MAC Makeup

The new Brushtroke Liners in the MAC Great Brows + Brushstroke collection got me thinking about being back in school and having to write the same line over and over when you (I) got in trouble.

Did you ever have to do that? Sit and write the same sentence 100 times, like, “I will not pull Timmy’s mullet,” or something like that? Do kids still do that? I don’t even know if schools teach penmanship anymore, since everything’s on a tablet… #datingmyself

The Browsculpts are back

Anywho. 🙂 The Great Brows + Brushstroke Liner collection is now part of the MAC permanent line with re-promotes of the awesomesauce MAC Brow Sculpts, which are like more affordable versions of Tom Ford’s life-altering Brow Pencil. I ? them!

There are eight $21 shades, and I wear the one called Brun.

Girl, seriously, go there. They’re fantastic, especially with Benefit Ready Set Brow on top.

Not sold on the Great Brows trios…

There’s also a brand new product in the collection — Great Brows — which is a brow powder trio with one shade darker than the other for filling in bare brow spots, as well as a peachy or beige color for highlighting the arches and a couple of teeny brow tools.

To be honest…I’m not in love with Great Brows. The brow powders are too pigmented and soft for me.

I end up with overly dark brows that don’t look quite right, so I’m going to pass on these and use a single pan of eyeshadow from the MAC line to fill any sparse spots instead (I usually go back and forth between Concrete and Brun).

Brushstroke Liner

I’m so excited about these! There are two of them, one in brown and one in black, and they’re $21 each.

So…the first time I talked about the Brushstroke Liners, I mistakenly mixed up Brushtroke with the new MAC pizza cutter liner, which is a totally different thing.

My bad.

To clarify, the pizza cutter liner looks like a tiny pizza cutter, and the Brushstrokes are thin and tapered like a tradition liquid liner pen.

The tip is fantastically flexible — probably the most bendable tip out there now — even more so than LORAC Front of the Line Pro and Tom Ford’s liquid liner.

I love it, and I can see it fabulous if you have small lids that don’t have a lot of space. I can drag it across my lash lines without pulling at my skin, and the super skinny tip draws thin, precise lines.

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It’s been very educational 24 hours.

First, I learned that seasons two and three of The Great British Baking Show ??? are on Netflix (you’re welcome). Second, OMG! I learned that gray is a legit transition color for green and blue eye looks.

Seriously, girl, I had no idea. Here I was, all this time thinking that I was limited to browns in the crease whenever I wore greens or blues on my lids, but no! Turns out gray works too. And yellow. This knowledge comes courtesy of the new MAC Tropic Cool Times Nine palette from the MAC Eyes on MAC collection.

The release features six limited edition Eye Shadow X9 palettes available on counters and online March 2nd through April 13, and Tropic Cool is one of them. And it’s a pretty distinct one, too, because it’s the one with lots of blue and green. You can’t miss it.

What interesting transition colors!

I had no idea how well gray would work in the crease with blue and green looks, or that yellow eyeshadow and gray would even go together.

I mean, I know it works as a combo with clothes and home decor, so I don’t know why I never thought to pair them together on my lids.

That’s the thing about this palette… It’s interesting. It has all these fun, boisterous blues and greens, which are getting me even more in the mood for spring, but it also has these unusual transition colors that make the whole thing interesting and kind of unique.

The new-school X9s rock

You know I had beef with the quality of the old-school X9 shadows. Well, I think this one’s just as good as Semi Sweet and Red Hot. The powders are both easy to blend and pigmented. There is, however, a little fallout, and I find myself doing more cleanup than I do with Semi Sweet or Red Hot, but that could very easily be due, at least in part, to my playing and getting carried away with my swirling and swiping.

So the palette made me do it. 🙂

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If the new MAC Red Hot Eye Shadow X 9 Palette came with a bunch of Hot candy, girl, those candies would be ALL YOU. Ugh! I can’t handle it (leftover trauma from my braces days!).

Anyway, I am NOT a fan of Red Hots, but I am a fan of this smokin’ hot ? palette.

Sorry…you know me. I’m a frequent visitor to The Land of Bad Puns.

Red Hot Times Nine is one of six new X 9 Eye Shadow Palettes in the MAC Eyes on MAC collection coming to counters and websites March 1st through April 13th.

I tested the matte neutral Semi-Sweet palette yesterday, and oh, my goodness! — I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I didn’t used to be a fan of the 9s, but based on Semi Sweet and Red Hot? OMG, SO GOOD. Something’s changed. Word on the street is that MAC reformulated the X9 eyeshadows, and ya know, I believe it. These are SO much softer, easier to blend and more fun to play with than the O.G. X9s were before.

Don’t be intimidated

You may be thinking, “I’m not a red/orange/pink eyeshadow person, Karen. I don’t go there.” Trust me, I get it. Brights are scary, especially reds, but I think you’ll love this palette. I do, and I wear A LOT of neutrals and brown eyeshadow.

I did this look here mainly to test, and I didn’t expect to like it enough to take pics. Even though I could’ve blended it better, I still like how it came together. It’s vibrant, fun and still wearable.

The look isn’t too crazy, but it’s juuust crazy enough.

Logical transitions

What I LOVE about this palette is how the pink, reddish pink, reddish orange and orange all share the same DNA. They transition beautifully into one another because they aren’t dramatically different.

