Tag Archives: MAC
5 Red(ish) Lipsticks for the Colder Months
It’s that time of the year when I start busting out all of my reds and burnt oranges. Fall and winter practically scream red(ish) lips to me, so I thought I’d let you know the ones I’ve been reaching for the most lately.
Some of these are old favourites (look at the nub left on that MAC lipstick!!), whereas some are a bit newer in my collection. New or old though… they’re all amazing lipsticks and I’ve been reaching for them constantly. And I just noticed a theme too (aside from the colour), they’re all pretty much matte finishes!
Bourjois‘ Rouge Buzz is definitely the brightest of the bunch! It’s an interesting orange/red mix. Some days I think it’s red, and some days I think it’s orange. Either way it’s a shade that lights up my face – I feel like my features come alive when I’m wearing this colour! It goes on a bit glossy but dries down over time to more of a matte finish.
Too Faced‘s Chill Pill is newer to me. They just launched it as part of a shade extension to their Peach Kiss range (lip swatch video here) and it’s glorious! It’s a burnt, rusty brick colour and it’s so perfectly seasonally appropriate that I keep grabbing for it over and over again. The Peach Kiss formula is a knock out too – smooth and comfortable to wear, it packs a ton of pigment AND smells like peaches and cream!
Oddly, I didn’t have a standalone photo of me wearing Bite Beauty‘s Crushed Chili, so I had to snag a screenshot from my Spice collection lip swatch video. That entire lipstick range was a solid home run, and I’ve found myself reaching for different shades depending on the season. Now that it’s November, it’s time for Crushed Chili to shine! It’s a deep red with a hint of brown to it and looks absolutely killer with a super simple eye look (think a warm crease, champagne lid and winged liner).
QUO‘s Date Night was just released in their Fall 2018 collection and it really surprised me. In the bullet it looked more like a pink, but on the lips it goes much more burnt red with maybe a hint of pink to it. I feel like it comes across slightly more muted in comparison to Bite‘s Crushed Chili and Too Faced‘s Chill Pill, so this might be for you if you’re looking for something a bit softer in the red family.
And what would a post about red lips be without mentioning MAC‘s Russian Red? This red is an absolute staple in my collection. It’s THE red to end all red.s I’m convinced there isn’t a person out there that can’t wear this shade. You can dress it up with a smokey eye, go vibrant with a bright orange and red eye, or dress it down with a simple eye – either way, Russian Red is foolproof. If I had to recommend one shade to you in this entire post, this would be it – because I feel like everyone needs to experience Russian Red at some point in their life!
Swatched out you can see that they’re all really heckin’ pigmented! The Bourjois and MAC shades are the extremes in this round up, but the three shades in the middle are all somewhat the same with slight tonal changes. If you like a red with a bit more pink – grab the QUO one. Like it with a little more orange? The Too Faced one is for you. And if you really want a burnt brick colour, then Bite‘s Crushed Chili is perfect.
Let me know if you start gravitating towards these kinds of shades in the cooler months! And if you do, let me know what shades you’ve been enjoying lately!
All of the lipsticks were sent to me over the years for consideration except for MAC's Russian Red which I purchased myself. Post contains affiliate links.
VIDEO: “Boring” Favourites (aka Products I Use Every Single Day)
MAC Cosmetics Iridescent Powder in Silver Dusk – 1996 vs 2018 (Review & Swatches)
I have been wearing MAC products for a very, VERY long time. My aunt first introduced me to the brand because I needed to get some makeup for my figure skating competitions in order to bring out my features while I was performing on the ice. I was 12 years old at the time… and now I’m 35. So I’ve been stuck on this brand for a solid 23 years. Heck, I remember when MAC lipsticks used to look like this:
Anyway, I digress. My point is that I’ve been wearing MAC for a lot time and I do actually have products that are over the 20 year mark in my collection (powders only – I’ve long ditched any creams). One of my favourite products circa 1996 was MAC‘s Iridescent Powder in Silver Dusk, which is what this post is centered around. I had (have) a *HUGE* tub of it that I’ve been using for over two decades now and the thing is literally magical as I’m not anywhere near halfway done.
