Ettusais Lip essence SPF18 (

Ettusais Lip essence SPF18 is one of Ettusais star product over the years, you will often see advertising of it associated with 'baby lips', like the below:

It is also often ranked in the top lip treatment products on various beauty magazines, e.g. 2010 cosme award. It is often released in various limited edition packagings and there are also tube versions of this.

I finally decided to give it a try- it has SPF 18 PA+++, comes in a cute pink tube:

It contains 10grams of product and retails for 1200 Yen, which is about 10USD but sometimes on sale so you can find it below 10 USD quite often.

Has a nice slanted tube that doesn't have jagged finish so you can directly apply on lips.

Content is a nice gel consistency, slightly pink but comes up pretty much clear on lips.

On skin :

smeared out:

Bare lips:

After application:

I quite like the consistency, it's between a gel and a light oil/ gloss, but doesn't feel oily or really sticky. there's a minimal tackiness which is far less than most lipglosses out there.

Unscented and have no taste either. 

Now on the effect, I have really sensitive lips so I really prefer lip treatments to be non irritating and as moisturising as possible. It offers a consistent hydration, and lasts for a good few hours, has a lovely finish (slightly glossy but not oily looking), and best of all, layers well underneath a lipstick despite the apparent glossy finish. It makes an excellent lip primer at least on my Chanels or mac lipsticks.

It doesn't really have 'plumping' effect but because of its moisturising property and that slight glossiness, it does make lip lines appear less obvious.

Overall it's 4/5. I really like how it has SPF but doesn't have that standard SPF taste or scent to it. The generous 10g size more than justifies the price tag as well.

Not my best lipbalms but I would be happy to use this up.

Dior Addict Lipstick/ Extreme Lipstick 762 Paris 578 Diorkiss 554 It Pink , 476 Plaza 366 Pink Icon pictures and quick review

Continuing on my quest to at least release as many photos with quick review as possible given my slowness with swatches in general =P

#762 Paris, 578 Diorkiss and 554 It Pink are all from the "Dior Addict" lipstick lines, which are releases from 2011- they feature slightly new packaging and also, many new shades.

Personally I do not find the formulation too different to previous Dior lines, and you can see base on the colors below they do release a lot of similar colors. (therefore I wouldn't worry about trying to track down particular shades given between different Dior lines, it's always repeated or similar dupes are released).

Group pictures in same order as above, from left to right is 762,578,554,476,366.

#476 Plaza is a cool toned medium pink, it's more pigmented than #554 It Pink and more 'barbie' pink. It can still be applied sheerly.

#366 Pink Icon is a more muted sheer pink, probably the lightest and most wearable out of all 5 shades I have. It also seems slightly more 'creamy' than other shades.

762 Paris is a sheer medium pink, it applies sheerer than in the tube.

578 Diorkiss is a bright medium rose pink. It's more vibrant than 762 Paris.

554 It Pink is a bright sheer pink- it's like a muted fuschia on lips but still wearable and can be applied sheerly for a subtle, office friendly shade.

The boxes for Dior Addict lipsticks look like below- tube packaging also like below.

personally I would really like Dior to start printing the color codes in a more obvious way on the body of the lipsticks, because the color codes are on caps at the moment and it's really easy to mix them up, not to mention very hard to find the shade you are looking for (especially when I'm probably looking at a collection of 10+ Dior lipsticks over the years all in similar packaging easily!).

MAC for Iris Apfel Lipsticks Pink Pigeon Morange Flamingo pictures/ quick review

Here are some of MAC's newish lipsticks from Iris apfel collection.

I have a bunch of lipsticks I haven't got around to swatch, so I thought I should do a few close up pictures for people who are looking for just the lipsticks first.

From left to right is Morange, Flamingo and Pink Pigeon.

From top to bottom is Pink pigeon, Flamingo and Morange.

Corresponding color names/ codes (Never understood how to read these codes).

Morange is quite difficult to pull off since it's almost a neon bright orange. Rather creamy and opaque (given it's an amplified creme finish). Flamingo is a lustre finish and the prettiest of them all, it's a bit of a coral pink on me with decent color payoff.

Pink pigeon is bright magenta- I found it quite hard to pull off again, unless applied really sheerly and topped with a gloss.

Overall would love to see flamingo being brought back as part of a permanent collection- the other two are really a bit too bold colors for me.

MAC The Faerie Glen Lustre Lipstick (Tartan Tale collection) review/ swatch

MAC The Faerie Glen lipstick was a limited edition shade from the Tartan Tale collection.

In the tube it looks like a pink nude, but without being too beige nude, and overall creamy finish looking. 

Swatch below, on the right it's about two swipes and on left about 4 swipes. You can see it transforms to same color as the tube- a pinkish nude. It's creamy and even though it's a lustre finish, it's rather pigmented and quite 'creamy' for a lustre lipstick. There's no shimmers.

Lips with just lipbalm below:

After about two swipes of the Faerie Glen lipstick, no lip brush was used. You can see it gives great even color coverage. I do find that your lips will need to be well primed because it's a rather creamy shade, it can look uneven or streaky especially on any flakies. I found this lipstick stays moderately glossy, it's not super moisturising but nothing a good lipbalm can't fix.

In real life it could be the undertone of my natural lips but I found the color turned more pink-nude-peach, like there's an apricot peach tone in real life.

Another swatch:

Overall it's a my lips but slightly more nude color. It's not my favorite lipstick out there because I believe a lot of Japanese lipsticks deliver a more glossy finish and even more "my lips but better" shades. This lipstick is just a tad too 'creamy' for me as I prefer my lipsticks to have a sheer yet pigmented finish - i.e. it won't look a bit too opaque and unnatural on the lips. This one is about as creamy as I'd like my lipsticks to be.

Overall 3.5/5. It's limited edition but not really worth tracking down for or paying in excess of retail in my books.

The Body Shop Born Lippy Lychee Shimmer Lip Balm (lipstick) review/ swatch

Sorry I've been slow with posting- work is crazily busy so obviously my retail therapy has in fact increased dramatically over this period but I just haven't had time to take photos or do reviews.

Here's a quick one- the Body Shop Born Lippy. It has various flavors and they are meant to be tinted lipbalms with shimmers. Other flavors include like pomegranate (which has a red tint). Initially I was really just fascinated by the lychee scent as I love lychee flavors, plus I thought this looked like an untinted color so it would work as a lipbalm.

Comes in a pale pink plastic tube, average size as normal lipbalms, content is 5g. 

Here's what it looks like- clear balmy texture with silvery/ white shimmers.

Swatch- I knew I wasn't going to like this as soon as I saw the swatch, it's like Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer all over again!  It's just a clear balm with LOADS of silvery and white shimmers. The shimmers are smaller than glitters but because of the silvery base it's very obvious. Far more obvious than my photos seem.

Here's bare lips, unmoisturised.

 Here's after 1 quick swipe- you will notice the overwhelming amount of white and silvery shimmers that also migrate off the edge. In fact it makes me look purple lipped and sick in real life. The picture also doesn't quite depict this lipbalm applying very unevenly in real life.

Overall 0 out of 5. I cannot really think of ways to salvage this. It does have an artificial lychee lolly sort of scent and taste slightly sweet. I mean unless I go to the trouble of using this first then apply a darker lipgloss/lipstick, I really don't see how this could work for most people with remotely pigmented lips.