3 Top Lipsticks for Fall

We are officially into the autumn season, and while I love boots, sweaters, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes as much as the next girl, today I wanted share my ultimate favourite Fall item: dark lipsticks. I realized in the last year that while I love pinks, MLBB shades (which is browny-mauve for me) or deep shades look the best on me, so I’ve become very interested in finding red and berry lipsticks that are comfortable and flattering.

NARS Audacious Lipstick in Audrey

I had been dying to try the Audacious lipsticks since the collection was released, and I purchased this one during last year’s VIB sale. Audrey is a warm-toned medium red.  On me, it looks lighter on my lips than it does swatched, and I would say it’s a pretty neutral (for lack of a better term) red: not too warm, but not too cool-toned; not too bright, but not too vampy. Out of all the three shades mentioned in this post, I would say this one is most easily worn at all times of the year, whereas the other two are dark enough that I imagine most people would wear them only in the fall. The Audacious lipsticks are quite easy to wear: it isn’t the creamiest formula I’ve tried, but it’s full-coverage, comfortable and moisturizing, and doesn’t move around on the lips. It wears for about 4 hours (without eating) and I’ve also noticed that it wears off quite evenly, which is always a good thing for shades like red.

 

 

MAC Dark Side

Out of all of the lipsticks featured, this one is my ultimate fall favourite. Dark Side is a deep vampy burgundy in MAC’s Amplified finish, which means the formula is creamy and maintains a decent amount of sheen until the colour starts wearing off. Because the formula is so creamy, I do find it a little bit more high maintenance because it does wear off and shift around more easily without a lip liner underneath than compared to formulas like the Audacious lipsticks. It doesn’t look much darker than NARS Audrey in the swatches, but on the lips it actually is a lot darker. The wear time is about 2-3 hours before I feel like I need to reapply. Unfortunately, the tube you see pictured has been thrown out by the time this blog post is up – when I took my tube out to use for the first time this year, I realized the scent is off, which means that it’s likely expired. I kept it around long enough to take pictures of it for this post, but I’ll have to replace it as soon as I can!

 

Tarte Tarteist Lip Paint in Killin’ It

A friend of mine bought this for me for my birthday, but because it’s a dark shade, I haven’t opened it until now. The Sephora website describes Killin’ It as “berry”, but I wouldn’t say it’s berry at all. To me, it’s a dark plum in a matte finish, and when applied to my lips, I would say it actually pulls quite brown. Can you believe that this is the only liquid lipstick I own? I’ve always steered clear of liquid lipsticks because they’re too drying on my lips, but I was actually surprised because this Lip Paint formula sits relatively comfortably on the lips. It dries within seconds, which can either be positive or negative depending on how carefully you applied it. This lipstick is does not budge at all; I had a full meal with it on, and it still looked perfect after. Nothing makes it come off unless I massage an oil-based remover gently on my lips several times. For those who want something long-wearing, this is what you’re looking for! My first foray into liquid lipsticks has made me quite curious to try out more liquid lipsticks, even though I think this particular trend is starting to lose its steam.

 

These are all of the lipsticks swatched:

NARS Audacious Lipstick in Audrey, Tarte Tarteist Lip Paint in Killin’ It, MAC Lipstick in Dark Side

 

That’s it for my favourite fall lipsticks! What are your top three lip colours for fall?

 

 

Honeymoon Travels: Amalfi Coast

Today’s post is the second installment of our honeymoon – this time takes us to the Amalfi Coast, Italy. While my heart always belongs to Paris, I was the most excited for the Amalfi Coast because I was pumped to see the famous views I’ve only ever seen on Instagram and never dreamt I would see in real life. My husband had never heard of the Amalfi Coast before I brought it up as a potential honeymoon locale. I was incredulous – had he never seen photos of the hill with all of the houses on it?! As soon as I showed him photos, he said, “Oh, I’ve seen those before. I didn’t know that was the Amalfi Coast!”

