Flower Beauty Petite Fleurs Pocket Triplets PF4 and PF7

The Petite Fleurs Pocket Triplets by Flower Beauty are something I have been curious about since the line launched.  My local Wal-Mart has been sold out of them for weeks, but the last time I checked, they had restocked so I picked up two of the lip triplets (there are triplets for eyes as well).

Did it seem gimmicky when I picked it up?  Yes.

Are they gimmicky?  Yes.

OMG, YES.

These things are truly awful.  Really, I cannot state enough how truly awful they are.

I think that all of the pocket triplet shades are shades from the full Flower Beauty line, but I could be wrong because I don't think that there is a dark brown lipstick in their regular line.  Yes, you read that right, dark brown.  Not nude, not a shade that caters to women of color, just an ugly dark brown lipstick.

The texture on these lipstick are horrible.  Drying, patchy.

The packaging just baffles me.  It's like they tried to design the worst packaging possible.  It's flimsy, cheap looking, holds a minuscule amount of product, the way the little bullets fit together it is almost impossible to not gouge the hell out of the product while trying to use it.

As with the rest of the Flower Beauty line, all of the descriptive information is on the plastic wrap around the product, so once you open it, you have no idea what it is, how much product it contains, what colors it contains ... nothing.

I got so fed up in trying to swatch these that I just stopped and tossed them in my daughter's dress up drawer.  Maybe she'll get some use out of them.

Overall:  0/10

Sleek Pout Polish in Powder Pink and Peach Perfection

A couple of weeks ago, I placed a big order on the Sleek MakeUp site.  Sleek is one of those brands that I've been lucky enough to receive in swaps with UK friends, but it's not available readily in the US.  

As a side note here, the prices are great and the shipping was super cheap - like $8 cheap for international shipping!  (Though it did take about two weeks to arrive.)

Anyway, I've been lucky enough to try a lot of the Sleek powder products, but I've never tried any of their lip products.  So ... I picked up two of the Sleek Pout Polishes in Powder Pink and Peach Perfection.  The Pout Polishes are basically like tinted lip balms.  They come in 9 colors.

They are very sheer.  You get just a hint of color.  They aren't the most fantastic lip balms ever, but they're decent.  The texture was okay.  I didn't find them to be sticky and I didn't find the scent to be particularly noteworthy (good or bad), but I'm not particularly sensitive to either of those.

You do get a ton of product, but since they come in jars, you have to apply them with your fingers.  This isn't a deal breaker for me, but I know it would be for a lot of people.

The packaging is cute.  They come in a range of colors (most of which will offer only the barest hint of color on the lips).  They are pretty much a take it or leave it product for me.  They're okay, but I don't think I would purchase them again, even at this (very good!) price point.

Sleek Pout Polish contains 10 grams of product and retails for $5.99 each.

Overall: 6/10

Lush Lip Scrub in Mint Julips

I generally try to avoid sweeping statements on my blog, but today I'm going to make one.  Lush's Mint Julips Lip Scrub is hands down the tastiest beauty product that has ever existed.  Seriously.

I've been doing DIY lip scrubs for a while.  Sugar + olive oil + toothbrush = nice results, but a less than pleasing taste.  Unless you're into sweet olive oil, I don't want to judge here.

However, I was watching the video that Pixiwoo and Beauty Crush did together and Sammi mentioned that one of her favorite beauty quick fixes is this lip scrub.  I was at Lush a couple of days later and I picked some up and it is divine.

As you can see, the ingredients aren't exactly earth shaking.  And I can't say that it works any better than my DIY version, but it does taste loads better.

Lush Mint Julips Lip Scrub contains .8oz of product and retails for $9.95

Overall:  10/10

Review: Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stains

So I know the beauty blogosphere has been overrun with posts about the new Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stains and so here I am to add my own $0.02.

(borrowed from Revlon)

I have to say that I have used the Revlon Just Bitten Lip Stains that came out last year and I despised them.  It seemed like no matter what color I tried, they all went extremely purple - despite the fact that my lips aren't very pigmented - and made me look like a corpse.  I actually ended up just pitching a couple of them.

Now Revlon is Back with the Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stains.  On first glance, the product reminds me a lot of my NARS Matte Velvet Gloss Pencil.  I don't think the NARS pencils are supposed to be stains, but in my experience that is exactly what they did.

I picked up two of these balm stains in Sweetheart - bright blue-based pink, and Rendezvous - bright coral. 

In my experience it wore well for a good three hours - looking pristine.  It did wear for six hours, but by that time the color had darkened considerably.  It did stain evenly and I wasn't left with streaky lips, which is absolutely key for me with any product that markets itself as a stain.  If it stains unevenly, it's not worth anything to me.

Overall, I am in love with these balm stains.  Like I said, they seem to work as well as the NARS gloss pencils, but at a fraction of the price.  These are quick and easy, they have great pigmentation and phenomenal staying power.

Overall: 10/10

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.

Review: OCC Lip Tars

I'm sure, you've already heard all the hype about OCC Lip Tars.  I just have one thing to say about all those rave reviews:

They are absolutely true.

I should start this post off by saying that I am not a big lip person.  I try.  I’m just not.  It always ends up on my teeth, so usually I wear chapstick or some variation on chapstick like the Revlon Lip Butters.  But when I do want to 'put on a lip', I almost always reach for my OCC Lip Tars first.

The OCC Lip Tars are fantastic.  They are so incredibly pigmented.  I had seen reviews where people said “a little goes a long way” and wow, are they right.  You only need the tiniest amount of product to get complete opaque coverage with vibrant payoff.  Plus, I've been using these regularly for almost a year and the tubes still have so much product.

Their range of colors is stunning.  I feel like OCC is really known for their super vibrant colors.  But the thing that really shocked me is that they do neutrals really well.

Most of the shades that I own are neutrals.  I picked up Trollop, Hush and Divine just under a year ago and if anything I am more pleased with them now than when the package arrived in the mail.  They are just beautiful neutral colors.  And the thing that I love so much about the lip tars is that it is so easy to mix the shades together to get exactly what you're wanting for any given look.

I did break from the neutrals to pick up Anime which is this gorgeous neon pink.  Gah.  I am so in love with this color.

(I'm working on the lighting for product photos and swatches.  I think it's getting better, but Trollop still photographed way darker than it is in person.)

Paraphrased from OCC:

OCC Lip Tars are 100% Vegan and Cruelty-Free.  They are also free of parabens and other harsh preservatives. A simple, elegant formula that contains Hemp Oil, Peppermint Oil and Vitamin E, OCC Lip Tar feels as good on the lips as it looks!


Overall:  10/10