Review: NARS Velvet Gloss Lip Pencil in Mexican Rose

I originally I saw the NARS Velvet Gloss Lip Pencil in Mexican Rose in a favorite spring products YouTube video by Tanya Burr.  I had a bunch of coupons and rewards bucks at Beauty.com, so I picked it up for less than $10.  The NARS Velvet Gloss Lip Pencils typically sell for $24.

I purchased this pencil weeks and weeks ago and it's just been sitting on my vanity.  I don't really know why I didn't wear it, but I didn't.  I finally picked it up last weekend and applied it and was incredibly unhappy.  I wasn't expecting it to be quite so bright and so I promptly took it off and put on something more sedate.  I was ready to list it on Make Up Alley for a swap when I decided I should give it more than a 5 second test run.

So a couple times this week, I wore it all day.

NARS describes the color Mexican Rose as "hot pink" which is pretty spot on.  It is a bold color, but I'm trying to wear more lip products and sometimes I just need to force myself out of my comfort zone.  And after a couple days of wearing Mexican Rose I have to say I'm kind of in love with it.

NARS describes the Velvet Gloss Lip Pencil formula as "Spectacular shine in an innovative, lightweight formula and enriched with Vitamin E plus a blend of moisture-rich hyaluronic spheres that make lips appear fuller".

The formula reminded me a lot of the Clinique Chubbystick on initial application.  It is closer to a lipstick formula than a gloss, but it really is moisturizing and it does stay glossy and moveable for quite a while.

This wore probably 6 hours on me before I felt like it faded to the point that I needed to re-apply.  A big part of that is that the formula stained my lips pretty significantly.

I haven't tried the Yves Saint Laurent ROUGE PUR COUTURE Vernis À Lèvres Glossy Stain, but it makes me wonder if the formulas aren't similar.  Has anyone tried both?  Thoughts?

The big downside for me to this product is that unlike the Clinique Chubbysticks, the NARS Velvet Glosses aren't twist up pencils.  You actually have to sharpen them.  UGH!  Thanks to the incredible pigmentation and wear time I haven't had to sharpen mine yet, but apparently when I do, I need to freeze the pencil first.  This is a recipe for disaster.  I guarantee you that I'm going to put the pencil in the freezer so I can sharpen it and then I'm going to find it at Christmas time when I'm trying to make room in the freezer.  There is no way I am going to remember. 

Contains .09oz of product.  Retails for $24 wherever NARS is sold.

Overall:  8/10 - love the color, love the formula, hate the sharpening.

Review: L'Oreal Infallible Lipglosses

I am going to have to try more products in the L'Oreal Infallible line.  I absolutely LOVE the Infallible Eyeshadows (OMG, have I really not done a blog post on them?  The horror!  I'll get on that stat.)  So when I saw the Infallible glosses, I decided to try them.

L'Oreal has at least 3 different Infallible Lipgloss lines.  There are:

• 6 hour 
• 8 hour "Le Gloss"
• 8 hour plumping

I tried the 6 hour and the 8 hour glosses.

In the 6 hour, I tried #115, "Blush".  This stuff wears incredibly well.  6 hours?  Probably.  It's tacky rather than sticky like some other long wearing glosses I've tried.  The texture reminded me a lot of longwear lipsticks except without the need to put the gloss on top.  Overall, I'd say the formula is much more like a liquid lipstick than a gloss.

In the 8 hour formula, I tried #240, Glistening Berry.  This is a much more vibrant color than the 6 hour formula I tried and I can't say that I got two additional hours of weartime out of it.  I can chalk that up to the color being so much darker and therefore being much more apparent when it did start to fade.  I'd say that I did still get a solid 6 hours of wear out of it.  And like the 6 hour formula, the 8 hour is much more of a liquid lipstick than a gloss.

Gloss is not my favorite thing because it disappears so quickly on me and I feel like I do nothing but re-apply all day long.  But this product certainly solves that issue.

The product has a doe foot applicator.  The tube contains .21oz or 6.3 mL of product.  It retails for around $7 and comes in 20 shades.

This is a solid home run for me.

Overall: 10/10

Have you guys tried it yet?  What did you think?

I must admit, this is one of the most amusing product gimmicks I've seen in a while.  I hope you can read this, but there is a sticker on the top of the lip gloss that read "Mirror underneath".  So if you take off the sticker, supposedly you can use the top of the gloss as a mirror.  LOL!  This could be standard on glosses, I honestly don't buy them enough to know, but it really tickled me.