Review: Lip Pencils

     After trying out mirenesse's lip color pencil, I finally gave those previously ignored lip pencils another look.

Overall impressions:

mireness- absolutely smooth, and highly pigmented. Slight vanilla scent.
BITE- slighty drying, which is expected of matte pencils
NARS- the satin formula is not drying

One odd thing to note is the lid for BITE's Madeira. It tapers at the top, causing the lid to slip off the pencil easily.

Madeira is basically what I would use for a nude color. It tones down my heavily pigmented lips.

NARS's Biscayne Park is also a nude-ish color. It is, however a bit on the warm side. I don't think this is a color that I will be wearing a lot. It would work excellent for one of those photoshoots where you are looking for a more natural look (but not completely nude)

BITE Cava- a lipstick that has a hint of lilac in it. It makes me look like a zombie (grayed out) or someone who just rose from the dead. On someone else with the right skin tone, it could look stunning.

mirenesse's Glossy Kiss in Quick kiss is definitely a head turning color. It's so bright someone would spot you from across the room. Love the formula, will be looking for another color.

BITE Pomegranate- another one of those colors that would let someone spot you from across the room. This almost seemed too bright, so I hesitated and bought Tannin as well. Tannin is cooler and slightly darker. I wore Pomegranate to go out with friends- the other bloggers were right, you will HAVE to get this shade. Be careful though. Since this is an intense red, it can get pretty messy. Pull out all the tricks in your bag to keep this one on. It wore off as I was eating, and made me look like a crazy clown. After a couple hours, it also becomes a bit drying. 

Try them out and tell me how you like them!

P.S. Have you looked and just stared at yourself in the mirror lately? I did that, and was surprised with how different I look. Almost don't recognize myself anymore.

Lipliners: Sephora Red vs L'oreal Crayon Petite

Well, with red lipsticks you have to have red lipliners. I originally got the L'oreal at my drugstore, but decided to also pick up the sephora one when I ordered (to make $50 for free shipping).

The L'oreal, true to it's name, smells like a crayon. It bothers me a bit. This is an automatic lipliner and the color goes on smoothly with no problems. It feels a tidge "stickier" at first but that goes away.

The Sephora Red lipliner is a cute 3". People have expressed how upset they were that it's a brick red as opposed to just a red. Well, I've taken a picture, and see for yourself, which is the brick here?! This lipliner glides on very smoothly with non of the slight stickiness I experienced with the L'oreal. And it doesn't smell like crayons.

They're both relatively easy to remove- although not so easy that they would come off all the time on you. The L'oreal costed me about $8, and the Sephora, $3. I can tell you that I'll be putting the Sephora under my lipsticks. I prefer to keep my lipsticks on the more neutral side, and the L'oreal just takes it too far over to the warm side. It made my MUFE Artist Intense Lipstick in #44, a slight cooler toned lipstick turn obviously warm colored. Which confused me and led me to believe that I didn't like the lipstick as much as I actually do.

I wanted to check to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, so here's the comparison of the two lipsticks layered on top of the two lipliners. Sure enough, just a leeetle bit more brick with the L'oreal.

The Search for Red: Make Up For Ever #44/32 & NARS Shanghai Express/ Fire Down Below

So you may know that i've been on the quest for the perfect red. For some odd reason I never bothered trying out the lipsticks that I had researched online that mentioned colors that were good. Something about how they looked in the tube that didn't satisfy me. They didn't look red enough, they were all brown, or orange or whatever. With the emergence of Make Up For Ever's new 50 lipsticks, I decided to use Sephora's return policy to my advantage. Since I don't currently have a car, going there to test out the lipsticks is hard, not to mention awkward with all the sales people watching. So I decided to order them online and if I didn't like them, return them. Normally I'm against this type of thing. I have the "if you bought the wrong item/ color and use it, suck it up" mentality, the store shouldn't have to lose profits just because you made a mistake. but in this case, I considered it a special time since I had no way to get to sephora to try the colors out. I don't recommend doing this every time you want to try something out. It's just not nice. Go to the store and swatch instead.

So I got 4 lipsticks to try out. Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Intense #44 & #32 and NARS Shanghai Express and Fire Down Below.

I dislike the NARS tube a bit because I think it's too easy to turn the tube. What if I accidentally turned it when I don't want to?

The MUFE are Satin texture. I was really upset with #32 because I had wanted a lipstick that would give my lips a light/ gentle/ sort of baby pink effect. Instead, it just looked like a shiny version of my natural lip color in a tube.

The #44 is a lovely red. I would say blood red, but it's not quite a blood red. It looks like a true red in the tube, but when swatched on paper, I can see it's actually a little on the cool side. I think it's described as a brown red on the site, but I'm not sure. The texture is not drying and it didn't seem to feather. Of course with all these strong lip colors I worry anyways that they get smudged or something.

NARS: these lipsticks are matte and therefore ever so slightly drying. This can't be helped though due to the properties of a matte lipstick. I feel like it feathers ever so slightly- barely noticeable.

Now you may be wondering what's the difference between the three red lipsticks. Let me tell you, it's really hard to tell when they're swatched on the lips. Shanghai Express is lighter- has a little less rich color than the other two. It's cool toned and more similar to the MUFE one than the Fire Down Below.

The MUFE one is more of a cherrier red than the Fire down below. It has less brown so it's more vibrant looking. Fire Down below is the darkest of the three, but with the little extra bit of brown it's probably the most wearable for everyday life in the morning.

Shanghai Express is again, less intense than Fire Down Below, less brown, and more on the cooler side. It's lighter in color and pops a bit more.

Even though Fire Down below looks really warm toned on the swatch in comparison, when I put it on my lips it turns a bit cool toned when viewed in natural light. All the colors change a bit depending on lighting. Strange how I have fluorescence lights and they all turn a bit yellow.

I can see where people get the idea that red lipstick lets your teeth look whiter. For me, it doesn't look so much whiter as more intense, probably from the contrast.

Turns out I can pull off all three shades equally well.

I'm at a dilemma because I can't pick one!! I decided that I don't want Shanghai Express. I want something that gives impact. The Fire Down Below is more natural a bit.  The step of brown makes it more wearable for daytime. The MUFE pops ever so slightly more (due to less brown and mostly likely the satin finish). I like the matte finish of NARS as well because I don't have to worry about it slipping/ sliding as much.

I like them both equally as much!! the MUFE is $19 and the NARS is $24, I know I should take the NARS back because of the pricing, but I do like having that lipstick that's a little more wearable. What to do... what would you do?

If it's all the same to you and you don't care about slight color differences or finishes then I do recommend the MUFE #44 over NARS Shanghai Express, only because they do look similar and MUFE is less drying and cheaper.

It was REALLY hard to get the color differences to show on camera for the lip swatches. Originally I had swatched them all separately, but then looking at them later I couldn't tell which was which, so I just did one with them all together. The picture only shows the lipsticks in indoor/ flash light. In natural light they look more cool toned. Apologies for the sloppy application, but I originally did a lot of combinations, so no point in perfectly applying them.

MUFE Rouge Artist Intense #32 (irl it's a tidge more coral)

MUFE Rouge Artist Intense #44 (Imagine a color between the two swatches- I know, not helpful)