New "Clean" Beauty Favorites | Kosas + Jillian Dempsey

Beauty sales season hit me hard this fall - I grabbed a few too many things in the Sephora VIB Sale (let me know if I should write a post on that, too), and then I was sucked in by Credo Beauty’s sale. I had never ordered anything from Credo Beauty before, but the shipping was so fast, and there’s so many brands there that I’ve been meaning to try, so I think this might be the start of a dangerous obsession.

I made a beeline to the Jillian Dempsey and Kosas Cosmetics sections as soon as I saw them both offered - I’ve heard nothing but good things about both brands and had a couple things I wanted to try from each. I ended up getting the Tinted Face Oil and Lipstick in Rosewater from Kosas, and two Lid Tints and two Cheek Tints from Jillian Dempsey.

Kosas Tinted Face Oil & Lipstick

T-B | Jillian Dempsey Cheek Tints in Petal & Rosy, Lid Tints in Lilac & Bronze, Kosas Lipstick in Rosewater

The Kosas Tinted Face Oil is something I’ve been wanting since its launch - a tinted face oil sounds right up my alley. It comes in 10 shades, which is not the most inclusive shade range, but since it’s very light coverage it is forgivable if the shade isn’t a perfect match. I got shade 01, and it seems to be a great match. You have to shake up the bottle before dispensing to make sure the pigment is dispersed in the oil, which always gets me weird looks when I’m applying this at my desk at work. It’s a super runny, thin oil and you have to be careful when you tip the bottle over. It blends so easily and smoothly into the skin that I can slap it on and have it looking good in about 10 seconds flat. I do find that if I don’t wait long enough after applying certain moisturizers (like the First Aid Beauty Priming Moisturizer), it can pill, but it’s usually not an issue. I don’t use it over a primer, and I don’t powder it either. You’d think this would look greasy as the day went on, but it just looks more and more beautiful with time. It actually has a bit of a satin finish on me when I first apply, slowly becoming the best version of dewy over time. My favorite thing about it is how beautifully my cream products apply and blend on top of it - I’ve actually fallen back in love with my Tom Ford Shade & Illuminate again because of how easily it glides over the Tinted Face Oil. This has been my everyday go-to since I got it, and I definitely feel like it was made for me. I do find that by the end of the day, it’s mostly faded away, but it fades away so evenly (and was light coverage to begin with) so it’s hard to even notice.

The Kosas Lipstick has also become a fast favorite. I’m not sure if it’s just because the tube is the same, but it really reminds me of the NARS Audacious Lipsticks. It’s smooth and creamy, but has great pigmentation and a satin finish. The shade Rosewater is one of the best my-lips-but-better shades I’ve found - if you took my natural lip color and made it a tiny bit more pink. this is the shade you’d get. It’s perfect for adding a quick, subtle flush of color to the lips, and the formula is super comfortable and wears down to a lovely stain over time.

Jillian Dempsey Lid & Cheek Tints

I’ve seen the Jillian Dempsey Lid & Cheek Tints all over Instagram lately, so I had to try them out for myself. I had heard the Lid Tints crease pretty quickly, but I love a good messy, glossy lid so I didn’t mind and ordered a couple. I got Lilac, a pale pinkish-purple, and bronze, a sheer wash of bronze-y brown. They are so beautifully juicy and glossy, and yes, they do crease - probably within 30 minutes for me. But you know how there are some products that crease, and then when you try to blend them back out, they disappear? These aren’t like that. They’re easy to manipulate right back into place without losing any product, so I really don’t mind the creasing at all. I just tap my eyelids every so often throughout the day and know they’re still going to look good. I’m so tempted to just order all the other shades now.

