© cienpiesnf

First of all, my apologies if you thought this post would give you a comparison of free and premium themes, plugins and services on the Internet, and which ones are good to download. This post isn’t about that today. I’ll blog about that topic in future (already written down in my notebook!) but for today, I’d like to talk about free bloggie things vs premium bloggie things.

When I first started blogging years ago, it never came across my mind to even pay for premium themes and blog design. At that time, I knew there were a handful of premium themes (blog themes that you have to pay for) circulating about the blogosphere but seeing that blogging was nothing more than a hobby for me back then, I went down the free theme route. It suited me just fine because it gave me the flexibility to redesign my blog designs to my liking and learning about HTML and CSS along the way.

In 2010, I decided to give the very popular Thesis framework for WordPress a go. At that time, I made a few peanuts a year from blogging via ads and decided to use those peanuts to pay for the premium theme. At that time, I didn’t know if I was making the right decision because to me, it was a lot of money to pay for a theme when there were heaps of free themes online. After consulting with Paris B who was (and still is) on the Thesis framework, I took the plunge into the world of premium themes. A couple of years later, I started to pay for premium WordPress plugins after dealing with so much crap that came with free mobile themes plugins.

These days, a lot of the plugins on my website are premium ones. I even pay for certain services that make my blogging a whole lot easier. And I don’t regret a single one of them.

You see, a very common question I used to ask myself was this: why pay for something when you can get them for free?

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Press Sample Purchased By Me Affiliate Links

I love tinted brow gels. I think it’s one of the best makeup inventions since the blush, which is slightly weird for me to say so given that 1) I have thick full brows and 2) well, I’m kinda dissing blush here, which y’all know is my #1 makeup love. You see, even though I have thick full brows, I do have areas that are slightly more sparse than the rest and what better and more natural-looking way to fill those in than using a tinted brow gel?

The thing is, I only started using eyebrow makeup a couple of years ago. I’ve always had thick full brows and thought it was unnecessary of me to use an eyebrow pencil or gel because heck, it’s already so thick. When I met celebrity makeup artist Rae Morris two years ago, I picked up a few makeup tips from her and one of them was using an eyebrow pencil even on thick brows. You’re not meant to make them super thick but simply to define them further. It made a lot of sense to me because in between my brow wax appointments, my brow hairs grow in all sorts of directions and without a wax or gel to keep them in place, they look very messy.

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Press Sample

I must admit, when I first heard of this foundation, I was very keen on trying it out. The swirling white bits that are separate from the foundation as seen in the bottle are very pretty and it piqued my interest as to how lovely this would make my skin look. This foundation is meant to provide a luminous, radiant finish on the skin and I wanted that on my skin.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the result I got. This foundation frustrated me so much to the point where I’m afraid I have to say it’s one of the worst I’ve used.

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