Happy Lipstick Day! (very belatedly)

(This is another one of those things I hadn't gotten around to posting.)

I didn't know there was such a thing as National Lipstick Day, but apparently there is (it was July 29), and Ulta had a sale when it rolled around, which is how I came to buy a whole bunch of lip products. Ulta also had a little bonus package if you spent some certain number of dollars ($25? I'm not sure), which was this:

This is, as you can probably see, an assortment of lip treatments. I've tried most of this and I like it fine, also though trying to get the lip masks to stay on my lips was pretty comedic. (Yes, there is a selfie, but no, you're not going to ever see it. It's really not a pretty sight.)

I only bought one thing that was higher-end, because it was about half-price and that put it more into my price range. This is Urban Decay Lo-Fi lip mousse.

This looks like it would be the kind of color I like, but on the lip it's awfully neutral-looking. I've been wearing it some, though, and I do like the texture of it - I don't think it feels very much like a mousse, though. Note that the thing sticking out on the right side is an applicator, which retracts back into the package when you close it - kind of cool.

All of the lower-end stuff was marked down as well, so I just tried a bunch of different things. Here we have a Nyx Lip Lingerie, and three Maybelline Super Stay products, two of the Matte Ink line and the other one an Ink Crayon.

I'm not worried about showing swatches for these four, because you can see the colors quite clearly from the packaging and it's pretty accurate. Mostly I think the top two are too neutral for my taste. (I was determined to try the Lip Lingerie because I kept seeing people talk about it, but this was the least neutral color they had, and, guess what, it's just not me! I should know better than this by now, since it's what I always end up thinking.) The matte ink in the pinker shade is okay but I inevitably like the red-violet one much better. I actually like the ink crayon most of all - I need to go back and see what other colors they have but I still like the less-purple fuchsia very well. The colors here are Treat Yourself, for the Ink Crayon; on the Matte Ink the more purple one is Creator and the pinker one is Inspirer. (I don't seem to have the Lip Lingerie color name anywhere handy.)

While I'm on the subject of lips, here's the Tarte lipstick that I bought on sale at Sephora.

You can see that I've been using this a good bit - enough to wear down the shape of it, anyway. The color on this one is Sea Goddess.

Ulta drugstore-brand purchases

I went into Ulta a week or so ago - I don't really do into the physical store very often at all - and they had a promo on L'Oreal/Nyx/Maybelline. (It was the little box below, with any $20 purchase of those three brands.)

So, question: I know that L'Oreal and Maybelline have had the same ownership for a while, but the promo got me wondering if Nyx is part of that group as well ...aaaand I just went and poked around on Nyx's website, and I didn't see anything that directly 'fessed up to corporate ties. However, I finally found that if you click on Careers down at the footer of the page, it takes you to the L'Oreal Talent webpage. So I'm guessing the answer to that is actually yes.

Here's what I bought - mostly Nyx, and L'Oreal foundation:

On the True Match Lumi, I bought C3 - I've always thought I was C2.5 on regular True Match - but so far the C3 is working fine. and then the Dewy Finish setting spray, a liquid lip, and a lip pencil.

So the promo was five assorted items (in the box above).

L'Oreal clay cleanser (I have another sample of this from somewhere else, but I'm not sure I've ever actually tried it), lash primer, yet another mascara, a micellar water sample, and a Nyx lippie that looks like it's full-size. Unfortunately that brown looks awful on me, I tried it.

Here's another picture where you can see some of the items better:

The pink lippie is "candy slick" - it works pretty good for me. The brown one is Liquid Suede, and so is the pencil. (Added: I forgot to look at the actual color names at the time I posted this - the Candy Slick one is Birthday Sprinkles, I believe, and the brown Liquid Suede is Brooklyn Thorn. I tried mixing the brown here with a Colourpop dark-pink that I haven't been wearing, and I got a color I actually like. So I may give that one a real-life trial later on.)

Nyx sale haul

I am addicted to Nyx lip butter, so when I saw last week that they were still having a 40% off sale, I decided to stock up on lip butter and try out a couple more things.

The lip butter is my usual color, Thunderstorm (it doesn't go on as dark as it looks by the packaging). I also decided to try out a Butter Gloss in a similar berry-ish color. And then I got a color-correcting primer - the blue is supposed to reduce sallowness, which is an issue for me - and an ink-liner in brown.

I also got a little freebie:

...a makeup sponge. I don't use sponges that much - I've gotten very much into brushes lately, you may have noticed - but all the makeup sponges I had are rather old and I'm sure I will use this some.

