Quickie Review: VIVO Matte Lipsticks

Last but not least in my VIVO-rama are their matte lipsticks! I love a matte lipstick so when VIVO sent me three shades to try I ripped the tops off and got swatching! I really like the packaging for these – the tubes taper off to one side instead of being a normal round tube. I like little quirks like this, as it makes it easier to find colours I want in my carefully organised storage system massive bucket of lipsticks.

‘Pink Sweetie’

‘Tangtastic’

‘Pucker Red’

L-R: Pink Sweetie, Tangtastic, Pucker Red. Eyes are VIVO Dreamy Palette.

 

Surprisingly, I really, really like Pink Sweetie! It’s not a colour family I ever really reach for, but I do like it and think it would suit a 60’s look wonderfully and I can see myself using Tangtastic for ombre lips using other orange or red colours or with a really sparkly gloss over the top, or for work. If you get one out of the bunch though, it’s gotta be Pucker Red! It’s a gorgeous classic shade and I think it’d suit a whole bunch of skintones. Something about it reminds me of how your lips look when you’ve eaten ice lollies.

The formula of these is kind of strange for matte lipsticks – they are indeed matte but unlike a lot of other matte formulas, they’re quite thin. I think this is a good thing – a lot of matte lipsticks can feel clumpy and drag on the lips but these don’t. They’re not super matte like some other lipsticks can be either, which depending on your preferences could be good or bad. I’m just happy there are such things as comfortable, pigmented matte lipsticks available for a couple of squids.

 

Personally I hope the shade range expands (there’s also a bright pink in the range) but if you’re after a gorgeous red for party season (and fancy a fair whack of change from a tenner to boot!) these are available from VIVO for £1.99.

 

As always where products are sent to me, opinions are my own.

Quickie Review and LOTD: Vivo Colour Block Eye Palette in Dreamy

Another palette from Vivo today! A contrast to the Show Me The Money! palette, Dreamy is full of lovely neutrals. I believe this is the same as the MUA Undress Me palette, which handily I don’t have! One of many alternatives to the Urban Decay Naked palettes that have popped up over the last year or so, I was really keen to try this one out.

All swatches over bare skin.

Top Row: Starry, Clay, Neutral, Eternity
Middle Row: Night, Dreamy, Luxe, Dove
Bottom Row: Stone, Tease, Sand, Twinkle

Again, not bad for bare skin, hey? Lovely pigmentation! My favourite here is definitely Clay, which I know I will use up right away as I always do when I have this type of colour in a palette – its just a perfect crease colour and I love to use this type of shade to blend out blacks and darker brows. It’s really nice quality for a matte, too! Stone is a very beautiful, cool pale taupe colour which I’ve been loving as a wash all over the lid for work. I love how rich Twinkle looks as well - a pretty damn nice selection of neutrals here, I must say!

Eye: VIVO Clay in crease, Tease all over lid and lower lashline with Stone in the centre, Night in the crease and Neutral to highlight inner corner and browbone.
Cheeks: Bourjois Delice de Poudre no 52, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter.
Lips: VIVO matte lipstick in Pucker Red

Eyes: VIVO Twinkle and Starry on the lid, Tease and Night on outer corner and lower lashline, Sand on brow and inner corner.
Cheeks: Bourjois Rose D’Or
Lips: VIVO Colour Stain in Sweet Dreams (sheerly applied)

What else can I say other than this is a really nice neutral palette?  Two lovely highlight shades, some pretty taupes, a good matte black and a good blending colour for £3.99? If you don’t have a good neutral palette in your life, go and get this one. You won’t be sorry. I know a lot of people are ‘allergic’ to neutrals, and I used to be one of them, but seriously, if you don’t have a neutral palette, I’d pick this up as it’s also going to be a lovely accompaniment to the brights in your collection – Twinkle with a bright blue perhaps? Stone with a deep mossy green? Clay to blend out a bright purple?

What’s your favourite neutral palette or shade?

Quickie Review and LOTD: Vivo Colour Block Eye Palette in Show Me The Money

If you caught my post on the Vivo Colour Stain Lip Crayons, you’ll have seen Vivo sent me a few goodies to play with, including this lovely bright palette! I was really keen when it got to the weekend and it mean I could play with some colour!

I really like how these palette are laid out – there aren’t many square-panned palettes about on the high street so I like that it’s a little bit different. I also think it looks nicer as there’s less black/plastic and more of the colours themselves showing.

