Post-Christmas Shopping---anyone?

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, wonderful Christmas and all, and hopefully unlike me you don't have to go back to work tomorrow >D Haha...anyway, regardless of whether you got your wishes for Christmas (did you? What did you get?) I'm sure you're all just as excited about the after-Christmas sale as I am! Most years I'm gone for the holidays so by the time I come back in January I missed out on most of the sales (boo~~), but this year I told yobo early on that Sunday the 26th is OUTLET SHOPPING DAY. :D:D:D

So today we went a little further down (to the border) to Las Americas Premium Outlets....just because we haven't been there before and we figured there would be less traffic from SD/Mexico than from SF/NorCal. It's like going to Tijuana but not quite, lol. One of these days I'll make it all the way there...

But meanwhile I did buy a couple of items that I will show you later when I have daylight to take pictures of them :) Victoria's Secret had 75% off and their xmas hats and tutus were only 99 cents each! Needless to say I was very tempted, but yobo said no ._.

I just wanted to show you that I do actually still use the ELF palette that I reviewed in this post, because I don't want to waste and it's decent if you really pack it on, don't touch the cream shadows, and don't dare to sweat.  Just a survival tip ;D

I'm wearing Gold and the Bronze next to gold on the top right of the palette

I'm wearing the ELF eyeliner that came with the package. The "lead" keeps breaking on me. I barely got my other eye before it needed sharpening (again). It's not very "soft" either but it still rubs off easily. Ugh. Never again.

So the key to using these colors is to use one of those flat sponge applicators instead of brushes. You know how some people say you should use brushes with powder eyeshadow and applicators with cream ones? Or your fingers? Well this color palette works way better with applicators and fingers, most likely because it needs to be packed on and the applicators work very well at that. I found a pack of H&M applicators that I must have purchased a while back and I have been using them with this palette to make it work for me.

What tricks have you got?