In my head, I thought that the Amalfi Coast would be the most relaxing part of our trip, but in reality it was probably the most chaotic of the four places we visited due to the massive crowds. A coworker had told me that a lot of Italians go down to the coast during the summer, which made perfect sense when we got there because it seemed like the majority of the tourists were either Italian or British.

Review: What’s Up Nail Vinyls

Today’s post features nail vinyls from What’s Up Nails, which Nail Polish Canada (NPC) kindly sent to me. Thank you so much for the opportunity to try these out! First off, I have to acknowledge that this post is long overdue – specifically, 4 months overdue. The vinyls arrived at my house in May, while I was on my blogging break and wasn’t even painting my nails. For my wedding, I had gotten Shellac done on my nails, and wanted the Shellac to grow out naturally after the wedding. This meant I wasn’t able to test out the vinyls until the Shellac had completely grown out. By the time our honeymoon rolled around (two months after the wedding), the shellac STILL hadn’t grown out fully! I ended up getting fed up and removing them myself right before we left for the honeymoon (please don’t try this at home) because the regrowth bothered me so much. After returning from our trip, I FINALLY had a chance to sit down to use these. Regardless of why it took me so long to get this post up, I do have to apologize for not testing these out sooner.

Nail Polish Canada not only to let me pick out one set of vinyls, but 3! I chose the regular chevron design, the mermaid scales, and the X-pattern design, which retail for $5.95 each on the website. The mermaid scales and X-pattern vinyls come in 12 squares, while the regular chevron comes in 90 strips. Since this blog post was going to be my first time attempting to use the vinyls, I wasn’t sure how adept I would be at them. I decided to first try the one that looked the most simple to use for my first attempt, which was the regular chevron.

Honeymoon Diaries: Paris

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll know that I was in Europe for two weeks for our honeymoon. There were so many cities within Europe we wanted to visit, but with only two weeks available, we settled on Paris, the Amalfi Coast, Venice, and Rome. Today’s post is on our stay in Paris! This was the only city on our itinerary that I’ve already been to. I visited Paris on a school trip when I was 18 and fell in love with the city; even as a kid, I’ve always loved anything Paris-themed. Not entirely sure why, but I think it’s due to my obsession of the show Madeline as a kid. Either way, I’ve always wanted to go back with my husband (who has never been), and what better time to go to the City of Love with him than during our honeymoon? It wasn’t hard to convince him, since Paris was on his bucket list.

Paris is separated into Arrondissements, or districts. For example, the Arc de Triomphe is located in the 8th arrondissement, the Eiffel Tower is located in the 7th, and the Louvre is located in the 1st . We stayed at the Grand Hotel Saint-Michel, which is located in the 5th Arrondissement. The location of the hotel was so convenient – we were a 5 minute walk to the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Garden) and the Pantheon, a 10 minute walk to the closest Metro station, and a 15 minute walk to the Notre Dame Cathedral. The hotel itself was quite good, too. It was on a quiet street far away from any noise, and although it was a bit small and we didn’t have much of a view, it was clean and modern. Being the beauty lover that I am, I found it interesting that the hair and body products they provided for guests were from Hermès! How fancy.

We stayed in Paris for four full days. There’s a lot to see in the city, so we knew we’d be on a bit of a time crunch! After landing at 9:00 am, we took the Metro to our hotel, where we checked in and dropped off our luggage. 

July and August Low-Buy

I missed out on my July low-buy post since I was just getting back into the blogging game, so today’s post is a combined July and August post. July was actually a no-buy month for me, which I successfully stuck with. I hadn’t set a budget for August since I knew I was going on my honeymoon, and all bets are off in terms of makeup purchases when I’m on vacation!

I didn’t spend too much time shopping while we were in Europe because we were on our honeymoon and obviously the focus was just enjoying our time together, but I did drop by a few shops as I noticed them when we walked by. I also picked up a few things in town before and after the trip.