Revlon Lip Butters: Cherry Tart and Berry Smoothie (swatches)

Ok. So admittedly I may have come onto the Revlon Lip butter bandwagon a little late, but I absolutely LOVED my ‘butters’ in Cherry Tart and Berry Smoothie.

In the lipstick vs lipgloss debate, I would say that I prefer lipstick in how they are packaged and lipgloss in that they are slightly moisturizing. So to me, they are the best of both worlds - In that they are nicely pigmented lip balms that have the really classy packaging that you get with lipsticks.

Cherry Tart being a universally flattering red shade that applies quite sheer and so is ideal for me in that I like to wear makeup that makes me still look like ‘me’. Berry Smoothie gave me the perfect ‘me but better’ shade  - which with me making the huge mistake of applying it directly on my lips during a cold sore outbreak means that I have no choice but to throw it out…it’s also possible that I have made the same mistake with my Cherry Tart one as well…

That being said, I just found out at my local pharmacy today that the entire range is being discontinued, which is why I found all of them on sale. This leads to the question of what Revlon is coming out with that is a replacement for these lip butters, as I see no reason why you should discontinue a perfectly good thing…That being said, the one thing I do find fault with these lipsticks is the casing, ie that the lid 'sticks' to the base when you try to pull it off...

 

Treating Cold Sores and Lipstick

It is common knowledge that it is possible to catch cold sores from lipsticks and other lip stuff that has been used by someone who has had a cold core outbreak.

After consulting with a nurse, I also know now that once you have the cold sore, you cannot be reinfected ever again – kinda like chicken pox.

BUT there is one thing that I’ve learnt the hard way…although you cannot reinfect yourself by using a lipstick that you had used when you had a cold sore, using the lipstick again does cause you to have another outbreak. So now I have to throw out one of my favourite lipsticks.

This is not to say that you cannot wear lipstick when you have a cold sore though…

All you have to do, is apply your chosen lipstick with a Q-tip/cotton bud, but you cannot double dip the stick into the product.

NB. Re treatment for said cold sores, I tend to use a lot of the betadine products re health related issues as they seem to work quite well for me - both in the cream/gel formulation and dabbing the liquid onto the affected area using a cotton bud. In the course of the past week in trying to clear up my outbreak, I've found out (via a google search) that dabbing a little nail polish remover using a cotton bud n the afflicted area every hour or so, does in fact seem to work.

According to my bio chem buddy, the reasoning behind this is that acetone has the chemical ability to kill organic cells - which does explain why my fingers and nails feel so dry after I remove my nail polish.

Review: Lancome Juicy Tube - Moulin Rose

I remember the hype re Lancome’s Juicy Tubes lip glosses when they first came out back in high school, so for a long time I have been thinking about buying a tube for myself.

Well all I can say is this, they’re not worth the hype – at least for me.

As a general rule, I don’t much like squeeze tubes of lip gloss as the colour pigments don’t always mix well in the tube and so sometimes all you squeeze out is the clear liquid part of the gloss without the pigment. This tube was no exception when I first opened it.

Moulin Rose actually applies rather clear, with barely any colour. But the thing that brings to mind re disregarding the hype is the fact that the stuff is rather sticky on my lips and so if I’m not too careful, my hair sticks to it really easily. Or rather, it feels like I have slightly dried syrup on my lips, which is a feeling I kinda hate...

So for now, I’ve decided to hang onto it to use as last minute night time lip balm as I don’t really like throwing stuff out, and you can’t donate second-hand make-up.

Symbolic/Sentimental Things I’ve Given Away 1

 

Part of me has always has a soft spot for plaited/braided silver bracelets, ever since I first found one in early high school.

So I was really chuffed when I found this for sale at Oxfam when I was working there at my Christmas job.

Still…after a couple of months, it has become clear to me that I pretty much never wear bracelets, because I really don’t like the feel of things bumping against my wrists as I like to use my hands a lot.

So much as I loved this, I figure it would be better off given to charity so that someone can give it the love it truly deserves…

DIY Lip Gloss / Lip Balm - What Not To Do

So it turns out that after going through my lip stuff collection, I realized that I had quite a few lip glosses/balms that I loved for a while and then somehow couldn’t bring myself to use for one reason or another.

One of these was a red lip tint from my local health food store that is a perfect dupe of Clinique’s Black Honey lip tint but at only a fraction of the price.

I loved the product but hated the tube – it’s super thin and there was something wrong with the twist up function which meant that whenever I accidentally twisted up too much, I had to push it back down into the tube…

Another was a almost clear orange Anna Sui lip gloss that I’d gotten as a Xmas gift. It was ok to use, but a little on the sticky end, so I tended not to use it too much as I prefer a little colour on my lips…

So given that it turned out I’d used up quite a bit of each, I had the brainwave of combining the two….

Big mistake…

I’d scraped the lip tint into a container and then simply unscrewed the cap on the lip gloss and proceeded to put both in the microwave on high for 2 min so that they would both be of a nicely runny consistency so that I could mix them together easily.

The mistake was that I’d factored all this in with the idea that it should have worked…all except the fact that the ‘foot’ of the lip gloss cap was actually a very thin plastic ‘spatula’…it melted clean off in the heat and there was a pungent smell of burnt plastic coming from the microwave…the applicator was now not much more than a short stick….

So…lesson learnt, and from now on I will make sure to check the containers before trying anything like this again…

Symbolic/Sentimental Things I’ve Given Away

Every so often, it seems that I get this odd urge to get rid of stuff that have some symbolic/sentimental meaning to me...

For a while I had been obsessed with the idea of wearing pretty sparkly flowers in my hair, so I’d convinced my parents to get me this hairclip at a hotel gift shop during our last visit to China. I soon unfortunately learned the hard way that there was no way it could stay in my naturally perma-straight hair….

I fell in love with these earrings as soon as I saw them at Myer, prompting me to ask my mum to get them for me for my 23rd birthday. I wore them at my birthday party to go with the blue dress I’d also gotten as a gift from my parents. Pretty much never wore them after that as I’d reckoned without the fact that my ears get super sensitive to non pure-metal (gold and silver only) and uber-heavy earrings…

Gorgeous starry huggies that were a gift from my best friend – unfortunately, there was no way for her to tell what kind of metal they were made from….

I am a sucker for all things rose and all things Guess – so I jumped at the chance to buy these during the Xmas sales…again, they fell victim to the unreasonableness life presented with the blue earrings…

I used to be way obsessed with Angelina Jolie, sword, and crosses, so I jumped at the chance to buy this pendant when I saw it was on sale in a catalogue…

Was also really chuffed when I later found out that she wore a necklace just like it…

I pretty much wore it to death, and then realized it had been sitting around like a lonely lemon for 5 years, when I figured that it should go to someone who might actually give it the love it deserves…

Penelope Cruz / Maria Elena Ruby Ring

If you pay very close attention, in the scene where Maria Elena and Cristina are taking photos at the fountain in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, there is a red ring on Maria Elena’s right index finger which got a few seconds of screen-time.

After doing some searching, it turns out that there are a few decent pics around which show Penelope Cruz wearing the ring.

I thought initially that it was given to her by some jewellery store to wear in their ads…

But it turns out that she wears it a lot off duty too…

So a little more searching revealed that she always carries the ring with her as a sort of good luck charm as it was given to her by her grandmother.

N.B. On a personal note, I have a square ruby coloured silver ring of my own that I got as an impulse buy last Christmas, before I found out about Penelope’s…

It was also pretty neat when I remembered that Juniper, one of my favourite storybook characters from primary school, in the book Wise Child also loved rubies and was known for wearing a ruby ring…