Do I Need This? Lip Primer (Comparison of Too Faced Lip Insurance Lip Primer, e.l.f. Lip Lock Pencil, and Bite Beauty Line & Define Lip Primer)

Disclosure: Affiliate links.

Welcome to the latest installment of my Do I Need This? series. In these posts, I offer my experience and opinion about whether or not I think a product or technique is worth it. Obviously, you don't really need ANY beauty products, so the answer to the question is always going to be no, to some extent. But is it going to change your life (or face)? Is it going to make things easier? Are you going to notice any difference at all? That's what I'm getting at. You may disagree with my verdict, because we all have different bodies/faces/brains/desires, but I'll try to offer a starting point, at least. 

One of the ways beauty companies keep us buying things is by continually creating new categories of suddenly indispensable products. Primer is one category that has certainly been growing over the last five years or so. Suddenly we need to prime everything: our faces, our eyelids, and even, apparently, our hair. I'm not going to be buying any hair primer, and foundation primer rarely seems to actually do anything to improve my makeup, but eyeshadow primer has actually become essential for me. I used to rarely bother with eyeshadow because it creased and melted off in a couple of hours, so primer makes a huge difference. But lipsticks and lip glosses can be finicky and fleeting too. Will lip primer do anything to make our lives easier? Or is it just another gimmick?

Do you need lip primer?

Short answer: Maybe, if you have problems with lip color feathering or pigmented glosses fading.

I'm going to compare three different lip primers here--one very cheap and two pretty expensive, one a thick liquid and two waxy sticks. Too Faced Lip Insurance Lip Primer ($20) is a whitish, translucent liquid product that comes in a tube with a doe foot applicator. It's similar to an eyeshadow primer (though I tried using eyeshadow primer on my lips and it was not a success). Bite Beauty Line & Define Lip Primer ($22) and e.l.f. Lip Lock Pencil ($3) are very similar, hard, matte, waxy crayons. The main difference is that the Bite product smells minty. (Note: I have a mini version of the Bite primer, which was part of the holiday Bite Discovery Kit.) No swatches of the primers here, because they are all nearly transparent. All three products make essentially the same claims: to prevent feathering and make lip color last longer. I tested each product with the same tricky lip gloss and lipstick.

Not my greatest photography.

First up, lip gloss. One of my favorite lip glosses is Avon Glazewear in Intense Plum (now sadly discontinued but still available on Amazon). As the name suggests, it's a quite pigmented purplish gloss. The problem is that that once I blot it, most of the color disappears. Wearing a thick layer of it, however, isn't really an option, because it gets messy and smeary. Too high maintenance. So a primer that can keep it in place at full strength would be ideal.

(Many, many photos below, so I will give you a cut.)

Revlon Colorburst Moisture Stain in Cannes Crush (Review)

So it occurred to me that if I could take mediocre photos with my phone and post them to Instagram, I could also take mediocre photos with my phone and post them to my blog, cutting out at least part of the process and saving some time. What a treat for you. Let's face it, though, if you are someone who demands flawless photography, you're probably not a reader of my blog anyway.

Here's a quick review of this glossy stain stuff from Revlon. On the plus side, it is a gorgeous pinkish coral color, it does feel moisturizing, and it does leave a stain. On the minus, the pretty coral glossiness wears away quite quickly, and on my lips, at least, which are fairly pigmented, the stain just ends up being slightly pink. That fucking awesome coral lasts maybe 30-40 min tops. I wouldn't be too disappointed it it were a regular gloss, but since it's supposed to stain, it's a big womp womp.

Immediately after applying, it's vibrant, glossy, and a little milky. It can look slightly patchy, but it becomes more translucent within minutes, so the patchiness goes away.

This second photo was taken about 20 min later. As you can see, most of the gloss has worn off and the color is less vibrant. The stain tends to wear away more in the middle of my lips, but that's pretty normal.

So while I don't dislike this shit, exactly, I'm kind of disappointed that this was what I decided to use my precious CVS bucks on. I already have plenty of pink lip products, including stains. I wanted coral. I'm trying not to buy any more makeup these days because I have way too fucking much, and this was sadly not an exciting way to break that no buy streak.

It's not a bad product and you might have better luck if your lips are less pigmented or if you choose a different shade. At 0.27 oz. it's bigger than most glosses. If you already own any of the recent glossy stains that pretty much every company has been putting out, including the ones in the photo below, then you basically know how it's going to feel and apply, etc. I'd say it's closest to the L'Oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain (briefly reviewed here), which also starts out a little more milky/opaque and then sets to a more translucent appearance.

(And then I finished writing this post on my phone and realized that the Blogger app doesn't let you add links so I had to do that on my computer, and it screws up the formatting, and what the fuck, why is it so terrible? I tried.)

Glossy/sheer red lip comparisons

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

I wanted to swatch all of my red lip products that are on the sheer side to see if I had any dupes that I could eliminate. I figured I might as well take a photo and post it, in case that sort of thing is useful to anyone else.

From left to right above:

Revlon ColorStay Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Romantic
Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter in Candy Apple
Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter in Cherry Tart
H&M Lip Pencil in Million Dollar Lips (Red)
Sephora Gloss Lipstick (unknown shade name)*
Stila Lip Glaze in Persimmon
Be a Bombshell Lip Gloss in Hot Mess
e.l.f. Super Glossy Lip Shine in New York City*

* These ones seem to be discontinued.

In the end, the only ones that are really very close are the Stila and Be a Bombshell glosses. I prefer the BAB formula. It's thinner, and so it will bleed slightly more, but it's easier to apply, feels better, and lasts really well. So bye bye Stila.

Here's a lip swatch of Hot Mess:

You can see lip swatches of a couple of the Revlon ones here. The color of the Revlon Balm Stain in Romantic and the Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple look pretty similar, but the formula is totally different, so they can both stay. I fail at eliminating things! Sheer reds with some sheen are just so fucking pretty, though.