Another mini version as an extension of their Ultimate 16 pan palettes – this is the NYXUltimate Edit Warm Neutrals!
NYX Ultimate Edit Warm Neutrals
While the Ultimate Edit Brights has all mattes, the Ultimate Edit Warm Neutrals has four mattes and two shimmers which makes it a little bit more interesting than just a straight neutrall matte palette.
Are lip stains making a comeback?? I sure hope so! Mary Kay has launched their Lip Tints for Spring 2019, and I was so excited to try them out.
Mary Kay Lip Tints
I used to love the ease of a lip stain (back when they were more readily accessible) – it feels weightless on your lips and yet adds a bunch of colour that seems to last forever. Mary Kay has released three limited edition shades that contain 0.08 oz/2.5g of product for $18 USD or $21 CAD.
The water-based lip tints are inspired by desert hues and smell of vanilla (honestly, I get more of a butterscotch smell which is really delicious). They claim to have buildable colour and a lightweight feel.
Mary Kay Lip Tints – swatches
They might be buildable, but right out of the gate you can see that there is intense colour pigmentation in a swatch! The shades are really beautiful and I experienced very little feathering even in a swatch (which is impressive given that most lip stains in a pen format tend to bleed out intensely into the crevices of my skin).
Unfortunately, the story changes a little when you get these shades on the lips.
Wearing Canyon Coral
Canyon Coral is the palest of all three shades, and yet still vividly bright. I found that I did have to swipe on two layers to try to get an even coat, but even then I was left with some patches on my lip where the colour wouldn’t adhere very well. Lip stains have a tendency to cling to dry sections of your lips (so for me that’s usually the perimeter) and that became pretty obvious with this one. Even after I had let the product dry for 3-5 minutes, I pressed my lips together and the colour lifted from a large chunk of the inner rim of my mouth. I tried re-applying it, but it just wouldn’t stick on that area. Plus you can also see that it looks kinda patchy on my upper lip. The colour itself is gorgeous, but I found the application and staying power too finicky on this shade.
Wearing Desert Flora
Desert Flora was slightly better, but again you can see the weird translucency in parts of my lip, but not everywhere. Sadly, the darker the shade, the more you’ll see lighter patches of your skin coming through. Unfortunately, I found that as soon as I licked my lips, most of the colour disappeared, even after I’d let it dry for quite a while.
Wearing Magenta Mirage
Oh boy… I’ll be honest, after the last two shades I didn’t even want to try Magenta Mirage out as my previous experiences had been seriously unfortunate. But I figured maybe this would be the BEST one. Yeah… nope. The colour itself is beautiful.. but you can see it clinging for dear life to a patch of skin on my bottom lip (that doesn’t even FEEL dry to me by the way). Sadly, the worst part was that I put this lip colour on after I’d done my makeup, let it dry while I did my hair, took the picture you see above… licked my lips slightly… AND:
What the heck?
The colour got all over my dang tongue. I was so annoyed. Not only had I lifted most of the colour off of my lips, but now I also had a stained tongue. (And it stained for HOURS by the way… through a coffee and a bottle of water, even after I’d blotted my tongue with a paper towel.)
Final Thoughts
I can’t recommend these at all. I was so excited to use them because I used to love the Revlon Lipstains + Balm (and only just realized they’ve long since been discontinued), but these Mary KayLip Tints annoyed the crap out of me. The colour payoff was inconsistent on my lips, the colour mostly came off at the faintest sign of wetness (the inner rim of my lips, my tongue, even a straw), and they stained my freaking tongue. Even when they left behind a mediocre stain (like… 30% of what you see in the lip swatch photos above), it was mostly as a rim around my lips! So it looked like I had applied lip liner and nothing else.
I’m actually really sad about this… I wanted to wear Canyon Coral all summer long and now I want nothing to do with these. 🙁
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.
NYX is continuing their line of Ultimate palettes with this latest one featuring incredibly vibrant warm-toned shadows. This fiery palette is aptly named “Phoenix“!
NYX Ultimate Shadow Palette in Phoenix
Like the other Ultimate palettes, this one (sadly) has no names!
Over a year ago I missed out on the TarteTreasure Pot Glitter Gel from another collection they had launched… and I was so annoyed! When I first saw it online I was IN LOVE with the shimmery, glittery-ness of it… as well as the huge nostalgia factor. Sadly, I put off buying it for too long and somehow it got snapped up by other people before I was able to purchase it. To this day I am still confused as to who the heck is out there buying glitter gel so quickly that I wasn’t able to get it… this kind of products is not what I would ever call a hot ticket item!
Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk
So when Tarte recently launched their Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk… I BOUGHT IT IMMEDIATELY. I wasn’t going to be bamboozled out of owning this one let me tell you. I *needed* to own it. Back in the 90s I was obsessed with these kind of jelly glitter products. I had a few in tubs, but most of them came in massive roller balls. I used to cover myself with them and I loved the effect so, so much. I’ve (thankfully) long since thrown all of them out, so I was more than happy to get my hands on Moonwalk – a shade that appeared to be quite silvery and holographic in the promo pictures online.
Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk
In person, Moonwalk is very, very different than what I saw in the promotional shots. It’s much more of a translucent jelly base with see-through particles. There are tiny pieces of particle glitter in the base, but there’s also large flecks in varying shapes. The most predominant shape is a hexagon, but there are moon and star shapes in there as well. The flecks appear to be rather iridescent cool tones in certain lights…
Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk
But if you catch the product from a different angle, it actually becomes quite the rainbow!
Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk – swatch
I think this swatch best represents the effect that you get with this product. The top half of the swatch is where the product curves around the top of my forearm – it’s more of an iridescent cool-toned reflection of the flecks there. But the bottom half was facing the camera a touch more and you can see the flecks suddenly become a rainbow spectrum instead of iridescent.
Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk on my face
Capturing the effect of this product on the face became quite the task. What I see in the mirror is the iridescent cool toned flecks… but whenever I photographed it all I saw the rainbow colours.
Close up
The slightly sad thing about this product is that the moon and stars flecks are completely translucent. They do not show up at all unless you happen to catch the light at the right angle and even then it’s only showing up because it’s glaring against the light source.
For application, I found this worked best if I spackled it on with a metal makeup spatula. If you use a brush, it only pulls up the tiny glitter sparkles and none of the larger chunkier pieces. When I first apply this I use a brush to lay down the tiny flecks of glitter as a base, and then I use my metal spatula to lay the larger chunks in place. I’d recommend spreading this in a thin layer because if you build this up too much, you end up with globs of the gel in places that don’t look that flattering.
Final Thoughts
I love the fundamentals of this product – glitter gel is so much fun to use and I’ll definitely be getting a lot of use out of this for special events like Pride.
BUT… the promo shots are nothing like the actual product. On Sephora’s web site this looks like a silver holographic glitter product and in practice it’s nowhere close to that. Their model shot also shows that the moon and stars are very visible on the skin, but they’re really not because they’re completely translucent. The promo shots are very misleading and kind of disappointing in the end. Don’t get me wrong – I do actually like this, but I wanted the silver holographic product they displayed online instead of the one I got.
NYX always knows how to have fun with their palettes, and the Off Tropic Hasta La Vista is no exception!
NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista
With a rainbow of fun shades to play with, the Hasta La Vista palette made me smile the first time I looked at it – it’s just so vibrant!
NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista
NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista Swatches
NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 1NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 2NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 3NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 4NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 5NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 6NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 7NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 8NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 9NYX Off Tropic Hasta La Vista – Shade 10