The Cheek Tints are the standout favorite of this whole haul - I actually only got one shade initially, and went back and ordered a second as soon as I tried it. It has more of a cream-to-powder formula than the Lid Tints, so they stay put all day, and I can see them working well on more oily skin types, too. I first got the shade Petal, a subtle pinky-peach, and then went back for Rosy, a bright pink. They have the perfect amount of pigmentation - they pack a decent amount of color right away without having to layer lots of product, but it’s not so much pigmentation that it’s hard to blend out and doesn’t look clownish. Petal is going to be perfect for when I’m wearing red lipstick this winter as it’s such a lovely subtle shade, and Rosy has already become my everyday go-to - I love a good healthy flush on my cheeks, and this is one of the best shades I’ve found. They blend out effortlessly despite feeling a little bit stiff in the pan and instantly become one with the skin. I actually went a little overboard with Rosy the other day and had someone ask me if I had a fever - they thought it was just my cheeks naturally flushing rather than me piling on too much blush.

So overall this Credo Beauty haul was such a win - have you tried either of these brands?

MAC Powder Kiss Lipsticks | Review + Swatches

One of my favorite things about the beauty world is watching trends evolve. First everything was all about the super opaque and precise matte liquid lip look, and now we’re coming around to more sheer stains and glosses. MAC’s new Powder Kiss Lipsticks are coming at a perfect time - they promise a soft, weightless, velvety finish perfect for a blurred lip stain straight from the runway, that you can wear every day.

When I first saw the photos of these lipsticks, I was immediately intrigued. The bullets themselves looked SO matte that they seem like they could be powders pressed into a lipstick bullet shape. They also come in a rubberized matte tube - think NARS packaging. I’m all about a more sheer, worn-in lip look so the Powder Kiss Lipsticks seemed perfect for me.

When first swatching these I was surprised at how easily they glided onto my lips/skin. They truly feel velvety and are like nothing I’ve ever tried. They feel so lightweight as you apply them and while wearing them - it’s almost like you can’t feel them at all. They’re not quite as pigmented as MAC’s regular matte lipsticks, and they have a soft-focus finish to them that makes them look like a lipstain once applied. Weartime has been good for me, a few hours if I’m not eating, and they’re easy to blend back into place as they wear away, too. I’m surprised something with such a matte finish doesn’t feel dry on the lips - they almost feel like you’re wearing a lightweight balm, so even my prone-to-dryness lips stay hydrated throughout wearing them. They apply best on dry lips (with no balm), otherwise they can tend to go a little patchy. And just as a heads-up - the scent is a little different than most MAC lipsticks here: it’s like the normal MAC lipstick vanilla scent, mixed with a little bit of rubber (?), which isn’t great, but the scent doesn’t transfer to the lips. I just love the finish of these - it’s like you spent a lot of time blurring and blotting down your regular full-coverage lipstick, and you’re left with this beautiful blotted stain.

MAC Powder Kiss Lipsticks come in 16 shades (descriptions from MAC’s website)::

MAC Powder Kiss Lipsticks in (top to bottom) Devoted to Chili, Fall in Love, Lasting Passion, Impulsive, Sultriness, Style Shocked, Influentially It, Burning Love, Sweet No Sugar, Scattered Petals, My Tweedy, Shocking Revelation, Mull it Over, Mandarin O, Best of Me, A Little Tamed

Devoted to Chili - warm brick red

Fall in Love - bright creamy fuschia

Lasting Passion - clean bright red

Impulsive - warm brown

Sultriness - baby blue pink

Style Shocked - clean red orange

Influentially It - nude beige

Burning Love - deepened red wine

Sweet, No Sugar - clean warm pink

Scattered Petals - pale clean pink

My Tweedy - blushy nude

Shocking Revelation - clean blue red

Mull it Over - dirty peach

Mandarin O - bright creamy salmon pink

Best of Me - pale milky beige

A Little Tamed - midtone pink

My favorite shades have been a mix of Sultriness and Devoted to Chili for daytime, and Burning Love for more special occasions. The MAC Powder Kiss Lipsticks are out now and are $19. Will you be trying them?

MAC Powder Kiss Lipsticks were sent to me for consideration, but all opinions are my own.

The Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk Look

Few shades of beauty products have reached the instant fame and cult-status as Charlotte Tilbury's Pillow Talk shade has. The shade first showed up in her Lip Cheat, quickly becoming an iconic favorite for being a universally-flattering pink nude that helped to sculpt and shape the lips. She then followed by making it into a Matte Revolution Lipstick (which I ordered the second it became available). And now she's done it again, adding to the Pillow Talk collection with a new Luxury Palette eyeshadow quad and a Cheek to Chic Blush.

