lip gloss

Review: 3 Custom Color Lip Gloss in Mango

By Voxy  |  2010/08/01 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss  |  Comments (1)

This was, I think, the biggest surprise product of the season for me.

As per my previous post on 3 Custom Color lip gloss in Candy Apple, these are nicely pigmented, smooth, non-sticky lipglosses with decent wearlength. I really liked Candy Apple, so I thought I would pick up Mango as well. Based on the online swatch (and here is where you should start to get suspicious), it looked like a warm caramel orange that I thought would be great for fall. 3CC describes Mango as “the perfect peach.” [Insert rant here about how if you're going to name a color after a fruit, it should look like that fruit, not like some other fruit. You can't make a purple color and call it "strawberry." Or maybe you can, what do I know. And peaches are yellow-orange, for what it's worth.]

So you can imagine my dismay when I opened the package and pulled out the Day-Glo neon tube pictured at the top of the post. It is a very, very bright orange with a tinge of neon pink. It looks like neither a mango nor a peach, as it happens. I thought, “Oh, this was a mistake.”

And then my second surprise was when I put it on and it turned out to be absolutely fabulous. I have trouble finding good coral shades of lipcolor that don’t overwhelm my lips or my skin. Because (like Candy Apple) this is pigmented but sheer, it applies as a transparent coating of bright color, and blends with my natural lip color to miraculously create a terrific coral. I couldn’t be happier with it.

I’m bringing it up now rather than later because although it turned out to be a fabulous color, it’s really better suited for summer than fall, so I plan to get my money’s worth out of it over the next month or so. If you’re still looking for a great summer shade, this one is worth hopping on.

I bought mine at DermStore (taking advantage of the recently-deceased Bing cashback program), but it’s also available at 3 Custom Color’s own website. The DermStore swatch and the 3CC swatch are quite different, which I probably should have checked before buying, but I didn’t. If it helps, neither one of them looks like the actual product, so I suppose no harm was really done there.

Swatches!

It’s hard to tell from the swatches and only a partial face, but it really is a lovely peach-tinted glaze.

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3 Custom Color Lip Gloss in Mango: $21.50

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? You bet your sweet mangoes.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Three Custom Color Lip Gloss Wand in Candy Apple

By Voxy  |  2010/06/25 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, lip gloss  |  Comments (7)

Say hello to my new favorite red lipgloss.

With the upcoming demise of Bing cashback (alas! sob! cue the Puccini!), I’ve been on a bit of a bender taking shameless advantage of their cashback savings, which are often considerably larger than cashback refunds offered by other rebate sites. (Cause, meet effect, I suppose.) So as I’ve been placing orders for refills of skincare and cosmetic items I regularly purchase, I’ve been throwing one or two other things from lines I’ve never tried before into the basket, because hey, if Bing cashback is on its way out, I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth before it goes. Any operatic soprano worth her salt never dies without singing an aria, after all.

Three Custom Color is probably best known for its discontinued product matching, in which you send them a sample of a lipstick or other product that has been discontinued and they recreate the color as closely as possible (hence the “custom color” part of the name). But they also have their own line of cosmetic products as well as brushes, accessories, and pigments. I saw a swatch of Candy Apple online and I thought that if it was anywhere close to that degree of awesome in real life, I needed to own it.

I love the brightness of this gloss. This is not the lipgloss you wear when you are succumbing to consumption in a freezing garret in Bohemian Paris, nor the one you wear while praying demurely in your bedchamber while awaiting the arrival of your husband, who intends to kill you over a suspected infidelity. No, this is the lipgloss you wear when you yell, “See you in Hell, Scarpia!” before throwing yourself off a battlement.

In addition to having an utterly fabulous color, this lipgloss wears surprisingly well (especially over TFLI) and is remarkably non-sticky. It is well-pigmented but sheer, so you get a bright color that doesn’t look masklike. This color has no shimmer at all, but some of the others in the line do; there’s a wide assortment of shades that range from muted to bright and that are also helpfully sorted into warm, cool, or neutral categories. (Candy Apple is “cool,” in case you were wondering.) I’m also interested in Mango and Apple Honey, which are both warm shades, but which I think I could pull off. And if lipgloss in pots is more to your tastes, they have a whole collection of those too. The colors are different from the wand lipgloss colors, and they’ve also done something very interesting and educational with these: they’ve created two versions of each shade (one warm, the other cool) so you can order the variation that best suits your skin tone.

