What Happens When 10 TSABD Readers Raid My Beauty Closet

As you can imagine as someone who writes about beauty for a living, I get A LOT of beauty products. Many of these are color cosmetics that I may get various shades in to swatch in order to help you guys with your makeup purchases. And as you can imagine sometimes the products can pile up. A lot of what comes in gets distributed to family and friends. Some unopened products get donated to charity. But even then I STILL wind up with a lot of stuff.

So I came up with an idea to have a small invite-only event where the most awesome of my awesome readers get to raid my beauty closet. I LOVE the idea of smaller, more intimate beauty events because it gives me a chance to really chat with you guys. I did one with BECCA Cosmetics a little while ago where attendees got a step-by-step hands-on tutorial from celebrity makeup artist Cynde Watson on how to create a summer makeup look. It was SO MUCH FUN! I honestly wish I could clone myself (and my bank accounts/sponsorships…lol) so that I can do many more.

Anyway, I have so many ideas in my head for fun ways we can get together but what made the most sense was to invite a small amount of you to raid my beauty closet. I had a TON of unopened and brand new skincare, makeup, perfumes, body products, and hair products as well as gently swatched foundations and color cosmetics that needed new homes so it made perfect sense.

The goods:

This is my first time doing an event like this and I actually had no clue how I wanted to organize it but I did know that it wouldn’t be helpful if people just grabbed at whatever products and wound up going home with items that may not have worked for them. The group was amazing and when I tell you SUPER thoughtful—offering to swap with each other or allowing others to have a chance at products before others. We started out with a per person product limit because I was expecting more people to come, but after a while I just said we’ll use some sort of honor system…lol. It was amazing—I helped the ladies find some (hopefully) great makeup matches and skincare products. We laughed, we drank mimosas, we chatted, we really had a great time and all the amazing positive energy made me tear up several times. Honestly, just looking at the room and seeing people take in everything I had to say—women who look like me—made me feel SO happy. And then some of them shared things that could have had me out right ugly crying, but I held composure…lol. One person said she found my blog when she was in high school and was so elated to find someone close to her skin tone. She printed out one of my foundation posts. There was another person who told me how much she loves the information I provide and how she would love if I could do a makeup application class. Someone else answered someone else’s question about makeup with “go on Danielle’s YouTube channel and check out her Makeup 101 series.” I LOVE it! It was great meeting people whose names I see in comments and it just felt so good to be around such a positive vibe. Like the good vibes in that room were SO thick you could cut it with a butter knife…lol. And this is what I love about social media and I encourage EVERYONE no matter if you have 6 followers or 600,000 followers to understand the type of impact you can have on people. I like to put out positive energy and it was so amazing to have it felt back.

The ladies thanked me for putting on a great event but honestly, I feel like I got the biggest gift of just being in their presence. Thank you all so much! I hope to have more events and hopefully get more of my favorite brands involved so I can do more. If money weren’t an issue, I’d be ALLLLLL up and through the U.S. and then travel the world wherever you guys are to kick back and talk makeup :)

Now you know you need to go ahead and sign up for my newsletter, right? Signing up for my newsletter and following me pretty much everywhere on the internet (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and I also have a YouTube channel) is exactly how these ladies were able to snag invites. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter here.

Thank you SO much to Nas for allowing us to hang out at her photography studio and for chatting with us about how important it is to have photos of yourself. You can find out more about booking your family, children, maternity, or glamour shoot here.

To more events!