NUDESTIX is all about easy-to use, everyday makeup on-the-go, and most of their products come in a stick, pencil or crayon with formulations designed to allow natural beauty to shine through. We realized we have six products from this cruelty-free brand between us: Tinted Blur Stick, All Over Face Color, Eyebrow Stylus Pencil & Gel, Magnetic Luminous Eye Color, Cream Lip + Cheek Pencil and Concealer Pencil. Time for an in-depth review of some of NUDESTIX’s most popular offerings.
Price: $26-$32
Find it HERE
Tested April 2020
Liz:
Nudies Tinted Blur Stick $30
On their website, NUDESTIX says that the Tinted Blur Stick “is NOT a foundation” but can be used like a concealer or tinted moisturizer to blur texture and provide a light tint for a no-makeup makeup look. They also say “Our blurring technology and hydrating makeup ingredients will make your skin look even, glowy and most importantly, real.” In my frustrating experience with this product, none of that is true.
I use their lightest shade, Light 1, and it’s a great match for my skin tone. I bought this because I wanted to add it to the on-the-go car kit I use when there’s just not enough time to do makeup before I need to leave the house in the morning (which, for me, is many, many mornings…or was before the current stay at home order in Los Angeles). Unfortunately, I hate everything about this product except for the shade.
Thinking this would be a nice way to minimize redness, I tried to use this stick like a tinted primer under foundation. When I blended it onto my face, not even using very much, it almost immediately sank into the pores on my cheeks. And on my nose! It clung to every single dry patch and made my entire nose look like a flaky mess. My apologies for the extreme close-up in the photo below, but I wanted to show you how bad this really was (and it looked like this in multiple areas of my face, including my forehead and eye area). I tried this on the face four more times over a few weeks with the same results. My skin looked better wearing no product whatsoever than it did wearing this stick.
I always give products a few chances to work for me and try to find a different way to use something that I don’t really like. Second Chance #1: As the brand says, I applied this like a concealer under the eyes and the result was also horrible. It didn’t brighten, but it did create patches of crusty, gross looking skin. I had to fully remove it and go in with another product because I would not leave the house looking like that. Second Chance #2: Maybe this would be better as an eye primer? Nope. It creased within a minute before I could even set it with powder.
To add insult to injury, the stick also broke in half and fell out of the tube. Sigh.
In theory, this sounds like my ideal product. In reality, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever used. I feel like this was a huge waste of money ($30!? No way) and I am totally disappointed. My complexion wasn’t blurred, hydrated or glowy. Look up an antonym for each of those words, and that’s how my skin looked after using this product.
Nudies All Over Face Color $32
I bought this cream blush stick in the shade In The Nude, described as a warm peach, over a year ago and use it all the time. It lives in my car kit for near-daily application and I take it with me when I travel.
I love this formula so much I added a second shade, a muted rose called Bare Back, a few months ago.
This is a highly pigmented and blendable matte blush formula. It’s creamy with opaque color, yet it makes the skin look healthy and vibrant.
It’s important to note that I usually wear this on bare cheeks with no foundation or powder underneath, but it looks good over foundation as well. It works miracles to brighten my whole complexion and make me look way more put together than my “I woke up 15 minutes ago” reality. Somehow it also seems to disguise imperfections on my cheeks and never looks overdone. I swipe a stripe of color directly onto my cheek and use the brush on the other end of the stick to swirl and blend it out (it applies well with other makeup brushes too).
This is also one instance where the included brush is incredibly useful and high quality. It twists off the end so that I can wash it and makes on-the-go application mess free.
In The Nude is my favorite of the two shades, and I like to create a monochromatic look by applying it to the cheeks, using what’s left on the brush to sweep all over the eyelid and then tapping it onto the lips for a matte lipcolor. I don’t love Bare Back as much on the eyes and lips, but it still performs well in a pinch.
This little color stick is well worth the investment. In The Nude, in particular, is a must-have item for me.
Eyebrow Stylus Pencil & Gel $26
After hearing good things about the brow gel from Kathleen Lights on YouTube, I picked up this Eyebrow Stylus, a dual ended brow product with a triangular shaped pencil on one end and a clear brow gel on the other, in the shade Blonde.
Admittedly, I’m not much of a brow girl. I pluck stray hairs every once in a while, run a pencil through them quickly to fill in sparse areas and that’s about it. Using this product is really the first time I’ve applied brow gel and I like it!