Swatches!

Bare lip:

With Three Custom Color Lip Gloss Wand in Candy Apple (sorry, I was a little messy in application; don’t hold that against the product):

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Three Custom Color Lip Gloss Wand in Candy Apple: $21.50

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? Yes, especially if I have a lot of battlement-jumping to do. Work is like that sometimes.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Monday Mix: Victory! — or, Why Jiffy Lube Rocks, and Sales

By Voxy  |  2010/05/17 09:37 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss, sale  |  Comments (4)

Say what you like about Jiffy Lube. Yes, they are overpriced, their waiting areas are generally scrungy, the TVs are for some unfathomable reason not hooked up to cable and are always showing Jerry Springer, and their estimated waiting time is separated from reality by several orders of magnitude.

However.

While changing my oil and vacuuming the inside of my car, the guys at my local Jiffy Lube succeeded this weekend in doing something that I have spent months trying to accomplish. To wit:

They recovered my Lancome Rouge Magnificence Lipgloss from the Lipgloss-Eating Monster Who Lives Under The Front Seat Of My Car.

For this heroic task, let them be venerated until the end of days!

It is only slightly the worse for wear, with some small nicks and scratches that to me are poignant battle scars, emblems of its long captivity and certain torture at the dastardly claws of the LEMWLUTFSOMC.

How do I love thee, Lancome Rouge Magnificence Lipgloss? Let me count the ways.

1. Thou art a sheer but true red color that is surprisingly wearable.

2. Thou art not sticky and thou givest a glossy shine.

3. Thou lookest good on bare lips or over other lip colors.

4. Verily, thy staying power is mighty, and thou leaveth no residue on lips.

Behold! A swatch.

Today’s nude lip:

Today’s lip with Lancome Rouge Magnificence gloss (no other color underneath):

All hail the brave knights of Jiffy Lube!

In other, non-Shakespearean news:

Sales!

The philosophy F&F sale is going on through 5/20, with 20% off and free shipping over $50. Use code HAPPINESS at checkout.

Allison Raffaele has 35% off (!) through 6/28 (!!). No, that is not a typo. Use code LUCKYBREAKS1 at checkout.

HauteLook has Tarte on Tuesday (that sounds like the name of a musical theatre show) and Decleor on Thursday. All sales begin at 11 am Eastern/8 am Pacific.

Review: Stila 24kt Luxe Lip Gloss Collection

By Voxy  |  2010/04/25 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, lip gloss  |  Comments (0)

I have always thought that there isn’t much in this world that can’t be improved by the addition of sparkly rhinestones. (This includes toenails, by the way, and a summer pedicure is not complete without the application of a little toe bling.) And so when this little package of Stila goodness arrived from the fine people at HauteLook a few weeks ago, and I opened it up to find that the lip glosses were not just sparkly on the inside, but on the outside too, I squealed like a twelve-year-old girl who just won free tickets to a joint Miley Cyrus/Jonas Brothers concert. No, seriously, I did. You have no idea. Rhinestones are like girly crack to me.

Stila has carved out a loyal following (hmm, somehow that sounds more violent than I intended) for their various lip gloss products. Their signature Lip Glaze was one of the first products to use the clicky-pen delivery mechanism, in which you twist the container to make the lipcolor flow up through the brush-head applicator. This is not my favorite applicator style, but it seems to have caught on with lots of different brands, because now they’re everywhere.

This little set was a holiday item, but you can still find them around, and now for greatly reduced prices! Unless, that is, you buy it directly from Stila, in which case you will still pay full price. Don’t do that.

There are four colors in the set: Golden Charm (pale gold), Precious Coral (very pale peach), Radiant Sunset (bright reddish coral) and Vintage Merlot (rich berry). The two palest shades don’t have enough pigmentation for me to wear on their own, but they look great layered over matte or satin lipcolors. The two darkest shades are better able to stand alone, but I prefer to wear these as topcoats over other lippies as well. Each shade has some shimmer, but the particles are fairly finely milled and the gloss is not gritty. They are slightly sticky but not unbearably so, and wearlength is about average for a gloss. All told, these are fun ways to add a little shimmer to your spring/summer look, and at roughly $5 per gloss (if you end up paying $20 for the set, which Stila estimates is an $88 value), it’s a pretty low-risk investment. And if there’s a color here you don’t like, it would make a great stocking stuffer for the holidays…

Swatches!

