta and getting the liner that Emily recommended which is NYX slide on liner in "brown perfection" very soon :)

But anyways, the next liner I purchased from CVS was the Milani Liquid Eyeliner in "Green" #06. I was really interested in this product because I created an eye look last week using the green shades from the wet n wild comfort zone palette and I absolutely LOVED the way the green made my brown eyes pop! This green liner is so beautiful and I can't wait to use it! :)

And lastly this is kind of a boring product, but I needed a better eye makeup remover. I use the neutrogena deep cleansing wipes to remove my makeup, but for some reason it doesn't remove all my eye makeup. So, while I was at CVS I saw the new neutrogena extra gentle eye makeup remover pads and I ended up buying those. I opened them last night, and they do have a slight scent but its not overpowering.

So thats it for my haul! I'll be doing reviews on all these products once I've used them enough. By the way, I'll be taking a slight break from blogging and doing youtube videos next week because my church has their VBS (Vacation Bible School) that I'm teaching at for the week.

Anyways, I hope you have a great week everyone and I'll be back blogging soon! :)



Daily Nuggets.....

• Getting geared up for teaching the VBS camp next week! It should be fun, this is my 10th year teaching! :) 
• Going to see a friends band play tomorrow night, so excited! :D 
• Starting my sociology and psychology classes for college soon! :)  

Broadway Nails imPRESS Press-on Manicure review...

Hey Everyone! I hope y'all are having a fabulous day! I wanted to share with you my review on the broadway nails imPRESS press-on manicure in sexy fresh. I received these in my Spring Fever 2013 VoxBox from Influenster last week, and I wanted to highlight a few things about them. DISCLAIMER:  I received this product complimentary from influenster for testing and review purposes. 

First of all, the pattern that I got called "sexy fresh" is awesome! It is a tie-dye effect in blue and orange colors, it is amazing!

I just love how fun they are! They were very easy to apply, the only thing that took awhile for me was trying to find the correct size for each of my nails. But once you applied them to your nails, they stuck extremely well to your nails. I had to really work at getting them off, so thats a plus for me because usually the artificial nails fall off pretty quickly for me.


Here is some information directly from the Influenster website:

• Salon manicure in seconds - NO glue - No drying time - Rivals the best gel polish - Won’t damage nails - Easy removal - Lasts up to a week
• $5.99 for colors $7.99 for patterns at CVS, CVS, Rite Aid, Duane Reade, KMart, Walgreens, Walmart, and more. 

Also, here's a link to the impress website: http://impressmanicure.com/ 

Bottom line, I really liked these and I look forward to checking out more of the different colors and patterns! My one recommendation is if you are considering purchasing these, I would look for a coupon because I've seen them in the drugstores, etc and they are a bit expensive. 

Anyways, I think thats it for this review! I hope you found it helpful and I'll be blogging again soon! And as always thanks for taking the time to stop by my blog! :)