a hoarder's blog

I went really easy on makeup hauling during my last holiday. I finally bought a foundation pump for my nars sheer glow, which is otherwise awfully neglected. The original rubbery cap was getting all sticky and I am glad I remembered to buy the pump when I came across a nars counter. My foundation bottle doesn't have a lid now, but the pump can be locked when not in use.

The other thing that I bought was from DFS on my way back home. I was just browsing the shelves (while waiting for the luggage to come out) when I saw this travel exclusive trio of Lancôme Rouge In Love lipsticks. I had never swatched them at the counters before, let alone looked at them for that matter, and so had no lemmings whatsoever, but I went on to grab the last set. It was an impulsive buy I must say, but I have no regrets. The colours are so lovely! The texture is so smooth and feels so moisturizing on the lips.

The tube is shorter than what I expected and I thought I had been cheated into buying a mini version or something. But no, these pack 3.9g of product which is great for a lipstick (MAC is 3g and Illamasqua 4g). I kinda dig the metal packaging too. 

The colours are 230M Jolis Matins, 163B Rose St Honoré, 132M Corail In Love. 

Great everyday lipstick colours right there.

Swatches:

Been alternating 132M and 230M to work this past week. 230M is a pretty pinky nude on me while 132M is slightly brighter on my lips but not too attention-seeking. 163B contains some shimmer that do not translate vividly on the lips and it's a rosy pink that I will reserve for the weekend.

I was at Watsons last week when I first saw that there were four new shades of Revlon lip butters being released. I was pretty sure I didn't have Tutti Frutti, but I wanted to go home to check first to be 100% sure before buying it. Besides, I thought to myself that I should be waiting for a sale to come. Sure enough, a Watsons member sale took place last Wednesday, and I hauled a couple of the new lip butters on that day. Usual retail price is $15.90, and after the 25% + 5% discount, I think it came down to ~$11.30 each. 

I bought Tutti Frutti and Sugar Frosting.

What I like about the sheerer shades of the lip butters is that I can easily apply them on the go for a hint of colour and shine, without being too careful about painting beyond my natural lip line and looking like a mess.

Check out the swatches for other shades of lip butters here.

The MAC Fashion Sets consist of a nail lacquer, lipglass and lipstick of the same shade and name. You can buy the items separately or you could buy the whole set if you'd like.

I liked Impassioned so much that I bought all three items (amongst others..but let's not get there)

Swatches of the lipstick and lipglass:

The lipstick is a hot pink on my lips.

This is Impassioned nail polish. The colour totally doesn't match the rest.

And this is the whole Impassioned look.

This will be the last swatch post of the Revlon Lip Butters that I have. These were bought from a Drugstore.com spree, except for Peach Parfait which was bought locally.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I am just gonna say that I love the Revlon lip butters. I picked another four last week at Metro at 20% off the retail price. (Promotion is still ongoing 'til 19th Feb). Unfortunately the outlet I was at didn't have Peach Parfait in stock, so it's the only one I'm missing.

Revlon Colorburst Lip butter contains a combination of mango, shea and coconut butter to naturally soothe lips and boost lip moisture by 156%.

I bought these nyx soft matte lip cream recently from cherryculture after seeing them featured on musicplayson's entry. They were kinda intriguing and I got curious.

"It's not lipstick nor is it gloss. It's like nothing you've experienced before. It's lipstick cream that goes on silky but looks soft matte."

I don't have any matte lip product in my stash and wanted to try this out. I went to google for more swatches (the sample swatch on cherryculture isn't accurate at all!) and eventually decided on two shades: Antwerp and San Paulo, out of the 11 shades available.

Doe-foot applicators.

Lip swatches:

Antwerp

San Paulo

I applied these on bare lips, with no prior lip balm application as I do with some lipsticks. I guess it would have defeated the purpose of looking matte in this case. If your lips are dry, this formula is not forgiving at all. It'll show up in the cracks and lines of your lips, and have blotches everywhere (kinda like in my swatch of Antwerp). Paler colours tend to do this to me. Otherwise, in summary:

• Cream in a tube
• Crazy pigmented
• Great colour pay-off
• Full coverage
• Pleasant sweet smell
• Nice soft texture
• Not sticky
• Affordable (UP USD6, on sale USD4.50)

I don't know when these Maybelline lipsticks were launched, but I only recently noticed them at Watsons. The selection is pretty wide. There are 20 shades in total and they are segregated into four categories: Ravishing Reds, Polished Pinks, Provocative Plums and Sensuous Nudes. Each category has 5 available shades.