Left to right: Golden Charm, Precious Coral, Radiant Sunset, Vintage Merlot

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Stika 24kt Luxe Lip Gloss Collection: $30 at Stila, but I bet you can find it for less elsewhere

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): $88 price: Poor. $30 price: Good. Cheaper-than-$30 price: Excellent.

Purchase again? Are you kidding? It’s lip gloss with rhinestones! Bring on the bling, baby!

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Chanel Lèvres Scintillantes Glossimer Lip Gloss

By Voxy  |  2010/04/13 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss  |  Comments (5)

You know, every lip product should be so good that it makes you run around your house making kissy faces at your reflections in various mirrors.

Not that I did that, or anything. I’m just sayin’.

But if I had, hypothetically, done such a silly thing as that, which I didn’t, then I might conceivably say that Chanel Glossimer lip glosses are among the kissiest of lip products around. Actually, most of Chanel’s lip products are pretty kissy.

My very first makeover ever was at a Chanel counter in … where? Boston, I think. I was visiting a friend there and we both decided to have makeovers. I hardly remember mine (although I do remember buying a blush and two lipsticks), but I remember that my friend hated hers and declared for weeks afterwards that the Chanel lady had made her look like a PW (which stands for “Painted Whore,” one of her idiosyncratic phrases). I thought she looked fantastic, but you know how it is when it’s your face and you’re used to seeing it a certain way and then suddenly it doesn’t look that way anymore. It’s a shock. But I didn’t think she looked like a PW, and I don’t think anyone on the street would have said so either, once you told them what PW meant, of course.

Nowadays most Chanel products are out of my price range in terms of daily purchasing ($42 for a blush, $54 for foundation, $56 for an eyeshadow quad, ouch), but I saw this gloss on someone online and loved it enough to shell out the bucks. You will have to tell me if the swatch makes me look like a PW.

The Glossimer formula has one of the nicest lip-feels of any gloss I’ve tried. That’s the thing about Chanel: in some ways, you definitely do get what you pay for with them. The blush I bought after my first makeover was, in retrospect, probably a little too dark and mature for the early-20s Voxy, but there’s no question it was a quality product that went on beautifully — as is this gloss. The formula is high on shine — I’d say a 7 or 8 out of a maximum of 10 — but it’s not at all the thick vinyl shine that’s become popular in recent years. The shine is more like that you might get from a liquid lip balm. The formula is lighter and thinner than I’d expected (which is not a bad thing), and it’s virtually non-sticky. I think only anyone who had a princess-and-the-pea sensitivity to stickiness could complain.

This particular shade is Spark; in the container it looks red with gold shimmer, but it goes on more pink than red, which is just what I wanted. The pigmentation is medium — over bare lips it provides a little color and sparkle and a lot of shine. Over another lippie it does the same, but also has enough pigmentation to alter the final color. It works really well over paler lippies, since it gives them more body, and it softens lippies that are a little too dark. It has the standard gloss wearlength; when I tested it, I probably shortened the wearlength because it felt so nice I just couldn’t stop rubbing my lips together (when I wasn’t making kissy faces at myself). (Which I did not do, of course.)

Swatches!

Today’s naked lip:

Today’s lip with Chanel Glossimer in Spark:

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Chanel Lèvres Scintillantes Glossimer lip gloss: $27

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. High price, but excellent product.

Purchase again? Oui. If you want a little bit of Chanel luxury, this is one of the more affordable options.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolour

By Voxy  |  2010/03/28 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss, lipstick  |  Comments (0)

Favorite. Lip. Color. Product. Ever.

Or. At. Least. For. Now.

Well, it’s certainly in my permanent top 5, anyway. MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolours (and their cousins, MAC Pro Longwear Lustre Lipcolours) are the best long-wearing lip color products I’ve found to date.

Like many long-wearing lip products, these are double-ended wands: one end contains the lip color, which dries quickly to a matte finish and stains the lips, and the other end has a gloss to go over it. The Longwear lipcolors contain a clear gloss, while the Lustre lipcolors have some sort of shimmery gloss (which are not really all that shimmery, so I don’t think you need to fear them). The one shown in the picture is an old limited-edition one called Gypsy Rose, and it’s got a gold-shimmer gloss; the ones in the permanent collection have either clear or silver-shimmer glosses.

