Hello dolls,
Ok so I know I just had a huge rant about MAC lipsticks but I would now like to introduce you to my LOVE for MAC lip pencils. I’ve always been a lip pencil kind of girl and although I hate hate hate to admit it (and I will deny it if asked in public), I was one of those girls who would wear nude lipstick and accompany it with a dark brown/maroon lip pencil. Urghhhh. It still makes me shudder, but hey we’ve all been there! (Well that’s what I tell myself to make me feel better lol).
When I first purchased a Honey Love lipstick (MAC Matte finish) about two years ago, I started to experiment with what I could do with it when mixed with different lip pencils. I think that was the time when ‘ombre’ was trending and everywhere you turned everything was ombre (nails, hair and eventually the trend turned to lips). I decided to try it out and I am so glad I did because I quickly but slowly fell in love. (I know that doesn’t make sense but my mind is a complex thing lol).
Honey Love is the PERFECT base for creating ombre lips, it’s like the perfect nude (I’ll be doing a post on nude lipsticks soon). And I adore the combinations I’ve made when mixed with other lip pencils.
Honey Love Lipstick
Honey Love Swatch (Without Flash)
Lip Liner Pencils; Retractable Lip Liners; Vitamin E Stick; Lip Scrubs; Eyes. Retractable Eyeliner Pencils; Liquid Eyeliner Pen; Loose Glitter; Sugar Dust - Loose Pigments. Honey Love Lip Gloss. Regular price $14.95 Soft Rose Lip Gloss. Regular price $14.95.
Honey Love Swatch (With flash)
I love ombre lips because sometimes I find that wearing too much colour on lips like mine can be quite striking, so mixing a nude with a strong colour can make the overall effect a bit less harsh. I have to admit that I no longer apply full on ombre technique, but instead I just leave a touch of nude visible in the centre of my lips. I like having different colours on my lips when I wear lipstick on a day to day basis, while saving the striking full on blocks of colour for more glammed up occasions.
Also, I really like the variety of colours in the MAC Lip Pencil range. I find that using lip pencils as a lipstick gives me more of a choice when deciding what lip colour to wear.
Here are a few of my favourite combinations..
1) Honey Love & Ablaze Lip Pencil
Ablaze Lip Pencil
Shop Charlotte Tilbury's Lip Cheat Lip Liner now, and pay later in 4 interest-free payments with Klarna (US) and Paybright (CA) at Sephora! Honey Love Blush. If you prefer something a little lighter and less distinct, apply this shade by Burt’s Bees onto the apples of your cheeks. Honey Love from the KKW Matte Honey collection may be beautiful, but you can get your hands on something more affordable! It’s a taupey brown that works well with colors like Velvet Teddy, Yash, Honey Love and Cherish. Spice is probably the DESI lip liner of the century! Our mom’s have worn this color it’s so classic and by-the-way back in trend these days. I heard that it’s one of the top luxury selling lip liners in the world!
Ablaze Lip Pencil Swatch (Without flash)
Ablaze Lip Pencil Swatch (With flash)
Honey Love lipstick & Ablaze Lip Pencil
Now I absolutely ADORE this combination. When I first bought the Ablaze Lip Pencil (it was part of a limited edition range), I fell so in love I had to buy two! It was the colour I was looking for for so long! And to be honest I prefer it to the Ablaze Lipstick (which I will feature in one of my future posts).
This combination of Honey Love and Ablaze Lip Pencil comes out as a orange-coral tone, which unfortunately isn’t completely clear in the picture. I would say overall the combination looks slightly darker than the picture above, but it is definitely one of my most favourite combinations ever! I think I wore it almost everyday for about 6 months, that’s how obsessed I was!
2) Honey Love & High Energy Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
![Lip liner tutorial Lip liner tutorial](/uploads/1/1/8/3/118314950/672177619.jpeg)
High Energy Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
High Energy Pro Longwear Lip Pencil Swatch (Without flash)
High Energy Pro Longwear Lip Pencil Swatch (With flash)
Honey Love Lipstick with High Energy Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
This has become a new favourite, I tried this combination out a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been wearing it almost everyday since! The combination comes out as a deep orange-red shade and I love how bold it looks. I feel like it’s a colour I can wear everyday without having the drama of say the RiRi Woo Lip liner (which I will feature on my post on the RiRi Hearts Collection – one to watch out for!)
