Quickie Review and Swatches: Lime Crime Velvetine in Pink Velvet

 God damnit, I can’t resist the Velvetines*. Bold matte colours that don’t budge an inch are pretty much my bag. Even when I'm wizened and old, I want to be wearing this sort of slap.  Luckily for us makeup lovers, more and more of these ‘velvet’ products are popping up on the scene, including more budget friendly options. which is fab as the Velvetines sell out pretty often and can be harder to get hold of if you don’t live in the US.

 

 

Oooh, isn’t that lovely? Super bright! For those of you who haven’t used this type of product before, it’s a liquid lipstick that goes on wet and dries very quickly into a budge-proof matte product. And these things really *are* budge proof! If you want a lip colour and are planning on eating, light snogging, swimming (?!) or are going to be without a chance to touch up, these are going to see you through the day. I don't find these that drying for a matte, but I'd recommend prepping your lips beforehand, as I would with all matte lipsticks.

 

 

This is a terrible picture that I took when I was dicking about with my new camera, but as you can tell, this is from Christmas Day. I’d eaten a LOT of food at that point, and it’s still clinging on for dear life. If you need a colour that isn’t going anywhere, this will tick the box. Luckily removal has never been a pain in the arse for me, but an oil based lip remover (or like, pesto) will take it straight off if you're having trouble.

 

 

As per previous offerings, the product comes in a frosted glass effect tube with a doefoot applicator but they’ve changed the design on the lid. I don’t know if the rose design is going to be rolled out across all the colours or just for this shade, but I have to say I prefer the older design which I think is very sweet.

 

In the UK, Velvetines are £13.50 from lovemakeup.

 

Do you like this sort of lip product? What’s your favourite bright pink?

 

* I don't like the way the company owner or the company conducts themselves in lots of ways, but if I use a product from a company I can't really let myself be affected by that, or I shouldn't have bought it in the first place really should I? I’d always recommend Googling any new company you buy from, particularly if you like to support small businesses or like to use vegan/cruelty free products.

No Mirror Makeup Challenge!

It is what it says on the tin…. do your makeup with no mirror, film it, allow people to laugh. It was actually pretty horrible to do, some things feel very strange indeed and the heightened risk of poking yourself in the eye wasn’t fun either! However, I think I did pretty well! I did go easy on myself and choose my simplest, everyday look to do though.

 

See how I got on in the video!

Oh god….

 

 

 

Eeeeee… it looks okay if you look at it really quickly and then look away, haha! I was surprised at my lips, I think they went pretty well except I overdrew the cupids bow a lot on my right hand side. My brows are just awful though!

 

If any of you odd people want to know what I used, the eyes are the MUA Undress Me Too palette, brows are Rimmel Hazel pencil, cheeks are Sleek Suede and Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter (LE 2012) and lips are Lime Crime Red Velvet.

 

Have you done this? Link me below!

Quickie Review: Lime Crime Velvetine in Suedeberry.

A lot of people have been going nuts over Lime Crime Velvetines, with them selling out left, right and centre. I found one on a UK website and curiosity got the better of me!*



The packaging is very, very pretty. I can see the frosted glass getting scuffed up pretty quickly but I like that it reflects that the product itself is matte. The lilac and red colouring is dead cute, and it has a unicorn on the cap of which I cannot but approve! It would make a pretty gift, I think. Here’s what the brand have to say about the product itself:

To me that sounds like a recipe for Sahara lips! I like a matte lipstick, but one that has tips to remove it on the packaging made me really worried these were going to be ridiculously drying. At least I can’t say I wasn’t warned, I guess.
I didn’t want to use a lip liner while I was testing it, but the swatches here are applied with a lip brush. I found it hard to get the colour to look smooth and not streaky just using the doefoot applicator. I applied one coat with a lip brush to get the shape, and then reapplied to get the depth of colour. The product is pigmented enough that one coat will certainly do the trick but I can’t get application nice using one coat. I don’t see this as a problem as I have small lip brushes I use often for lots of products anyway.

Isn’t it pretty? It’s less of a pinky coral than I thought from website swatches, but as I’m an orange fan I don’t mind at all. Lime Crime do have a history of really inaccurate website swatches so googling swatches of any of their products is a good idea. The product itself  goes on like a liquid and dries very matte very quickly. It really is super matte and I’m not sure if that looks great on me or not yet!

