Despite my no-buy, I’ve managed to acquire a new lipstick. My boyfriend teaches in the UK and asked me if I wanted him to bring me anything when he came to visit this month. He was actually the one who suggested that he might surprise me with some makeup from Topshop, and who was I… Read More Topshop Mini Lip Bullet Pyramid in Motel
Odds are good that if you’re reading this, you fall into one of two categories: either you’ve already collected the 2015 Sephora birthday gift, or you don’t have access to Sephora and are annoyed to see the millionth review of the 2015 Sephora birthday gift pop up on your feed. In fact, I’m tempted to… Read More Because It’s Not 2016 Yet: NARS Mini Lip Pencils in Cruella and Rikugien
Three weeks into my no-buy, I’m not feeling any great temptation to get something new, but I do find myself adding a worrisome number of items to my “buy in 2016” wishlist. In the interest of self-distraction, I think I’d better get back to reviewing the stuff I picked up during my stress-shopping phase in… Read More Stress-Fueled Impulse Purchase #5: Urban Decay Rapture Blush
All right, technically the NARS Semi-Matte Lipstick in 413 BLKR has been around since Fall 2013. But it’s my standout lipstick acquisition of this fall, so there. I’ve had it for two weeks and have worn it on almost half those days. I can’t stop. It’s just too good. I forget how exactly I became… Read More The Official Lipstick of Fall 2015: NARS 413 BLKR
I don’t wear much red lipstick. Is that a strange admission for a lipstick addict to make? Red is the iconic lip color, the color that we all think of when we hear the word “lipstick,” yet it’s rare that I reach for a true red: I prefer my reds sheer or burnt or plummy.… Read More Stress-Fueled Impulse Purchase #4: Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in 69
2015 will certainly go down in makeup history as the year of the brown lipstick. Dark gothy brown, ’90s-style midtone warm brown, muddy red, and the strangest brown of all: a cool-toned gray-brown, often with a hint of purple. I don’t know why undead lips have become so wildly popular this year, but they’ve been… Read More Stress-Fueled Impulse Purchase #3: Topshop Matte Lipstick in Boardroom
Prior to this year, I felt ambivalent about Milani. It was the only cruelty-free brand with a decent selection in my local CVS (no NYX or Wet n Wild for this backwater), but its offerings included heavily fragranced, drying lipstick, sticky lip gloss, coarsely milled eyeshadow, and too-shimmery baked blush. 2015 has changed all that. I… Read More Stress-Fueled Impulse Purchase #2: Milani Matte Fearless
Guys, I miss beauty blogging. I miss it so much that in the week since I announced my semi-hiatus, I’ve worked on four different draft posts. I’ll open an empty post, add a title, write a few sentences just to give myself the feeling of blogging, then save the post to my draft folder and… Read More Stress-Fueled Impulse Purchase #1: Essie Leggy Legend
What were the odds that I’d review two lipsticks named “Crush” in three days? Pretty good, actually, since drugstore beauty brands love to name their lip products “Crush.” There doesn’t seem to be any color theme linking them together, either. Milani’s Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush is dark brown; Maybelline’s Coral Crush lipstick is,… Read More Now for a Crush Worth Crushing On: Revlon Balm Stain in…You Guessed It
If you distilled all of 2015’s lip-color trends into a single product, you’d come up with Milani Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush. Crush ticks all the boxes: it’s a dark brown (check) liquid lipstick (check) that dries to a flat matte finish (check). Interestingly, it’s also a marriage of high-end and low-end trends. Matte… Read More Brown Is Back, Bitches: Milani Amore Matte Lip Creme in Crush
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