3) Honey Love & Embrace Me Lip liner
Embrace Me Lip Pencil
Embrace Me Lip Pencil Swatch (Without flash)
Embrace Me Lip Pencil Swatch (With flash)
Honey Love Lipstick with Embrace Me Lip Pencil
This is a another limited edition Lip Pencil that was gifted to me from America. It was sold in the MAC UK stores but it sold out before I could get my hands on it, so I was super happy when my sister got it for me from America! I went through a phase in my life when all I wore was pink lipstick and lip pencils. But I always had the problem of my lips looking more purple, as opposed to bright pink. The lip pencils I had been using included the likes of ‘More to Love’ and ‘Process Magenta’ (both by MAC, the latter only being available in the MAC Pro Stores). Don’t get me wrong I love both colours, but for a girl with my natural shade of lips, they weren’t ideal for creating a bright pink shade. Embrace Me on the other hand was perfect! I was so surprised by how it came out, when I compared it initially with Process Magenta, they looked almost IDENTICAL. But after application, I was sold. And let’s just say my Process Magenta Lip Pencil hasn’t seen the light of day in a long time! Embrace Me is the perfect bright pink, and mixing it with Honey Love gives the wearer the ability to make the shade as light or bright as they want! I wear it as quite a pale pink (by using more Honey Love) to Uni, but on days where I want to be a bit more glam I can make it a gorgeous bright fuchsia, which I feel is quite similar to but much much more wearable than Candy Yum Yum (another MAC Matte Lipstick which will feature on my blog soon).
4) Honey Love & Beet Lip liner
Beet Lip liner
Beet Lip liner (Without flash)
Beet Lip liner (With flash)
Honey Love Lipstick with Beet Lip liner
Now I have to say I was getting really frustrated when I was taking the pictures for this combination, the photo’s are not a 100% clear representation of what this duo look like together. The reason why I love Beet so much is because it gives me such a gorgeous vampy colour which is perfect for the Winter. The two mixed together make a beautiful rich deep beetroot colour (funny that?)
Lip Liner Sets
Now I was never one to wear much purple on my lips, but I feel that this shade is perfect for girls like me who aren’t quite ready to brave it out and wear full on purple. This combination is amazing because it has the full on effect of being vampy but with pink undertones and a ‘girly’ feel to it. I can’t quite explain it, but once you try it out you will know what I’m talking about. I’m gutted you dolls can’t get the complete feel of the duo, but next time you’re in a MAC store I would definitely recommend that you experiment with the two, it’s perfect for the winter!
5) Honey Love & Trust in Red Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
Trust in Red Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
Trust in Red Pro Longwear Lip Pencil Swatch (Without flash)
Trust in Red Pro Longwear Lip Pencil Swatch (With flash)
Honey Love Lipstick with Trust in Red Pro Longwear Lip Pencil
Another Pro Longwear Lip Pencil that I adore! Now I have to say that usually I prefer standard lip pencils to the Pro Longwear range, my reasons being that the latter are usually quite difficult to blend in to a lipstick the way I have described. Pro Longwear Lip Pencils are designed to give you a more saturated and rich colour, and that they do very well. However I find that when ‘colouring in’ for an ombre effect like I do, this can make the consistency of the lip quite lumpy and the colour quite blotchy. Trust in Red however, (and High Energy which I showed you above) doesn’t seem to have that problem! Both of these lip pencils are part of the newer additions to the Pro Longwear range and as result I feel that their consistencies and overall feel on your lips after application are much much better than those that I’ve tried before. For you dolls out there that have had the same problems as I’ve described with the older Pro Longwear Pencils (and have been put off from purchasing anymore as a result) I would advise you ladies to definitely take the risk, it will be worth it! I was pleasantly surprised and I love this shade! It’s a dark pink that verges close to the side of purple without crossing it completely, just how I like it!
Honey Love Lip Liner
So there you have it dolls, my favourite ‘Ombre-effect’ Lip Pencils! I hope it’s inspired some of you dolls to get experimenting, be it with Lip Pencils or any other products you may have lying around. It’s always good to play around with what you have, I’ve discovered some beautiful colour combinations just by mixing products together that I already have at home! And the best perk of that is, you’ll always be the one with the unique shade of lipstick wherever you go ? I always get asked about what colour lipstick I’m wearing, but it can be quite long to explain, especially when you’re using 4-5 different shades lol. But start off slow & be sure to let me know if you come across any beaut combinations while experimenting!
