Quest for Coral

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Settle in, because this is going to be an epic quest. Sometime in April, when I'd had about enough of the gloom, I decided I would declare this the Summer of Coral. It's kind of like the Summer of George, but on my face. I was going to find a bright coral lip product that I loved and wear the fuck out of it. I already owned some options, but none of them was quite right, so I started shopping. Here I've laid out all the lip products I now own that are coral or coral adjacent. There are some that turned out to be orange or orange-red, but if nothing else they provide a basis for comparison.

Here is the full array (lip swatches and more info for each below):

Left to right: Stila Lip Glaze in Melon, Revlon Moisture Stain in Cannes Crush, BareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipstick in Light It Up, Wet N Wild Silk Finish Lipstick in What's Up Doc?, Wet N Wild MegaLast Lipstick in Purty Persimmon, ULTA Automatic Lip Liner in Scarlet, Life's Entropy Lip Theory in Apoptosis, Life's Entropy Lip Theory in Recursion, L'Oreal Pop Balm in Caring Coral.

And here are swatches of all of them:

Swatches (left to right): Stila Lip Glaze in Melon, Revlon Moisture Stain in Cannes Crush, BareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipstick in Light It Up, Wet N Wild Silk Finish Lipstick in What's Up Doc?, Wet N Wild MegaLast Lipstick in Purty Persimmon, ULTA Automatic Lip Liner in Scarlet, Life's Entropy Lip Theory in Apoptosis, Life's Entropy Lip Theory in Recursion, L'Oreal Pop Balm in Caring Coral.

More below the cut, because I have a thousand photos and a million words to go.

Two drugstore stain glosses: Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless and Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

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It's been a while. Oops. In the meantime, I managed to get a part time job, so I'm at least nominally employed. And my cat got sick again, which makes that about the 500th time in the last year. She's fine now, but I think that if she decides she needs any additional medical care, she's going to have to get a job and stop mooching off of me.

There have been other distractions, but let's just get back to the damned makeup, shall we?

I got both of these stain-gloss things a few months ago at about the same time, so it makes sense to me to review them together.

Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless and Milani Power Lip Lasting & Moisturizing Gloss Stain in Cabernet Blend

Let's start with Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless ($3.50). One thing both of these products have in common is long fucking names. The Wet N Wild stuff has a really interesting, slippery, and almost gelatinous texture. Sounds nice, right? Ha. Well, the closest thing I have to it is a L'Oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain (review here), which makes sense, since that's also a stain-gloss. The L'Oreal's texture is a little stickier, though. I've never used anything quite like this Wet N Wild stain. I do like how it feels, but it might take getting used to for some people. It's packaged in your typical gloss tube with a particularly long and flexible doe foot applicator.

Wet N Wild Fergie Vicious Varnish High Shine Lip Stain in Flawless

Two $3 Essence lip thingies

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Wow, two actual reviews in a row, rather than just posts ruminating on my weird behavior. Don't worry, it's not in me to stop ruminating, but maybe you'd like to hear about some makeup that you could pick up as a cheap treat. One is good, and the other is potentially good for people who aren't me.

Essence Stay With Me Longlasting Lipgloss in Choose Me! and Essence Stay Matt Lip Cream in Smooth Berry

The first of the two products is Essence Stay With Me Longlasting Lipgloss in Choose Me! The color of this gloss is difficult to categorize. In the tube, it looks like a sort of plummy or burgundy shade with pinkish shimmer. On the lips, the shimmer is pretty much invisible other than to add a bit to the shine, and it's sheer enough that it just sort of deepens my natural lip color and adds some warmth and sheen. It makes my lips more rosy, but not at all vampy, like you might expect from looking at the tube. It doesn't settle into lines as much as it might appear from the photo - that's just the nature of closeups of sheer things, in my experience. It's a very wearable, everyday color. Flattering, too, at least on me. (I hope I've never claimed that something is "universally" flattering, because I've been disappointed by recommendations that made the promise before.)

Essence Stay With Me Longlasting Lipgloss in Choose Me!

Is e.l.f. Essential Hypershine Gloss ($1) a dupe for Stila Lip Glaze ($8)?

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You may have noticed that e.l.f. regularly makes products that look like more expensive products from other brands. They imitate the packaging, sometimes the name, and the basic type of product in an apparently attempt to attract people who want the higher-end item but aren't willing or able to spend the extra money for it. A good example is the crazy cream blush I reviewed a while ago. Their strategy seems to work fairly well, because you'll often see e.l.f. products suggested as cheaper alternatives to similar-looking higher end cosmetics.

