Boy Bait & Lip Liner

As we are finally making the transition from winter into spring, I stopped in at Mac the other day to update my lip gloss to something a bit lighter, brighter, and just generally more springy. As I browsed the seemingly endless selection of lip treatments, an unnaturally undermade Mac employee named Nick brought my attention to Boy Bait. A newer shade of Mac's Cremesheen Glass (their soft and happily non-sticky line of lip gloss), Boy Bait is a light, nude colored gloss with just a hint of pearly pink to it.

Not yet sold on the new gloss, Nick asked if I would like to try it on. Why not, right? So he brought me over to a make-up station...and what happened next has changed my cosmetic life forever. Before applying the gloss, Nick first used a lip liner--but rather than actually lining my lips, he instead filled in the whole lip. The purpose? To make my lips a solid neutral canvas, upon which he then added Boy Bait. The result: a smooth and even nude colored lip that looked clean, fresh, and--obvi--utterly springy.

I should mention that, until now, I have stayed away from lip liner for two main reasons. For one, I don't think there is any need to revisit the 80s, at least from a cosmetic standpoint. Secondly, even if I wanted to use it, my hand is never steady enough to do so (the same goes for liquid liner--in college, my roommate always had to do it for me). But this new use of lip liner totally changes the game, and I can most definitely use the pencil to color in my whole lip. I mean, how tough is that? Just color inside the lines, right?

To summarize: my new lip gloss is outstanding--and thanks to a preliminary layer of Mac's Lip Pencil in Naked Liner (very fitting, don't you think?), the way my gloss looks in the tube is exactly how it translates on my lips. Forgive me if I'm the only fashionista who has been living under a cosmetic rock all these years! Maybe everyone else out there already uses this process when it comes to their lip color? I hope that's not the case--and that this post isn't all for nothing/doesn't make me look like the make-up fool that I very possibly might be... Whatever the case, all thanks to a Mac boy named Nick, I have stepped out of the dark, un-lined ages and into a fresh, new spring day--and it's never looked better.

Images, in order of appearance: (1) Kate Bosworth, showing off a springy nude lip, image thanks to In Style (http://www.instyle.com/); (2) One of the many faces of Mac, Eve, showing off her nude lip, image thanks to Beautynomics (http://www.beautynomics.com/); (3) Mac beauty spread, featuring Eve, photo thanks to Socialite Behavior (socialitehavior.com).