My first The Balm palette! This was a surprise gift this past Christmas from my aunt. I was so surprised that she picked out a brand I’d been wanting to try(without me even mentioning it! As the title would suggest, all the shades in this palette are matte.
One of the most interesting things I saw on Swatch and Review‘s event recap of Maybelline‘s 100th birthday was the brand new Baby Lips Moisturizing Lip Glosses. Although I had never actually purchased a Baby Lips before (shock, horror!), it was hard to resist how tempting these Baby Lips Glosses look. They look downright juicy, fun and come in a multitude of colours.
There are three finishes – shimmers, creams and jellies – and feature a lightweight texture with a refreshing fruity scent that isn’t overpowering. They are non-sticky (yay!) and are predominantly translucent when applied to the lips.
Let’s take a look!
Tickled Pink is a soft pink with a cream finish.
Tickled Pink goes on the lips with a somewhat milky texture, but spreads out to be a sheer wash. It’s very easy to wear – slap it on your lips and you’re good to go. Not a lot of fuss with this one – it’s the perfect topper to any lipstick if you need just a hint more pink or really want that glossy feel.
Fuchsia Flicker is a shimmer gloss with flecks of hot pink sparkles.
Fuchsia Flicker is great to ramp up the sparkle and shine on your lips. Use it alone and you get a faint hint of sparkle on your lips, or use it over a lipstick to get some additional shimmer. It’s not opaque, so you’re mostly going to get the sparkle on your lips and not the colour from the tube. The sparkles are finely cut so that they don’t give your lips a gritty texture.
Berry Chic is a red-orange tinted jelly gloss.
Out of the three, Berry Chic is definitely the most pigmented. I’ve worn this one the most because it definitely puts more colour on my lips than the rest of them.
The Maybelline Baby Lips Moisturizing Lip Glosses have a wide range of colours with enough textures to keep everyone happy. They are a primarily translucent gloss that are intended to moisturize your lips, so you won’t find a ton of colour payoff in most of the shades (out of the ones I tried anyway!). From my perspective, I look for more colour in my lip products, so these aren’t something I will personally reach for very often.
Wear time is average for a gloss for me – I tend to reapply every 90 minutes or so just to keep the texture going on my lips. They are smooth feeling and easy to wear. Due to the nature of the translucency of the pigment, I experienced no bleed out of my lip line which is highly appreciated! They are completely comfortable on the lips and you definitely do not need a mirror to touch up!
Aside from their moisturizing properties (which heaven knows everyone needs!), one of the things I thought of while wearing these is how much they would appeal to teens who are just starting to get into makeup. The Baby Lips Glosses are a perfect transition item from chapstick to actual lipstick for younger generations. They’re a highly popular item right now so you get the feeling of being “on trend” without going over the top. Just some food for thought from my end of things. (Says the woman with no kids, granted!)
The glosses retail for roughly $6 CAD and are starting to show up in drugstores across Canada right now. I can see these being a huge hit and I anticipate limited edition releases later on!
This review features press samples sent for consideration.
Black pencil liners aren’t really exciting to talk about. I mean, it’s black, and hopefully it does its job. What that job is though can really change from person to person though. For me, a black pencil liner is used to tightline my waterlines (that flap of skin on the inside of your lashes!) and it must. stay. put.
I’ve used many a pencil liner over the years that just completely bled off my water line. They’d rub off, wear off, or just… melt off within about 30 minutes. How freaking frustrating is it to create the perfect eye look and then have it ruined within the hour when your eyeliner suddenly decides to gunk up and go to the inside corner of your eyeball? You might be grossed out right now, but you know it’s happened to you. It’s happened to all of us!
However, I have found a black pencil eyeliner that actually fights the powers of darkness attacking my makeup look, and that badass is the Marc Jacobs Highliner Gel Eye Crayon in Blacquer. It’s got quite the long superhero name but this little guy knows how to get the job done.
It’s super black and it FRIGGING STAYS PUT on my water lines! So much so that I can actually apply it to my upper water line and it will not transfer to my bottom. I have never experienced this kind of majestic power built into an eye liner before! Seriously! I’m at the point where I’m actively throwing out all my other black pencil liners because when you find the holy grail, why bother use anything else?
Here it is in use on a few looks. Ugh. Look at that beauty. It’s not budging for no one.
Yassss yassssss!
I can get away with wearing this for roughly 13 hours without issue (I don’t think I’ve worn it longer than that). Around the 10 hour mark I will suffer some very minor outer corner fading, but that’s fairly impressive considering what I’ve had to put up with before. If you’re looking for something to wear like iron, I’d say give the Marc Jacobs Highliner Gel Eye Crayons a shot.
Side note: Thank you for all of the well wishes over the last week as I’ve rebuilt my site from scratch. I’ve got 75% of the content back online (thank you, THANK YOU Google Cache!) as of typing this and I should get the remainder done this weekend. With this blog post, I’ll be resuming my normal schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, with the occasional bonus entry thrown in every now and again. It was only a week, but damn it feels good to be back.
As a blonde, I struggle with my barely visible brows. Even worse, I’m a blonde with very little brow hair at all. I don’t overpluck my brows (not even during the 90s when it was fashionable to do so) so it’s not that I got rid of them slowly over time. It’s just that I’ve really only got the first half of my eyebrow and no tail to speak of (pictures shortly!). So I’m always searching for something to use on my brows. Unfortunately, most of those options have been from highend brands (Anastasia) or harder to find brands in Canada (NYX). Sometimes you’re just searching for something cheap, and readily available, you know?
Maybelline‘s brand new BROW define + fill duo fits that bill on all accounts: it’s at the drugstore and it won’t break your bank (~$10 CAD). (As a note, mine also says BROWsatin on the side of the product, but that’s not written anywhere on the box.)
One end of the product has your typical brow pencil – it’s larger than the NYX or Anastasia counterparts, but it’s not enormous either. The other end has a foamy tip that picks up shadow from the cap. The intention is that you fill in your brow with the pencil and then follow it up with powder to set it.
Colour-wise, the Blonde shade I have actually matches my brows quite well. It leans a bit warm, so I think redheads could get away with wearing this shade as well. Despite the warm tones, it doesn’t make my brows look unnaturally orange, but I know some blonds prefer more of a grey cast to their products. Personally, I flip between the two without noticing much difference on myself.
Here’s me with nothing on my brows. You can see that I have about half of a normal brow, but that I’m lacking a tail.
Here’s my brow with the Maybelline define + fill duo pencil applied to my brow.
And finally, with the pencil and powder applied directly to my brow.
I feel the pencil part could do with being a tad smaller in diameter. I struggled to fill in the very end of my tail without making it look too blunt. I also think the foam tip of the powder applicator is too big and I couldn’t really use it to fill in the tail of my brow since I have next to no hairs there. However, I’m happy that something labelled for blondes actually works with my colouring! Often companies make products that are flat out too dark for us and make us look rather silly. I like that the pencil dispenses enough product to help build up my brows in a natural way without looking chunky. (The pencil also doesn’t feel as scratchy as the Anastasia Brow Wiz does to me.) The products wears all day and didn’t melt off my face, so total win there!
Those with fuller brows will likely benefit from this more than I can with my half brows. That being said, I do reach for this quite often as I really like the natural look it gives me and the colour tone is perfect.
This review features a press sample sent for consideration.
At long last, the final six-pan palette from Wet n Wild in the Silverlake collection! This is Vinyl Collection.
