Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipstick in Poe: I'm not too old for this?

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Ok, I know I just posted a review of a metallic silvery-lavender lipstick and complained that it made me feel old, and now I'm posting a photo of myself wearing navy blue lipstick and feeling fine. Well guess what? Fuck consistency.

I bought this set from Sephora, and it contains a mini Formula X nail polish and a mini Kat Von D Studded Kiss lipstick, both in the shade Poe. They've been on sale for $7.50 for a while now and going in and out of stock, so you might have to keep an eye on the page if you want to order online.

When I applied the lipstick at home for the first time, I immediately regretted buying it. I mean, I should have known better, because I've read a lot of pretty negative reviews of Poe, but for some reason I bought it anyway. I was curious. It's not easy to apply this shit evenly and opaquely. Just do a Google image search for it and look at all the iffy lip swatches--consider the worst ones the most accurate. The most annoying part was that, while it looked okay immediately after applying it, as soon as I so much as touched my lips together, all the color completely disappeared from the inner part. Blah.

I decided to give it another shot the next morning, however, and this time I applied it over top of Too Faced's lip primer (reviewed here). Surprisingly, the primer made a noticeable difference, despite the fact that I have tried it with many lipsticks in the past and it never helped. It does help with gloss, however, so this slippery-as-fuck lipstick must have something in common with lip gloss. I applied a layer of Poe, blotted, and added another layer. Then to clean up the edges, I used Tarina Tarantino eyeliner in Cute Robot, which is almost a perfect match, as you can see here:

These are the results, which aren't perfect, but at least it's not complete garbage anymore:

I actually liked how this color looked on my face. It wasn't as jarring and weird as I'd expected. (Excuse my sad-puppy expression. I know people object to the term Resting Bitch Face, but there has to be a reasonable substitute--Resting Grump Face? Nothing's Wrong That's Just My Face?)

It's interesting that both the lipstick and the nail polish really look purple in the tube/bottle, but they are definitely navy blue when you apply them. I think it must be the iridescent/multichrome shimmer, which shifts between a bunch of colors: purple-pink-orange-gold-green. The lipstick contains the same shimmer as the polish, which you can see in the bullet, but it doesn't show up much on my lips other than to add some extra dimension.

I posted a nail swatch on Instagram earlier this week. The nail polish is very opaque and pretty, in keeping with the generally good results I've had from Sephora's Formula X polishes, though it chipped slightly within 24 hours (not unusual for me).

So in the end, I don't think this set, at $7.50, was a waste of money, because the nail polish is nice and I managed to get the lipstick to work. On the other hand, I can't really recommend the full size lipstick at its regular price of $21, since I had to use two other products with it to get it to work. When Poe first came out, it was difficult to get your hands on blue lipstick, so it might have been worth the hassle--but now even Maybelline offers very similar options.

I don't know if I will wear this out of the house. I should. We'll see.