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...

Welcome to my second low-buy progress report for 2016! I used up a few things this month and needed to buy replacements, but I did a much better job of staying under my $40 limit for brand-new items. Oh, and I've added two new categories to this series of posts. In addition to chronicling my new purchases every month, I'm going to record the makeup I destash and the items I'm thinking of buying in the near-ish future. Without further ado: New makeup/polish: ColourPop Super Shock Shadows in Shop (top) and Eye Candy: $5 each ColourPop Ultra Matte Lip in Trap: $6 ColourPop Super Shock Cheek in Rain: $8 Zoya Kristen: $9 Total: $33 I'm pretty happy with everything I bought this month! At the beginning of the month, I made a ColourPop order. CP has come under fire for their deceptively bulky packaging, but I'd rather pay $5 for a deluxe-sample size of a crazy eyeshadow color than $20 for a large size. My surprise favorites from my haul are Shop, an almost-matte coral eyes...

Like many of us, I go through polish phases. Sometimes I prefer neutral cremes, sometimes bright pastels, sometimes dark shimmers. The category I'm most fickle about, though, is the glitter topcoat. I've accumulated quite a few over the years (so pretty in the bottle!), but I usually find it hard to wear glitter on ordinary occasions without feeling either childish or inappropriately festive. Recently, though, I've entered something of a glitter phase. Carolina and I have discussed the temptation to buy glitter during difficult emotional periods, and I think that's part of the reason I've worn so much sparkly nail polish since the late fall. It's brutally cold outside, I'm on the academic job market, I don't know where I'll even be living in six months —glitter makes it all a bit more tolerable. Yes, gross materialism and all that, but there's nothing wrong with making your aesthetic environment a little prettier to counteract whatever else is g...

The past week has been unusually busy, so I haven't had a chance to take photos and write paragraphs and all that. But I've had a series of fugitive beauty-related thoughts, none of them quite substantial enough for an entire post, and I thought I'd compile them here before the wind blew them away. 1. My boyfriend is visiting for the week, and we had an early Valentine's Day tapas outing on February 13 and spent V-Day itself on such thrilling tasks as walking to the grocery store in the snow... ...and making vegetarian chili from this recipe (plus 1.5 tablespoons of cocoa powder, and minus the celery because who puts celery in chili ). I marveled at the alien symmetry of the innards of a bell pepper: 2. My Valentine's Day nail polish was Zoya Gilda, a fuchsia microshimmer that gives an almost foiled effect on the nails. Unfortunately, Gilda is something of a problem polish: it takes a long time to dry completely, it starts chipping within a day or two, and it...