Until next time..
Love, A x
American drugstore brands are an obsession of mine. I wish we had the selection and variety in the UK that they do in the states, and I often find myself scrolling through sites like Beauty Joint and Cherry Culture and lusting over $2 lipsticks and $4 foundations.
Every couple of months I like to treat myself to a US haul, and recently I picked up the Wet N Wild MegaLast Lip Colours. These have rave reviews both on blogs and Youtube, and one of my favourite beauty gurus Tati always talks about these for their incredible lasting power, matte yet creamy full coverage, and great selection of shades. They are dirt cheap as well (less than £2 for a full-size bullet), so you can really go to town picking as many colours as you like. The MegaLast Lip Colours are a line with great ‘dupe-ability’; many of their shades are bang-on matches for MAC, Charlotte Tilbury and Bobbi Brown cult classics in my collection, which I’ve swatched alongside the MegaLasts so you can see how similar they are.
Here are the colours I picked up; I’ve already placed an order for a few more!
902C Bare It All – a brilliant dupe for MAC’s Honey Love, Bare It All is a beautiful light mauve-brown that gives off that 90s grunge-lip look without looking too dark. I don’t currently own Honey Love, but I have swatched it in store, and it’s virtually identical to Bare It All. It’s a great everyday shade and I love to wear it with a slightly pink lip liner, like Charlotte Tilbury’s Lip Cheat in Pillow Talk. This helps to lighten and soften the overall effect and because of it’s creamy matte texture, it’s super long-wearing. Out of all the shades, this is the colour thats has received the most online hype, and I definitely see why!
903C Just Peachy – this is Tati from Glam Life Guru’s favourite colour and the reason I wanted these so badly. Surprisingly, this is the least wearable shade and the one I am slightly disappointed with. It’s a warm pinky-peach that doesn’t compliment my skin-tone that well, but maybe on paler skin this would look more natural; on me, I just look like I have orange paint on my lips!
906D Wine Room – I adore this shade. It’s the perfect balance between pink and red, and the matte formula doesn’t make this look OTT or too dramatic. I can see myself wearing this when I’m slightly more tanned, and find it very similar in tone to Bobbi Brown’s Roseberry lipstick, a lovely rose-based pink.
912C In The Flesh – to me, this is lipstick perfection. I have tried dark nudes from almost every high-end brand around, and the one I love the most is In The Flesh. It’s creamy, easy to wear, understated yet super luxurious, and the colour is perfect either for a casual look or paired with a dramatic copper-brown smoky eye (my favourite at the moment). It’s a perfect dupe for Bobbi Brown’s Tulle Brown, although I prefer In The Flesh because it’s a little more mauve. This is probably the most emollient in texture but it stays in place and doesn’t bleed, fade or smudge at all. If you were to choose one shade from the line, I’d say definitely pick this one up.
915B Spiked With Rum – a slightly deeper version of In the Flesh, Spiked With Rum is a warm-toned berry that is a creamier, more intense version of the Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution lipstick in Bond Girl. It would look beautiful on olive to deep skin tones, although I’m fair-medium and I love this. It’s great as a statement lip but wouldn’t look out of place paired with a more dramatic overall look.
917B Cinnamon Spice – this is the darkest shade that I picked up and the one that requires the most work; because the pigmentation is so intense, you definitely need to use it with a lipliner, but once applied, it doesn’t smudge or bleed. It’s the perfect shade for darker skin as the berry, brown and red tones are absolutely stunning, and would definitely enhance your skin if you’re a MAC NC35 onwards.
I’m going to make a bold claim here and say that I prefer these to the majority of the lipsticks in my collection; more than MAC, more than Charlotte Tilbury, more than Makeup Revolution, and maybe even more than the NARS Audacious lippies. These don’t pull or skip over dry patches, they last for around 4-5 hours (more with a liner) and they are so incredibly pigmented it’s hard to believe they’re so cheap. Like, less than a cup of coffee cheap. If you’re in the mood for a haul and fancy playing around with different colours, these are well worth a few £ spent on shipping – make an order on Beauty Joint and thank me later!
You can buy the Wet N Wild MegaLast Lip Colours from Beauty Joint here for £1.87(!)
Have you tried these lipsticks? What did you think? And are you running to place an order right now? Let me know in the comments below!
Jess, X