Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Hello from South Florida! I took this photo yesterday evening, toward the end of a thunderstorm. It's hard to adhere to a regular blogging schedule when your location changes every few days, but I couldn't resist doing this meme from Liz at Beauty Reductionista . 1. Summer lipstick you're loving? I've been enjoying sheer and semi-sheer reds, both cool and warm. And on days when I just can't be bothered with color makeup, I reach for my favorite (and recently repurchased!) MLBB. Left to right: Maybelline Vibrant Mandarin, Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple, NARS Flamenco, and NARS Dolce Vita. Swatched in the same order: 2. Summer nail polish you're loving? All Essie, as it happens! For my fingers, Lollipop (cherry-red jelly) and Fashion Playground (mint green with faint silver shimmer); for my toes, In the Cab-ana (swimming-pool blue). 3. Summer blush you're loving? Illamasqua cream blush in Zygomatic (I'm sure you knew I'd say that). I can't remem...

Greetings from Birmingham, Alabama! I've been here for a few days to see my boyfriend, who is visiting his parents. This means, of course, that I've also been to Ulta. The company has no outposts near where I live, and I have yet to see one in San Francisco, where my parents live, so what was I to do when I finally found myself in physical proximity to an Ulta? Not go? Come on. The great and unusual thing about Ulta is that it sells both drugstore and high(ish)-end products, as well as a few brands that I normally have to buy online, such as NYX and Zoya. The more expensive brands at Ulta (e.g. Urban Decay, Too Faced) tend to have a young target demographic: no Guerlain or YSL or even NARS, more's the pity. I tend to be less interested in those shelves than in the drugstore stuff and the overwhelming selection of nail polish. Today I picked up three nail polishes and a lipstick:  Left to right: OPI Eurso Euro (a birthday present for my stepmother--I already have a bottle)...

I got a haircut yesterday! My hair hasn't touched my shoulders since 2007. In the past seven years, I've had long bobs, short bobs, longer-in-front bobs, pixie cuts, and whatever was happening on my head during senior year of college, when I couldn't afford professional haircuts and had to take matters--and scissors--into my own hands. All this means that I've learned a lot about managing short hair, and I thought I'd discuss some of my recent experiences in this post. This past January, I got a pixie cut for the first time in almost two years. Enough time had passed since my last one that I'd forgotten something very important: a pixie is not a low-maintenance haircut . If you want to keep that perfect pixie shape, you need to get it touched up every month or two, which I can't afford to do right now. Maintaining a pixie is even harder when you don't have straight hair. My hair is fine and wavy, and on humid days it crosses the border into curly; it...

Name: NARS Sheer Lipstick in Dolce Vita Date Purchased: Spring 2013 (and again on Monday!) Grade: A Notes: I did it! I repurchased NARS Dolce Vita after a few months spent trying to preserve the tiny nub that remained of my first tube. I have a weird psychological hangup about repurchasing makeup. A second tube of a well-loved lipstick just doesn't give me the thrill of the new and unknown. And since no product is perfect, not even Dolce Vita, I can't help thinking that if I keep looking, I'll come upon something even better. But with Dolce Vita, my neurosis went too far. I found myself avoiding my favorite lipstick because I was afraid to use it up. Two days ago I decided that enough was enough, and $26 plus tax later, I have a shiny new tube of my trusty goes-with-everything lipstick. Just in time, too, since I can't in good conscience continue to use my old one. I mean, look at it. I feel like I'm turning into my mother, who has used up and repurchased the same t...

All right, that title is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not completely sure I'll never get a tattoo. But given my indecisiveness, fear of commitment, and habitual buyer's remorse, I can say the odds are very slim. I do, however, own five Maybelline Color Tattoo eyeshadows. I'm not the first person to consider the Color Tattoos (with a couple of exceptions) some of the best beauty products at the drugstore. They're cream eyeshadows in adorable, satisfyingly heavy glass pots, and they can be used either on their own or as long-lasting bases for powder shadows. Most of us have heard that cream eyeshadows should be stored upside down (I trust this isn't a myth...?), but I'd probably never remember to do that if not for the ingenious design of the Color Tattoos. The glass "lid" is actually the pot that holds the product, while the black plastic "bottom" is the screw-off lid. I've never encountered another drugstore product packaged in real...