Nyx Macaron Lippie in Rose

I am sorry about the word lippie in the title of this post, I know that is a neurosis trigger for a lot of people.  However, it is what the tube says and who am I to deny Nyx the joy of upsetting people through the names they give their products?  I am excited to talk about this rather freakish shade of lipstick today that I honestly mostly wear as a cream blush and have never managed to get out of the house wearing on my lips.

The packaging is typical Nyx black plastic with white writing and a clear middle portion that allows you to see the color inside. 

The bottom shows the innocuous name "Rose" which might lead you to expect something nice and pink and wearable.  There are certainly a lot of wearable rose lip colors.  This is not one of them.  While it may look like one of the more wearable out of the Macaron line, this is anything but subtle.  It isn't a pistachio green or a concrete grey, but it is almost more jarring as it is close to being a shade found in nature.  As you can see in the context of my face, it is an alarming pastel shade of bubble gum pink.  

The packaging is pretty cheap feeling, but is functional.  The bullet rolls all the way down into the packaging, which is a plus so my clumsy self will avoid nicking it with the cap.  The only real flaw is there is no "click" to start rolling up so I can see myself managing to squash the bullet against the inside of the cap.

Here is a swatch of it looking all lonesome on my arm.  I gave this a couple of swipes to get the color opaque.  Because it is so bold any patchiness becomes very obvious.  

1

Below it is swatched in context of some other brighter pinks and purples in my collection.  None are quite as white based as Rose, but the Posietint  is maybe the closest in shade.  Top photo is without flash, bottom is with. 

Top to bottom: Pixi Shea Butter Lip Balm in Pixi Pink, Nyx Macaron Lippie in Rose, Laqa & Co Lip Lube in Menatour, Benefit Posietint, Benefit Lollitint, Benefit Lollibalm

It took me quite a few layers and a lip brush to get this applied the way I wanted but I ended up with a decently smooth result.  It felt thick on the lips, very noticeable, but it did not seem to dry them out. There is a thicker deposit of product on the left side of my bottom lip that looks a little off and applying straight out of the bullet was hard to define my cupids bow.  

 

The makeup I was wearing on the testing day was quite warm, which only assisted in making it look like my lips were floating on my face.  I think if I had been wearing a more cool-tone face of make up the look would have been slightly more cohesive.  That being said, this shade will never be subtle so I got some enjoyment out of playing up the white and blue in the base.  

The color stayed on my lips very well for an hour of just sitting and reading.  I did not eat or drink during that hour.  At the end you could see that the lipstick was starting to settle a little more obviously into the cracks of my lips.  This is not that surprising given how creamy the formula of this is, there is borderline too much slip for it to be trustworthy.  I suspect a drier formula would not give you such a bold color.  This settling also was not that obvious in the context of my whole face.  

After about an hour I got thirsty and drank a glass of water, that was left with some nice lipstick prints.  The transfer from this lipstick is super obvious, if not surprising given the creamy formula.  It also looked a little bit worse for wear following the water, no obviously bald patches but generally more sheer toward the center of my lips.

By the two hour mark I had also eaten a handful of candied ginger and my lipstick was showing quite a bit of wear.  You can see the bald patches on the left side of my mouth and that it was quite obvious even in the context of more of my face.  

Overall I don't hate this lipstick, I think the look it creates is interesting.  I just have found it too unusual to wear out into the world.  I have worn it a few times as a cream blush, but requires an awful lot of blending and probably wouldn't work on anybody with a darker skin tone than I due to all the white in the base.  

Otherwise nondescript makeup with the nyx macaron as a blush

I think this shade of lipstick would look absolutely stunning on somebody with a darker skin tone, but again it would not look any more natural.  Maybe sometime this summer I will get up the courage to be one of the cool kids and wear this so other people can see.  

So Whatever Happened with That Palette?

So casually six months late I am going to post a wrap up for my pan that palette project from 2015.  I am nothing if not a timely woman.  I ended up finishing 4 shades out of the palette and although I hit pan on the transforming ribbon it irritated my eyes too much for me to ever want to use it again.  I had also used up a fair bit of the single shadow in "Bone" from Ulta.   

 

The offending glitter bomb.

Many of the shades in the palette had a lot of love and little baby dips going in them.  

Examples of a few dips in shades that I really did like.  

Other shades were clearly less loved and still had the embossing on them.  I am accepting that I am not a fun shadow lady.  I am a boring lady.  

I was just never really very sure of what to do with a navy besides occasionally lining my eyes.  And never enough to make even a slight dip.  

I tried very hard in the last month to hit pan on Miracle, but unfortunately that never happened.  Although I did manage a rather deep dip dug right into the center.  This was an odd shade to me, in that it looked very reddish and cranberry-like in the pan, but on my eyes was almost grey.  

Overall I was pleased with the progress I had made using the palette almost exclusively for a year, but I was also very much ready to not use it again for awhile.   The palette had mostly just transition shades remaining, but they were perfectly fine shadows for the most part and I didn't want to just throw them away.  I have seen lots of people depotting shadows and watched many a tutorial out of curiosity, but I didn't have a Z palette and didn't really want to buy one.  Plus, I liked the sturdiness and bright holographic packaging of the house they were in.  So I embarked on a repressing journey with some Ulta singles, and also took the opportunity to gouge out that irritating glitter and replace it with a more usable shimmer shadow.  

I did all of this on a paper towel because I am a giant mess and this made an easy clean up at the end.  

I wanted to press in the shades "Bone", "Camel", and "Bermuda Sands" from Ulta singles.  This plan also gave me the chance to get these out of their bulky singles packaging and into a palette where I could use them to create a cohesive look more easily.  

The first on my list was "Bone", as a palette is useless to me without a cream base color to set my primer and use to blend out.  I had been using "Bone" during the project anyway after the original cream shades in the palette were used up.  

I crushed up the shadow in its original pan to create a fine powder, the put that powder into the It Cosmetics palette pans.  I ended up having enough shadow left to fill two of the pans in the palette, rather than just the one I was expecting.  

Then I dumped some isopropyl alcohol on the powder and pressed down gently with a paper towel.  This kept me from getting my fingers and all the gunk on them into the new shadow as well as helping to soak up some of the excess alcohol.

As you can see, there was a lot of alcohol for the towel to soak up.

All pressed

Next I crushed up "Camel".  I was using a pen cap that I had dipped in alcohol as it was sharp and I didn't care about throwing it away after it became gross from all the shadow.  I know a lot of tutorials recommend a butter knife or the like, but I just didn't want to deal with the clean up.  

About halfway through breaking up, still too chunky to repress.

Here it is a fine enough powder to use.

I poured enough alcohol on top to make them really wet and pressed them with the paper towel as shown before.

A lot of shadow ended up being pressed outside the pan as well, but ws easy to clean up with a Q-tip after I was all done.

I went through the same steps with "Bermuda Sands" going into the larger pan that previously held the glitter itch disaster of supposedly transforming magic.    

Powder pile

Pressed with alcohol

In the end I was pretty happy to have taken a palette that was beat up and well used and turn it into a new customized palette.  I haven't used much of this palette in the last couple of months, as I have been enjoying playing with my other shadows, However, I like knowing that I could use this palette to make a full look again with the shades in it now and will likely use this a travel palette for some trips coming up this summer.  Below is the finished product with and without flash.  I am pretty pleased with how nicely it turned out and very much like this as an alternative to mismatched pans of shadow in a Z palette.