By Terry Terrybly Rouge Lipstick : Product Review

Welcome to the land of $50 lipsticks! I have ventured over to the dark side and entered into the world of very expensive cosmetics. The real reason for this is because I saw multiple people talk about this lipstick and I was curious if it could really live up to its $50 price tag. In all honestly, I got this for practically no money at all because this happens to be sold in the Birchbox shop and I had $40 in points and a coupon code; schwing. I picked up the shade Terrybly Nude because let's face, I'm constantly on the search for a nude lipstick that doesn't make me look incredibly odd (...and approaching death). Let's dive in.

The Facts

Price: ~$49

Amount of Product: .12 oz

Number of Shades: 20 (I believe; there could be more, but this is what I found)

Claim: Rouge Terrybly Age Defense Lipstick is the first volume and firmness lipstick enriched with By Terry’s exclusive anti-aging Lumilip technology. Available in an array of silky colors, this extra-comforting lip color rejuvenates and embellishes every smile, while offering a “push-up” effect. Wrapped in a satin bag, it’s perfect for a beauty touchup any time of day.

• Anti-aging lip color
• Rejuvenates and embellishes lips
• Delivers a “push-up” effect

Shade that I used: Terrybly Nude; a pink based nude shade that appears quite mauve. 

Coverage:  Opaque

Application: This lipstick is crazy silky feeling, which means that it just glides onto the lips. Imagine Linda Richman saying it glides on like buttah, because that's exactly what it feels like. I don't own a lot of extremely expensive lipsticks, but dare I say that this is the nicest feeling lipstick that I've ever glided onto my lips.

Packaging: One major thing to talk about when it comes to high end lipsticks (and cosmetics in general) is the packaging. The box that the lipstick comes in is a shiny, laminated box; nothing amazingly special there. The lipstick itself comes in a little silky feeling bag, but again, it doesn't feel like anything that amazing. It has By Terry printed all over it, just in case you were to forget that you bought a By Terry lipstick. The lipstick case itself is a little silver bullet; very compact and nice feeling. It has a nice weight to it; not overly weighty and not plastic feeling. The lid does close via a magnet, but I store it in my purse in the silky bag that it comes with; I think the case would scratch easily and the lid might pop off otherwise.

(on my face from Friday's FOTD)

How it wears: Lets go back and talk about the price tag again; $50. For that much, you should pretty much expect your lipstick to feel like butter on application (and it does) and then continue to feel like luxury, which this does fairly well. The buttery slip sticks around for a substantial amount of time and my lips only began to feel dry toward the end of my work day, which is because I never reapplied and didn't put any balm on the entire day. It doesn't settle into your lip lines and it doesn't dry your lips out, which is pretty fantastic since I have deep lip lines and fairly dry lips. I did line my lips for the picture above, but I've worn this without liner on multiple occasions and it has never bled into my quickly growing fine lines.

Wear Time: I've read mixed reviews on this shade, but let me tell you that this wore pretty damn evenly on my lips for a full 8 hours, and that includes eating and drinking. There was no white line on my mouth that sometimes accompanies light colored lipsticks and the only area with an extreme amount of fading was the moist part of the center of my lips. Just so you guys can have an idea of how much eating this lasted through, I'll tell you what I ate and drank: a banana, oatmeal, yogurt covered raisins, chocolate easter egg, two glasses of water, bagel thin, hummus, baby carrots, lemon bar, and pretzels. I'm also a pretty intense lip licker (a huge cause of lip dryness, unfortunately), which is why it wore off so heavily on the center part of my lips. By the end of the day, my lips were feeling dry, but I never reapplied balm and that feeling went away as soon as I ended my hour test.

(after roughly 8.5 hours of wear)

Does it deliver on its claim? I don't really  understand their claim of a "push up effect", but I don't think that my lips really looked like that. Other than that claim, I will say yes. Since this is technically an anti-aging lipstick, it's really moisturizing and formulated not settle in your lines too much; perfect for someone like me. 

