It’s Christmas in August! By which I mean, it’s been so gray and gloomy in San Francisco that wearing gold eyeliner and brick-red matte lipstick–together, even–seems perfectly appropriate in early August.
These are both recent purchases: I bought the eyeliner at a CVS in New York and the lipstick at an Ulta in Birmingham. I get around.
NYX Slide On Pencil in Glitzy Gold is a yellow-gold metallic pencil eyeliner that needs to be sharpened (in my case, with a NARS dual sharpener that I forgot to bring to San Francisco, of course).
The Slide On formula was already familiar to me: I reviewed Jewel, a reddish purple with pink sparkles, here. Like Jewel, Glitzy Gold is soft, yielding, and easy to apply and blend, but it’s not perfect. It draws a very fine, surprisingly subtle line. When it comes to eyeliner, I like subtle, but Glitzy Gold verges on easy-to-ignore subtle. It goes on about 90% opaque, but I like to wait 30 seconds for it to set and then go over it again, which results in this:
One big caveat: I wouldn’t recommend Glitzy Gold for anyone with especially oily eyelids, since the formula is so soft. I have dry lids and even on me, the color does fade a bit after several hours. I’ve also tried it on my lower lashline but haven’t been impressed, since it gets a bit smeary there. For me, this is an upper-lashline-only product (I don’t wear liner on my waterlines at all, since I wear contacts and the thought of putting makeup so close to my eyeball squicks me out). But as an upper-lashline-only product, Glitzy Gold is great! I’ve been wearing it almost every day for the past week and a half. I think gold is a great summer-to-fall transition color, since it works equally well with bright fuchsias and corals and muted plums and berries.
NYX Matte Lipstick in Alabama is a brick-red true matte.
Color-wise, it’s close to Rimmel Apocalips Lip Lacquer in Across the Universe:
Alabama is more matte, of course (though the Rimmel lip lacquers set semi-matte), and I also think it’s warmer, browner, and more muted. Do I need both? Probably not. Put another way: yes, absolutely.
The only NYX products I’d recommend with zero reservations are the matte lipsticks. I now have two (including Bloody Mary, a bright pink-red that hasn’t shown up on the blog yet), and both of them are true mattes that are also non-drying and comfortable to wear. Alabama is not my longest-lasting matte lipstick, and it won’t withstand a meal, but it does leave a lovely red-berry stain as it wears off. Here it is at full force:
Finally, Glitzy Gold paired with Alabama. Sorry about the inconsistent light throughout this post; the sun has come out in this neighborhood once in the last week, and it’s like a cave indoors unless I stand directly in front of the window.
Alabama also prompted me to buy my first lip brush! I’d always scoffed at the idea that a lipstick bullet and some concentration and dexterity were insufficient for applying certain colors, but Alabama convinced me otherwise. The NYX matte formula isn’t drying, but it’s certainly dry, which gives me less control over where on my mouth the color ends up. So I finally picked up a lip brush at Sephora, and it’s a revelation. I love the ritualistic feeling of painting on my mouth; I love the precision and control that the brush gives me (no one is more horrified than I am at the thought of overdrawing her lips). The only problem is that my brush lays down very thin layers of pigment, so I have to apply three coats of Alabama before it’s opaque enough for my liking, and then pat the bullet over my entire mouth to make sure the color is completely even. Not a process I’ll undertake on days when I have to dash out the door, but still a vast improvement over my previous lip-brush-free existence. I suspect that the magic of lip brushes is old news for most of the people reading this, but I still might write a separate post on it.
Yesterday at Sephora, my mom was nice enough to buy me a tube of NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer, which I’ll review soon. I also managed to swatch three products from the NARS Fall 2014 collection. Top to bottom: Satin Lip Pencils in Bansar and Mondore; sparklebomb blush in Unlawful.
I’d be tempted by Mondore if I weren’t already waiting with bated breath for September 1, when NARS will release a 40-piece lipstick collection in its new Audacious formula. There’s been some speculation that the Audacious lipsticks are meant to replace the existing line, but I have a hard time believing that NARS would get rid of classics like Heat Wave and Schiap. We’ll see. In the meantime, I have my eye on Audrey, a “red currant”:
Be still, my heart.
