I can still hear my mom say it now, “oh, you forgot, put your lipstick on!”  Growing up in the ‘gloss age’ I was definitely a bit of a rebel always wearing a bright lipstick…all credit going to Lisa Ervin…who runs marathons in lipstick…and liner.  I’ve always LOVED lipstick.  Through the years I learned what worked.  The tones, the ones that needed liners, the ones that needed gloss, how to keep it from running, how to apply it without a mirror.  But today, I’ll focus on shades.  I usually live in the red family always, but I branch out.  Here are my favorites in the 5 big lipstick categories, Red, Nude, Pink, Orange, and Purple.

Ill start with my favorite…RED!  How I love red.  Here I’m wearing a goto classic, Bobbi Brown Red.  It’s a great tone and it’s a stand alone color.  No gloss or liner needed.  I always dust my lips with a face powder before applying, and sometimes even cover them with concealer and then powder and it stays put.  You have to try it.  It’s a major game changer.  I love so many other shades of red too, including several drugstore brands, but I’ll share those later in my drugstore post.  However, if you think, “Oh I don’t want to spend $20 something dollars on a lipstick”, I get that, but I’ve literally had some of mine since high school.  They last a loooonnng time.

Next NUDES…I used to be afraid of nudes, then I found the right ones.  And the cool thing about nudes, you can make them.  So I have on a MAC Lip Liner in Cork and a concealer as the lipstick with a nude gloss of any kind over it.  I like it for a natural look like the one I’m wearing above, or with a really dark smokey eye.

And on Wednesdays(and every other day) we wear, PINK!  Pinks are tough for me, but so many people love pink so I searched for a pink that I loved too.  I really like a darker liner and lighter lipstick for pinks personally, but you can wear either alone if you don’t like this look.  I’m wearing MAC Talking Points Liner and Saint Germain Lipstick here.

And now for ORANGE!  It’s another one of my regulars and one that can really brighten a look.  I love this orange for all seasons.  It’s Anastasia Beverly Hills Liquid Lipstick in Persimmon.

And last but not least PURPLE.  I’ve always been, and still kind of am, afraid of vamps unless it’s Halloween.  However, on some people they look like a million bucks.  As you can see, I’m not necessarily one of those people, but I wanted to show you. It takes the right person or occasion to pull this off, but when you do it’s a statement like no other.  I did an ombre look here, which is simply created by fading the MAC Lip Liner Nightmoth into the MAC Lipstick Rebel.  Vamps do make your teeth look really white though…and kind of vampirish…but white for sure.

And a big thank you again to my Mom for teaching me much more than lipstick.  She’s pretty rad.

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Photos by: Madding McFaddin