Here’s a shot of me wearing it after eight hours of wear. I had one touch-up after lunch, but that was it. It doesn’t look amazing, but the base of colour is certainly still there and I don’t have an ugly ring of colour on my lips, or any icky goopy buildup on the ‘waterline’ of the lip either like you can get with some products.

Whether you the way this wears or not or not is going to be pretty personal – I don’t like it as I’d prefer to apply fresh rather than touch up as I think the result looks better, and it’s really tough to actually remove this product. There’s no way you’re going to remove this on the go! I’m impressed with how much is actually left on my lips though, as I did notice a bit of transfer throughout the day on to cups/boyfriend. I also wore it the night before the application above, where it survived a workout (yes, I am that guy), a bit of a snog and dinner. In the shower afterwards it went smudgy – you really do need a remover for it. Despite the fact that it’s so long lasting, it’s not actually hideously drying on the lips. It didn’t get to the point where I felt I HAD to take it off. If I’m totally honest, I found it less drying than a MAC matte which wears for about the same time on me (with a touch-up).

Overall, regardless of the fact I don’t think Lime Crime are all that, I really like the product and would consider the other shade. I bought this from Cute Cosmetics for £11.50

*I know a lot of you aren’t Lime Crime fans, and I’m not overly enamoured with them as a brand either. While I really wanted to try this particular product, I know a lot of people choose not to shop from them and I’d really, really recommend Googling them if you’re not sure.

Confused (a bit of a serious post!)

Recently, a friend sent me a Lime Crime lipstick.

Lime Crime ‘Mint to Be.’

I try to keep drama off my blog – I don’t like to be incendiary, or to perpetuate drama when I could be swatching pretties -  so you might not know that I don’t support Lime Crime. It would take something very special for me to part with my money for one of their products. I find their ethics questionable over and over again. But god dammit, I *love* this lipstick.

I really like it even though a mint green is not all that unique…

I made this colour with Sleek Cloud 9 pout paint and a green Fyrinnae pigment.

…and it’s very expensive. However, if it wasn’t from a company I have so many negative preconceptions about, honestly, I would buy more. The forumla and pigmentation for a difficult colour like that were much better than I was expecting.

Now, I’m not going to start showering dodgy companies with my money. I have better places to spend it.  But this got me thinking - I’m sure a lot of us have “morals” regarding makeup. I certainly do, even though I’m sure I buy things which are much worse than buying from someone who I think is a bad or shady person. I’m sure a lot of my food and clothing is unethically produced, for example, so why do I have such strong feelings about makeup? Well, aside from the fact it's something I am passionate about, personally I think that as a lot of makeup companies have a ‘face,’ it’s easier to direct anger at someone when something goes tits-up, there is often a culpable person. Also, if that someone does something really idiotic or cruel, it’s usually easier for us to find out as they are the face of the brand and will have lots of social media presence. Anyway, my questions are thus:

• Are there companies you boycott?
• What would it take to make you stop buying from a company?
• If something was interesting/pretty/unique enough, would you buy it even if you’d sworn to boycott.
• If you bought something from a potentially controversial company, would you lie about wearing it on your blog? (I.e., say it was from another brand, forget to mention the colour?)

Do I  boycott certain companies? Yes.

Lying about ingredients/unsafe ingredients, scamming, harrassment/bullying and repeatedly poor customer service are some reasons why I wouldn’t buy from a company.

Would I buy from them anyway if I *really* wanted something? Yes. In all honesty, if it was something I really wanted and couldn't get elsewhere, I would.  As for the last one, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to encourage someone to buy from someone I had a problem with, but  on the other hand, my problems with a company may not be the same as someone else’s, so why should I enforce that opinion? I don't think I'll ever buy from certain companies, but if someone I knew wanted it as a gift..?

What say you? I’m genuinely just interested, so please be nice to each other in the comments box!

While I'm not intending this to be a Lime Crime bashing post, I do think Mai's recent posts here and here are ones that ought to be read, if only just as an example of something that may turn someone off of a company.

Back to pretties tomorrow!