I think that things can go wrong sometimes when you’re using bold eyeshadow palettes — and I’ve totally done this — that don’t have the necessary “in-between” shades.

GIRL, I’ve done some terrible hot pink and purple eye looks where it just looks like BAM! — a whole mess of pink, and really nothing else around to ease the transitions. That’s what I was expecting from Red Hot, but surprise! It has the right “in-betweens,” so it’s easy to create gradients where each color flows into the next, and that’s the next-level sh*t that elevates this from a good palette to a great palette.

You’ll also appreciate the neutrals

There’s a taupe, beige and three plum shades, all of which are essential, because you’ll probably need to incorporate at least one or two of them into your looks; otherwise, you’ve just got hot pink or red floating all up in space on your face. You can use the taupe, beige and plums to define the boundaries of your eyes, anchor the bold colors, and make things look legit.

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What the heck do you do with these things? Are they eyeliners? Are they eyeliners that also double as lip liners? Can I wear them on the water line? WHY YOU SO COMPLICATED, SON?!

The $17 Chromagraphic Pencils from the upcoming MAC Work It Out collection come with an insert that basically tells you how *not* to wear them.

Um…OK!

MAC suggests not using several of the six shades from Work It Out in the lip area, along the water line and, in some cases, avoiding the eye area completely.

Hmm…

I’m guessing that people will do what they will, and use them however they want, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some intrepid makeup artists out there do some off-label business with them.

Still…

Even though I love the nude Studio Chromagraphic pencils, I’m going to avoid the colorful ones from Work It Out because, yes, on the one hand they’re hella vibrant, but they also like to scoot all over my skin and transfer up into my crease, and when they touch my water line, my sensitive eyes water.

If you’re still intrigued, all six Chromagraphic Pencils arrive with the rest of the MAC Work It Out collection at counters, stores and online on March 2nd.

Finding motivation…

You guys, I’ve been going to that high intensity interval training class at night for going on three weeks now, and I love it! I still miss the camaraderie I had with the people in the daytime class, but the nighttimers are freakin’ hardcore.

I like to find someone near me who’s really pushing it, and I try to keep up with them. It’s so much fun going to a class where people push you, not to say that that never happened in the daytime class, but it’s fun trying to push myself and do things I’m not sure I can do.

And when I go to sleep at night, I’m so tired that I conk out when I fall into bed. Zzz…

I know I talk about HIIT all the time, but it’s been wonderful! It’s very hard for me, but it’s also a lot of fun. If you ever get a chance to try it, go for it! There are a bunch of HIIT workouts on YouTube that you can try to see if you like it.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

I dream of a world where doughnuts are a legitimate pre- and post-workout food. Additionally, in this world, the new MAC Crystal Glaze Glosses from the Work It Out collection would also taste like doughnuts, because how awesome would that be? 🙂

In our actual world, though, there are no doughnuts involved… These taste and smell like standard MAC vanilla.

Be that as it may, MAC’s Crystal Glazes last an unusually long time for non-sticky, moderately moisturizing glosses, which is almost as good as a doughnut… Almost.

Yesterday I put on Flex Appeal right after Connor’s morning snack (dude, babies eat SO MUCH) around 10, had a salad at noon, and after a huge cup of tea at 2 I could still feel it on my lips.

They look bright in their pots, but they’re pretty sheer on my lips. The two brightest of the six, Ripped and Flex Appeal, are the most tinted ones, but all of the lighter shades (soft peach Nice Cheeks, bubble gum pink Sixxx Pack, coral pink Love Your Body and cool pink Oh My Lunge) look more or less the same on my lips.

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Oh, I wanted to wear one of these colorful In Extra Dimension Lash Mascaras from the new MAC Work It Out collection to my HIIT class yesterday, because why not? It would have been fun to see myself doing split lunges while wearing bright blue lashes. Might as well, right?

But, alas, they aren’t waterproof… 🙁

Darn! I wish they were, because that would take them to the next level.

Bust out your leotards and leg warmers!

For MAC’s new ’80s Jazzercise Collection…

Well, that’s what I want to call it. It’s actually called MAC Work It Out (available at stores, counters and online March 2 – April 13).

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like the 16 In Extra Dimension Lash Mascaras ($19.50 each), six Chromagraphic Pencils ($17 each), six Crystal Glaze Glosses ($22 each), four Lipsticks ($17 each), three Studio Quiktrik Sticks ($34 each) or the three Prep+Prime Fix+/Sized to Gos were made with actual, ya know, sweating in mind.

I think they’re more for looking cute in your leotard and leg warmers while you sip a green juice than they are for actual heavy lifting…which is totally OK. 🙂

Lift those lashes!

Speaking of lifting, I do get a major lash boost from the In Extreme Dimension Lash Mascaras I’ve tried from the collection. They lift my lashes from the roots and keep them lifted, so my eyes look bigger and, dare I say it, brighter.

Ironically, this formula straightens out the curl from my lash curler, which results in lashes that are lifted at the roots but straighten out toward the tips…

Something like this would normally bug me, but I don’t mind in this case because of the crazy colors and how much thicker the formula makes my lashes look.

When the blues make you happy

I’ve been testing five of the 16 colors this week, and all of them have been exceptionally pigmented.

My faves, though, are the blues… I absolutely LIVE for these blues. When I wear bright teal Sweaty Betty and bright electric blue Hold for 10, my lashes glow like technicolor fringe!

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