Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

It turns out that I have time for one more post before I head to New York tomorrow! A lot of new products entered my life in October, and though some of them were gifts, some were...definitely not. It's not exactly shocking that I bought more stuff than usual last month. October tends to be hard for me mental-health-wise, and I was applying for jobs for the second year in a row, and I couldn't help but keep up with upsetting election bullshit . And my neighbors' cat, whom I'd known for three years, died two weeks ago. Mr. B was the sweetest, friendliest cat I've ever met, and he used to come over so often that I almost thought of him as my cat . So October was a stressful month, and I'm not going to beat myself up for going a little over budget, though I will make some new resolutions at the end of this post. After all, I have more stressful months ahead of me, and the whole point of this low-buy is to learn how to manage stress without spending impulsively or ...

After my little spending spree in the UK last month, I decided to go on a replacement-only makeup/polish no-buy for the month of July. I'm happy to report that I didn't need any makeup or polish replacements and had no trouble avoiding new purchases. I don't know why, but it's much easier for me to stick to a no-buy than to a low-buy. If I restrict myself to two new items per month, I'll inevitably end up with three or four. But if I restrict myself to zero items per month, I'll buy zero. Granted, I don't have a huge breadth of experience here — I've never tried to maintain a no-buy longer than two months — but in general, moderation is not my (black-and-white-striped) bag. Anyway, here's the damage for July: New Makeup/Polish: none, bitches! Gifts:  My mom picked up an e.l.f. lip stain in Nude Nectar at some point in the last several months. She can't remember when or why she bought it, but she has never used it and conjectures that "I pr...

I've used up quite a few products, mostly skincare, in the last month or two, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to write my first empties post. I've been wondering why so many people (myself included) love such posts. Maybe because it's the closest the law-abiding among us will ever come to the thrill of rifling through someone else's household trash. Maybe because it gives us all hope that we, too, will someday have the excuse to buy a bunch of new things. In the world of beauty addiction, the optimist's glass (or tube, or pan, or jar) is always half empty. I wanted to delay this post until I'd used up Revlon Plum Velour, so that I could have an exciting empty tube of lipstick, but the empty containers of everything else kept piling up... 1. Burt's Bees Royal Jelly Eye Creme Eye cream is the Pascal's Wager of cosmetics. I suspect that most eye creams are placebos, but what if they're not? Once you start using eye cream, there's no way ...

If you've watched as many geisha documentaries as I have (she said, too casually), you'll be familiar with the clichéd close-up shot of a geisha or maiko painting her white-powdered lips with a brush dipped in rouge. The inevitability of this shot, in both Japanese and foreign documentaries, makes me roll my eyes every time it comes up; there's something fetishistic and exoticizing about it, especially when the wielder of the brush is a sixteen-year-old maiko. But the allure of the ritual itself is undeniable. Applying lipstick with a bullet can be sexy, but it's more often matter-of-fact: swipe it on and go. Applying lipstick with a brush is never anything but artistic. It forces you to slow down, to think critically about shape and precision. Until recently, though, I'd never felt the need to own a lip brush. The good old bullet, it seemed to me, was a perfectly effective technology for transferring color to my lips. And if a bullet failed to deliver a cris...