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MAC Bronzer Collection Swatches on NC42 Skin!

July 8th, 2020 by Karen 3 Comments

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 top pic — Bronzed and beautiful 😍

Things that say, “Summer has officially arrived…”

The sun setting at 9 p.m.
Barbecuing on a random Wednesday night just because you can
Challenging someone to a sword fight with a pool noodle
Sweating buckets every time you walk from any air conditioning building to your car
The MAC summer makeup collection (of course!)

This summer’s MAC Bronzer Face and Body collection is all about bronzed shades for tanned skin, but there’s also a twist… It includes a plethora of shades designed for warm *and* cool skin tones.

Hot and cool

Sure, MAC stocked it with the kind of warm summery coral, gold, bronze and peach tones you might expect from a MAC summer launch, but this year’s collection also sports some surprising cooler-toned shades of taupe, pink and pale lavender in the Foiled Shadows (apply with a wet brush for a slick, foiled finish) and the Strobe Face Glazes (*very cool* gel-like highlighters you can wear over foundation or bare skin).

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 — Love the limited edition packaging!

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 foiled shadow — MAC Bronzer Foiled Shadows, $26 each

Silky, satiny bronzers

As for the bronzing powders in the Bronzer collection — be careful! — the velvety Radiant Matte Bronzing Powders will shock your fingertip if you swatch them (ME: “Why is this powder SO SOFT?!”), and there are absolutely no orange undertones in sight.

Totally Taupe, the darker of the two options, is brown with yellow undertones, and Beige-ing Beauty is a light yellowish brown (I’m an NC42, and I could probably wear it as a face powder).

Technically, they’re matte with a slight sheen, which keeps them from looking too flat on your face.

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 strobe face glze — 143SES Medium Face Face Brush ($38.50), Strobe Face Glaze ($28 each), Prep+Prime Fix+ in Bronzelite ($30) Strobe Body Lotion ($35)

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 radiant matte bronzing powder — Radiant Matte Bronzing Powder, $32

A refreshing take on highlights

If you’re totally over the trend of shimmery, frosty highlighters that are visible from space, then the dewy, shiny Strobe Face Glazes might be worth checking out. They’re dewy and shiny but not blindingly glossy. There’s just a little something-something there… I think it’s super cool.

They feel slightly sticky, like a typical face gloss, but don’t worry — your high pony won’t stick to your cheekbones once you pat and blend them in because they aren’t thick. On minimal makeup days, I’ll do a swipe of Bronzejour on my lids with waterproof mascara (waterproof is a must, since whatever the Glazes touch will break down and smudge eventually) and use Let’s Make Waves as an upper cheekbone highlighter.

Like most face glosses, Face Glaze isn’t built for longevity, so expect it to move a bit when it’s on your skin, and anticipate having to touch up every four hours or so.

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 lipsticks — MAC Bronzer Lipsticks, $20 each

mac bronzer collection summer 2020 lipglasses — Lipglass, $18.50 each

mac bronzer collection swatches lipglasses — Lipglasses

mac bronzer collection swatches foiled shadow lipsticks — Lipsticks

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MAC Selena La Reina Collection Swatches (NC42 Skin)

April 21st, 2020 by Karen 8 Comments

Your first Selena fun fact of the day: One rainy spring day during my senior year in college, I sat, bawling my eyes out, while parked in my red Honda Civic listening to Selena sing I Could Fall in Love on the radio. LIKE, FULL-ON EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN IN MY VEHICLE.

Don’t mind me! I’m just crying in my car! 😭

Your second Selena fun fact of the day: The new MAC Selena La Reina collection is available now on the MAC website, and it’s a follow-up to the MAC Selena collection released in 2016. (Wow, it’s been four years already?)

The new collection is BIGGER! — and unlike the 2016 release, it leans toward lip products, with three liquid lipsticks, four lipsticks, three glosses and two lip pencils. (There is also an eyeshadow palette, a very Chanel-esque highlighter and a bejeweled bag.)

Plenty to make your heart sing. 💖👩🏾‍🎤

mac selena la reina paletta — The highlighter and eye palette both come with this pic inside of Selena wearing a cute jeweled bra (which I would wear in a hot second!).

mac selena la reina packaging — The design on the outer packaging of the highlighter and palette look like Selena’s jeweled bra top.

mac selena la reina highlighter — Yup, that red is eye-safe.

mac selena la reina lipsticks — Love the rose detail on the lipstick bullets.

mac selena la reina liquid lipsticks — The Retro Matte Lip Colours

mac selena la reina lipglass — Lipglasses

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MAC Loud and Clear Lipsticks: Yash, Baroque the Internet, Fleur D’Coral, Sugar Sweet Cameo and Sugar Dada

February 18th, 2020 by Karen 8 Comments

mac sugar sweet cameo — Matte Lipstick in Sugar Sweet Cameo, a midtone coral pink

I keep vacillating over which of the five lipsticks in the new MAC Loud and Clear collection is the most “noteworthy.” One the one hand, there’s warm nude pink Baroque the Internet, and mid-toned coral-pink Sugar Sweet Cameo, both of which have more than enough oomph and color to compliment smokey eyes, wings and just about every eyeshadow look imaginable.

mac baroque the internet — Matte Lipstick in Baroque the Internet, a warm nude pink

But then there’s also deep natural matte Yash, which is nowhere near as flashy, but you can throw it on with almost anything, so it’s also super flexible.

mac yash — Matte Lipstick in Yash, a deep neutral

Four of the five lipsticks are in MAC’s classic Matte formula, so expect soaring pigment, a nearly flat finish, and longevity for days (OK, more like 4-5 hours).