I innocently saw them on the same day I was swatching the Revlon lip butters, and I started swatching some of them too. One nude shade immediately struck me as very pretty and that was Warm Me Up. I didn't buy it immediately though. Having accumulated 5 lip butters recently seemed enough for me, especially since I'm not religious in applying lip products. But you know the feeling of how you see something you like, and you convince yourself that you don't need it, and then you keep thinking about it, and you end up going back to the shop to buy it? Yeah that was pretty much it. What made it even more enticing was the price. These were going at $14.30, 20% off the usual price of $17.90.

So the next day, I went back and ended up with two. (I actually had a wishlist of four from the previous night's swatches, and one of the ones I got isn't even on that wishlist *gasp*). It's bad cos the more you think you don't need them, the more you want to have them.

So I bought a nude and a plum. The colour of the plastic case makes it easy to differentiate the shade category (nude=brown case, plum=purple case, pink=pink case and red=red case). I find the case kinda chunky. For size comparison, it's slightly bigger than the Revlon lip butter. There are also no markings anywhere on the tube that it's Maybelline, except for the tiny print on the sticker.

How they look like. Weird curved up top.

The lipsticks have good pigmentation. You can tell just by looking at the swatch. (Some of the red shades I swatched even stained my hand. So there's no doubt on the colour payoff). They smell good, like vanilla or something. Just very pleasant and sweet to me. They're very creamy too and glide easily on the lips. Some of the other shades had shimmer, but I think I skipped swatching those.

I wouldn't mind going back for more. I kinda like them.

I think that by now, all of you have seen, read about and probably already bought these lip butters from Revlon.

I bought these whilst in Hong Kong last month during the Chinese New Year week. At that time, the Revlon lip butters had not launched in Singapore yet. And so, just like in Bangkok (haul post here), I ended up choosing shades that I was comfortable with, and not necessarily shades that would not be available here since I didn't know which shades would be launched locally. Out of these three, only one can't be found here, and that's Berry Smoothie.

I love how these are so smooth and silky on the lips. They are kinda sheer, but still provide a nice touch of colour. I can't tell how long they last though, because I tend to remove lipstick before eating my meals. So on a typical week day, I would wear lipstick from the time I leave my house for work as it's the last piece of makeup I apply and that's around 8am,  til it's time to eat breakfast which is around 9am for me. And the thing is I don't usually re-apply throughout the day.

My lip butter stash stands at 5. I wanna get Peach Parfait next.

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I chanced upon these Revlon lip butters whilst in Bangkok. There was a promo of buy 1 and get the second same item at 50% off on that day. So I bought these. The original retail price is 249 Baht each. That's about SGD10 each, which is already pretty cheap. With the promo, it averages out to SGD7.50 each. Fab deal!

There were other colours which looked really bright, so I didn't even consider them. I didn't have time to swatch them all cos I was in a rush. Also, when you have your other half standing right beside you, it's pretty stressful buying makeup cos he thinks that you already have TOO MUCH makeup at home. So I grabbed my kind of colours and that was it. Have not worn them out yet. I just opened them last night and created a dent in one of them. I always seem to be able to do that with new lipsticks.

There's a very very faint sweet smell to them. Colour looks sheer but is buildable on lips. They feel as smooth as they look. Macaroon contains some subtle shimmer.

In the Colour Definition make-up collection for Autumn 2011, Clarins introduces 2 new shades of Joli Rouge and 3 new shades of Rouge Prodige, all of which are now part of the permanent line.

Here's what I have to show you:

Left: Rouge Prodige True-Hold Colour & Shine lipstick in 115 Rosy Coral

Right: Joli Rouge Long-Wearing Moisturizing lipstick in 733 Fig

Swatches:

Couldn't get decent pictures of my lips, so please excuse these replacements.

The Rouge Prodige was a tad drier to apply than the Joli Rouge which literally glided over my lips like butter. I can hear you say duh, it's not called a moisturizing lipstick for nothing. Indeed, its creamy texture contains mango butter which goes further to nourish and protect the lips.

The smell of the lipstick is a big draw too. They smell sooo goooood making them even harder to resist. I'm not good at describing smells but the Rouge Prodige is like candy and the Joli Rouge like Ribena pastilles (ok not sure where that came from, just that it has this grape-y fruity scent). They are both a pleasure to have on the lips.

Rouge Prodige in Rosy Coral, being lighter in colour compared to Joli Rouge in Fig, added a slight pink tinge to my lips, nothing too obvious but pretty nonetheless. Fig showed up much better.

Each lipstick retails for $35, available at all Clarins counters from Aug 1 2011.

DISCLAIMER: All products in this entry were sent to me by Clarins for consideration. I wasn't paid to do this and I'm not affiliated to Clarins in any way. Opinions expressed here are my own