Final Verdict: I think that to make a final verdict, you have to ask yourself, would I buy this again at full price? The answer for me is yes, I would purchase this again. The price is high, but this lipstick has already joined the ranks of my favorites and I've been wearing it on a fairly steady basis since I bought it. I think that this will likely be the first lipstick in a long time that I use up completely. I am already planning on buying another color to test a wider range. 

If you want more information on these lipsticks and want to see more swatches, I highly recommend going to the blog Shameless Fripperies; Karima owns multiple shades and does some great reviews.

Questions or comments? Let me know down below!

Best Bite : Product Review

I kind of waffled on writing this review, because surprise surprise, this was a limited edition item that I happened to pick up late in the game. It is not available online at this time, but the last time I was in my Sephora, there were a ton of these sets, so if you're interested, I would call and see if they have some (they are a Sephora exclusive).

With that little disclaimer mentioned, I also want to mention that I felt compelled to write this review because I like these pencils so much that I felt like it was good to review them. Also, even though this set is limited edition, Bite Beauty does sell these pencils individually (the set is $25) except for Cranberry, which is exclusive to this kit.

So what comes in this kit? It comes with 4 "matte" (more on this later) lip pencils which are housed in a cute little tin that has a mirror inside. I believe that these pencils are a bit smaller than the regular pencils since the suggested value on this kit is only a smidge more than two regular pencils. 

There is a fairly nice shade range in this kit with a nude shade, a dusty rose, and two brighter, more vibrant colors. If you've ever wondered if you could pull colors like these off, this would definitely be a good intro kit.

The reason I wrote the word matte in quotations up above is because these are marketed as matte, but they aren't true mattes; they do have a bit of a sheen to them and I would describe them more like creams. The colors are extremely pigmented and it only takes on swipe to get the color to show up beautifully on the lips. I've read that some people find these to be drying, but I don't really find that to be the case, at all. I think that these apply incredibly smoothly and stay nice and creamy for hours. Yes, after about 6 hours or so, my lips might be a bit dry, but my lips would be dry after 6 hours anyway if I hadn't applied a balm. 

I like Bite Beauty because of several reasons. First and foremost, every product of theirs that I have tried has been insanely pigmented and shows up the same color as it looks in the tube. They also say that each lipstick has as much reservatrol as 5 glasses of red wine, but that doesn't do much for me. However, they also create their lip sticks using food grade ingredients as mentioned by Sephora here "This product is free of synthetics, polybutenes, and petroleum byproducts and made exclusively with lip nurturing food-grade ingredients that are healthy enough to eat.". 

From left to right: Cranberry, Quince, Rhubarb, and Madeira.

(Ignore that smudge on the left side, this was the last one I applied and I smudge Quince!) Cranberry is a very lovely rich red shade that pulls a little bit cool, but isn't overly pink toned. I have warm undertones, so if a red has a lot of blue in it, it just looks fuchsia on me. Luckily, Cranberry is only a bit blue toned and stays fairly true to red on my skin.

(these next few pictures are out of focus because I'm incompetent...)

Quince is definitely a bold color, but it's very very pretty. Sephora's website describes this as a "rose berry", but I find it to be much bolder than that description. In the photos, it tends to look similar to Cranberry, but Quince is definitely much more pink in real life. I think I would describe this more a darkened magenta but don't let "darkened" fool you, it's a very standout color.

Rhubarb is your standard dusty rose color that for some people will be a MLBB shade. It's a touch too dark for MLBB for me, but it's still a beautiful neutral shade that could be worn with a myriad of looks and is also work appropriate.

Nude shades mostly make me look like a living corpse, but this is one that I feel like I can kind of pull off. It's a little bit more pink than most "nudes" which I guess makes sense since Sephora describes this one as "nude pink". I still practice caution with this since I'm mildly terrified of anything even close to this color, but maybe I'll have to venture into the world of lip gloss and the Kardashians and bust this one out from time to time.