The thing about most longwearing lipcolors is that as soon as you put the lipstain on you can feel the moisture getting sucked out of your lips with force rivaling that of an Electrolux. The gloss then becomes a survival necessity, because otherwise your poor dehydrated lips would crack every time you tried to speak or eat. By the time you get to the end of the 8- or 12-hour wear period, you’re counting down the minutes, trying to avoid moving your mouth, and swearing you’ll never, ever do that again if someone will just make the pain go away.

What a nice surprise that these are not at all like that for me. I don’t notice a single bit of dehydration (and my lips tend to be dry to start out with). And the stain lasts all day, through talking and eating. No, seriously, it does! I was astonished, because I’m a big skeptic about that. The gloss lasts the usual amount of time for a gloss, which is to say “not all that long,” but the color underneath lasts the whole day. When the gloss wears off there is occasionally a little bit of residue, but that’s easily removed and you can reapply. And if you don’t like their gloss, it’s perfectly OK to substitute one of your own; you can even add a colored gloss for a custom lipcolor.

The only drawback to these that I’ve found is that they are very hard to color-test. I own three — the Gypsy Rose LE one above and two from the permanent collection: Loyal (which is My Lips But Slightly Terracotta-Colored) and Passion Preserved (which is My Lips But Slightly Darker). Testing them on your hand (as I did) is both annoying and inaccurate. It’s annoying because man, those things STAIN. I wish other things that called themselves lip stains would take a lesson from MAC (why, yes, Tarte, I am looking at you). So once it’s dried on your hand, you will not get it off for two days. Ask me how I know. It’s also inaccurate because if your lips are well-pigmented, the color will look considerably different on your lips than it does on your hand. I had originally gotten a different, lighter color than Passion Preserved and I had to take it back and exchange it because although it was gorgeous on my hand, when I put it on my lips it was way too light and gave me Corpse Lips. (Eeeeew.) But given the depth of the stain, they’re also hard to test on your lips, because you can’t keep swabbing it off and applying new colors — there’s too much residual stain. You can test a couple, but beyond that your lips accumulate so much color that it’s hard to get an accurate look, especially if you’re testing both warm and cool shades. I’d advise taking a lipstick that’s around the color you want to the store or counter with you so that you can at least get close to the right shade/tone. You’ll still need to do some testing, but hopefully this will help you avoid the shades that won’t look good on you (and they all look pretty in the tube, so it will be hard to tell).

You can also mix the stain colors together to create in-between shades, but tread carefully, because once it’s on there, it’s on there. And if you put on too much stain, you will get some crusty residue which is kind of yucky.

I do wish they were a tiny bit cheaper, but they work so well that I feel like I should shut up and count my blessings rather than my dollars. So I will. ;)

Swatches!

Loyal:

Passion Preserved:

Gypsy Rose:

(I am wearing the gold gloss in this picture and as you can see it’s hardly shimmery at all.)

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MAC Pro Longwear Lipcolour and Pro Longwear Lustre Lipcolour: $21

Provenance: Purchased (check your local CCO if you have one for past-season limited edition colors)

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. I do wish they were about $3-4 cheaper.

Purchase again? Oh, you betcha. “Loyal” ain’t just a river in Egypt one of the shades I purchased.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Beauty on the Cheap: The $50 Drugstore Start-Up Makeup Challenge

By Voxy  |  2010/03/23 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, blush, concealer, eyeliner, eyeshadow, foundation, lip gloss, mascara, steal  |  Comments (12)

Gauntlet for the Left Hand by unforth.So, a few weeks ago, Froggy challenged me to put together a start-up kit of makeup, using drugstore products, for $50. (Well, using the word “challenged” makes it sound like she came to my house, called me out, threw a gauntlet on my front steps, and told me to pick my second as we would be dueling at dawn the next morning. It wasn’t like that. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if Froggy owned a gauntlet. ;) )

I am pleased to report that I did it! and came in $1.50 under to boot. OK, so I didn’t count sales tax. And I did the majority of the shopping at Target and (hides face) Wal-Mart. I know! I know! But getting a whole face full of stuff for under $50 is hard! If you don’t want to shop at Wal-Mart, you can call it an under-$60 challenge and do it wherever you like. I live quite near a Wal-Mart but I didn’t realize how small the beauty department at this particular store was; only two aisles, and short ones at that. So you may have even more options than this!

