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| Justina is one of my favorite bloggers so why wouldn't I feature her right? She does it all while being a mommy also. Her page features great information on all kinds of products with a side of giveaways. If your on Facebook and you come across her page, stop by and show her some love, she works really hard on a daily basis to bring us all great reviews on products. |
I started blogging in October
2011. It was kind of a random thing- my friend Jessica and I had
stumbled upon "Beauty Broadcast" aka emilynoel83 as she is known on
YouTube. She is so down to earth and her videos are so fun to watch.
Jessica mentioned that we should start up a YouTube channel and a blog,
and that's how TruBeautyGems was born. The funky spelling comes from the
combination of our last names. "Tru" is the prefix of Jessica's and
"Gem" is the prefix of mine. I think it's kind of funny that one of our
first things we did on the internet relating to beauty/blogging is
starting a YouTube channel. We were so bad at making videos it wasn't
even funny. I'm not tech savvy. At all. I can write up a review and
throw some pictures in there no problem, but ask me to edit a video, and
no thanks. If you search for TruBeautyGems on YouTube these days, you
won't find it, because we took it down.
Fast
forward from October to December, and we had some exciting things
happen to our blog. We have always been makeup junkies. I am more into
the high end side of things, and Jessica was into the drugstore. It was a
great mix, and it was fun to watch me dabble more into drugstore and
Jessica get sucked into the high end scene. I won a contest called the
Rimmel 10 contest, which was super fun, and I just concluded it this
past November 2012. Me winning that was as group effort, and it gave us
the approval we needed on our blog to know we were doing cool stuff! It
also looked good to be involved with Rimmel boosting the publicity for
their products when we were trying to make company contacts.
Fast
forward a little more and in January 2012, my husband took a job in
Washington (we were living 26 hours from there in Wisconsin) and I found
out I was pregnant. Blogging took a bit of a turn for me as I went from
working 3 jobs to none, and relocated to a different area where I knew
nobody. It was a really fun hobby to keep me company in a new town, and I
will always be grateful for the online beauty community I had built
during that time. It kept me wanting to keep putting on makeup, and kept
me feeling pretty despite my growing body.
You don't even need to wear makeup every day to be a
successful beauty blogger- I know I sure don't. Sometimes during the
week, the only time I put makeup on at all is so I can write up a post
or test out a product to show my readers. About 95% of the pictures on
my blog are unedited. As a new mom, and as a person who likes to spend
time doing other stuff in my day besides blogging, I don't really have
the time or energy to sit there and painstakingly remove each flaw from
my face. The pictures on my blog are a reflection of me and what I look
like in real life. I want people who look at a product to see what the
colors are really like, and how they perform on a real person. Don't get
me wrong, I do love looking at awesome photography in perfect lighting,
but in my opinion, that's what sites like Temptalia are for. I don't
have studio lighting in my house, and frankly, if I can't accomplish it
by a window with my smart phone, I'm not interested.
Shortly after having my baby, TruBeautyGems branched
off and now Jessica and I each have separate blogs. She branched off
and created a blog at www.intrubeauty.blogspot.com, and I'm now located at www.justinasgems.com. Our original site, www.trubeautygems.blogspot.com
is still live, and at some point we would love to transform it into a
beauty community of sorts, but it's still undecided what we should make
it, so it sits there waiting. I am still blogging about beauty, but at
some point would like to blog about motherhood, the books I'm reading,
and other topics of interest. There's so much more to life than beauty
and makeup! I'm still trying to find my niche in blogging. Another thing
I've been doing a lot of is giveaways. It is always a high point in my
day when I get a package of beauty products to review in the mail- why
not share the wealth? When we were active on TruBeautyGems, we were
constantly doing giveaways of stuff we purchased at the store and we
sent packages ourselves. Regularly, we would do giveaways that cost us
$30-40 out of pocket to gain followers. Now, I only do company sponsored
giveaways. Thankfully, the companies I work with have been very
generous to me and my followers, so I regularly have giveaways that are
better than I could provide for my readers anyways.
Before I started
blogging, my favorite beauty companies were Clinique, Lancome, and
Benefit. They are still three of my favorite brands and very trusty. I
probably owned 3-4 perfume bottles, and a few Clinique moisturizers for
skincare, and that was it. Fast forward to a year and a half of
blogging, and my perfume collection has exploded, I have quadruple the
amount of makeup I've started with, and I've been introduced to a slew
of new companies. I couldn't even choose my favorites anymore! I still
turn to Clinique for my basic skincare needs, but a recent favorite I've
discovered is Le Mieux. I still love my $30 Diorshow mascara, but I
like my $7 L'Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black at least as much. One of my
favorite hairsprays is Prive, which I never would have discovered had it
not been for blogging. I also love Zoya nailpolish, and live for
Clinique Chubbysticks (I have almost the entire collection of the 3
lines they've come out with!) I almost forgot to mention I discovered
Harvey Prince through blogging, and they're one of my favorite perfume
brands. There are lots of smaller companies out there and it's worth
giving them a try. Just because a brand doesn't sell their products at
Sephora doesn't mean that they're not just as good.
Please feel free
to stop by my page anytime! I am always either hosting a giveaway or in
the middle of planning my next one. We have lots of fun on my page :-)
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