Except it makes me want to look like that every day… 🙂
Before I took my After photo, I came downstairs like this:
Katie did not like my eyebrows and called them creepy. I think her actual words were more like “MOM! What happened to your eyes? Your eyebrows look soooo creepy!?”
Granted they did get a little too much color in them…but still…getting my makeup application critiqued by a 5yo? Hoo boy.
I needed new and better lighting for my live Facebook videos so Tom helped me make my own ring light for a fraction of the cost. Of course we had to test it out.
Without ring light with horrible ambient yellow bathroom lighting:
With new LED ring light with no other lighting:
When you’re rearranging your desk and you accidentally tip the ShadowSense container a bit too far forward.
Since I’ve been doing my makeup more these days, I’ve come to realize I need to bring my eyes out more—and I found a decent mascara but it still didn’t give me the ooomph I was looking for. So for awhile now I’ve been thinking about trying fake lashes. I never would have even thought about it except a bunch of my friends (and online makeup friends) wear them and they just look gorgeous. (Prior to getting in the makeup biz, I honestly thought fake lashes were strictly for professionals—models, movie stars, TV personalities—I never realized real people wore them every day!)
Well, I decided to order some very inexpensive ones to try—just to see if I could even put them on halfway successfully/deal with sticking something to my eyelid without looking like a clown. So I invited my friend Heidi over to assist—she wears them regularly and was going to be my support system. 🙂
And you know what? I LOOOOVE THEM. Holy cow. I’ll start with the After pic.
Amazing, right? Yet they still look natural enough, right?
I wasn’t completely successful with my first application—I overtrimmed one (and then consequently placed it too far inward) but overall it was easier than I thought it would be and I loved the look. It did take some getting used to to have a plastic strip attached to my eyelid but after a few hours it was almost unnoticeable. And of course I’ll get better with time. That said, I definitely won’t be wearing them all the time. But I do like them.
Before / Half done / After
In different lighting:
With my lash muse, Heidi:
My family had no idea I was trying them (I did them during the day) and I bet Heidi that Katie would notice and Tom wouldn’t. Within minutes of Katie getting off the bus—before we even made it home from the bus stop—she said I did something to my face, looked at me closer, then said it was my eyes. Ding! Ding! Ding! It took Tom a bit longer and he didn’t technically say anything (I had to ask but he said he did) but I’d say Katie won. 🙂
Tom thought he was doing a good thing by moving our pre-lit birch tree behind the bench…except it doesn’t really work for my selfies.
This is what can happen when you mix that shocking purple from yesterday with a more neutral color. Gorgeousness!
Oh I’m just sitting outside in 19° weather to take a selfie of Violet Volt in good lighting. 😂 ❄️ It matches my hair but it’s way too bright for me! But a year ago I’d NEVER have even THOUGHT about trying this color, let alone wearing this color.
When you weren’t planning on wearing makeup but you got called in as a replacement volunteer mom for your kid’s holiday party…
And then the actual business photo…
Getting VIP Lippy with Jen was donating three cans of food for every $20 spent in November, so that equated to 111 cans of food.
I was just going to turn that into a cash donation to make life easier, but the kids’ schools are having a Holiday Food Drive (to include books, cleaning supplies, personal care items, and winter accessories) so I’ve decided this is where my donations are going. And on top of that, I donated $50 to the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which is currently being doubled by sponsors and will provide $800 worth of food! Thank you to all who made purchases this month!!
I got these cool tester cards to help people try and pick colors without actually having to put it on. Of course Katie was more than willing to assist/play!
It is finally starting to come off. I haven’t shied away from washing it but I haven’t really tried to scrub it off, either. That makes three showers. Can your lipstick do that?! 😂
I had a Facebook party live demo tonight and I show the products I use for my 5-minute face. Of course it takes me longer than five minutes to demo because I’m talking and answering questions… But realistically it does only take five minutes. And the difference is striking.
I was volunteering in Owen’s class party so felt I had to do something since I wasn’t dressing up. This took two tries and is still kinda pathetic…but it won’t come off!! 😂
When you start to do fun eyeliner for a kids birthday/Halloween party and it keeps growing out of control. Then you just figure it’s a good time to practice so why not just go for it. 😂
…it feels like it’s going to be a great day! 👍🏻❤️
Thank you to my friend Heidi for all her table design guidance last week (and coming down to check on me and talk up LipSense to passersby), my amazing upline (and the rest of the team across the country!) for dealing with my total crazy as I prepped for this, and my awesome hubby for his unending support in every possible sense. I couldn’t have done this without all of you! 💕 It was tiring but fun… I won’t be doing these every weekend but I’ll definitely do more!
