The new MAC Hot Nights Blush from the Temperature Rising summer collection, $23

MAC Hot Nights Powder Blush is for those times when you want your cheeks to look like they’re “glistening” (let’s not call it sweating; it’s not nearly as cute), like after some hot hubba-hubba action or a seriously vigorous elliptical session at the gym.

Got time? I hope so, because I wouldn’t even bother with this berry pink unless I had a few extra minutes for blending. That’s how pigmented it is. But I think it’s worth every second, especially if the theme of your evening is, “huntress on the prowl…”

Where Ripe For Love, the other blush from the Temperature Rising collection, can pull off naughty or nice, Hot Nights can’t.

Because it’s straight up naughty (which is nice).

Howdy, pigment!

Here I’m wearing the new MAC Strobe Liquid Lotion Golden Elixir ($31) from the limited edition MAC Temperature Rising summer collection

When you wear MAC’s Strobe Liquid Lotion in Golden Elixir ($31) you’ll look radiant and golden like…

1. A Grecian goddess soaking up the last rays on a summer day
2. J. Lo after running a 5K in Christian Louboutin pumps and a gold lamé catsuit
3. A sequined Oscar gown on the Best Dressed list
4. A Beyoncé-themed Christmas tree
5. Jeremy Renner’s glistening arms after saving a family of stray kittens from drowning
6. A mega millions lottery winner the moment right after she tells her bosses to suck it and walks out of the room in a dramatic exit
7. An extra in a Britney video circa the golden years, aka BF (Before Federline)
8. A proud kitty stage mom who just found out her baby cat won the award for best actor in a gravy commercial and is dabbing tears from her eyes with a lace hanky
9. A reflection in a mirror after easily slipping into those goal-weight skinny jeans that you’ve been holding onto for months
10. A room full of Skarsgårds
11. A room filled with 1000 birthday cakes, each cake miraculously calorie-free (so you can eat as much as you want!) and topped with 1000 candles
12. MC Hammer after he tried on his first pair of gold Hammer pants
13. Someone who just discovered Nutella
14. A girl on vacation laying on a beach towel in Kauai reading The Great Gatsby
15. A lightning bolt tattoo streaking across Channing Tatum’s tanned stomach

Babe, you know I love me some MAC Strobe Cream, so I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life for Golden Elixir. It’s a lightweight, golden liquid highlighting lotion that you can wear on bare skin and/or layered underneath or on top of makeup (foundation, blush, face powder, bronzer), and it’s bomb for getting that dewy, golden Cat on a Hot Tin Roof type of glow without looking too metallic.
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MAC Feel My Pulse Lipstick

Oh, my gosh, it’s happening! The annual coral migration has begun.

Every year around this time huge flocks of corals migrate from their winter hideaways to makeup counters everywhere, gathering in large numbers wherever there are lip displays.

It’s one of my favorite things.

When the corals come back in spring and summer, it’s like, it reminds me that the world will keep turning… Frozen yogurt will keep tasting great, the Real Housewives of My Butt will keep screaming nonsense at each other on Bravo, and RyGos will keep looking hot under pretty much all circumstances.

But some makeup lovers don’t get that fired up about coral. I have a friend who refuses to wear it on her lips because she says it makes her feel like a “South Beach grandma” (her words).

Gotta be honest, I don’t get it (SERIOUSLY, HOW COULD YOU NOT LOVE CORAL?!), but I can appreciate wanting to be different and going against the flow, which brings me to the four new lipsticks in the MAC Temperature Rising collection.

From the left: Altered Beige, Caliente, Feel My Pulse and Sheer Seduction

See that? No coral whatsoever. Instead, MAC went a riskier route with beige, violet and bronze, and you know what?

I think it works.

Feel My Pulse, a vivid magenta violet with a Cremesheen finish

Caliente, a super dazzle violet with a Dazzle finish

Wearing the new, limited edition $23 MAC Ripe for Love Powder Blush on my cheeks from the Temperature Rising summer 2013 collection

5 things MAC’s Ripe For Love Powder Blush would say if it could talk

1. Ditch your boyfriend.

Boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. Your tanned skin and I, we belong together, just the two of us, you and I.