I only have two complaints about these lip pencils and for some, these might be deal breakers. One being that since these shades are so creamy (except for Madeira, which is the most true matte shade in here), that they tend to transfer very easily. This could be remedied by applying, blotting, and then reapplying, but I am lazy, so I tend not to do that. The other complaint is that Cranberry and Quince appeared to feather around the lip line. I have scars and some fine lines around my lips and those two shades definitely try to creep into them. The solution to that is lipliner, which is easy, but I wanted to inform you lovely readers that they can feather!

My verdict on these? Pick these up if you can find them. Yes, the feathering can be a touch annoying, but it's nothing compared to the pigmentation and feeling of these lip products!

Burberry Lip Cover : Product Review

Welcome to the world of luxury cosmetics! Today, I'm going to be reviewing a high end lipstick for you guys; Burberry Lip Cover in No. 33 Oxblood. I bought this after I saw swatches of it on Reddit and I fell head over heels for the color. Also, burgundy/dark raspberry/wine colored anything is my favorite and Oxblood is probably the coolest way to describe the color (you know, if you're morbid, like me). I bought this from Burberry directly since I couldn't seem to find it through any other retailer, but it's fine because they offer free shipping on any purchase. AND, they're so fancy that you have to sign for the package when it comes... which means I had to take a trip to UPS to go pick it up.

For the high end world, this lipstick isn't that much coming, it comes in at $30, but compared to most mid-end, that's still fairly expensive. For example, Givenchy lipsticks are $36 and Urban Decay lipsticks are $22; so it's smack dab in the middle. As you can see above, the bullet comes with Burberry detailing all over it, but it doesn't affect the usability at all (similar to how the RiRi Hearts MAC lipsticks have her signature on them). The packaging is very prone to fingerprints which is going to drive me insane, but I already knew this since I own a mini Burberry lipstick. One of the coolest things about the packaging though is that if you put the lid on backward or sideways, it flips itself around (with magnets, I assume) so that it's always in the right spot.

So, that's all fine and good, but how does it actually perform?

So here it is when I first applied it. Do you notice that it looks a bit streaky in the top photo? Yeah, ignore that. My lips get insanely chapped and peel if I don't put Vaseline over them, so I have to put that under any lipstick, regardless of brand. What does that mean? It means when I apply lipsticks, they have a tendency to get streaky until I rub my lips together. So, can you guess when I took that picture? Yeah, before I rubbed my lips together. I want to clarify right now that the lipstick doesn't apply patchy or streaky,  it's just my stupid lips and the Vaseline. 

Aside from all of that, it applies really nicely and very opaquely; no dragging or patchiness. I didn't use a lip liner, because I feel like that's cheating when you are testing out a lipstick. I applied this at about 9:30 a.m. before I came into work.

And here it is at 3:00 p.m. after eating two Special K bars, an applesauce, a sandwich, a string cheese, a granola bar and drinking water (although, the water does come out of a Camelbak). I think you can see the the color has not faded much at all after a lot of food and 5 1/2 hours of wear. In fact, for all of that activity, it looks pretty damn good. I can see some dead skin flaking up and there is a small amount of patchiness to the lipstick, but nothing astronomical and nothing that you would notice unless you were really, really, oddly close to my lips. 

I do, however, have two complaints about this lipstick and they're both rather small. The first is the smell, which I unfortunately hate. I don't quite know what this lipstick smells like, but it makes me think of something floral or old-lady esque. Chanel cosmetics smell like old lady rose perfume to me and this doesn't quite smell like that, but it's somewhere along the same lines. It's not overpowering though, so I can deal with that; I deal with Chanel's scent as well. The other thing is that this isn't the most moisturizing lipstick in the world and even though I put the Vasline down first, my lips were feeling a bit dry by the time I took the second set of photos. Burberry says that this lipstick is hydrating, but I think I'm going to call bull on that one.

