Welcome to my January favorites where you get a look at all my favorite items from the month of January with mini reviews. If you are a beauty lover, I do invite you to check out my beauty blog RedLipstickDiaries.com, where it's all beauty, all the time. And now without further ado, let's get into my January Beauty Favorites!
My Instagram (@smashbravo) is giving me a lot of happiness. I've been on IG three years now and I am only at 5,000 followers, which is very little but I am proud because it's all organic followers. In the IG game it's so easy to want to do the follow for follow, or share game, like many girls do, or have some giveaways. But that's how I manage all of my other social media accounts and it's not the way that I want to ever manage Insta. It's my favorite SM account and I only want to be followed by people who genuinely like what I post. It's finally gotten to the point where there is a lot of interaction and I almost have too many comments to reply to. It's just exciting for me to have found so many likeminded people.
For the month of January I have two nude lippies which is extremely different from my normal reds. Getting comfortable enough to branch out of my norm when it comes to lipsticks is something that's come from the beauty community on IG. And that's why I really like being part of that group of women, and men.
The first lipstick I loved in January is the L'Oreal Infallible Pro Matte Gloss in Bare Attraction. I have 4 of these (I did end up returning two shades that didn't work for my skin tone) and I love them! I am not a big L'Oreal gal because it's a brand that I find too pricey but these are a great lipstick that feels like a gloss and delivers great color. They are super comfortable to wear and the shade selection is superb.
Bare Attraction is a pinky nude with the perfect amount of brown. This is one of the most wearable nudes I have ever found, plus the formula is such a treat. These lippies have a matte finish but they are creamy and soft so they are not a "matte lippie" in the traditional sense and they do transfer and wear off. But the formula and shades are excellent.
The NUDESTIX Lip + Cheek Pencil on Whisper has to be the next stand out for me. These pencils are $24 and therefore I probably would never have bought one but I've been super curious about them. After getting this in a set from Sephora I got to see how great they are and I can't wait to try one of the shadow sticks. But I will wait for a sale or some sort of deal before getting one.
As for Whisper, this is more nudey shade but it's beautiful and the formula is so creamy and comfy. In person it's a little browner than you see here and it's almost too nude for my tastes but I just add a darker pencil on the outside, blend and it's perfection. I can't wait to try more NUDESTIX!
For January I have two palettes that stood out to me. I tried about 10 palettes in the month of January, most are palettes I've owned for a while and just not used. But that's why I came up with the #ShopMyStash2016 Challenge, which is so that us beauty hoarders can take all our makeup and actually use it up. From the many palettes I use, these are the two that I used more than once because I really, really enjoyed them.
First let's talk about the Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette. Almost 9 months in my stash and I had never used it. Now I know why it's a holy grail and favorite of so many! These shadows are not only gorgeous, they are super blendable, they stay on forever and you can get so many looks out of this one palette. Plus it smells like chocolate! I look forward to using the Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette many more times.
The next palette is the Too Faced La Petit Maison. I am sorry to say this was a Holiday 2015 Limited Edition Palette but you can still get it on Ebay. Too Faced had so many palettes for the holiday but this was the only I wanted and it's nice that it was actually the most affordable. I loved this palette so much I got one for Munkey for Xmas too. But I hadn't actually used it till this month.
Wow, this little palette is a wonder. I wore it three times and was able to get not just three looks but three very different looks and that's only scratching the surface of its potential. The more I use shadows the more I am sure to get comfortable with coming up with looks and I just love the versatility of this little palette. I'm so glad I got it for myself in December!
I just became a concealer wearer and still don't use it daily. Things like concealer, primer, highlight, false lashes....lol, all those are things that I just don't have time for nor really the need. But lately with all the lack of sleep I have noticed that on some of my photos I will look tired, or my bags will really show up, so I decided to grab one and start adding it to the routine. The Maybelline Fit Me Concealer was really cheap, I think under $6 and I kept hearing and hearing about it on YT so I finally got it.
What a great product! It doesn't give me that white under eye that seems to be the rage on Insta, I am so not a fan of that. Instead it covers up the darkness from lack of sleep, it gets that dark area in the corner of each eye and it cleans up any mess my shadows might have made. When I use it I look more awake and my overall makeup look is just cleaner and more crisp. The formula blends so easy and just sinks into my skin. I love it!
Now we are moving on to two tools which have been indispensable for me the month of January. The first is a brush I hauled the very first week of the month, it is officially the first Real Techniques Brush I own. Ulta had a BOGO FREE sale on Real Techniques and like a dork I only grabbed one. This is the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush and I used it every time I wore makeup since getting it. Truly I could have switched it out because I love my foundation brushes but I wanted to really get a feel for it with my many different foundations. So far it's worked wonderfully for every type of foundation I own: from the thin Chanel's Vitalumiere Aqua to the really thick Revlon Whipped. This brush is $9.99 and I totally recommend it.
The next brush that made a real impact in January for me is the Morphe M176 which I got on my #MorpheMe January bag. This is the brush that I use with the Maybelline Fit Me Concealer, it's the perfect shape for under the eye and buffs that concealer perfectly. I have also used the Beauty Blender for this step but I love the control that I have with this brush more. I can get into the tight spaces better and I can really clean up the angle by my eyeshadow perfectly.
My last favorite of the month is a fragrance that I have had for years and years. Lancome's Poeme for me is like a dream, it is my #1 favorite perfume of life. My second favorite perfume is Lancome's La Vie Est Belle which is very close second but Poeme just beats it by a little. This perfume to me smells like a beautiful, confident, sexy woman. I've had this particular bottle for a long time now so in January I made an effort to use it a lot, even though I usually switch out daily. But really I love this scent so much that if you took all my other perfumes away, I wouldn't mind! So because this bottle is old I need to finish it, but I will always have it in my collection and in January I have loved wearing it so much!
Very longwinded I know, but I hope that you have enjoyed finding out more about my January 2016 beauty favorites! Let me know in the comments what beauty products were your fave in the past month.