Below I’m going to give you the basics and what they cost. Tomorrow, there will be suggestions for adding on to or changing products out of this collection.

For $48.50, according to prices in-store and online, you can get a foundation, a concealer, an eyeshadow quad, an eye/brow liner, mascara, a blush, a lipgloss, and brushes. That’s pretty darned good, I think.

Foundation

It will be no surprise to regular readers that I’m going to go for the Almay SmartShade Anti-Aging Foundation (SPF 20) for $10.97. I use this myself and like it very much; the sunscreen does not break me out, the product does not clog my pores, and the shade matching works very well. (I reviewed an earlier version of this product here.) It comes in only a few shades, but the color-matching technology is good enough that it should suit most people. If you prefer a mineral powder foundation, I’m opting for L’Oreal Bare Naturale, which I’ve also reviewed previously; this was available at my Wal-Mart for $10.50.

Other popular drugstore foundations at the moment include Revlon ColorStay ($12.99 at drugstore.com) and Cover Girl Advanced Radiance ($10.99 at drugstore.com).

Concealer

Again, sticking with a on old standby that has worked well for me for both undereye circles and for blemishes: Cover Girl CG Smoothers concealer stick, $5.99 at Target.

Eyeliner

There are a few products on the market that do double duty as eyeliners and brow liners. (Obviously, they are brown.) Brown eyeliner looks good on anyone, and if you get something that also matches your brow color (or, preferably, is a tiny bit lighter), then you’ll in effect be getting two products for the price of one. Can you use a regular brown eyeliner, one that’s not specifically made for brows, as a brow pencil? Sure — but because those formulas are usually a little creamier, it might smear.

Because cost was a primary concern, I went with Cover Girl Brow and Eye Makers 2-pack for $2.86. The package even comes with a sharpener, which is handy. Maybelline makes a comparable product which does not require sharpening and costs $4.48. Getting this one instead will put you 12 cents over the $50, but I have to say I think it’s worth it. For the sake of the challenge, my official pick is the CG for $2.68, but I strongly suspect the Maybelline product is superior. I have to admit that if I weren’t aiming for a $50 target, I’d probably have recommended separate eyeliner and brow powder/pencil, just because it’s hard to get something that’s the right texture for both different uses. Prestige Cosmetics makes excellent inexpensive eyeliners in a variety of colors (if you go to their website, don’t be distracted by the fact that they are picturing lipliners instead of eyeliners; they look just the same and the color selection tab at the bottom works properly to show eyeliner colors); they are $5.39 at ULTA but can usually be got cheaper elsewhere.

Eyeshadow

In terms of mileage for the buck, you can’t do much better than a nude trio or quad. Most lines make some version of these, so you’ll have options. In general I think neutral shades are safe to buy in the drugstore; I tend to go high-end if I want something that’s bright, bold, or highly pigmented. (And, I admit, it is luxurious to have some high-end neutrals too.) Here I’m going with Rimmel’s Color Rush eye shadow in Smoky Brown (or Smoky Brun, depending on whether you’re looking at the product or the display!). You get two lid colors, a highlighter color, and a crease color, all for $4.28. You don’t have to use all four; you can just use one lid color and call it a day. But at least you get options.

I chose the nude quad because everyone looks good with a natural eye. But if you’ve got some brown shadows at home already and are looking for something different, you can get similar sets of mauve- or blue- or grey-tinted neutrals. And take your skin tone into consideration — some lines’ nudes lean a little warm, and some a little cool. Again, I’d stay away from the ultra-brights if you’re just starting out.

Mascara

This is a category I thought a lot about, and I have to confess that my eventual recommendation is not actually a mascara I’ve tried, but it’s one that’s gotten very, very good reviews, and quite a lot of them. For several years I used Maybelline Lash Stylist, until it was discontinued, and around that time I switched to Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes!, which I love and so I don’t see myself going back to drugstore mascaras anytime soon. Because I stuck with Lash Stylist for a few years, I missed a lot of the other mascara releases that happened during those years. So, take it with a grain of salt, but know that I read a lot of reviews.

