Loving this lip scrub!!! Tastes sooo good. Yum. 



Having an official love fest with lip products now. I never would have thought I would one day be into lip products (esp when I was in my blush junkie phase) but sadly for my pockets, I now am! Despite that, my lip philosophy hasn't changed much - I still tend to prefer neutral tones (all my 3ce lipsticks are crying now - they are super neon hahaha) and stay away from sticky, shiny formulas. I usually like my lipsticks to complement the rest of my makeup rather than it being the highlight.

I just did a count of my lippies and I currently stand at.. 50+? Its not really a lot considering I only tend to use about 10 of them more frequently than the others. And honestly... you can never have enough. There's tons of different formulations and technologies on the market now, and so many shades! One thing I realize about lip products in general is that performance really does correlate with price. It is very obvious when you pay much less for a drugstore lippie which usually streaks or have really poor colour payoff. The only drugstore brand who does good lip products (and by a large margin) is Loreal. I've almost all their colors in the lip caress range and also some lipsticks in the color riche range, and they perform very closely compared with expensive brands.

Not just, I don't know know why but drugstore lipsticks just have cheap and flimsy bullets which I hate. Its like those companies never bothered to think that women are very easily duped into buying stuff they don't actually need or necessarily like - as long as they look good. High end brands, on the other hand, put much more thought into their packaging. Tom Ford is perhaps the best exemplar:





I solemnly swear I've never seen lipsticks so sexy. Doesn't it make you want to buy them all? And I mean all. I go a bit goggle eyed when I reach Tom Ford counters and swatch their lippies in a trance like state. Heck, why do I even need to swatch them. I'd buy them anyway.

I own an Estee Lauder from their signature range and it comes in this amazing weighted gold case that's super classy. Would fit right into a boudoir from the 80s. They also do amazing nudes. I have my eyes on no.21 from their signature range.



YSL is always, always on the top of my go to brands when I think about buying lipsticks and I love their packaging... so so much. It's a crime. I know some people think their excessive use of gold is tacky but it's so pretty! They also make sure their brand is ostentatiously shown - to me its not a deal breaker. After all, I did spend $50 on a lipstick, I might as well let people know its from YSL.



Too much love here. My eyes hurt from their beauty. Not a great fan of the rouge volupte formulations though, I'm currently loving the glossy stains a lot more:



Yummy.



Now this is a really interesting product that is very suited for my needs. Dior's lip glow uses a colour transforming technology that reacts to your lips to give you a customized pink shade (subtle, mind you. it is a balm after all). Sounds gimmicky I know. This tech is not new and I tried smashbox's o-glow range a few years back and was very unimpressed. I was in Sephora that day and my lips were deathly pale (the aftermath of three hours of tuition with two energetic kids). I saw the lip glow and picked it up, Meh? Looks like any other lipbalm - but I ate those words when I tried it on and after about a min or two it transformed into this lovely pink shade on my lips. Looked like I tried, or maybe I didn't? It's the type of pink you can't buy off a lipstick because its too natural. This means it'd go even if you're not wearing makeup, or when you want to complete your makeup look but want the lips to take a backseat. Inwardly I was throwing my hands up and shouting Hallelujah! Lip Glow!! What a godsend. I mean, what was I thinking, cult products are cult for a reason. Silly me.

The fun thing for me is that my natural lip color does vary depending on how hydrated I am or the weather; sometimes its colorless and sometimes its very pigmented - and so I can never quite know the end result after using the lip glow because it reacts differently each time. Sometimes its a light pink and sometimes rose. If my lips are a little more beige that day I'd even get a slight coral tone. It's also less emollient than burt's bees or fresh balms and so stays on the lips for a longer time. The biggest reason, I think, why this sells so well is probably because it is technically universal. It'd work on the porcelain fair to the olive skinned. Very smart, Dior. Very smart.

Eyeing dior's lip polish next, hehe!