Hey guys! When I was planning this week's #CBBxManiMonday post, I had something else entirely in mind, but the weekend got the best of me and I had to keep it simple - luckily, I'm pretty thrilled with what keeping it simple resulted in. I've definitely fallen back in love with gradients and I absolutely love the way that Color Club neon polishes blend for a gradient, so I of course reached for them again as we continue with the Brights theme.

Keep reading for a closer look and to see how I got this look!

As I've been thinking about how I want to make little changes to this blog so that I'm more personally satisfied with what I'm putting out, I've really felt inclined to write more about my feelings on the state of the beauty community and the beauty industry. Smatterings of these things may have popped up in blog posts before, but I really felt like since this is my space and these are things that I feel pretty strongly about they were worth writing down and sharing here. I have a feeling this will end up being a bit of a series here on the blog, but to start with I wanted to really dig into something that has been niggling at me for a while now.

I feel like more and more, with the rise of "clean" beauty we've seen a really firm binary being cemented and accepted and it's been really bothering me. The problem with binary thinking on pretty much anything is that it obliterates nuance and context and boils everything down to a basic, easy-to-understand but often incomplete or even incorrect picture of what's going on. When it comes to the question of Natural Ingredients vs. Synthetic or Manmade Ingredients, I genuinely believe there's no answer to the question of which is better because ultimately we're asking the wrong questions.

Keep reading for more!

Hey guys! For the month of June, our #CBBxManiMonday theme is Brights... and I feel like I'm really, really going to have fun with it. Of course, I'm sort of bleeding the May and June themes into each other because I have some floral stamping in today's look, but it really just had to be done. I actually tried something else before I did this mani and it didn't come out as bright as I was intended - but it's actually really pretty so I'm going to share it over on @pblnails and if you're interested in seeing all of my nail art you should definitely follow me there!

But for now, keep reading for a closer look at this Fresh Spring Floral Gradient mani and to find out how I got it!

I've been spending a good amount of time recently thinking about self care and what that really means to me. I genuinely do think that how we treat self care and the things that we do to practice it can be very personal and we have to figure out those things for ourselves. For me, one thing that I've absolutely learned is that if I don't get enough sleep, it has a domino effect that really impacts my mood, motivation and productivity, so my number one thing is making sure that I'm prioritizing sleep and doing what I can to make sure my sleep is restful. Because I do have anxiety disorder, sometimes falling asleep and getting a restful sleep can be difficult, but I've figured out some really good tricks that help me and I wanted to share them.

Keep reading for more!

Hey guys!

I just wanted to drop in and write a little something. An update of sorts, I guess.

I have to admit that I've been feeling a little bit of beauty fatigue lately. I could blame it on the fact that I basically spent five weeks feeling like crap and my beauty routine basically consisted of little more than washing my face, but I think it goes a little deeper than that. Ultimately, this fatigue has left me feeling like I need to recalibrate myself, do a little bit of soul searching, and maybe extend the content on this blog to include more than just beauty related content.

So what does that mean? I'm not actually sure. I have every intention of continuing to do beauty content because it's still something that I absolutely love and getting into that zone of trying out new products and reviewing them for you guys, but I feel like I also need to branch out a little bit.

I hope you'll understand if content is a little bit more sparse as I try to figure things out and I hope you'll stick with me and end up really enjoying where I end up taking this blog. I really, really want to keep creating content that I love and am excited about.

Thanks so much!