The product I’ve picked for this challenge is Cover Girl Professional All-in-One Curved Brush Mascara, which retails for $3.99 at Target. It also comes in a waterproof version for the same price, if you prefer that, but I don’t tend to recommend waterproof mascaras as a first option as I find they are more likely to irritate my eyes and are harder to remove. (And at Target, if you want to get the straight brush instead the curved one, you’ll save another 10 cents! Srsly — it’s $3.89 while the curved brush is $3.99.)

Right now there’s a lot of buzz about Cover Girl Lash Blast mascara, which is a little pricier, but one of the things that people commonly complain about in regards to Lash Blast is that the enormousness of the brush makes it difficult to control application of the product. If you’re looking for a starter set, it’s probably better not to get something that hands you a steep learning curve straight out of the package.

Blush

Here I went with Maybelline Expert Wear Blush ($4.48), because they offer a wide range of colors: 13 blush colors and 3 bronzer colors if you prefer a bronzer instead of a blush (same price). Revlon also offered some nice-looking blushes, but the color range wasn’t as wide and prices were in the neighborhood of $8-8.50 instead of $4.50. They do look like interesting products, though, and they offer cream, powder, and mineral formulas, so if you don’t find anything in the Maybelline aisle that suits you, I wouldn’t hesitate to hop over to Revlon.

Lips

For someone who’s new to makeup, a gloss is IMHO a much better bet than a lipstick or lipstain — easier to apply, less worry about smearing or smudging, less worry about the color being too strong, etc. Glosses do come in a wide range of pigmentation (more is better) and stickiness (less is better), and after carefully perusing the options, I went with Revlon Super Lustrous Lipgloss, which Wal-Mart had for $5.94. I actually purchased the Cherries in the Glow shade I’d mentioned the other week in the Drugstore Red Lippies and Glosses post, and like it very much. It’s very sheer and I can’t think of anyone who couldn’t wear it. It definitely does not scream “HELLO MY LIPS ARE VERY RED!” like some lip products can. They also have a variety of other tones: pinks, corals, and nudes. P.S. — Dear Revlon, I still hate your website. Plz fix it. OKthxloveyoubye! — Voxy.

Brushes

So, since you’re going to throw out all the applicators that come with those packages (right? you are, aren’t you?), you are going to need some brushes — at least for the blush and eyeshadow, and possibly to smooth out the foundation or apply concealer in hard-to-reach spots as well. Fortunately, there is a perfectly priced set of Essence of Beauty brushes available at CVS (their exclusive retailer, so you won’t find them elsewhere): a six-brush travel pack of face brushes for $9.99. This package contains the following: powder brush, blush brush (either of these can really be used for blush), eyeshadow brush, shadow eyeliner brush (in case you want to use the dark shade out of your quad as an eyeliner), smudger brush (so you can blend the colors in the quad together), and concealer brush. Voilà! Everything you need. Like Ecotools, Essence of Beauty brushes are far better than their price point might lead you to believe. I just bought two sets of EoB brushes for myself — not the travel set I’m mentioning here, but a two-pack eye brush set and some dual-ended face brushes.

So, where do we stand with the math?

Almay SmartShade foundation: $10.97

CG Smoothers concealer: $5.99

CG Brow and Eye: $2.86 (but really, think seriously about the Maybelline; I’ll send you the twelve cents. If you get the straight brush mascara instead of the curved brush at Target, there’s a dime right there, so you’d only be TWO cents over!)

Rimmel eyeshadow quad: $4.28

CG Professional mascara: $3.99

Maybelline ExpertWear blush: $4.48

Revlon Super Lustrous lipgloss: $5.94

Essence of Beauty brush pack: $9.99

TOTAL: $48.50

Note: In addition to tomorrow’s post on possible additions to or substitutions for items in this list, I’m planning to do another one of these kind of posts for higher-end products, probably a $100 Sephora challenge. (I can’t do it on $50.)

Review: Lancome Color Fever Lip Gloss

By Voxy  |  2010/02/07 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip gloss, shimmer  |  Comments (3)

Lancome and I have a complicated relationship. Or rather, I have a complicated relationship with Lancome, and Lancome probably couldn’t care less about me.