Empties: lip butters

I've got a bunch of empties but for today I'll just show you these:

This is Revlon Colorburst lip butter in Lollipop and Nyx lip butter in Hunk (which is now called Thunderstorm - I talked about that here and also back here). The Nyx is my favorite, I've finished up three of these, I think, because I re-apply it compulsively when my lips feel dry. The Revlon one is fine too but I don't quite like the color as much on me.

Late Black Friday haul

I bought a bunch of stuff from Nyx to give for gifts on Black Friday, and now that the gifts are given I can post the pictures. The only thing I kept out of this was the darkest color, which is a backup of the one I wear. (Which is the one that used to be called Hunk and is now called Thunderstorm, and it goes on as sort of a medium red-violet, much lighter than it looks from the tube.)

I must have a record somewhere of the name of this blush color, but I haven't found it so far. I did take a picture of the lipstick colors, so I have those. The box set of three is Beach BBQ, Easy Livin', and Neon Lights. The three loose pink ones are Taffy, Gumdrop, and Seashell. (And then Thunderstorm on the right.)

I did swatches on my wrist and I didn't write down what was what, but I think this is mostly in the same order. Presumably Thunderstorm is the bright one on the right - so Seashell may be pale bit that's hard to see on the far side of that.

I gave Beach BBQ to my sister and she really liked it. (I also gave her KL Magic City, which likewise went really over well. I knew she likes red-oranges the same way I like red-violets.) The rest went to other family members and I'm not completely clear on what went to whom, honestly. I should have taken a picture of the whole pile before I sorted it out - there was a lot more stuff than just this - but it was very much at the last minute and it didn't occur to me. I had Colourpop stuff, too, and Clinique, and all my Sephora Play leftovers and assorted deluxe samples. I decided I usually overthink the question of what exact color I give to whom and so I waited til the last minute on purpose (literally, like, 3am Christmas morning) so I had to just do it and not think too hard about it. Luckily everybody seemed to really like what they got!

NOTD: Lengha (+ some stray purchases)

It seems a little fallish to wear in the middle of summer, but I went ahead and tried out Square Hue Lengha and I really like it a lot. Square Hue does a good shimmer, I've noticed that before.

I'm not seeing ridges in person, but they really show up in this picture. But then I don't really think this picture does this polish justice, quite honestly.

I went in the grocery store to pick up a prescription and ended up with a new lipstick (which I'm about to need) and a nail polish (which I didn't need, but hey, it was on sale):

I'd really like to start calling this lipstick by its French name, Beau Gosse, because its English name, Hunk, just seems like a stupid name for a lipstick. Although I looked up "gosse" - I did take French once upon a time so I knew "beau" - and it means roughly the same thing, it just sounds better. "Gosse" means "kid" and "beau" is the masculine version of "belle" so it's more like "good-looking boy." I know I'm overthinking this as usual but this is my third tube of this lip butter so I keep being reminded about it. (Added: I was poking around on Temptalia just now, and figured out that in fact I must not have been the only person who didn't like the name Hunk; the color is still available but it is now called Thunderstorm. This must have been a very recent change since I just bought this lipstick yesterday.)

I decided to try Buffalo Nickel out as an accent nail. (Lengha has silvery shimmer so I felt like they coordinated reasonably well.)

Since Buffalo Nickel covered up the much darker Lengha, I think it's pretty safe to say this is most likely a one-coater, or very close to it, at least. I feel like I have something fairly similar to this... but this has a nice antique feel to it and I can't think of anything else quite like that, so I doubt that this is really a dupe to whatever silvers I have. (If I figure out otherwise I'll come back and say so!)

Enchanted Forest, Shake Your Money Maker

This is Nyx Enchanted Forest and Deborah Lippmann Shake Your Money Maker (who, you may notice, appear to buy their bottles from the same source):

This is definitely an iPhone SE picture, because the old phone never did this: it cut the nail wheel right out of the picture. (I talked about this before - it's not actually the phone itself doing this but Evernote, and I eventually figured out how to turn it off.) These are both blue-leaning green glitters, although obviously the mix is very different. Enchanted Forest is a small glitter in a sheer formula, and SYMM is clearly one of DL's signature big glitters - gold plus a green somewhere in the forest-green-to-teal range.