The odd woman out is Fleur D’Coral, a sheer light peach MAC Lustre with the faintest hint of a sheen.

mac fleur d coral — Lustre Lipstick in Fleur D’Coral, a light peach

And oh: If you like your makeup early-’90s style (I’m guilty of this from time to time), you’ll be sweet on Sugar Dada, a warm brownish orange matte. I, along with half the population of my former high school, rocked a similar shade circa 1992.

mac sugar dada — Matte Lipstick in Sugar Dada, a warm brownish orange

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Monochromatic Makeup With the MAC Loud and Clear Collection and Glow Play Blush: Coral Lids, Lips and Cheeks

February 11th, 2020 by Karen 15 Comments

I’m a fervent fan / enthusiastic adherent of monochromatic makeup, and that’s because I only have so many brain cells, and I like not having to expend them all thinking too deeply about matching my lids, lips and cheeks.

I’d rather conserve a little more of my life force for other things, ya know? And I need every single drop of life force I can spare to just make it through the day, ha ha ha!

Monochromatic madness!

Fast and Flirty Valentine’s Day Makeup Tutorial: A Romantic Monochromatic Soft Peach Look for All Skill Levels

A Monochromatic Multitasking Makeup Look

Monochromatic Makeup: Playful Pinks, and a Play on Cat Eyeliner

Today’s (7-Minute) Makeup: Monochromatic Lids, Cheeks and Lips

The key players in this monochromatic coral look are blush, eyeshadow, lipstick and gloss from the new Loud and Clear collection and the Glow Play Blush collection by MAC, both of which are on counters now.

The eyeliner is an old MAC standby called Teddy… I love me some Teddy! It’s an pearly reddish brown pencil liner and a workhorse staple if you like wearing warm orange browns, reddish browns, orange, or coral shades on your eyes.

I’m wearing Teddy here with matte orange coral Painted by Umber eyeshadow, and I like the contrast between Teddy’s pearly finish and the matte eyeshadow. That’s a minor detail, but I think it elevates the look a little.

I wore this look to the bakery the other day, and it was a day when sugar cookie dough, otherwise known as “the bane of my existence,” was killing me softly… You see, I had to roll out 60 heart-shaped Valentine’s Day cookies, and the temperature in the kitchen was warmer than usual (we’ve had a couple of warm, spring-like days in the low-60s lately).

A toasty outside temp means that everything inside the bakery warms up faster than usual, and that means MISERY if you’re handling sugar cookie dough.

Basically, you wanna keep your sugar cookie dough as cold as possible, because when it’s cold, it “listens” to you and does exactly what you need it to do. It stays thick and retains its shape as you roll it, and it continues to do so as you stamp out your shapes with a cookie cutter and move them to a baking sheet. Yup, when it’s cold, it is very, very good dough.

However, as the dough warms, like it does in an unseasonably hot kitchen, it embraces its inner rebel and becomes progressively ill-tempered and misbehaved. Your sweet, previously kind-hearted sugar cookie dough transforms into @sshole dough. 🙁 It picks up dents and fingerprints, stretches out where you don’t want it to stretch out, and becomes nearly impossible to transfer from the counter to a baking sheet.

WARM SUGAR COOKIE DOUGH HATES YOU.
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MAC Loud and Clear, Glow Play Blush Collection Swatches on NC42 Skin

February 6th, 2020 by Karen 22 Comments

mac loud and clear collection — The MAC Loud and Clear Collection and Glow Play Blushes, both available now at select MAC locations and the MAC website

Man, I couldn’t get this on my arm and face fast enough. First of all, NEUTRALS. Second, MAC.

Seriously, too good.

Technically, you are looking at two LE MAC collections. One is Loud and Clear, which consists of single Eyeshadows ($18 each), Lipsticks ($20), Lipglasses ($18.50) and Extra Dimension Skinfinishes ($37 each), and the other is a collection of Glow Play Blushes ($30 cheek colors extraordinaire).

A few high-level observations:

The blushes are not in the standard-issue powder formula. They have a creamy, bouncy formula and feels gel-like. They’re silky. They’re soft, and they work best when applied with my fingers. I believe they’ll be fab friends to five-minute makeup.
As for the eyeshadows, they feel softer than usual, like they have more “give” than usual for MAC powder shadows. I have high hopes for them, especially because they appear to be more intense than usual, too.
If you like monochromatic looks, this is the collection for you. There are several coordinating eye/cheek/lip products (this becomes more apparent when you separate the items into color families). I love matchy-matchy makeup because I think it’s easy sophisticated, so I’m all about that life.
THE PACKAGING! It’s kinda Shu Uemura, yah? I’m into the clear cases, not just because they look cool, but they’re also practical, because it’s easy to tell what shade they are from the front and the back.