Auxiliary Beauty 
Alabama looks so pretty on you. It reminds me of Revlon matte \”In The Red\”, which is another pretty red color with cool brown undertones.And \”be still, my heart\” indeed! You picked out the perfect shade. I want Audrey, too! The Unlawful is definitely on my wish (to-buy) list as well. 🙂
LikeLike
Whee! 😀 Audrey is on my list of 'must see' colours as well. I'm so into the 'muted deep pinks' thing at the moment that I'm considering writing a whole post on it! On that note, I totally think you should write a post on lip brushes. I am a very lazy rogue, and own precisely one lip brush that I use for extremely dark shades (like MUFE 49) or lip art. It makes me squee a bit every time I draw that first razor sharp line at the lip edge, and I totally agree there is an extremely, deeply, satisfyingly, ritualistic element to painting one's lips. I'd do it more often, but I'm astoundingly lazy, and it's another brush to clean… ;-)*takes off ritual hat*
LikeLike
Oh, both of these are such gorgeous colours. I've yet to try any Nyx (which, by the way, I always assumed stood for \”New York\” something or other else but then I googled it!) but everyone raves about their lip products. Ooh, waiting on your concealer review! Is it really as good as everyone says it is? Another tip for dark lip colours — I sometimes conceal around the lips so it's even more precise, because I'm pretty cack-handed with lipsticks in general.
LikeLike
Now I'm curious what you thought the X stood for! NYX is a great brand if you want to experiment with offbeat lip colors, since they have a huge range of products at low prices. Of course, the tradeoff is that some of those products are much better than others, but I can recommend the matte lipsticks and butter glosses wholeheartedly. (The round lipsticks, not so much.)The concealer is great, though I like it better for my undereye circles than for spot concealing. It's definitely a huge step up from my old CoverGirl concealer! I'll try to post the review tomorrow.
LikeLike
Muted deep pinks ftw! I'd love to read what you have to say about them, since they're dear to my heart as well. Have you tried Revlon Sultry yet? I think it fits perfectly into that category…For me, the worst part of using a lip brush is that I have to clean it every time. I'm embarrassingly bad about washing my eyeshadow brushes (in my defense, I don't use them every day), but with my lip brush, I can't get away with that kind of laziness. It's not like I can just wipe off the red lipstick with a tissue and get started on a purple. A self-cleaning lip brush would be a great innovation…
LikeLike
I keep looking at the NARS product photos and finding more lipsticks to covet! I love how many wine and plum colors there are in the collection. Unlawful is a really pretty blush, but too sparkly for my taste–I'm very much a matte-blush person, at least for now.
LikeLike
I keep eyeballing sultry, but what holds me back is that I just don't know if I really like the look of matte lipstick on me. I have (and like) Shameless, Unapologetic and Elusive, but I don't reach for Elusive as often as I might (despite its less, er, 'aggressive' shade) because I always feel the rest of my face is not made up enough to get away with matte lipstick. I honestly can't decide if it's because I don't like the effect, or because I'm just too damn lazy to put on full makeup just to get away with a lipcolour… #lazymakeupjunkieproblemsIt is on my list, though! 😀 If you have any others you can think of, do let me know, as I'm trying to compile a list of as many lipsticks from as many brands as I can…and there are about a million common brands that I don't have access to!
LikeLike
It's interesting how we all develop personal makeup rules! I've never felt the need to put on more makeup with matte lipsticks than I do with other finishes, though I can see your reasoning. I do worry more about my skin when I'm wearing a dark matte lipstick, though…A muted deep pink that I used to wear allll the time is Bobbi Brown's Roseberry. I eventually got rid of it because I found the formula so drying, but the color is beautiful. I think Sultry is the closest I've come to a dupe, in fact!
LikeLike
[…] NYX Matte Lipstick in Alabama (Summer 2014) It’s amazing how dramatically lipstick formulas have improved in four years, […]
LikeLike
[…] 8. NYX Matte Lipstick in Alabama (review) […]
LikeLike
[…] Sheer Lipstick in Flamenco NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Mysterious Red NYX Matte Lipstick in Alabama Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Fire and Ice Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in […]
LikeLike
[…] reviewed the NYX Slide-On formula here and here, so for the sake of your patience, I’ll be brief. These eyeliners are very soft, which means […]
LikeLike
[…] NYX Matte Lipstick in Alabama entered my life. Alabama was exactly the deep matte interbellum brown-red I’d been pursuing […]
LikeLike