It's important to be aware, however, that often what e.l.f. is replicating is just the appearance of the product - that is, the packaging. They don't necessarily try to recreate the formula of the more expensive inspiration: the texture, pigmentation, scent, wear, finish, etc. That means that they are not necessarily a reliable source of real dupes. It's marketing, not SWFing.

e.l.f. Hypershine Gloss has been around forever and has been a favorite of mine for years. Though there are other brands that sell glosses in this click-brush type of packaging, Stila seems to me like the most likely reference point for e.l.f.'s version. But until just recently, I had never tried Stila's very popular Lip Glaze. I ordered several tubes of it in an attempt to find something to compare with the two e.l.f. glosses that I already had (and also because they were pretty, and so I bought a few that definitely weren't going to be comparable shades). In retrospect, I went overboard, because it turns out that I am not a huge fan of the Stila glosses. Let that be a lesson to you (me) here: whether you're looking for an e.l.f. dupe or a dupe for an e.l.f. product, proceed with caution.

So to answer the question in the title before I go on to a more detailed comparison of these two products: No. They are not dupes.

Tricky tricky! Which package contains more product? Lip Gloss Edition (PLUS photos and review of L'Oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain in Infinite Fuschia) (picture heavy post)

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Here is the third (and possibly final) installation of the series in which I look at the tricks packaging design plays to make you think you're getting more product than you really are. You can see the previous editions here. This time I'm going to look at a bunch of tubes of lip gloss, and holy shit, there's a lot going on here. Not one of these is without its illusion - so it took me a long time to choose which products to compare here, because every time I checked the label, I was surprised by the size. Some of these still confuse me, even when I know how much is actually in there. Let's get to it. Which of the two tubes below do you think contains more product?

L'Oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain in Infinite Fuschia ($10)
vs. e.l.f. Super Glossy Lip Shine in New York City ($1)

UPDATED: Avon Glazewear Lip Gloss Swatches, Photos, and Review

UPDATE: I redid the photos of these glosses, since I really hated the old ones I had, and added a new shade (Plum).

Avon Glazewear Lip Glosses, natural light: (left to right) Diamond Dazzle, Mirage, Iced Pink, Darling Pink, Cinnamon Apple, Rave, Crimson, Intense Plum, Cherry Liqueur

Avon Glazewear Lip Glosses, with flash: (left to right) Diamond Dazzle, Mirage, Iced Pink, Darling Pink, Cinnamon Apple, Rave, Crimson, Intense Plum, Cherry Liqueur

This isn't usually the sort of blog where I swatch a single product in a bunch of different shades, and holy shit, it was a lot of work! I don't know how swatching bloggers can stand it. But I love Avon Glazewear Lip Gloss so fucking much! I bought a bunch of minis recently, so I thought I'd post some photos. I hope they are useful, because the color swatches on the Avon website are not very accurate, and they don't provide descriptions, so it's difficult to tell what you're getting. For instance, from the website, I would have guessed that Rave is brownish, when it's really a purple-pink. 

I've raved about the formula and finish of this lip gloss before, and I still think it's one of the best ones out there. Note that I don't say best for the price. I mean this is one of the best glosses out there for any price, period. It's not sticky, it's moisturizing (or at least not drying), it stays put, and it has absolutely no smell or taste (I think that's ideal, since every scent will annoy someone). They don't bleed, and most don't settle into lip lines at all (the "Intense" shades do, slightly, but it is only noticeable very close up). They come in a nicely sized tube with the use doe-foot applicator. I have no complaints about the packaging at all. I've been impressed with every shade I've tried. The regular price for these glosses is $6, which is good to begin with, but they are frequently on sale or part of some BOGO type deal. I've never had to spend more than $3 on one.

Fix Your Face: Avon Glazewear Lip Gloss Swatches

UPDATE: New swatches have been posted here.

Fix Your Face: My Cheap Favorites

Today I’m just going to write about some of my favorite cheap makeup. Some of these I’ve posted about individually before, and others I haven’t. They aren’t all necessarily revolutionary and life changing, but they are are good and reliable and useful. These are the products I tend to use on a daily basis and that I keep buying when I run out.

This is a long one, so get ready.

• Monistat Soothing Care Chafing Relief Powder-Gel (as primer), $7

Here’s my previous post about this one. I just got a sample from Sephora of Lancome LA BASE PRO Perfecting makeup primer. It costs 42-fucking-dollars a bottle. It looks, feels, and even SMELLS identical to this Monistat shit. I haven’t compared the ingredients, but I’ll wager it is exactly the same. Do not waste your money on that nonsense, or I will have to hunt you down and kick you in the taint.

The Bare Minerals lipgloss I got in my Ipsy/GlamBag is making my lips all tingly and cool. I KNOW that just means it’s irritating them, and I’m going to pay for it later. But damn, if it doesn’t feel good.