Lips: MAC's Lipstick in "Hug Me" (Lustre)

PURCHASED

Hello! Second post of the day, wee! I have pictures for a lot of posts, actually, since I've been gone for a while. Anyway, here is a post on another MAC lipstick. Hurray (I guess?) for falling into the majority for once and enjoying MAC lipsticks the most. They've grown on me as I've tried colors across their board of available finishes. Today I'm reviewing "Hug Me," one of their lustre finishes.

Up to this point, the cremesheen finish has been my favorite of MAC lipstick finishes - you can see my very first MAC review here. "Hug Me" isn't the first lustre I've bought (it's the second, if you want to be precise), but it is the lustre that made me give lustre finishes a second look. And now, after trying more lustres from a recent color collection, I think it's a finish that ties for favorite. I'm extremely excited to review the lipsticks from the new collection, but I wanted to write a review for the lustre finish in general first, using a color from the permanent line.

While "Hug Me" isn't the most interesting color - nor is it my favorite by any means - it is my go-to, most used lip color, as you will see in just a bit.

Sakamoto Maaya: Be mine!/SAVED (LE) + External Bonus (02/05/14)

AFFILIATE, PURCHASED

Last Wednesday, February 5, 2014, Sakamoto Maaya released her newest single(s), yay! Not surprisingly, I preordered my limited edition copy back in, oh I don't know, December or so, and I finally picked it up from the post office this past Saturday. I had it shipped to California, since I was there during the release and didn't want to wait 'til I got home to open it, haha.

You might be wondering why I say newest "single(s)," and I'll clarify that now: technically speaking, Sakamoto released two singles last Wednesday. But, when it boils down to it, the only difference between the singles is the official single title - Be mine!/SAVED for one, and SAVED/Be mine! for the other - the arrangement of the tracks, and the anime artwork sleeves. Otherwise they're identical, down to the limited edition extras.

You do not need to own both, content-wise. The only reason to order both is to own both sets of anime artwork, as the two main tracks are from different anime. But that is wasteful in my opinion, hence why I only purchased one.

The differences could have been slightly more interesting, but whatever. I can only see one logical point as to why this decision was made - and I'll get into that briefly later - but, besides that, I'll never understand the marketing behind it.

Anyway, so the copy I decided to pick up was Be mine!/SAVED, purely because "Be mine!" is the opening song for an anime and "SAVED" is the closing song for another anime. It chronologically fit.

Lips: NYX's Butter Lipstick in "Fireball"

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Hi! Hope you've all been having a great week. With 2014 settling in, cosmetic brands have been coming out with their usual new year releases, and one of the releases I was most excited for was NYX's Butter Lipstick. NYX came out with their Butter Glosses last year, which seemed to be one of the popular releases for 2013. I, too, purchased one - you can see my review of it here. I also purchased one of their Butter Balms - the second installment to the "butter" line - but have yet to review it. Not surprisingly, as the lipstick fan that I am, I was most excited for the lipstick addition to the line.

NYX's Butter Lipsticks have been showing up in Ultas on displays with a selection of colors, but NYX has recently launched the full line of colors on their website here. The color I'll be reviewing today, "Fireball," is the color I picked up from my Ulta's display. It was the only one of three colors left, and the other two were pale, chalky pinks that I could never pull off, so I settled for "Fireball," which I convinced myself was more than a red, my least favorite color in lipsticks.

Thankfully, it is.

Lips: MAC's Lipsticks in "Punk Couture" (LE) and "Instigator" (LE) [Punk Couture Winter 2013]

PURCHASED

Hi everyone. I remember when I heard about MAC's Winter 2013 collection, Punk Couture, back in October. It was being released alongside another collection, Magnetic Nude, on December 26, 2013, and I was not surprisingly looking forward more to its partner collection than this collection itself. Why?

Simply put: the stars of this collection are four limited edition matte lipsticks in dark, vamped/gothic colors - a finish and color range I typically don't wear.

As I started seeing pictures of these lipsticks, however, I decided to try some because the colors were unique for me and different from all the colors I already own. I've been open to experimenting with new looks and colors, and these lipsticks fit the bill. I also wasn't too scared of trying MAC's matte lipsticks after having so much success with their retro matte formula.

The colors I purchased were "Punk Couture" and "Instigator."

TL;DR: On Hormones [Part 1]: Why I Stopped Wearing Makeup

First off: Happy New Year, and hello to 2014. I hope you all had a wonderful, happy, and safe holiday season, and that 2014 has started off kindly for you. Now for today's post.

I didn't want my blog to become too busy, and so I've thought about this a lot. Long story short, all the 'health' details - at least in relation to birth control and laser hair removal - are very much beauty related for me, and as this is a predominantly beauty-based blog, they are indeed relevant to this blog's content.

Or you can call me lazy, which is fine, but I indefinitely want to share this, period. I don't care where or how. And I want to share it now. Especially now.

My name is Nikki and when I was 9 years old I went through what I like to call child's depression. That is, the phase of 'depression' that most kids/teens eventually crash through, where they 'hate themselves' and 'want to die' over whoever and whatever. For me, it was a matter of my parents getting divorced, my body hitting puberty just a year earlier, my face being covered in acne, and my grandmother having a stroke, which meant my mom spending a huge portion of her time in the hospital. I was used to going with her and my brother places, and with her temporarily out of the picture I had a ton of free time. I had my first laptop and Word became my best friend. For the next two or so years I would tear myself apart verbally in daily diary entries.