The Day in Beauty Vol. 23: MAC Bangin’ Brilliant Blush…and One of the Best Movies of 2016!

Why are the $16 MAC Bangin’ Brilliant Powder Blushes in eyeshadow pots?

For the life of me, I can’t figure it out. I’ve picked one of them up assuming it was a shadow at least half a dozen times. Like the matte red, Never Say Never? — call me crazy, but I kinda wanna put it in my crease.

I dunno… Sometimes I think red smokey eyes can look super cool, but maybe I’ve been spending too much time on Instagram lately.

LOL!

These are so bright and so juicy that they remind me of summer fruit.

Mmm… Watermelon…

These five new blushes have joined the MAC permanent line, along with the rest of the Bangin’ Brilliant band, and after spending the past few weeks with them, I think they compare well to my regular MAC daily blush musts, which are Gingerly and Blushbaby, at the moment, in terms of wear time (they last all day long) and blendability (although you do need to use them with the right tools, but I’ll get to that in a few).

Where they definitely differ is size, obvi, and intensity.

I don’t know how MAC did it, but they made these even MORE vibrant than the boldest and brightest MAC blushes around, which is really super cool. I just wish they came in the regular 0.21-oz. $22 MAC blush pans.

These may cost a little less at $16, but they’re also much smaller (0.05 ounces). Technically, though, since you’ll probably need to use so very little, a small pan like this could still last a year or two, depending on how often you wear it.

But that part of me that likes to buy toilet paper in bulk at Costco still wishes they were bigger, man.

Lately I’ve been liking very minimal cheek color, so because these are so intense, and because the pans are on the smaller side (which makes it kind of hard to load up a regular-sized blush brush with them…but really, I probably wouldn’t use a blush brush with them anyway because I only need to use a tiny amount, and a big brush head would be excessive), I use a small duo fibre face brush with them instead.

I like the MAC 199 Small Duo Fibre Face Brush ($35). It’s small and fits these pans better than a big blush brush does. I just lightly swirl the brush head in one of the pans, tap most of it off, then buff, ever-so-gently, like whisker kisses on my cheeks.

Then I grab the biggest powder brush I can find and gently run that over my cheeks to slightly take the edge off. The end result looks very natural.

Since these are so bright, I assumed I would look like a resident of crazy clown town, but that totally wasn’t the case! I’ve been wearing the orange shade, Bright Response, on the regular, and it’s completely doable.

But hey, if you are all about the “too much,” that’s cool too. You can easily get there with these blushes.

I’m an NC42, by the way, and because I like to use these with a light touch, some of the colors look kinda similar. My cheeks look, more or less, like I just finished doing hardcore sprints whether I wear matte red Never Say Never, matte reddish orange News Flash or matte fuchsia pink Bright Pink.

The ones that look more distinct to me, at least on my skin tone, are matte bright bluish pink Saucy Miss and orange Bright Response, the shade I mentioned earlier, which is technically a frost, but it looks more like a matte on me.

Overall, I think these blushes are super fun! Just keep ’em away from your MAC eyeshadows if you’re easily confused like I am, LOL! They’re available now.

For Movie Night! The Invitation

I watched THE BEST, most intense movie last weekend, and it’s one of my favorite movies of the year.

It’s called The Invitation, and it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

OK…but first, something happened after I had Connor. I used to love really, really scary, suspenseful movies, and I still do, but I have less patience now for standard slasher horror movies.

There was this one movie I tried to watch recently — I can’t remember the name — where the opening scene had a bound woman crying in a dark room, and I had to immediately turn it off. I just can’t handle those kinds of scary movies anymore, but this movie? It’s more of a slow-burning suspenseful thriller.

Dude, it was SO GOOD that I actually watched it twice because I wanted to see what I missed the first time around.

Not gonna lie — I kinda want to watch it a third time now.

It’s about a group of old friends reconnecting with each other at a dinner party that one of them throws in the LA hills after not seeing each other for about two years.

Will is the main character, and his new girlfriend is Kira, but he used to be married to Eden, who now lives with her new husband in the same house she once shared with Will, and they’re all at the dinner party together.

Two years ago something tragic happened to Will and Eden that led to them splitting up. It ended their relationship, and it’s one of the driving forces in the story.

Anyway, Eden and her new husband invite their old friends to the house for the dinner party.

Needless to say, things go awry. Very, very awry.

I don’t want to give too much away, but all I have to say is be patient, and watch closely, because there are little breadcrumbs dropped along the way that, if you watch it a second time, you’re like, “Oh, I get it now!”

I can’t say good enough things about it. It’s SO great.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen