Ulta Haul

Recently I received a flyer in the mail from Ulta with a little coupon card that was good for 300 points ($9) to spend at Ulta by last Saturday's date. I got to thinking and couldn't really come up with anything specific to buy before last weekend came. Then Friday morning I received an e-mail stating that I had 350 points ( I had earned more through actual purchases) or $11 to spend in store before the 300 expired. I really wanted to get something high-end to make me feel like I was getting a complete bargain. I already talked myself out of the new Urban Decay Shadow Box palette (I had too many similar colors and people complained that the shadows weren't up to par with the individual shadow pots). Then I thought that I would get a Moondust eyeshadow. Stargazer, the gold one interested me since I'm still on the hunt for the "right" gold shadow. But my store was all out of the Moondust shadows, and only had a couple of testers in the spot (they didn't even have the Stargazer tester so I'm not sure if it's the shade of gold I'm looking for). I looked all around, nothing really caught my interest. 

I've always wanted the Stila Kitten eye shadow... I found a palette up front with the "on the go" items that was a Stila nudes palette. It had some eye shadows, a blush, and an all-over color. Kitten was the all-over color, and the palette was only $20 so I was about to buy it. But I couldn't find testers of the shadows or blush to get a true feel for the colors or quality, so I was hesitant. Then I decided on my back-up plan.

I had glanced over at the drugstore brands but didn't find a whole lot that interest me without really looking in depth. However, I did have a $3.50 off of $10 coupon that I could use, meaning I could bump up the value to $14.50 off of a drugstore brand purchase. I like NYX cosmetics...at least the lip products and jumbo pencils. I've only had one eye shadow but the pigmentation was faint and different from in the pan. The eye products were "buy one, get one 50% off." I noticed that the baked shadows had testers so I started looking through those. I came across one color that appeared duo-chrome, which then I remembered seeing something on Makeup Alley about some of the newer NYX shades being duo-chromey and space inspired. Well, that one shadow, Cosmos, was the only duo chrome shadow I could find. But I had to have it! Then I settled on Ghetto Gold (still not pleased with the shade of gold but it's still a versatile shadow). Then I remembered that they carry Essence and a lot of people seem to like Essence. I found some glitter shadows (no testers) and then some shadow duos (with testers). So I ended up getting a glitter shadow, Metal Glam in N'ice Frosting and one of the 3D duos in Irresistible Vanilla Latte. 

Here's the great part. The NYX shadows were $5.99 each, so with the sale, they were roughly $9 together. The Essence Metal Glam was $2.99 and the 3D duo was $3.49. After the discounts and tax, my total was $1.05! Woo!

(NYX Baked shadow: Cosmos & Ghetto Gold, Essence: 3D duo Irresistible Vanilla Latte, Metal Glam N'ice Frosting)