Silver Dusk is this beautiful pink-ish powder with unreal silver shimmer flecks suspended within the power. In 1996, 13 year old me was astonished by this product. It was likely fairy dust, unicorn tears and diamonds come to life.
I used to put it everywhere.
Literally.
All over my face, my arms, my neck – anywhere I had exposed skin, this stuff would go. I just wanted to SPARKLE. The reflection on it is fairly intense too – splash this all over your body and you do end up looking like a disco ball.
Of course, it’s come to my attention recently that having a 23 year old powder is kinda gross. And even worse is that my older packaging is looking really rough. And it’s because this tub of glory has been with me everywhere – I used to scoop out little spoonful and give to my friends in sample jars so they could experience the glory of it. I took the whole bloody thing with me on a family vacation to France in 1998 (I was also proudly hauling around my MAC Vellum, Orb and Haux eyeshadows, alongside a particularly hideous shade of pink lipstick by MAC called X-pose as well as the every lovely Cosmo). Suffice to say, I brought this sucker with me everywhere – it was beauty itself personified in my eyes.
MAC has discontinued and brought this powder back more times than I can remember in the last ten years. When I finally decide to bite the bullet and buy it again (which honestly felt stupid because I still had so much left *and* it doesn’t smell funny whatsoever), they upped and discontinued it before I took the plunge. I was pissed because it seems it was now gone forever.
However… two years later they brought it back around the time MAC launched at Sephora and I snagged it when they were having one of their sales. I was over the moon – I finally had a new version of my beloved powder!
So… how does it stack up? Well, you can definitely see they’ve reduced the size of the packaging, although that happened many, MANY years ago when MAC started rebranding all of their packaging to the more matte black/charcoal you see today (back in the 90s the packaging was actually more of a glossy black). But honestly, my tub lasted me so bloody long that having that huge packaging was clearly not necessary.
The most significant change though is definitely to the colour. The 2018 version of Silver Dusk is definitely more pink than the one I have from 1996. That being said… it’s entirely possible that my tub has been left out on a ledge exposed to a lot of sun over the years so it may have lost some of its colour over the years.
Swatched out you can definitely see more of the pink in the 2018 version. And it’s funny… I remember reading that Silver Dusk was a “pink/peach with silver shimmer” recently, but I had never mentally processed the powder as looking that way. To me, Silver Dusk always applied with a translucent base jampacked with silver-white glimmer. So I don’t really know if it actually has changed over the years, or if my memory of it has just warped over time (alongside the bleached out colour).
On the cheeks this powder is just as glorious as ever. It’s a little more subtle than today’s blinding highlighters, but there’s also more tiny flecks of shimmer in the product in comparison to what you’d expect a highlighter to look like nowadays. If you put this everywhere on your face (as I used to do), you will look like a glimmering diamond though!
I still feel like it’s ever so slightly different from my old pot and, because of that, it makes me not want to throw out my old relic. But let’s be real here… over the years I gradually stopped reaching for my old tub of Silver Dusk simply because it was SO old. I’m happy to have the new one, but it’s just not the *same*, you know? And maybe that’s because I have so many memories tied to it. Heck, I wonder if a MAC rep would even let me take the product back to them for Back2MAC… I doubt they’d even recognize the packaging!
Either way, I’m happy to have gotten a new Silver Dusk as it’s one of those makeup items I feel really attached to. If you want to snag MAC‘s Iridescent Powder in Silver Dusk, you can pick it up at sephora.ca for $33 CAD or on maccosmetics.com for $29 USD.
So tell me – do you feel this way about a particular product in your collection? Do you have fond memories of an old product that maybe you can’t get anymore? Tell me!
5 Blushes for Autumn
It’s finally autumn, and I am HERE for it! The cool, crisp air, the scent of the wind (yes – actually), the layering of clothing, HALLOWEEN… there is nothing I don’t love about this season!
