Illamasqua Intense Lipglosses

Illamasqua are well known for their bold campaigns and fearless colour choices in their products and in my opinion, nothing embodies that view of the brand more than their Intense Lipglosses. I own eight of these beauties and I thought I would share just how gorgeous they are!

L-R: Boost, Touch, Shoot, Wanderlust, Violate, Galactic.

 

 

 

This is Shoot – isn’t she gorgeous? This is a newer addition to my little collection and I bought her for shoots, so I haven’t really worn her yet. She’s almost totally opaque, but due to the unusual colour I would recommend wearing a green eyeliner on the lips so if the colour moves around, you won’t see any pink underneath from your natural lip (which can really ruin the look of a green shade!)

 

This is Touch, from the 2014 I’m The One collection for Valentines Day. Not as unique as some of the Intense Lipglosses but certainly gorgeous! This has a lovely shimmer to it.

 

This is Boost – applied alone, and over a deep brown liner. Don’t you just love a duochrome? People went nuts for Boost when it was released and for good reason – it’s beautiful! This is fairly sheer for an Intense Lipgloss which tend to be thicker, but I suppose the effect is quite intense! I love the versatility of this shade.

 

 

 

Next up is Violate, one of my favourite Illamasqua products ever. I think this shade is really glamorous, and layered over a red is actually beautifully wearable. This isn’t fully opaque but you can get away with wearing it on your own.

 

 

From the Creator collection, this is Wanderlust. I LOVE this shade – if you like the brown shades of the 90’s revival that’s been going on in the makeup world, this is a really nice, different addition to that sort of trend. I can’t wait to use this shade on a model with deeper skin. And on a model with pale, pale skin. I just love it!

 

 

This is Galactic – very cool, but very strange! It doesn’t seem to have a base colour and seems to be made up of silver particles - if you click to see a bigger picture, you can see what I mean. This means it's hard to get a crisp line, but it's worth the work.

 

 

This is, Absorb. Alone, it’s.. well, on me it’s quite frankly nasty and a little um, biological, but it’s a great mixing shade, so I’ve kept it hanging around! Again, pigmented and glossy.

I *think* this may be Frenzy, but the label has worn off of this one so I’m not too sure. Sorry! However, I wanted to include it to show you again how lovely and pigmented these glosses are.

So there you are, thems my babies! The Intense Lipglosses do vary – some are sheerer than others, some have more of a creme finish for example – but on they whole they tend to be very pigmented, slightly thicker lipglosses that are nonetheless comfortable to wear and with fairly decent staying power. Out of these, Boost is probably the one I have to reapply most often. At £14.50, they’re certainly not the cheapest lipglosses on the market but if you want an unusual colour, I really don’t think you’ll find better quality. The only negative thing about these is that since they changed the packaging, sometimes the brushes in them are splayed which is very frustrating. However, because of the pigmentation of these glosses, you may wish to apply them with your favourite lip brush anyway.

Facade, Gender, Stranger and Absorb are next on my list. Do you have any of this range?

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.

In which I try lip art I don’t think will catch on.

I quite enjoy doing lip art – lips are a less versatile canvas than your eyes, in my opinion, and having to do them on an open mouth presents all sorts of challenges. I’ve been doing a lot of it recently and uh, here are a couple of attempts that don’t look so good!

Furry Lips:

Furry nails are all the rage, apparently, so naturally I picked up some of the flocking powder to try. Having used nail materials successfully on my lips in the past, I thought this might work out nicely. As you can see, it did not.

Weird Lip Liner:

I have very mixed views on this one. Artistically, I really like it. As a small photograph, it looks good. It’s copied from the makeup from the recent Vivienne Westwood Red Label show at LFW, where Val Garland was the makeup artist. This lip look specifically was only on one of the models – some lips were half painted, some were outlined in white, some were fully outlined, but only half coloured in. I loved that whole aesthetic but yes, it’s not a look I’m going to be wearing out on the town anytime soon!

Tried anything that didn’t work quite so well recently?

Quickie Review: Rockalily lipstick in Mae Hem

Mae West once said ‘I generally avoid temptaion unless I can’t resist it,’ a fitting quote for this blog post! I fell utterly in love with this limited edition Rockalily lipstick at the ZOMG! bloggers bash and knew I had to have it. It’s limited edition, so I snapped it up as soon as it came online. (I broke my no-buy without even thinking about it until afterwards, I feel awful!)

I didn’t take another picture of the lovely packaging, but you can see it here.

 

Eyes: MoonRabbit Cosmetics Groundhog Day Collection.
Cheeks: MAC Style, Benefit 10.
Lips: Rockalily Mae Hem.

It’s a beautiful bright matte orange-red  - somewhat similar to MAC Lady Danger, but with more of a pinky undertone, perhaps. It doesn’t dry down to a matte finish immediately – a quick blot will sort that out if it bothers you - but it’s one of the more comfortable mattes I’ve ever worn.

Rockalily is famous for its fast delivery, which is excellent for when you need a lipstick fix! They are – to me at least – pretty bloody expensive at £14 each, and they’re certainly a bit of a treat for me rather than a regular lippy purchase. I think in my old age I have enough lipstick that I don’t mind forking out for one I really want, as opposed to buying 8,000 cheaper ones. I digress. The quality is fantastic and the colours are gorgeous, if not super unique. I’m a fan at any rate – Hot Rod Red is next on my list when I have a bit of pocket money to spare.