After a fair amount of experimentation, I think the only products Lancome makes that I can really get behind are their lipsticks and glosses. I’m a big fan of the La Laque Fever lipstick I reviewed previously, and I do really like the Color Fever lip glosses. The rest of the makeup and all of their skincare are not for me. I have enough Lancome gift-with-purchase items that I think I can be pretty sure of the accuracy of that statement. Actually, I have enough Lancome GWP’s that I could probably make over everyone who lives in my building. For a pricy brand, they sure do give a lot of stuff away. Maybe they should keep some of it and lower the prices on the things you’re actually buying? Just a thought, there.

The Lancome Color Fever Lip Glosses are between a gloss and a lipstick in opacity, and they’re definitely glosses for grownups. Most of them are not transparent (with the exception of Rouge Magnificence, which is a surprisingly wearable clear red gloss; see: monster under the front seat of my car). Between the pigment and the shimmer, your lips will have almost as much coverage as regular lipstick, and if you use these on top of a lipstick, then you will be guaranteed full coverage.

Like Lancome’s La Laque Fever Lipshine lipcolor (love those L’s!), the Color Fever glosses come in a clear container with a splayed doe-foot applicator. The packaging is not among my favorites, mostly because I have this thing against squared-off lipgloss containers with sharp edges. OK, not “cut-yourself” sharp, but hunting for one of these in your purse can be uncomfortable. It’s also that whole “extra plastic that refracts light so you think you’re getting more product than you actually are” thing.

The lipglosses apply true to color, which is to say that what it looks like in the container is basically what it will look like on your lips. However — and this is a big however — I heartily advise that you shop in person, either at a counter or at Sephora, because the color swatches on the Lancome website are less accurate than your average entry in a “how-many-gumballs-are-in-this-jar” contest. Things that look pink on the site turn out to be coral, and things that look like a reddish brick end up being a deep berry. So, swatching in person is a good idea.

I also really, really wish that Lancome would not perfume their cosmetics. I don’t need my lipgloss to smell like perfume. In fact, I would much rather it did not. Foody scents don’t bother me as much, because at least a foody scent goes with a lip product; having my lipgloss smell like perfume makes me feel like I’m eating soap. Blech.

All that being said, and despite my many criticisms, the product is a good one. The wearlength is about average for a gloss (a few hours, at least on a working day when I’m talking all the time), and it wears evenly without feathering or leaving a stain around the outer edge of the lips. Now if they would only change their packaging, lose the scent, revamp their website for greater accuracy, and lower the price, we’d be all set.

The color shown both at the top of the post and below is “Combustible.”

Left: nekkid lips; Right: Combustible! As you can see, it really is true to the color in the tube, so at least it’s got that going for it.

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Lancome Color Fever Lip Gloss: $26

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. A bit higher than I’d like.

Purchase again? Maybe.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Lancome La Laque Fever Ultimate Lasting Full Color Lipshine

By Voxy  |  2009/12/12 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, lip gloss, lipstick  |  Comments (0)

lancome lip gloss 1… and a partridge in a pear tree.

Lancome La Laque Fever Ultimate Lasting Full Color Lipshine (hereafter referred to as “The Product”) is a densely pigmented opaque lip product with a lot of color, a satin finish, and a tiny bit of shimmer. Although this review is full of little gripes, this product is really one of my new lip color loves. To get a true “shine,” you’ll need a separate gloss, as The Product’s finish is much more like a lipstick than a lip gloss.

The applicator is unusually shaped; instead of the usual cotton-swab-shaped applicator wand that you normally get with glosses in this kind of packaging, the spongy part on the end of The Product’s applicator wand is shaped like a small flat leaf and set at an angle. For some reason I find it odd and I dislike it. This is totally irrational on my part, especially because it performs phenomenally well. It delivers the cleanest, sharpest lip line I have ever gotten from a wand applicator, and also applies a fully opaque coat of color with one swipe, so my strange dislike of it is pretty silly and I think I had just better get over myself.

