Current State Of The Nation

millions of boxes.. boxes for me...

I am from a broken home.

No, that's not right.  My home is broken.  Nope.  My hope is broken.  Nope, not that either.  So why the long silence?  Bless me father, it has been one month since my last blog post...

For the purposes of this post, please do assume that you're going to come across some swear words.  And feel free to read "stuff" as "schtuffff", as I have been pronouncing it in my head the entire way through.

MontyC's Favourite Blogs

For today's Mondays with MontyC, I thought I might share a few of my favourite blogs and bloggers.  From down over the years, I've read/watched a lot of blogs/YouTube videos, I've seen blogs/bloggers come and go, and I've let some of them fall by the wayside too, as I outgrew them, or their standards slipped, or they sold out (sadly, this happens a lot - you see bloggers who start out idealistic, grow, get bigger, and become nothing more than mouthpieces for specific brands).

I shall nail my colours firmly to the mast and tell you that when it comes to beauty blogs or YouTube videos, I have developed zero tolerance for bullsh*t.  I don't mind promotional posts - who doesn't want to know what's coming out in a few months after all! - but only if they're not trying to pass themselves off as reviews.  When I want to do some research and read some reviews, I don't want to know about what the press release says a product does, and neither do I particularly care what celebrity fronts its campaign.  I want details on on how it performs on real people to help me figure out if it will work for me and if it's worth my hard earned cash.

Changes to Make Up For Dolls Twitter!

Important announcement!

From here on in, MontyC has agreed to also post all things Make Up For Dolls -related under the @MakeUpForDolls twitter account!  As an absolutely avid (and brilliant) tweeter (as opposed to me, I'm just a twit!), I'm confident that Make Up For Dolls will have a much better presence and representation on Twitter than ever before.

MontyC will be posting thus:  <Twitter Text> via @MontyC

Whereas I (Siobhán) will be posting thus:  <Twitter Text>
or
<Twitter Text>  via @MakeUpForDolls

So please contact either MontyC or Siobhán from here on in at the same twitter username, by tweeting @MakeUpForDolls directly.  Any questions or comments, please holler!  In the meantime, welcome @MontyC's gradual takeover of the blog... gulp :-)

2014 Blog Charter

Happy New Year!

So it's the 6th of January, and here I am, back with a bang as promised!  Christmas is well and truly over chez nous.  It's January, it's the start of a new year a new set of plans and targets, hopes and dreams, interests and adventures.  The days are technically already starting to get shorter.  Not so you'd notice, there's hardly a grand stretch to the evenings just yet, as we say in Ireland, but it's enough to know it's happening at least!  And as planned, my blogging break ends today.

I refuse to call this a "resolution" post, but in essence that's what it is - what I'd like to do with the Make Up For Dolls blog in 2014.  Read on - there's some exciting news!

2013: The Year in Review

I started out this post thinking I'd do a recap of the products that I discovered this year and loved, then realised, nope, Make Up For Dolls has come a long way in the last year, and I wanted to do a recap, not in a boasty way, but just as a reminder of some of the highlights - things I got up to, things I posted about, stuff that was fun and different and interesting!

Of course the absolute crowning moment for me this year was the creation of my very own red lipstick, following on from a lot of researching and back-and-forth on the subject with the fabulous folks at Cosmetics a la Carte in London.  Read all about it here.  Go on.  I'm not remotely excited about this one, still, a year on :-)

As for the rest?  Well... read on!
 

New MakeUpForDolls app on Android!

One for the Android users - instructions on how to sideload the new MakeUpForDolls Android app!

This one seems complicated, but it's not really... honestly!  "Sideloading" is a new-ish term which refers to downloading of an app onto a device outside of that device's native app store, and the installation of that app on your local device's storage.  So you won't be downloading this from the Google Play Store*, for example - instead you can use a QR code (see the rest of the post) to link directly to a website to download the app and install it onto your Google Android device.

Why bother?  For me - it was an exercise in seeing if I could do it.  For Android readers of my blog - why not!  It's a single-click access to the app with a dynamically updated recreation of the blog, in other words it auto-updates for you each time a new post is produced or any other updates are made.

Here's the instructions... go for it and I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone who has tried it...

* reason being, Google charges 25 quid to post an app to the Google Play Store.  AND it doesn't allow legacy Google for Business domains to register with the appropriate tools first to enable you to do this as far as I can see, so I'd have to commit to spending additional on a monthly subscription to this too.  No thanks.

Inglot Colour Play Lipsticks, Kohl Eyeliner Pencil, Addicts Fanbase and Bloggers Event...

Last Wednesday I attended the Inglot Blanchardstown VIP event to celebrate the launch of Ingot's new "Inglot Addics" fan database, together with their new Colour Play Lipsticks and Kohl Eyeliner Pencil.  

The launch included a makeup demonstration, featuring the new lipsticks and nicely thought-out goodie bags, as well as Inglot's generous 20% discount available to all on the night.

Givaways! Prizes! Free Makeup!

Giveaway time!  Freebies galore!!  Prizes!!!  Competitions!!!!
If you're not in, you can't win!!!!!
And other annoying overly-effusive declarations, spoken in the most irritating accent imaginable, punctuated by multiple exclamation points!  Whohoo, yeah, baby!

So, I've been doing some reviewing (hey that kinda rhymes!) and even though it's been a quiet (on the blog front) few months, due in no small part to mania (on the home/work/fun front), I can confirm that my stats are looking good and I'm happy.  While I appreciate some of the figures below may be considered small fry to some, I'm happy with then and to say thank you to everyone who follows me and reads the stuff I write... and so I wanted to have some giveaways.  Not just one or two, but five, five freebie prize giveaways for absolutely nothing - just so say thanks!

Return to normal operations...

I'm back!

I'm sorry for the hiatus.  It was a necessary one.

Blog Posts: What to write about

Snapshot of some of the stats Google Blogger provides for a particular period of time
(these are for this week)

I took a look at my viewer stats this morning to see if I could get some inspiration on what to write about today.  I have a few posts started, but nothing near completion (or even near where they should be for editing down).  So instead I took a trip down memory lane on my postings in the last fiften months.  It was an interesting trip and revealed to me what people read the most.

If you're a blogger, or an aspiring blogger, perhaps this might prove useful.  If you're a reader, then maybe you'll discover some posts you haven't seen before!

Make Up For Dolls Blog is One Year Old!

Make Up For Dolls Blog is One Year Old!!!

I made it!

When I started this out, a year ago, I decided that I'd blog "whenever I could".  I thought I'd give it a year, and see how it went.  I had some rough targets in mind, I figured (nominally) I'd try to aim for:

• 100+ Facebook likes
• 250+ Twitter followers
• 2-3 posts a week
• An average of 1,000 blog pageviews per month (ie 120,000 pageviews for the year)

So how did I do?