The eyeshadow quads and “swish and pop” blushes have been favorite formulas of mine for awhile, so it’s no surprise that I’m absolutely in love with these two new additions. Charlotte Tilbury’s eyeshadows are some of my favorites - they perfectly toe the line between creamy and soft, hitting that sweet spot between too dense and too powdery. They’re buildable shadows, so they can be applied as a sheer wash or built up to something more intense, and they layer on top of themselves easily with no fallout. These eyeshadows are also some of the longest lasting on me - I always use a primer of course, but there’s no creasing or fading at the end of a long day (they even last through my kickboxing class, which is the ultimate test for me). The shades in the Pillow Talk quad just completely speak to me - the setup is the same as her other quads, with the “Prime, Enhance, Smoke, and Pop” shades. Prime is a soft pink champagne that brightens the eyes and also doubles as a lovely inner corner highlight. Enhance is a pinky brown matte that adds soft definition to the crease. Smoke is a deeper pink-brown that’s perfect for adding some depth to the outer corners or smoking out an eyeliner. The Pop shade might be my favorite, a lovely rose gold glitter that I’ve been packing on with my finger. I haven’t gone a day without wearing these shadows since they were delivered - they’re so wearable, and I could definitely see myself finishing this palette.

T-B | Liner, Lipstick, Blush outer, Blush inner, Eyeshadow Prime, Enhance, Smoke, & Pop

The blush is also a beautiful formula. The other shade I have is First Love, which is a light peach, so using the darker nude shade of Pillow Talk made me realize how pigmented these blushes really are. I simply need to tap my brush in the compact once to have more than enough product for my cheeks. The Pillow Talk Blush shade is the absolute perfect pinky nude that adds both a flush of color and definition to the cheeks. Rather than another blush color in the center, the Pillow Talk Blush houses a rose gold highlight instead. Some days I mix the two together, and others I apply the outer ring as my blush and the inner circle as my highlight. They’re both beautiful, finely milled powders that blend over the cheeks seamlessly.

To complete the whole look I of course had to use as many other Charlotte Tilbury products as I could. One thing I love about her line is how well the products all work together. I started with the Hollywood Flawless Filter as a primer to give my skin a glow, and then followed up with the Light Wonder Foundation. This left the glowiest base and a pair I’ll keep using again and again. I don’t have a Charlotte Tilbury concealer (do I need the Retoucher or her new one?), so I used the Milk Makeup Flex Concealer. I also don’t have any CT brow products, so here I used a base layer of Glossier Boy Brow in Brown and then filled in sparse areas with the MAC Eyebrow Styler in Stylized. I used the Glossier Lidstar in Slip as an eyeshadow primer and then applied all four shades of the Luxury Palette in Pillow Talk - Prime all over my lids and in the inner corners, Enhance in the crease, Smoke on the outer corners, and then dabbed Pop on the center of my eyelids. Again, I don’t have a CT mascara, so I used Milk Makeup Kush Mascara on my top lashes and Glossier Lash Slick on the bottom. To sculpt my face a little I used the contour side of the Filmstar Bronze & Glow Palette (I forgot how much I LOVED this), and I went in with the outer ring of the Cheek to Chic Blush in Pillow Talk in sort of a draping-shape. I tapped on a little bit of the Beauty Light Wand highlighter to the high points of my face and then dusted over it with the inner portion of the Pillow Talk Blush. Lips were finished off with, of course, the Pillow Talk Lip Cheat and Matte Revolution Lipsticks. I’m in love with how this look came out, and frankly I’m a little offended that Charlotte didn’t release these products before my wedding - I definitely would have used them!

So the new Pillow Talk additions are a definite win for me - so much so that I’ve been contemplating picking up a backup of the eyeshadow quad when it comes back in stock. The Pillow Talk products are exclusive to CharlotteTilbury.com (you can get the full collection or the blush & eyeshadow duo as well) and are limited edition.

Have you tried them yet?

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