Final Verdict: I'd buy this again in a heart beat. I love the color and the staying power is awesome. Unfortunately, my dog attacked me shortly after and licked my lipstick off, but if he hadn't, I assume that this lipstick would have been fairly decent looking for a full 8 hours. And even if it couldn't perform that long, 5 1/2 hours including breakfast and lunch is pretty damn good. Yes, this lipstick is $30, but I think that this shade is fairly unique and the formula is good. Buy it if you have the pennies and want a great fall lipstick!

Soft Matte Lip Cream :Product Review

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you might have seen one or two of these pop up in my tutorials. The NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream was one of the very first NYX products that I ever bought and I am so happy that I've been adding to my collection since. To see swatches and find out why I like these so much, keep reading!

Stila Sale : Haul

I feel like I talked about this haul endlessly, but honestly, I got such a good deal on it all, that I can't help but talk about it. If you follow me on Facebook, then you probably know that I posted the promo code for this sale and that it was valid for 50% off your purchase. Well, I somehow lucked into something else and Stila honored it. To find out all the products that I got and what my super special discount was, keep reading!

It's a Giveaway!

It's time for another giveaway! I hit 75 fans on my Facebook page and I'm thiiiis close to being at 10,000 page views, so it seemed like the perfect time to do a spring giveaway. There is more than just nail polish involved in this giveaway and there will be multiple winners, so keep reading to find out how to enter!

Everyday Look Twisted : Tutorial

 

Let me clarify what I mean by an everyday look twisted; an everyday look is generally very laid back and simple to do but this look, while very simple looking, takes a bit longer and is a bit more spruced up. It can definitely pass as something minimal, but it's much more polished than what I would do everyday. Keep ready to find out more about this look and how to achieve it.

Spring Lip Colors : Real Talk

It's finally spring! While it doesn't really feel like it here (we have snow in the forecast for the next four days, hooray...), it means that bright lip colors are on the horizon and that makes me happy. This is just a quick guide to some of my favorite bright and more subdued spring lip colors. I have glosses, sheer lip colors, and lipsticks, so there's something for everyone. Keep reading to see some of my picks!

Wet n Wild Megalast Liquid Lipstick : Regrets

 

I had read some bad reviews of this product, but I needed to try it out for myself and... now I wish I hadn't. I did get this for $1.99, so it's not a big loss of money that I'm mourning, it's the texture of my lips that I mourn. There are many reasons why this lipstick is being dubbed as an "epic" fail, so keep reading to find out why.

J. Cat Beauty : Lip Product Reviews

If you guys have not ever heard of J. Cat Beauty, I would not be surprised. They are a fairly new cosmetics company, but I'm thinking that they're going to end up making quite a big splash in the world of affordable cosmetics. I got in contact with them a few weeks ago and they were kind enough to send me* several of their products to try out and after having used them quite a few times, I feel like I can tell you guys about them. Keep reading to find out more about J. Cat's Fantabulous Lipsticks and Eternal Shine Lip Glazes.

p.s. I received a few other products from them as well and will be reviewing them in the next week!

L'Oréal Colour Riche Caresse : Product Review

You guys, this snow stuff is throwing everything off and I had to shovel... and go sledding. Anyway, back to posting! For the next product review of this week, we have a lipstick that I bought several months ago. I have used this many many times, so I feel fairly well qualified to tell you all about this lipstick. Keep reading to find out more!

Red Lips : Tutorial

The red lip. It's a classic look that is can be used for practically any occasion. For this tutorial, I'll show you two different methods to achieve a red lip. The first look is for a more traditional red lip while the second tutorial (which only requires three steps) is for a more modern red lip. Keep reading for more on how to achieve these two looks.

Weekend Round Up

Weekend Roundup is simply a post to wrap up the week and let you guys know about new things I've picked up and am excited to use. This weeks roundup has two drugstore products and one high end product. Click though for more info!

Color Whisper : Product Review

Color Whisper : Maybelline

I always get excited when I see that the drugstores are getting new product and I saw new end displays at Target about two weeks ago. The first item that caught my attention was the new Maybelline Color Whisper. I am a huge fan of the Revlon Colorburst Lip Butters and these looked similar, so I thought I should pick some up.