Tarte Shining Stars: Slender Tampon

So I promised I’d post about some things I like, and this is that post! (you can refresh yourself on my review system here.)

I’ve been eyeballing Tarte makeup for awhile, but it’s pretty expensive to experiment with, and I haven’t wanted to take the plunge (I really hate returning makeup. I know most places will let you, but I always feel like some kind of scam artist, so the stuff I don’t like usually languishes in a drawer until I throw it away.)

Before Christmas I was at Beauty Brands in a bad mood, and so splurged on several things I’d usually not have purchased. One of them was this Tarte “Shining Stars Limited-Edition Best Sellers Collection”

This set contains:
- full size EmphasEYES™ Waterproof Clay Liner in Black
- deluxe mini Cheek Stain in Flush (sheer berry)
- deluxe mini Lights, Camera, Lashes! Clinically-Proven Natural Mascara in Black
- deluxe mini LipSurgence™ Natural Lip Tint in Enchanted (rose)

It was mostly that cheek stain that I wanted to try, since a full-size tube of it is $30, which was more than I wanted to gamble on not liking it. But I DO like it. I like it lots. It’s sheer and a great color, it stays on all day without looking over-done, and it spreads easily, smells nice and feels awesome when you apply it. Total win!

The other items in the set are decent, but nothing to write home about. The clay eyeliner is good (I had to go buy a special brush just to use it!) it’s tricky to apply until you get the hang of it, but once it’s on that stuff is not going to budge at all. The mascara is nice, it has a good, thickly-bristled brush and it doesn’t seem to flake off too badly, nor does it clump up on the brush. The lip tint is okay. It’s an ok color and it stays on a decent length of time (for the type of product it is) It also has a lovely smell/taste from the peppermint oil in it. However, I don’t like their delivery system. When you combine the odd shape of the stick with the consistency of the product, you end up with this:

Unless you use absolutely no pressure at all when you apply it to your lips.

So, of all the products here, the cheek stain is a definite re-buy item for me. The mascara is a maybe, as it’s only $19 and it seems to perform well. I will give that a longer test run. The eyeliner in that little tub will probably last me the rest of my life, and the lip tint is a “nope” since the individual tubes are $24 for what is basically peppermint flavored sheer gloss. Not worth it.

I am interested to try some of their clay waterproof liners, but the most economical way to do that seems to have been this holiday set, and it’s sadly out of stock. I will wait until next year.

The Emperor’s New Lipstick

I’ve been on a product-purchasing bender this fall and winter. Since we humans don’t really have to stock up for winter foods anymore, I have mutated that hoarding/nesting instinct in the direction of nail polish and lipstick. Eyelid primer and colorful stockings. Necklaces and thigh-high socks. If it’s colorful or fuzzy or sparkly or seems in any way a thing to bring me comfort or cause me delight, I’ve purchased it. I follow a crap-ton of blogs and feeds and tumblrs that recommend various products, and there do I hear of the latest trends in micro-glitter holographic nail polish, or 100-inch socks, or terrarium necklaces. And I BUY ALL THE THINGS. At least here lately.

I’ve been meaning to review some of the things I have purchased, because some of them are awesome, some less so, and I like to share my experience, in part because I rely on other users’ experiences to make my own purchasing decisions.  But mostly I’ve been too busy playing with my new toys and painting/repainting my nails to even bother. Until today.

Today I am blogging about a product that is an epic, utter failure. That’s not unique really, not all products suit all people, and sometimes you’re bound to be disappointed. However. This is the perfect storm of an expensive, highly-touted, much anticipated product that turned out to be an epic failure, and that’s worth noting.

Now, when I want to invest in a new brand that is online-only (or sold only on the coasts and in remote German villages, which effectively makes it online-only for the rest of us.) I try to do my due diligence. I read reviews. I look for YouTube videos describing user experience with the product. I read up on the company’s marketing copy and carefully ponder swatches to see if I think a thing will work for me. So when people started recommending Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, that’s what I did. I read about this AMAZING WONDER PRODUCT called “Lip Tar,” which was described as some sort of Holy Grail lip product. From the company’s own marketing copy, the product is described thusly “A stunning new innovation in lip color, OCC Lip Tar combines the longevity of a lipstick, with the ease of application of a gloss.”

So from this you’re going to gather that this product is long-lasting and easy to apply, right? I mean, that’s what I thought, from reading their copy. Lasts like a lipstick! Easy to apply, like a gloss! And everyone in the blogosphere just raved about how “highly pigmented!” the color is, and how it’s just this must-have product.  But I am reluctant to jump into new brands that I can’t see in person, so still I resisted. I also read about OCC’s cool nail polish line, and I lusted after a color called “Blackboard.” Yet still I held firm. Even though they’re “100% Vegan and Cruelty Free!”  Then OCC had a sale. 20% off for the new year, and I decided to take the plunge. I ordered two lip tars, Trollop (cranberry pink) and Vintage (deep dark burgundy.) I also ordered two nail polishes, the aforecoveted Blackboard and a chartreuse called Wasabi. (FWIW The checkout process was so unprofessional and generic that until the actual package arrived I wasn’t sure if I’d been on a scam site.) Total cost including s/h was around $39 – which is a lot for me to invest in totally untried brands/products.

Since the shipping and handling took longer than I am accustomed to for cosmetics orders (probably partially due to the nail polish not being able to go USPS) I was hotly anticipating this delivery. When my package arrived yesterday I was super excited to finally try these miracle lip tars that every freaking person in the world seemed to be raving about.

Uber disappoint.

Where to start? The colors. Trollop is extremely… vibrant. Vintage is extremely… batcave death dark, to the point where they’d kick you out of the goth club for wearing this shit because they’d think you were being too dramatic. (I read “burgundy” and pictured, well, deep wine color? This color is brown. Dark brown. It’s a dark brown that maybe one time had a cousin who knew a guy who dated a girl who was red, and that girl had a purple sister. But mostly it’s brown.) The colors are highly pigmented, it’s true. This means that when you apply them (round one, bare lips, with a lip brush) they just sit atop your lips, rather than truly being on your lips, if that makes sense. They sit there but do not sink into your lip texture, so your original lip color shows through in cracks. It’s like – well it’s like what I imagine it would be like if you applied latex house paint to your lips. This does not look/feel/seem like a lip product. Then it starts bleeding outside your lipline, which is painfully obvious when the color is so dark. So lipliner is a must.

The culprits

I tried Vintage first, saw that I looked insane, wiped it off, tried Trollop. I am pale with dark hair, and I know that I need to stay with cool/blue tones rather than orange or coral. I thought a cranberry pink would be right for me (We’ve all seen cranberries, right? Definitely a blue/purple tone to that berry, not a coral or orange tone.) I am not sure who this color would look good on, but it’s not me. I looked like a kid who got into the paint pens or something. Wow, even more disappoint. So then I decided to blend the two together, to see what I got. Moderate success here, I got a color that wasn’t offensive, but really wasn’t all that exciting either. Sort of a suede-y dusty pink. The color continued to sit atop my lips, my natural lip color was showing through, and this stuff was feathering halfway to my chin within half an hour. In addition, my lips felt extremely dry, and the product smelled and tasted awful. Very chemically.

Aggravated, I went to paint my nails, thinking at least I could have cool chartreuse nails to cheer me. The color is a good thing about this polish, it’s certainly unique. But that’s all that’s outstanding about it. The website’s copy claimed that this was developed for “editorial” work so meant to go on smoothly and dry fast. I wondered if it might even be a one-coat polish. Nope. Definitely two coat, and the second coat doesn’t even go on all that smoothly. Then, rather than being quick dry, it actually took longer to dry than most of my other nail polishes. Even with a coat of Seche Vite on top, an hour later I went to the bathroom and ended up having to do touchups on two nails. This morning when I looked at it again, the color hasn’t settled well or leveled off on the nail, and it looks pretty crappy (again, super evident because the color is so bright)

You can see how this went on. Streaky and unlevel. And this is after a top coat to seal and level it out. I might be able to get a better result with a lot more time and patience invested but the product was advertised as being perfect for editorial work. Not so much.

I did some more reading on the lip tars, wondering if other people had as much negative feedback as I did. I found a couple negative reviews, beauty-blog people having the same issues I was. The feedback to those who had problems all seemed to be “You’re doing it wrong!” To me, a product touted as “easy to apply” shouldn’t require such specialized application processes that professional beauty bloggers cannot fathom it, but maybe that’s just me.

I re-read the website copy (and came to understand why they don’t show any of their swatches on actual lips) and I saw that they have an entire section of their FAQ dedicated to “WORKING WITH OCC LIP TAR” (Again, if you’re going to tout this as easy to apply, like lip gloss, maybe you shouldn’t need a whole FAQ about how to get it on your lips?) I read this in that FAQ “We recommend applying a tiny bead of Lip Tar™ with an angled lip brush, like our #009 Angle Brush to well-moisturized lip, starting in the center of the mouth and blending outward toward the lip line. Though certainly not required, Lip Liner will definitely enhance the look of Lip Tar™ and help you keep the color inside the lines.”

I had already determined that lip liner would be a necessity, but reading between the lines here I also realized that you couldn’t apply this product on bare lips. When they say “well moisturized” what they mean is “Bitches better have some balm on before they try spreading this shit.” So we have here a product that requires another product (another two if you count the lip-liner) and a lip brush to apply. The balm underneath (tried that this morning and it DOES look better) means that the product will not be long-lasting, and will feather even more than before.

So to sum up: Lip Tar! It’s difficult and messy to apply on the go, doesn’t last, dries your lips, looks artificial and weird, from what I read in their FAQ it will permanently stain your clothes and towels, and no they don’t take returns for any reason. Enjoy!

(Later I will review some stuff I really like, promise. I finally splurged on some Tarte stuff and some new Urban Decay and I love it all to pieces.)

Frostbite Friday

Here’s today’s nail experiment (well, technically yesterday’s)

It’s China Glaze “Frostbite” (bright blue base coat) and OPI “Last Friday Night” (blue glitter top coat)

I like both of these, the blue is insanely bright and hard for me to get used to, and also, it stinks. Or, it stank when I was applying it. Like skunk. I have never had a nail polish smell so foul.

But otherwise kind of fun? I don’t know if I would just wear the blue on its own, it’s kind of costumey. But fun to play with.