Review and swatches: Revlon Colorburst Matte Balm in Elusive (with comparison to Revlon Balm Stain in Honey)

Revlon ColorBurst Matte Balm in Elusive and
Revlon ColorStay Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Honey

Elusive is damned right. I finally found these suckers in a little corner of my local CVS, on the side of a rack filled with the new Revlon scented nail polishes, wedged in next to a wall where they were hard to reach. Luckily that mean that no one else had got to them yet, so I had my pick of all the colors, including all the Lacquer Balms. CVS has a deal on now where you get $5 Extracare bucks if you buy 2 Revlon items, so I got two of the matte balms.

First of all, and this is totally my fault for poor reading comprehension, but I failed to notice that the "stain" part of the name is missing, even though they look like my beloved Balm Stains. These are balms (I guess), but not stains. Fine.

I hovered around the rack for ages trying to figure out which colors to get, and ended up picking Elusive and Striking. Striking is a really bright red that I picked out immediately. I eventually decided on Elusive, because it looked similar to the Balm Stain in Honey, which I love. I thought it might make a nice matte alternative.


Long story short (ha), I am going to keep Striking and exchange Elusive for something else. If you have dry lips at all, Elusive is just going to catch in all the lines and accentuate the dryness. It's not moisturizing, either, as you might expect a "balm" to be, so it's just going to make things worse. I have really dry lips, and I am not about to exfoliate every single time I want to use this shit. It's too bad, because the color is really nice. I'm sure I can find a basic matte lipstick that is similar, though, If I really want to. Here's how it looks on my lips:

Revlon ColorBurst Matte Balm in Elusive

I'm sorry the photo is so blurry. It's gloomy fall now, and I don't have the best lighting in this apartment to begin with. But I think you can still see the texture issues, even with a flattering blur over them. Also, the swatch color is more accurate than the lip photo. I never pretended to be all about the quality photos around here. I just don't have the set up.

Here is a comparison with Honey. Elusive is darker, more opaque, and redder. It's in the same ballpark, though. Honey doesn't have any shimmer in it; what you see in the photo is just the slight glossiness.

Swatches of Revlon ColorBurst Matte Balm in Elusive and
Revlon ColorStay Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Honey

These matte balms don't wear especially long, but they do tend to stay in place well. I have problems with lipsticks smearing. I'm not too worried about that with these. Striking doesn't have the problems with settling into dryness the way the other one does, so I'm going to hold on to it, since I don't have anything similar already. Elusive will be going back. Hooray for drugstore return policies.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know what these are like in case you've been hunting them down too. If you're attracted to Elusive in particular, you might might find this information useful. Unless you have smooth, soft, perfect lips.