The pencil is natural looking in the brows and not fussy. I don’t have to be super precise, which works for my brow style. The clear brow gel brushes through easily and doesn’t leave my brows crunchy. I do wipe off excess product on the side of the container before I apply just to make sure there is less on the brush. If I do get a little too much on my brow hairs, I can quickly pat it down with my finger to remove the excess.
The hairs at the front of my brows have a tendency to move around, and I like that this gel keeps them brushed up and in place. I’m no brow product connoisseur, but this definitely works for me!
Liz’s Verdict: Hard pass on the Tinted Blur Stick, but the Eyebrow Stylus is great, and the All Over Face Colors are must-haves.
Lea:
Magnetic Luminous Eye Color $26
I originally picked up a few NUDESTIX products in anticipation of a backpacking trip around SE Asia. Knowing I would have little space for extra in the hot and humid weather, I needed something small and easy to use with some staying power. These cream eye pencils claim to be super long-wearing, 24 hours even. Functioning as a primer and highly pigmented color in one, the NUDESTIX website also says these pencils can be used as a highlighter. I am here to tell you, they cannot.
I picked up the shade Angel, described simply as “nude”, thinking it would impart a subtle shimmer all over the lid for my tropical vacation. Boy was I wrong. This is hands down the worst cream eyeshadow I have ever used. I might be able to blame it on the tropical weather except that their website specifically says “ideal for oily lids” and I don’t know what makes for oily lids more than 80 degrees and 65% humidity.
It’s very hard to get an even wash of color using this eye pencil. Despite its claims, this isn’t “touch and go”, intense, or super gliding. I even tried using an eye primer first (despite the fact that this pencil claims it can be used itself as a primer) and though the color was slightly more opaque it was even harder to blend and seemed to emphasize texture, bunching up unevenly. At the end of the day, both with and without primer, this still settled in the crease, pretty much migrating there from everywhere else and exacerbating the lid darkness/discoloration I have. It looked even worse in person.
Below: Angel with primer
I didn’t like this on my trip; I used it maybe once and forgot about it. When Liz and I decided to do a NUDESTIX brand haul I pulled it back out and remembered exactly why I had abandoned it. Turns out, even back on our side of the world it performs just as badly. After photographing it for the review, I tossed it in the trash, it’s that bad.
Cream Lip + Cheek Pencil $26
This is the best cream lip pencil I’ve ever used. This is also the best cream cheek color I’ve ever used. I love both the shade and formula of this pencil. I’ve been really into coordinated lip and cheek color lately and this is perfect for that. I have the shade Mystic, which I’ve repurchased once already and after this review I’m thinking strongly about trying other shades.
The single gripe I have about this pencil is the delivery method. Because it is so creamy, sharpening the pencil is pretty messy. There is absolutely no way this could be used as a lipliner (I don’t know what the NUDESTIX website copywriters were thinking with that claim). This blends like a dream so patted onto the cheeks it’s easy to achieve an even wash of color both over foundation or on bare skin. It imparts a slight sheen that lasts along with the pigment for hours without feeling sticky. That’s some kind of magic in itself! After blending onto my cheeks, I tap the excess from my finger tips onto my brow bones for a little flush of natural color.
On the lips this feels like a thick, cream color; it isn’t sticky but it is “there”. I don’t mind the slight slip because it lasts longer than something that absorbs into nothing. This lip color wears off evenly and doesn’t stain my lips so it’s really low maintenance. You aren’t getting a precise application so I don’t think I’d like this formula in a dark shade (maybe why it doesn’t come in any?) and I find that because the pencil is a bit goopy, my look benefits from a few dabs with a ring finger just to even out the application.
Please don’t be deterred by the little extra finesse this formula requires because it could all be done with one hand in a rearview mirror and then will last the rest of your day. The shades are all so forgiving I could see this working on-the-go in a variety of settings.
Concealer Pencil $26
I picked up this pencil in the shade Light 3, also for my backpacking trip. I didn’t know much about it then and even after using almost 2/3 of it I still don’t. It’s forgettable. The shade is a good match for my skin tone and it does an ok job of covering blemishes for a short time. The formula is creamy and matte but doesn’t ever really set, so it rubs off. Because it’s a cream and on the thicker side, when I tried setting this with powder it looked really heavy. It’s too heavy for under the eyes period. I could maybe see keeping this in a secondary purse or your car as part of an emergency/last minute date kit… then again, for $26 there are better options.
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