I’m feeling particularly autumnal this year so I thought I’d do a post on the five blushes that scream fall to me. I’ve pulled them out of my collection and put them directly on top of my vanity so as to make sure I’m getting a ton of use out of them. They fall into the darker, more warm side of things. It’s kind of funny to me that I reach for darker blushes as my skin gets paler due to lack of sun… but these truly are the blushes I reach for during this time of the year. Not a single blush is new to me – they were all purchased prior to 2018, so you *know* they’re favourites!
The first one is MAC‘s Gingerly. I was heavily influenced to buy this blush when I saw Allison Anderson (formerly Amarixe) talking incessantly about this blush during the earlier days of her YouTube career. I always thought the shade looked ridiculously ugly in the pan. I mean it’s basically a warm brown – how the heck is that supposed to look good on my cheeks??
And yet somehow it does. It definitely gives more of an orange cast on the cheeks than the pan would lead you to believe, which means that it works with a lot of the eye looks I create during this time of year! (If you want to see more details on this eye look, you can take a look at this post from 2015.)
Too Faced‘s Peach Berry is the newest product in this whole post, but it’s a good one. I picked it up during the launch of Too Faced’s Peaches & Cream collection last year because it appeared to be the most unique shade in the launch. It’s a super dark berry shade that typically scares people off, but if you apply this with a light hand it blesses your cheeks with a gorgeous cranberry tone.
I’m super pale in the shot above because this tutorial was filmed back in March or April, but you can see how it doesn’t come across too dark or too strong on my cheeks. I promise you this shade will work for pale skin!
Although I don’t wear this Cargo Mendocino blush very often, it’s managed to sneak through several of my blush declutters simply because it’s incredibly unique and I don’t have anything similar to it in my collection. At first glance it’s a dark cranberry-mauve, but when you swatch it it has the most beautiful gold flecks scattered throughout the formula. The glitter flecks aren’t super apparent on the face though, so don’t be too worried about looking like a disco ball.
I do tend to wear this one rather heavily, and I really couldn’t explain why to you because it doesn’t swatch that strongly (swatches for all these shades are below). I love pairing it with a similarly coloured lip colour for that “matchy-matchy” look. (Post with this look can be found here.)
Next up is Clinique‘s Cheek Pop in Cola Pop – a long, LONG time favourite of mine, although you wouldn’t know it from the lack of wear on the embossed flower! Cola Pop is the shade that got me into wearing darker blushes because I quickly came to realize it was all in your application. You can wear this lightly if you want, but I tend to be heavy handed with my blush because I actually want to SEE it on my cheeks – none of this “barely there” nonsense thankyouverymuch!
Despite the pan colour, Cola Pop comes out very red on me. Dare I say the perfect red? For me this is that perfect “came in from the cold” cheek colour. And really, I need it in a blush, because when I actually flush from the cold I turn hella blotchy!
The very last shade I have to mention is BECCA‘s Songbird, and I hadn’t realized just how similar it is to MAC’s Gingerly – it’s only a hair deeper and slightly more orange. BECCA’s blushes have a beautiful formula – one of the most pleasant to apply and blend out.
And of course, since I do like to match, I pair this with a lot orange and red toned eyeshadow looks (like this one from my Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance post).
You know it’s funny – when I collected these shades from my collection, my initia; reaction was that they were all way too similar to each other and wouldn’t look like much in swatches. But now that I see them all side by side there are definite tone differences between them all (well, yeah, obviously between the more red ones and the orange ones, but you know what I mean!).
As I mentioned at the top of this post, none of these are new shades to me. These are ones I go back to every single fall and winter because I know they work beautifully on me and I absolutely love the shades.
Let me know if you’ve got any seasonal blushes you reach for every year!
The BECCA Songbird blush was sent to me for consideration many moons ago, the rest were all purchased by myself. Post contains affiliate links.