Tuesday 6 September 2011

No. 7 Stay Perfect Lip Lacquer in 25 Plumberry

I got a couple of No. 7 £5 off vouchers this month so I decided to spend one of them on a new lipstick.  I was going to go for yet another neutral shade but luckily for me I happened to be with a friend at the time and she advised me to try a shade that was a bit different to the normal browns that I go for and I ended up coming home with this:

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It’s a Stay Perfect Lip Lacquer which is a double ended product, one end being a long lasting colour that you paint on and the other end being a gloss that can be worn alone or popped on top of the lip colour for extra shine and moisture. 

The lip colour has a doe foot applicator while the gloss comes with a brush.  I have to admit that I’m not the hugest fan of the doe foot applicator as I find that you have to be careful to get an even application of colour and create the shape that you want.  If you wanted to be really accurate you should probably use this in conjunction with a lip pencil but that’s just so long winded – not great if you’re rushing about in the morning or if, like me, you often end up applying your lipstick on the bus!  I do like the brush that the gloss comes with though, which is actually pretty good at applying the gloss.

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Here’s a quick swatch on the back of my hand to show the lip colour alone, lip gloss alone, and gloss on top of the lip colour.  Both photos were taken in natural light w/o a flash, I just took them from different angles to capture the shine.

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I was a bit surprised by the colour of the gloss the fist time I wore both it actually because it seems a bit light for the lip colour. If you put too much on it totally alters the colour of the lip colour, but in a weird way because in effect you’re wearing a gold over a berry colour so it ends up as some kind of in-betweeny shade which I didn’t really find flattering.  I’ve found that wiping one side of the brush before applying the gloss as well as spending a few seconds to really blend it over the lips helps.  However, I do love the gloss when worn alone and have a sneaking suspicion that I am going to run out of the gloss side of this product long before the lip paint…

Anyway this is how my lips looked when I applied the product this morning – in the top pic I’m just wearing the lip colour, and in the bottom pic I’m wearing some gloss on top.

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I really like the colour and think it’s the perfect half-way shade to ease me into the bold berry shades that hit the shops every autumn as I’ve been wearing nothing but neutrals this whole summer long.  I think the bottom pic illustrates a little bit what I was trying to describe with the gloss changing the colour – it looks much lighter and quite different.  The lip colour takes a few minutes to apply as the applicator is not the greatest and you have to wait for the paint to dry before applying the gloss otherwise it would smudge and leave you with patchy lips – not a great look.  It doesn’t dry out the lips too much though, which I have found with some other long lasting lip paint type products, which was good.

I went out late in the morning today and spent about 4h walking about, stopped to have a burger for lunch and later on a milkshake before finally rocking up back home about 6h later.  I reapplied the gloss once while I was out, but not the lip colour. Here’s how my lips had fared:

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To be honest I think that’s a pretty good performance!  The colour has faded away on the very inside of my lips, but it’s definitely mostly still there and that’s after having eaten a burger too!  When you eventually do want to remove this lip colour you can use an oil-based cleanser for the speediest removal, otherwise just work away at it for a bit longer with a creamy cleanser.

This product usually costs £10.50 which for the reasons I’ve outlined above I think is a bit overpriced.  However, if you have a No. 7 £5 off voucher then I would say it’s definitely worth picking up at £5.50 if you’re looking for a long lasting lipstick and you don’t mind the bit of extra effort that this requires to apply and remove.  I have a couple more vouchers so I might go pick up another few shades for me and my mum before the offer expires in fact.

Just before I go here’s a sneaky shot of my eye make-up today, which I created using a couple of colours from my Urban Decay 15 Year Anniversary Collection.  Just look at that blue – further evidence that Urban Decay are amongst the best for vibrant colour.

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