Luxe Lips for Less - Essence Lip Liners

by Bec 8:58 AM 7 comments

Slightly delayed, but as promised, here is the follow up to the Essence lipstick post - Essence lip liners.

 

Before I became a makeup artist, I confess that I never saw the use in liners. They seemed like a completely unnecessary product. How wrong I was. Lip liners are truly the secret to long lasting lip colour. It doesn't matter how long wearing your lipstick is, the liner is what you really want. Plus really long wear lipsticks are usually quite drying which is not overly attractive. You want to draw attention to your lips and you want them to look (and be!) soft and supple, not dry and a little flakey looking which is how some of these products can look.

So what do they do?

• It creates a barrier between your lips in the colour - which anyone who has ever used a darker OCC Lip Tar can tell you is important otherwise you end up with green lips for a few days. I may know this from experience.
• They help stop the lipstick from spreading into those fine lines around your lips, also known as bleeding. They also can change the shade of a lipstick slightly so it's more flattering.
• But the biggest plus to liners is that you can be at an event or even work for hours without the chance to touch up your lips so eventually your lipstick will wear off but by having liner underneath, you are ensuring that there is always, always colour on your lips. It also makes the fact that your lipstick has worn off much less noticeable.

So now that you know why you need liners in your life, lets check out the offerings Essence have. These are $2.95 each so I went out and grabbed another couple in addition to what was sent to me for review.

 

L-R Honey Bun, Soft Berry, Satin Mauve, Cute Pink, Red Blush, Femme Fatale

I like the texture on all of these but the reds. The reds were horrendous to work with. Let's take a close look at how they work on the lips shall we?

Honey Bun is a really great nude liner colour, it won't change your lip colour too much beyond evening it out. So it's a great base for a lipstick you already love the colour of.

Soft Berry is again a great colour. It adds some depth to the lip, a great colour if you are looking to match to a vampy lip colour or it can be used underneath something a little softer to add some "pop".

Satin Mauve is a great bridal lip liner. It will go with any softer tone and shade and it's a solid colour on it's own so it's really, really good for when you have those times where you don't always have time to touch up.

Cute Pink is a girly light pink and another solid go-to colour like Honey Bun. It mostly even out the lip tone and adds a tint of pink.

 

Red Blush has a really slight red tint to it and as far as I'm concerned is not worth the effort. If it applied more easily, I could love this colour but it's also the most drying of them. The texture was really waxy and really hard to even out. I don't know how many times I went over the top lip on the right to try and even it out and it still horrendously patchy.

Femme Fatale. Failure. That's pretty much all there is to it. Too waxy, uneven pigmentation throughout the pencil, horrific to apply. I hated it. This picture fills me with rage. Almost as much as I was feeling when I was applying it.

So there you go. Mostly a good bunch, crappy reds = lots of rage. Want to see how they look with the Essence Lipsticks over the top? Of course you do.

Honey Bun with Creamy Nude

Honey Bun with Look at Me

 

Soft Berry with Funky Funky

 

Satin Mauve with Sparkling Miracle

 

Cute Pink with All About Cupcake

 

Red Blush with More to Love

 

Femme Fatale with More to Love

 

I threw some duplicates of liners with different lipsticks and the same lipstick with different liners in there so you can see the difference it can make.

I'm going to attempt to back this up tomorrow with my favourite tips and tricks for luscious lips. Do you have anything you want to ask me about lipsticks or liners? Lip care in general? What are your thoughts on the Essence lip range? Favourites and not so much? Have you tried them yourself?

That's it from me today, be awesome to each other.