Some of you probably know that VIVO are made by the same company that make MUA, and I believe some products are the same but packaged differently. This looks very similar to the Poptastic palette (which I don’t own) but I believe it has one more purple shade. I could be wrong!

All swatched on bare skin.
Top row: Serene, Summer, Crush, Hot
Middle row: Chill, Night Sky, Sizzle, Stormy
Bottom row: Breeze, Sunrise, Wave, Calm

Not bad for bare skin, eh? I wasn’t really sure why there was only one matte shade in the palette (Breeze) as the rest are super shimmery.  Summer appears very green-toned here but it’s actually a light, cool gold that would make a pretty highlight.  Crush and Night Sky have a a blue shift to them that I couldn’t quite capture on camera either. Overall it’s a very pretty  collection of jewel tones and I particularly like Crush, Serene, Wave, and suprisingly for me, Hot. I don’t tend to reach for pink shadows at all and can only think of one other in my whole collection that I love, so for me to want to put Hot on right away really says something!

Let’s try some looks, shall we?

Pink/purple look: Hot all over the lid, Sunrise on outer lid, Chill on inner corner. Serene in crease and on lower lashline over a grey liner. Crush on outer V with a touch of matte black (from another VIVO palette), touch of matte skintone on the brow (also from another VIVO palette)
Green look: Wave all over the lid on the bottom lashline, Summer dabbed in the middle of the lid blended out with Sizzle
Purple look: Lips are Sleek Matte Me in Fandango Purple with Revlon Embellished over the top. Green look: Lips are Vivo Wide Awake

These looks are only applied over a primer and not a cream base as I know from experience these shimmery types of shades need a careful touch with blending and adding a cream base can make it all a bit of a pain to deal with. Having had a play though, I really like this palette and I’m kind of in love with the green look I did as it was so simple but I think really pops! Overall I really have no complaints with this palette. While I think all bright palettes would be more useable with a matte black or brown and a highlight shade in them, that’s beside the point a little bit really I suppose (and VIVO also have some neutral palettes, one of which I’ll be posting about soon!). I really like the choice of colours and think you could wear the majority of them with each other which is nice. With Halloween coming up, I think this could also be nice if you were going as a fairy, mermaid or Barbie!

Show Me The Money costs £3.99 and is available from vivocometics.co.uk

 

As always, where products are sent to me all views are still entirely my own.

Quickie Review and Swatches: VIVO Colour Stain Lip Crayons

Once again, here’s a lip trend I seem to have missed the first time around! A little while ago everyone was cooing over this sort of style of twist-up lip crayons while I somehow managed to remain oblivious, so when Vivo Cosmetics very kindly sent me a few shades I was very interested to test them out indeed!

Much like the Clinique Chubby Sticks, these are nicely chunky twist-up pencils, with the packaging corresponding to the colour inside which I think is cute.

L-R: Miss Independent, Thing Called Love, Sweet Dreams, Wide Awake

‘Thing Called Love’ (left) reminded me of Viva Glam Cyndi (right) and I excitedly went to grab it to see if it was a dupe. As you can see VGC is less sheer and more pink, so not a dupe but certainly in the same family.

Wearing Sweet Dreams with Fyrinnae Equality on the lid, Kiko Color Explosion Multi Tone Blush in Active Mauve.

Overall, I really like these! I’m always on the lookout for sheerer lip products now I have a job where I have to be more conservative, and Thing Called Love is going straight in my handbag for work, it's that pretty! Sweet Dreams is a close second and a nice way to dip your toe into the berry trend for autumn if you're shy of all the vampy colours around at the moment. I also love that all the shades are named after songs and I’ve had Katy Perry stuck in my head all day!

I do think the name of the product is slightly misleading as I only found Sweet Dreams to stain and that was only a light stain. They’re certainly more of a tinted lipbalm than a stain and they’re actually pretty moisturizing – I’ve tried products like this that aren’t anything special in the moisturizing stakes despite being labelled a balm (*coughpinkBabylipscough*). The wear on these is reasonable – two or three hours which for this type of product is pretty decent – they’re not so balmy or glossy they’re going to slide right off but you’ll certainly need to keep it in your bag for applying after eating and drinking. They have a light minty scent not dissimilar to the OCC Lip Tars, but it fades on initial application.

These bad boys cost £3.99 and are available from vivocosmetics.co.uk where they have free worldwide shipping which I think is pretty good!

As always, where products are sent to me all views are still entirely my own.