After being up at 5:30 and setting up from 7:30-9…Let’s do this! (Oh and did I mention that Tom had to work at his office today so he couldn’t help at all plus had to take the kids with him?!)
Some info and takeaways from my day:
💋I am a bit anal plus I’m a perfectionist so I spent probably 50-60 hours prepping the table (design elements, printing stuff myself, REprinting stuff 😂, shopping for inexpensive stuff that can do double duty in my home)… But I think it turned out pretty well! I was definitely the most professional-looking booth in my immediate area!
💋Everyone loved my lips (Blu Red and Blackberry). I think I went through more gloss than I normally do in a week—every demo I did I literally dragged my fingers across my lips and face. 😂
💋The Dum Dums with my business info stuck on them were a fail. The stickers didn’t stick to the waxy sticks and were all falling off and not one person took one. I couldn’t even give them away to kids!
💋The very first customer wanted to see a lipliner. It was my fault for handing it to her… So let’s just say I now have a tester. 😂 But she did end up buying two colors and gloss–and might have a party. (She also came back later in the day with a cracked gold glitter gloss so now I have my very first RMA!)
💋 I didn’t realize until about halfway through that I didn’t have a Honey Rose or Hazelnut tester out! [Two recent new colors.]
💋 I had ShadowSense stripes on my arm from my own personal stock which I didn’t bring. A handful of people wanted to see them but I only had one color out so people could see the cream to powder action.
💋I really could have used a LipSense Buddy. I know I lost a lot of people because it took so long to explain and demo with people that I couldn’t snag people as they walked by. A friend (Heidi) who was at a different booth would stop by when she could and whenever she was there taking up LipSense it went better (she’s a big fan). I was also bummed I didn’t get to check out the other vendors. They did have volunteers who would sit at your booth while you took a break but I didn’t feel like just anyone could handle my booth—if I wasn’t there to reel them in, they’d likely pass right by.
💋 I took my laptop thinking I’d have time to enter each sale. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.
💋I could have left the beauty stuff off the table entirely. Not one person asked about it. I definitely didn’t need my own out for testers. (But if I didn’t have them, someone would surely have wanted to test something, right?)
💋The QR code was a fail. I thought it would be easy to snap for business info but only one person all day did it. People still wanted business cards. (I had seen it recommended to use because people were more likely to “see” it again on their phone vs. a business card which would likely get tossed.) Next time I will just have a big contact info sheet that they can take action picture of.
💋I didn’t give away too many glossy samples because pretty much everyone who tried it on their lips bought their own color and gloss.
💋 The raffle for a free gloss went pretty well. I got 19 entries. Two wanted to host a party and four marked that they wanted to learn about/buy other products. Now we wait and see if they return my emails.
💋 My biggest sellers were Napa and Sheer Berry. I managed to sell more Ooops! today then I did since I starting selling. 😂 I think it’s a much easier sell when they demo it and see how easy it is to make a mistake.
💋 I was prepared with $150 in cash but only one person paid with cash!
💋 Being on my feet the whole day was rough on my back. I was busy most of the six hours so never really had time to sit down—and even when it was calm I wanted to be ready to easily interact with people and I couldn’t do that from a chair. If I did have a chair I’d want a director’s chair.
💋The collapsible wagon from Sam’s Club was amazing. It fit my big heavy duty totes perfectly. (If I begin to do more shows, I would like to organize my totes better so everything fits.)
💋I will eventually get a real banner but I was going inexpensive for my first show.) And I will have some small tweaks to do before my next event (like bigger lip pics with more true colors—everyone looked at those).
All in all it was a great day. I didn’t make a ton of money but I went into it expecting to sell nothing and just being there for the experience so anything above that was a bonus! 😂 After both raffle items (the one on my table and the one I donated to the fundraiser), I think I made $200 (better then nothing and my upline was proud!)!
One of my uplines had a Work It Wednesday Challenge awhile back and I won! I had the most accumulated points for things like contacting new people, wearing stripes, and making a sale. I just got the prizes today!
It’s obvious that lipstick makes a difference but I think it totally changes my face. Or is it just me?! 😂
I was originally planning on meeting a girlfriend halfway for a girls night out and we would do a joint live Facebook LipSense sale while having a few adult beverages in the hotel. She had to bow out due to work commitments, but I still wanted to try the sale myself so that’s just what I did! Of course, I kept with the adult beverages because, hey, that’s who I am and it was my birthday after all. :p
So why did I call it a fish sage? Well, in the initial planning stages with my friend over text, my phone autocorrected bad typing of live sale to fish sage and the rest is history. We both thought it was hilarious and I thought it might draw in more people’s attention if I was advertising a FISH SAGE. The result was…meh. A few people were intrigued, but it didn’t have the rousing success I had envisioned. (The fish sage joke only lasted for the first two days of the advertising. I quickly let people in on the joke.) The advertising was also proof you can pretty much google any two words and find appropriate pictures!
