Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Because it's year-end-roundup season until January 31, damn it. I'm back online, so it's time to present my favorite new-to-me beauty products of 2016! As always, I've listed these items in the order in which I bought them. I listed 14 favorites in 2014 and 15 in 2015, but 16 seemed excessive somehow, so I kept the number at 15. 1. MAC Matte Lipstick in Antique Velvet This was the very first beauty product I bought in 2016, after a no-buy of almost two months. During those two months, I tried on Antique Velvet twice, loved it both times, searched the internet for cruelty-free dupes, and finally decided that nothing would satisfy me but the genuine article. Antique Velvet is a dark, cool-toned brown with a hint of plum. You'd think that such a dark matte lipstick would go on patchy, but it's smooth and evenly pigmented, with the same soft, comfortable formula as the other MAC mattes I've tried. After sticking to my no-buy for seven weeks, I expected to be thr...

How's that for an uncreative title? Just popping in to let you know that I've wanted to post in the last week, but my aged computer has stopped connecting to wifi AND the wifi in my apartment isn't working, so I'm using data to type this on my phone. I hope to get both situations sorted out in the next few days, ugh. Also, I have such a large backlog of products to review that I thought I'd ask your opinion: what would you like to see me review first, after my roundup of 2016 favorites? ABH Modern Renaissance palette New liquid matte lipsticks from Milani and Wet n Wild Urban Decay Vice lipsticks in Backtalk and Roach ColourPop eyeliner in Fast Lane, highlighter in Might Be, and Lippie Stix in Let's Play Finally, let me send my love and support to everyone marching today; I wish I could be out there too. Women's rights are human rights!

I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to destash makeup when I'm in a foul mood. The angrier I feel at the world, the more readily I can accept that a certain lipstick will never work for me and doesn't deserve a place on my shelf. In that spirit, I'm removing nine lipsticks from my collection today: The three Topshop lipsticks and the mini Givenchy are fairly recent acquisitions, but the other five have been kicking around for years and are very well-loved . In fact, all five were favorites of mine at one point or another, but have outlived their usefulness in my collection. It's hard to part with those lipsticks, but I know from experience that decluttering the makeup I no longer wear makes my collection less visually overwhelming. From left to right, we have MAC Pink Nouveau, Topshop Plastique, Topshop Boardroom, Maybelline Vivid Rose, Topshop Motel, Revlon Primrose, and MAC Creme Cup: And two stragglers, Revlon Red Velvet and Givenchy Noir Révélateur...

Welcome to the first, and saltier, of my two 2016 roundup posts! A few notes before we begin: There are 13 products on this list simply because I was disappointed by 13 products last year (not a large number, considering how many I tried).  As always, the products are listed in chronological order of purchase, not from best to worst or vice versa. I've linked to my original reviews where available.  I returned several of these products, sometimes too quickly to take photos. In those cases, I've used the brands' product shots. I also lost a number of my photos while clearing my phone's memory last year. Not all of these products are total fails. I kept and still use a few of them, since I don't subscribe to the KonMari doctrine of getting rid of anything that I don't absolutely love. Especially in the case of color cosmetics, if a product fulfills a specific purpose but isn't perfect, I'll often keep using it instead of buying yet another product in the s...

I returned last night from the academic job conference and felt so drained today that I didn't leave the house once, which almost never happens unless I'm sick. (Today's high temperature was about 12 °F, too. That was definitely a factor in my laziness.) Now that I have some more time, I'm looking forward to writing a couple of 2016 roundup posts. In today's post, I'll look back at my low-buy plan for 2016, concoct a (better, let's hope) plan for 2017, and make a few miscellaneous beauty resolutions. At the beginning of 2016, I vowed to "maintain a low-buy of no more than two new products (makeup, nail polish, and fragrance) and/or $40 per month, with at least two no-buy months." The devil was in that "and/or." In the interest of simplicity, I decided after a couple of months to pay more attention to the "under $40" half of that resolution than the "no more than two new products" half. That was a mistake. There were ...

Surprise! I'm allowing myself to write one quick post during this hiatus. Today I'll be skipping over my backlog of unreviewed products to take a look at my most recent purchase, a new product that hasn't yet received much attention online. Sephora massively expanded its Cream Lip Stain range last month, adding 27 new shades, mostly trendy browns, purples, and taupes, plus some offbeat colors like black and teal for the goth mermaids out there. The Cream Lip Stain formula has been around for at least a few years (you've probably heard of Endless Red and Marvelous Mauve), and it tends to garner positive reviews. Being generally indifferent to liquid lipstick, I'd never taken much interest in the Cream Lip Stains, but that changed during a visit to Sephora at the end of December. While glancing over the new shades, I found myself drawn to one in particular: 25 Coral Sunset, which looked a lot like my platonic rusty orange. A swatch proved me right. Forth reaching to...