The wheel labels aren't legible at all here, but Enchanted Forest is the one pointing straight at the bottles here, and SYMM is above that. (The China Glaze bottle here is Agro, which I'll talk about later. I don't think it's even on this part of the wheel, so I don't know what the point of this picture was supposed to be.) Enchanted Forest is very obviously blue-leaning on the wheel, although I often wear it over greens, which of course makes it look different. I've worn SYMM a few times and it's pretty - I need to remember it when fall gets here - but I wear Enchanted Forest more.

Neither of these seem to be current colors: current Nyx colors; current Lippmann glitters. (If those glitters were just a little cheaper I would be in deep trouble. Superstar! Flash Dance! Bad Romance! But I don't even wear the glitters I already have that much.)

NOTD: Enchanted Forest over Agro

I was poking around the box of green polishes, which is pretty large and hasn't been newly swatched yet, and I came up with China Glaze Agro, which I hadn't worn in a while. As PolishAholic notes, Agro has kind of a funky finish - I like the color but I wasn't in love with the finish, myself. And so I grabbed something to put on top of it, and the something was Nyx Enchanted Forest, which is a fairly sheer green glitter that's somewhat on the blue side, as I recall. And it took Agro's more olive-green color and pulled it right over into emerald. It came out really beautiful; I got compliments.

Not a great picture, but I think you can get the basic idea. With two coats of Agro and two coats of Enchanted Forest, it came out noticeably glittery, but not in a terribly flashy way.

I think that Agro is still findable if you were determined to have it - it's from the first Hunger Games collection, about, what, four years ago now. Nyx nail polish has never been easy to find, since I've been collecting; this is the only one I have. I don't have the bottle in front of me but I think it's from the Salon line. I poked around and Nyx's website doesn't even show that line any more. So finding that one might be very dicey.

New iPhone is finally due to arrive, woo! (However, you'll probably continue to see pictures from the old one for a good while.)

A wheel (half) full of recent purchases

I filled half of a nail wheel up with recent purchases, in no particular order (and this isn't all of them, either, it's just the ones I had handy.

I did go back and number these after I took the picture, but going from L-R:

1. Enchanted Forest (Nyx Salon)
2. Via Della Spiga (Square Hue Milan collection)
3. Houston We Have A Purple (OPI Texas collection)
4. Odette (Zoya Naturel collection)
5. Sansa (Zoya Ignite collection)
6. unlabeled mini (not new, but I found it under a table where I'm pretty sure it had been for a while, so don't think it had been swatched before - not that you can tell a lot)
7. Fires of Gallifrey (Lyn B)
8. Dovima (Zoya matte)
9. Gilded (Sinful Colors holiday collection)
10. Remy (Zoya Ignite collection)

I believe all of these were two coats, and I left an area at the bottom of each nail where it's only one coat so you can see where there's a difference. (It's most noticeable on Enchanted Forest at the far left.)

Here's the bottle pictures - slightly out of order but I think you've got enough information to sort it out without further help! - and below that is close-ups, with some comments.

Enchanted Forest is not nearly as forest green as I thought it was - in fact it's practically blue. (I don't think it's actually quite as blue as it looks in this picture, but it's definitely in the blue-green range, anyway.) I've worn it but I think I wore it over a dark-green base and so the blue shift wasn't noticeable. Via Della Spiga is the red and I still like it a lot. My only comment is that it does seem to lean a tiny bit to the pink side sometimes - but only a little. (That's not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned, anyway!)

So here we have Houston We Have A Purple (which is berry-pink, not purple at all, but I knew that when I bought it) and Odette, which is a slightly grayed-out purple creme. Houston We Have A Purple was one of several "sorbet"-finish colors in the Texas Collection and so far they seem really interesting. (I've tried the other one I bought, which was the orange one, but not this one yet.)

This is Zoya Sansa, which like all the Ignite colors is fabulous - much more fabulous than you can tell here - and an unnamed beige-ish mini which as I said I found under my TV table. It's one of that big collection of minis that I got for Christmas a couple of years ago. You can't tell much here but actually I think it has possibilities for layering. I'll probably play with it at some point.

This is Fires Of Gallifrey - which I've worn a couple of times, usually over something orange. I had no idea the base was actually this pinkish! And the black is Zoya Dovima, one of the matte velvets. (There were six of them in the last re-release and I have four of them. I'm always using them so I'm really tempted to get the last two, too, before they become unavailable again.)

This is Gilded, which I've been wearing like crazy lately but it's still interesting to see what it looks like on its own, and Remy, the blue Ignite polish. Which looks amazing - I haven't tried it yet.