Imagine this: you have Friday night all planned. Meeting up with a girlfriend directly after work (yes you brought a change of clothes!), grab a nice pre-game dinner (my pick: some sort of healthy pita place, because you know after you’ll be headed to a greasy spoon), then head out to a bar/club/art event/roller derby match. You want to look your best, but you also don’t want to look like you’re going to a club all workday long. What’s a time-strapped girl to do?! Grab an empty Altoids tin, throw these essentials in, and you’re on your glamorous way!

• eyeliner pencil. For the smudgy, smoky, mysterious girl look, I like the 99¢ pencils. Then again, I’ve never tried Dior and such so I wouldn’t know how those fancy ones fare. But, I would stay clear of the middle ground eyeliners. Either you get the cheap-o ones that run like the dickens when you rock out, or you buy the crème de la crème.
• blush.  I like to rouge a little bit more when I go out, since dark lights drown out any color. Warning: not too much! There’s a thin line between flush and vibrant and scary clown. Learn to tread with caution.
• red lipstick. I find it very hard to find a drugstore red that doesn’t make me look like a clown, so i like to mix my own keep in a small, vintage tin (a tin within a tin, so meta!)
• dangly, sparkly earrings. I recommend diamond-type chandeliers, because they sparkle best at every angle of low light.
• small perfume sample. luckyscent is an amazing place to stock up on samples of perfume if you don’t have the cash, or aren’t sure about the smell. My all-time favorite is Vanille Bourbon. Hands down the best vanilla perfume ever. No sickly sweet candy smell that makes you nauseated because you smell like you’re oozing cotton candy from your pores (which wouldn’t be bad thing, until you have to go to the dentist)