The texture is just slightly sticky, but not enough to be annoying, and the color is very long-lasting but does not stain, which is a nice combination. You do need to watch out for stray bits of color on your teeth with this one, though. Lancome promises eight hours of color without touchups, but really, I’ve never met a lip product that actually lasted through eight hours of my daily life. I don’t know how they measure these things; is it eight hours of sitting quietly in a chair, not talking, not smiling, not eating or drinking, and not sneezing or coughing? It certainly doesn’t last through eight hours of teaching. However, it is longer-lasting than many other lip products I’ve used, so I’m not going to get all snippy about the exact length of time.

la laque swatch

The thing that could have been a serious problem, but which fortunately turned out not to be, is that the color description and swatch on Lancome’s website are not even within spitting distance of the actual color on my lips. (Spitting: another eight-hour no-touchup no-no.) The color I purchased is called “Techno Brick,” and is listed in the Reds-Corals category. Both the category name and the word “brick” in the product name imply that this is going to be an orangey-reddish color, and the swatch on the Lancome website does indeed appear to have some warmth. Imagine my surprise, then, when I pulled the wand out of the tube (which requires some effort, and which creates a not-very-appealing sucking sound) and found it to be nowhere near coral, red, or brick. It is a rich berry (almost maroon), and definitely much more blue-tinted than orange-tinted, both on the applicator wand and on my lips. The swatch just above, which shows it on the back of my hand, is slightly washed out (although my product photography skills have improved greatly, I still need to work on my swatch photography; the colors never come out quite right). It’s a much richer berry than the photo suggests. Fortunately, the color suits me, but if you can stop by a Lancome counter to see the shades before you buy, that would probably be a good idea, so that you don’t get any unpleasant surprises.

So, in spite of my irrationally pissy fault-finding, in the end I have to say that Lancome La Laque Fever Ultimate Lasting Full Color Lipshine is nothing short of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. (The adjective is 14 syllables, and the product name still wins by two. Day-um.)

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Lancome La Laque Fever Ultimate Lasting Full Color Lipshine: $26

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent. Of course I wish it were $6 instead of $26, but the product has great staying power and is sophisticated and well-designed, so it definitely delivers value.

Purchase again? Yep.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a shout-out in the comments!)

Review: MAC Tendertone Lip Balms

By Voxy  |  2009/12/09 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, lip balm, lip gloss  |  Comments (4)

mac lipbalm 1What? Limited edition, no longer in production? Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Alas. Joe says it is, in fact, so. Joe also says, though, that you can still get these products at your local CCO, Amazon, or (sometimes) on eBay (watch for scams). And there seems to be a lot of pom-pom-waving for MAC bringing this product back, which is understandable because They Are Awesome.

Whereas the Korres lip butters are clearly a lip care product first and a lip color enhancer second, these are a glamour product first and a lip conditioner second — but you would never know it from the lip-feel. In the top photo, the pink shade is Sweet and Nice, and the coppery shade is Deep Sigh. These look deeply pigmented in the container but go on (with a brush, preferably) smooth, glossy, and sheer. There is a little bit of shimmer in the coloration of the product, but there’s absolutely no glitter on the lips. Very sophisticated. The lip-feel is luscious, the formula lasts for several hours, and, when worn over bare lips, it wears off without any crustiness, dryness, or blotchy color. They’re also SPF 12, which is a nice perk, and even though they’re called “balms” they’re as glossy as any tube gloss. They are smooth and totally un-sticky.

I <heart> these so much I can hardly stand it.

mac lip balm on

Only disadvantage: they’re heavy in my purse. I know — if that’s all I’ve got to complain about, it must be a pretty darned good product, right? Well, OK, I can find something else to complain about. They’re heavy in my purse because the glass base is unnecessarily large and weighty, which also (not coincidentally) has the effect of making you think there’s more product in the container than there actually is, and you know that deceptive packaging drives me nuts.

These glosses last a couple of hours on the lips; if you were just going out and smiling at people, you’d probably get five hours out of one. (That’s Sweet and Nice I’m wearing there, by the way, over bare lips.) However, if you teach or are otherwise talking all the time, it will wear off more quickly, but that’s OK. Like other MAC lip products, there is a slight vanilla/fruity scent to the product, but it’s quite subtle.

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MAC Tendertone Lip Balms: I hardly know what price to assign this product, since reseller prices change all the time, but it’s currently $11.95 on Amazon.

Provenance: Purchased (via CCO).

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good, I think. Because of the way the glass base refracts light, it’s hard to tell the actual size of the pot of gloss inside the container. If it turns out that I run out after having only had them for two weeks, I shall be revising this estimation tout de suite.

Purchase again? You bet your bottom dollar.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Let us know in the comments!)