CoverGirl Lip Lava and Colorlicious Lipgloss

Hello lovers!

I'll be the first to admit that I am a huge fan of drugstore brands. Why pay for "high-end" when you can get the same thing for a fraction of the cost and sometimes even better quality. Throughout high school and college I did most of my cosmetics shopping at my local Walgreens. Still to this day I swear by a couple of drugstore make up products. Lower cost does not equate to lower quality in my book.

Any way’s I was in Target the other day when I cam across these beauties, not many were left for me to choose from so I only picked up four. 805 "Look its lava", 850 "mauva lava", 860 "lava-ender" and the other being a colorlicious lip-gloss in 620 "candylicious". Sadly I don't have swatches for 860 and 850 (I returned them soon after I bought them). The reason why I'll get into in a little bit. I was pretty optimistic about these for the fact that they were almost all sold out. I wanted to know—what’s so great about these? Why are they sold out? Curiosity got the best of me and here we are haha

Cover girl’s website says this about the product: Bolder than a balm, glassier than a gloss, more lustrous than a lipstick. The hybrid formula of new Colorlicious Lip Lava combines highly pigmented shades with iridescent pearls for saturated lip color with the high shine of lacquer. Now you can get a lip look overflowing with color, shine, shimmer and glimmer with just one product.

(Top "Look its lava" bottom "candylicious")

What I liked: I liked the packaging on these. What can I say...It’s fun and shiny.... I was sold :p As for the actual product, I think the shades are pretty universally flattering. The color payoff on these glosses is definitely high. They’re opaque and I would agree that they’re highly pigmented. I also agree with the high shine description. Where they got the word "balm" to describe this gloss make no sense to me. A balm is lightweight; these glosses are nowhere near lightweight. Yes they are moisturizing, I'll give them that.

(I was not a fan of this Colorlicious lipgloss in "620 candylicious), had no color payoff for me. Took 3-4 layers of appliction to see any color)

What I didn't like: The brush itself inside is a little too long, not short and stubby like other brushes that I've seen. I personally feel that long brushes make it a little bit more difficult to control distribution of the product and are easier to fray when placing the brush back into the bottle. The biggest issue that I had with this whole collection was the "sticky factor". I felt like I was wearing Elmer’s glue on my lips. It was so unbearable that I returned all four a week later.

I would constantly feel my lips just sticking to each other. Forget about eating if you're wearing these ladies! Anything and everything will be stuck to your lips or vise versa. It was a mess; even my hair was caught up in it all the time. And we all know that I am not a fan of re-applying my lip-gloss 10 times a day...I mean who is!

I also found the names to be a bit misleading, for example lava-nder (880). Despite its name this shade has nothing to do with the color lavender besides the fact that it belongs in purple family. You guys can Google a swatch of this color. Look its lava was a good fit for its name, a nice vibrant red/pink. I'm usually not a huge gloss fan but I'm trying to venture out a bit more and thought these would be the perfect fit for me. I was sadly mistaken.

(This was a gorgeous color on me. "Look its lava" is such a fun and playful color to wear)

At $6 a tube, you get what you pay for. The color on these glosses are stunning and their best feature. They are sticky, thick, and have a messy application process. They smear at a moments notice and also stain when in contact with fabric, which I find to be problematic. I can honestly say that Lip Lava is not a product that I would ever re-purchase for myself. Just wasn’t my cup of tea. The negative aspects of these glosses outweighed the positives for me.

Until next time...Ta-ta