I was a bit nervous but once I got started it went well enough. I had about 4-7 people watching for the hour and a half I was on (I didn’t plan for it to go that long but oh well!) and although I didn’t sell anything during the sale as I had imagined, I sold quite a bit afterwards! So it was a success!
Here are some screenshots of the live video just because. There were some hilarious parts where I really didn’t know what I was doing with some of the makeup but I rolled with it and it was all good. (Keep in mind before this gig, I really didn’t wear lipstick or makeup more than a few times a year. I mean, ever since I stopped working nine years ago—and even back then I had no idea how to apply makeup—I just winged it. So I’ve worn makeup and eye shadow more in the past month than I have the past five years. And I’m still learning.)
And this was the full end result of the makeup demo. It was only a semi hot mess. And yes, the two different color lips were on purpose. 💕
It was definitely an interesting way to spend my birthday!!
Since I had plans for a live LipSense demo and sale on my birthday, we went out tonight instead.
Of course my dinner choice was sushi.
Bulgogi egg rolls
A Volcano and Black Widow
And then since it was still way early…we did what we always do and went to Costco. 🙂
We were home by 8:30. LOL
Last night the Obamas were at our house, just chillin’. I was FREAKING OUT because, duh, it was THE OBAMAS, but I was trying to be cool and clean up the house and be a consummate hostess and they were totally chill, telling me to just sit down and relax.
The guys were watching a biography on Obama (I was pulling toys out of the couch from under Barack’s butt) and I was showing Michelle LipSense–I left her alone for a few minutes and she had stripes all up and down her arms!! I woke up before I was able to take any pictures or find out what color she bought.
🙌🏻 IT’S A NEW MONTH! And also a new city! New house! New friends! New challenges! New season! New goals! And new (temporary) banners!
I’m sure most of you know I don’t really like change so the past three months have been challenging to say the least. But this month I’m ramping it up and jumping in feet first so I can ROCK this business. But I can’t do it alone…
🚌 Can you help me be successful and grow my business so I can continue to be supportive of my children in their new schools (okay, and also to keep Tom off my back and not to have to get a real job)?? 😂
👍🏻 Getting Lippy with Jen now has a public Page! I’d really appreciate if you could throw a Like or Share my way to help promote my business and keep me working from home. Pretty pretty please with sugar on it (as Katie would say)?
https://m.facebook.com/gettinglippywithjen
So I’m not sure why I didn’t do this sooner, but…if I am going to really try and make a go of this business, I need a real domain. So, I grabbed www.gettinglippywithjen.com which for now just redirects to my Facebook group. New business cards will come after we move and get settled and I have time to devote to them.
Business in my first two months has been amazing—if I hadn’t reinvested all my profits into more stock, I would definitely have passed my first goal of making back what I’d spent on product before becoming a distributor (I actually would have done that the first month). If I decided to quit right now and sell everything I have in stock, I’d come out way ahead for sure. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can keep this going and make some nice side money with it (though July will be tough with the move—and summer is apparently always bad for sales)!!
It was lightly raining and Katie asked if she could put on her rain boots and rain coat and go out and play. Sure thing.
My little LipSense helper (she LOVES running packages out to the mailbox).
Unfortunately she can’t always get the box open so big brother helps, too.
Heather and Eric invited us over to their pool today, but I had a LipSense party scheduled and Tom really needed to work in the garage…so they offered to take the kids for us!! And they had A BLAST! The pool is much bigger than our AND has a real deep end with a diving board so Owen was THRILLED—he’d never been on a diving board before! Heather said he was so cute—he must have gone on it 30 times!
These are some of the friends we are REALLY going to miss…
Mine can! Here’s a Before & After teeth cleaning. The color looks exactly the same—I’m just missing a bit of gloss! I’m telling you LipSense is amazing.
It’s still SUCH a good feeling to be able to cross my legs in a middle row seat! I ♥️ Naturally Slim!! Also, I’m wearing my #lipsense stripes!!
Let me just tell you how excited Katie was when I told her she could wear mommy’s lip stuff and that I had unicorn gloss for her! (It’s LipSense Opal gloss.)
