Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

This March has felt about twice as long as a normal month, and it's still not over. I can't explain what made it seem so interminable. Maybe it was that we were teased repeatedly with the promise of spring, yet the vernal equinox nine days ago brought us this: Whatever the reason, this was a long and rather stressful month, and I clung more fiercely than ever to small material delights like lipstick and baking and k-pop music videos. I enjoy reading other bloggers' roundups of their monthly makeup favorites, but since my own beauty routine is pretty consistent and my new purchases are pretty infrequent (though less infrequent than they should be), I've never felt qualified to do my own monthly list of favorite beauty products. I've been thinking, though, that I'd like to start a tradition of listing all my favorites, beauty and otherwise, at the end of each month. I want to acknowledge those small ephemeral pleasures that make day-to-day life more enjoyable but

Sorry I've been posting so erratically this month! I usually try for one post every three days, but lately it's been two posts in two days, then a break of five or six days, then two more posts in two days. I'm trying not to beat myself up about it, because inspiration comes and goes for us all, but I'm hoping I can get into a more regular pattern soon. I blame March. It's an untrustworthy month in so many ways, and it leads me to do untrustworthy things like make an Ulta order when I've already announced a March-long no-buy on my blog. "Holy magenta!" really was the phrase that popped into my head when I first saw swatches of NYX's new Intense Butter Gloss in Spice Cake. (My fingers keep wanting to type "Space Cake," for some reason. It's true that the deep shiny fuchsia-magenta is the sort of lip color one would wear to an intergalactic rave.) Despite my love for NYX's original Butter Glosses (I reviewed Peach Cobbler and Raspb

After holding out for years, I finally joined Instagram! I was wary of giving myself yet another way to waste time online, but you all seemed to be having so much fun there that I couldn't resist. Plus, what kind of person writes an entire post about Instagram selfies and doesn't even have an account? My username is @dresspaintpatches @auxiliary_beauty (@auxiliarybeauty was taken, if you can believe it). (Update, 3/23: Yes, I'm so indecisive that I changed my Instagram handle within two days. I think it's less confusing this way. I promise I won't turn into the kind of person who changes it every week.) I do, of course, have a couple of questions about this marvelous technology that all the kids are using: 1. How do you attach one of those little Instagram badges to your blog? I thought I could do it by copying and pasting the HTML code provided here into one of the sidebar "gadgets" available on Blogger, but Blogger tells me that I need to copy a URL

Thanks to Liz for the tag! The person who came up with this meme clearly has a boundless capacity for suspension of disbelief, as well as a knack for writing questions that each provoke about five more questions. I've done my best. 1. You have to get rid of all of your foundations and only keep one high-end and one drugstore; which do you keep? I don't actually own any foundations, so I'm going to take the liberty of replacing "foundations" with "lipsticks," which makes the choice much harder for me. Am I allowed to buy back any of the shades I've gotten rid of, though? Or am I allowed only two for the rest of my life? I need more information. But assuming I'd eventually get to repurchase the ones I lost, I'd go with one neutral and one bold lipstick. These days I've been enjoying Milani Matte Naked, and I guess I'd choose NARS Angela for my high-end lipstick: it's my most expensive one, and I've used so little of it. 2. You

In my 27 years on this earth, I've never lived in a space larger than a two-bedroom apartment. My current apartment measures 271 square feet (10 square feet per year of life, plus one to grow on), which is actually an upgrade in size from my previous place. It's fair to say that I'm used to coping with limited space. In the comments of her recent post about moving into a smaller apartment in New York, Monika asked me if I'd be willing to write my own post about how I organize my stuff in my miniature apartment, and I'm happy to oblige! This post would have gone up earlier, but I managed to delete the first draft entirely, ugh. A couple of caveats here. First, I'm a bit of a slob. I try to keep my slobbish tendencies in control, but I'm never more than one step ahead of entropy. My preferred method of "tidying up" involves tossing more and more things onto the futon until there's almost no room for me to sit. Do you really want to take organiz

Name: Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Streak Date Purchased: January 2014 Grade: B+ Notes: This "chronology" has gotten so woefully out of order that it doesn't even deserve the name, but the weather is finally above freezing and the sun is out and I'm drinking an iced coffee, and I'm going to review my springiest lipstick, damn it, even if that means skipping over ten others. It's my blog and I can ignore the flow of linear time if I want to. Streak is the only purchase I've ever made from Urban Decay; the brand just never grabbed my attention until it released its 22 new Revolution Lipsticks in the fall of 2013, and it hasn't grabbed my attention since. The reason, I think, has to do with the disconnect between UD's brand identity and its price point. If I'm going to pay $18 for a single eyeshadow or $22 for a lipstick, I want to buy into a slightly more refined aesthetic, you know? UD describes the Revolution Lipsticks as "creamy, ba