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.
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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.
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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).
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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:
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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.
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Color-wise, it's close to Rimmel Apocalips Lip Lacquer in Across the Universe:
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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":
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Be still, my heart.
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.