I don’t care where we go. I don’t care what we do. I don’t care, pretty baby, just take me with you. Let’s hit that beach we talked about, sip umbrella drinks, and nap all day long because I’m from MAC’s Temperature Rising collection. And I’m hot like that.

At night, you can put on that look I like with the chocolate smokey eyes and glossy copper lips, and then dust me on top of some bronzer on your cheeks before we head out.

Oh, the trouble we’ll find…

2. I’m officially called a mid-tone peach but…

…I think of myself as a papaya.

A juicy, ripe papaya begging to be devoured. Don’t even bother with a spoon. No shame! Just bite into that thing, and let the juices dribble down the side of your chin in slow mo.

3. I hate your shoes.

Blergh! Especially the flat Life Stride pair that you borrowed from the cafeteria lady wear when your feet ache.

Screw that. My name is Ripe for Love, hello! — so I’m all about, pardon my French, the fracking pumps. One layer of me on your cheeks (that’s all you’ll need because I’m pigmented like whoa!) and you’ll be glowing like Halley’s Comet.

Why? Because I’m THAT good, if I do say so myself.

4. I have a softer side…

It’s true. My scene, like my friends in Temperature Rising, is more about sultry summer nightlife, where molten metallics throb and glittery glosses throw air kisses with shimmering bronzed skin.

But look, I’m not all about seduction. I also have a softer side.

I can go from Do Me Baby to Let’s Wait A While in the flick of a wrist. All it takes is the gentlest caress of my feather-light powder on your cheeks, so we can do all kinds of things together, like go to the ice cream shoppe, your next book club meeting, work — heck, even that froo-froo yarn store where you fondle all the skeins but never actually buy anything.

I promise, I’ll behave.
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MAC Bare My Soul Eye Shadow X 4 ($44)

Because I generally try to avoid bubbling vats brimming with bacteria, I’m not the type to spend my summer nights hot tubbing (unless it’s with RyGos or J-Ren). But if I were, my dream scene would look something like this:

So totally feeling this makeup!

I was so excited about the MAC Temperature Rising collection’s highlighted skin, metallic, glossy lips and strong focus on smoldering eyes that toe a slightly menacing line between seductive and spooky that I tried to paint a picture of it over the phone to my mom (who never wants to talk about makeup), and the best I could come up with was, “The girl in the promo pic looks like Nelly Furtado sitting in a hot tub at night under a heat lamp wearing Mrs. Roper’s jewelry. Oh, and she’s sandwiched between two dudes from Magic Mike.”

Eye Shadows, counter clockwise from the green pan: When In Rio (a deep green with a copper pearl and a Frost finish), Friendly (a deep bronzy chocolate with a Veluxe Pearl Finish), Romantico (a light taupe bronze with a Veluxe Pearl finish), and Bare My Soul (a frosted gold with a Lustre finish)

With three neutral powder eye shadows and a single smokey green pan, Bare My Soul ($44) must be a hit among cool, stylish mallards… It has a brown, a taupe, a gold and a coppery green.

Quack! See, Mallard duck colors. The slightly shiny finish even says, “I’m a mallard duck, yo.”

What do hot mallards have to do with MAC Temperature Rising, the release to which Bare My Soul belongs?

Absolutely nothing, far as I can tell. Well, the mallard part doesn’t, but the colors sure seem conducive to summery smokey eyes with copper, gold, bronze and brown.

I’ll use the taupe and gold for dusting all over my lids (and/or highlighting) and the chocolatey bronze and coppery green for deepening and smoking out my look.

Swatches from the left: Romantico (a light taupe bronze with a Veluxe Pearl finish), Bare My Soul (a frosted gold with a Lustre finish), Friendly (a deep bronzy chocolate with a Veluxe Pearl finish) and When in Rio (a deep green with a copper pearl and a Frost finish)

The coppery green, also known as When in Rio — jinx! You owe me a Coke if you thought, “That’s a Club dupe.” It reminds me a lot of MAC Club on my NC 42 skin, except a little more brown and less red.

MAC Bare My Soul Eye Shadow X 4

I swear these powders feel softer than the powders in the past few limited edition quads, but I’m not totally sure why… Sure do like it though.

PRICE: $44
AVAILABILITY: Coming May 16 to maccosmetics.com and May 23 to MAC counters and stores
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: B+/A-

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen