Lime Crime Wicked Review

I'm on the Wicked bandwagon guys! I drank the kool-aid and had to give it a go. I've never bought Lime Crime products before but was slowly falling in love with the gorgeous matte burgundy shade I'd been seeing on several beauty blogs and Youtube videos. A little digging and it turned out they were all Lime Crime's Matte Velvetines in Wicked.  

The normal retail price is $20 but I actually ended up buying it off of the Urban Outfitter website during a sale with 20% off which I was pretty pleased with. It has been sold out on the LC website for weeks so I was glad to be able to buy it elsewhere as I was hoping to try it out for holiday parties. 

When it finally came, the color was everything I'd hoped for. It's a gorgeous deep burgundy red that's very wearable and not TOO dark to come off as overly vampy. Pair it with an understated eye and your look is instantly glamified. 

The website describes it as being a matte burgundy-red and claims to be a "ground-breaking formula that goes on liquid and dries completely matte. Claims to be touch-proof, transfer-proof, long-wearing and utterly addictive."

The Pros: 

Once again, the color. It's a perfect fall/winter shade. Wear it every day with a simple eye look or glam it up by pairing it with a smoked out eye. 

It sets pretty quickly from liquid to matte and isn't too drying for your lips. 

Paired with a lip liner, is pretty long-lasting. 

The Cons: 

It's really not THAT long-wearing, especially if any liquid touches your lips after it's on. I played around with it a bit and had some trouble keeping it on my lips especially near the inner center where I got the dramatic color/no color when it rubbed off a bit between my lips. I fixed that by wearing it over a lip liner and once completely dried, wouldn't transfer, but if I took even a sip of water it would start moving around and transferring to the bottle or anything my lips touched. What worked best for me was applying it over lip liner and blotting it a tad with some tissue to make sure any excess formula was removed.  

The feeling on the lips isn't the greatest, it isn't especially drying but sort of feels like it is. It gives the grainy-don't try to move much feeling.

(wore this to Thanksgiving dinner, showing off the eye look I went with too!)

Overall I do really love the color and that alone is enough for me to continue wearing it, but it's a pretty difficult formula to get the hang of and feel comfortable in. I think if I were to wear it on a regular basis I'd get used to it, but I know I'd always be concerned about it transferring or smudging off my lips if I made any slip ups. 

I'd say comparing it to some other long-wearing formulas I've tried, I like the Make Up For Ever Aqua Rouge stains (which I made matte by blotting) more for staying power but would choose Lime Crime over the Sephora Luster Matte Long-Wear Lip Colors as it's got a better applicator making it less messy and easier to control. 

Final thoughts, is it worth buying?

Yes-ish. The color is to die for, but the Sephora lip colors mentioned above would definitely be a comparable less costly dupe if you don't mind working with the clunky applicator.

And our lovely little family all ready for Thanksgiving dinner! 

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

XOXOXO

J.Cat Beauty Wonder Lip Paint

I was at Ulta yesterday afternoon and was bummed over not finding the NYX matte lip creams I really wanted and was just about to leave when I spotted these beauties. I've been really wanting to try out the OCC Lip Tars for the longest time but could never justify the price tag for what I considered a novelty lip product. I love the pigmentation an intensity of the swatches I've seen on other blogs but $18+ for a difficult to apply and not very forgiving lip product just seemed silly to me. 

Luckily these babies had a beautiful $4.99 price tag and all inhibitions were gone! I walked out with 3 gorgeous shades and have swatched them below. 

Shade: Much Mucher

Shade: 2nd Impossible Thing

Shade: Red Potion

Much Mucher, a very light orangy-peach-nude shade. It applied probably the best of the 3, was really opaque and I really loved how it looked. 

2nd Impossible Thing, in the tube and the swatch made it look like an electric red, but it ended up applying a bit less vibrant. It ended up on the lips as a slightly transparent berry red. Still beautiful, but not really true to the swatch. 

Red Potion is a super deep plum/berry shade that applied again a little more transparent than I was expecting, but still bold enough. It was a little patchy so I think it would do better on me if I'd exfoliated my lips first as they were a little dry. Overall I LOVE the color, but don't love the need for prepping my lips before applying it. 

While I can't compare them to the OCC Lip Tars, I can say that I really enjoyed them and was pleasantly surprised by how wearable they were. I still think they're more work than they're worth but for a night out or just for fun, they're awesome!

XOXOXO

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Naked3 Swatches & Tutorial

Dun dun duuuuuuuun!

I'm back! And I'm the proud owner of the gorgeous, perfect Urban Decay Naked 3 palette. When I saw the teaser images for this palette, my little heart skipped a beat... 

I'm happy to say I'm absolutely in love with every single shade in the Naked 3 palette. Where the Naked palette was aimed at golds and warm neutrals, and Naked 2 was silvers and cool neutrals, the Naked 3 is all about rose gold! Every shade has a slight pink or mauve undertone to them, and I love the way it works with my skin tone. 

Here are the swatches! I took the descriptions from Urban Decay's site.

Strange: Pale, neutral pink matte-satin

Dust: Pale metallic pink shimmer w/ iridescent micro-glitter

Burnout: Light pinky-peach satin

Limit: Light dusty rose matte

Buzz: Metallic rose shimmer w/ silver micro-glitter

Trick: Light metallic pinky-copper shimmer w/ tonal micro-sparkle

Nooner: Medium pink-brown matte

Liar: Medium metallic mauve shimmer

Factory: Pinky-brown satin

Mugshot: Metallic taupe shimmer w/ slight pink shift

Darkside: Deep taupe-mauve satin

Blackheart: Smoky black matte w/ rosy red micro-sparkle

Like I said, I'm in love with every single color. They're all amazing quality, as is expected with Urban Decay shadows, and all of them are pretty accurate to their descriptions. Blackheart is a little misleading just because if apply the color normally, you really won't catch any of the red glitter in your look. It is pretty much invisible, even in a swatch, but may possibly stick out more if you use some kind of mixing medium or something like that. It's still a beautiful color, just don't expect to notice the glitter when your actually wearing it. 

I have been using this palette for the last few weeks as I've had all my other makeup boxed up for our move. We just bought a house (pictures to come eventually!) and I've had very little time for makeup, but have used this palette for my daily eye looks. It's very versatile and I've come up with a ton of beautiful new looks. I did a tutorial of one of my favorites!

Woo for silly face :)

Until next time!

XOXOXO

Naked 2 & Smashbox BB Cream

So today was definitely a day of indulgence... I've really been wanting to try out a BB Cream and after some looking around at Sephora, I decided to go with the Smashbox Camera Ready BB Cream - Fair.

I haven't had a lot of time to see how I feel about it, but first impressions are good! For the most part, I love how it looked against my skin. It was the perfect color for my skin tone, which is tough with how pale I am. I have some pretty red blemishes around my chin that it didn't cover well, but a little concealer over it helps, and I decided to go with the BB Cream to hopefully clear up my skin in the long run.

Even more exciting was finding Urban Decay's Naked 2 Palette in the store! I've been trying to get my hands on it online since it came out, but it was always out of stock, so I was incredibly excited to FINALLY get it in the store.

 First impressions... I'm in love! The new colors are gorgeous, the pigmentation was great, and the packaging was a huge improvement from the first Naked Palette. I'm a die hard Urban Decay fan anyways, but if I wasn't a fan already, this palette would make me one!

 The colors swatch on my hand from the palette, left to right: Foxy, Half Baked, Bootycall, Chopper, Tease...

 Snakebite, Suspect, Pistol, Verve, YDK...

Busted and Blackout.

Very excited about both buys, and I'll probably end up doing more in depth reviews in the future on them.