Category: lips

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we like: Bite Beauty Cashmere Lip Cream

The Bite Beauty Cashmere Lip Cream formula is so interesting. It’s a cream-to-powder matte lip product that reminds me of a more posh, more pigmented version of the NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream (which I also like a lot). Evidently it features unprecedented levels of pigment for this kind of texture, which I readily believe. This gives massive color impact in one swipe.

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Here is their blurb about how it works, which sounds so cool,

“The cream-to-powder delivery system is achieved with an advanced formulation of butters, waxes, and oils that all have different melting and absorption rates. The balanced combination of waxes and butters with the powder texture of silica develop a creamy and buttery application that quickly absorbs into lips while the powdered pigments remain on the surface to leave a matte finish.” (via Sephora)

Bite Beauty is a compelling (and relatively young) brand, all about nourishing ingredients, most notably high levels of the antioxidant reservatrol, also found in wine, presumably the reason behind naming so many of their colors after wines. They are one of a growing number of smart beauty brands out of Canada right now (Toronto). Their Luminous Créme lipstick, which I’ll talk about soon, is absolutely gorgeous, and their various lip pencils are excellent as well. Solid all around.

I picked up the color Sancerre, a bright raspberry pink. This is quite a dry cream upon application yet doesn’t dry immediately on the lips (is blottable for many (say, 15 or so) minutes, with increasingly faded results). The curious thing is that even if you keep blotting, though product comes off on the tissue, the effect on the lips doesn’t seem to change at all. That is, blotting truly removes only the excess, not part of the foundation of color you want to keep. It comes off on drinking glasses and whatnot as well, minimally, yet still without diminishing the effect of color on the lips, at least not for a good while. Pretty impressive for a formula that doesn’t promise to be long-wearing. It has an interesting flexi-fuzzy-tip applicator, a little longer and narrower than the standard doe-foot. More like a short mascara wand, and I think it works brilliantly.

We like.

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worth it: wet n wild balmstain

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Imagine my astonishment when I tried this $3 lip crayon (a meet-the-shipping-minimum gamble) and absolutely loved it. Slick, gel texture, uniform pigmentation but not so opaque as to be any kind of trouble, any kind of fuss, nice gloss level (not too high), moisturizing (not amazing but it’s not a farce to call it a balm, as with some we could mention), no strange smell…really kind of surprisingly great, and especially great for $3. This color, officially the Wet n Wild MegaSlicks Balm Stain Moisturizing Lip Color in Red-Dy or Not, is lovely, too. A warm rosy red that comes up a little more terracotta on me than it seems in the stick.

I’m often throwing on whatever lip thing in the morning and investigating later on, how it’s going, and this one was impressively present, still, a few hours in. I kind of made a face in the mirror, like, what are you still doing here?! It’s not like it doesn’t wipe off on things like your coffee cup, it does, there’s just somehow still some left on your lips for a good long while. I think it might actually stain a little! [Research not yet conclusive] Like no lip stain ever seems to be able to do.* And the cap clicks on pretty well! And hasn’t fallen off on me. YMMV but this ticked a lot of boxes for me.

*Work on this technology, industry, this is a gold mine.

Upshot: there are much worse things you could do with $3. On top of which they’re bound to go on sale sometime soon in a pharmacy near you. I may try some of the other colors.