And we've gotten to the last section of the Balmbini palette: the lips! First up is Wanted, a sheer red lipstick.
Read My Lips in Wanted on the left
Wanted is a nicely creamy, semi-glossy, sheer red lipstick. It's a neutral red, so should be able to be worn by pretty much anyone, especially since the sheerness means that your natural lip color will peek through. On me, it's a pinkish red (since my lips are naturally somewhat pink) with a mild sheen.
It's a little redder in real life, but this is pretty close
It smells like something sweetish, maybe vanilla? It's very emollient and smooth, but surprisingly still has a relatively long duration––upwards of an hour (and lip products don't tend to last as long on me as they do on others), and leaves a nice stain after:
The palette version comes in a pan, which can be applied with a lip brush or a finger (the latter lends itself to a sheerer application than the former), but the individual version is a traditional lipstick. I don't know if the formulas differ, but I'm going to assume they don't for the purposes of this review. If you've tried both, let me know how they compare!
Overview
$17 for 0.14 oz, available from Sephora and theBalm
Price: 6.5 ($17 is on the cheap end for high-end lipsticks, but is still expensive for a grad student)
Value: 7.5 (0.14 is on the larger end of standard lipsticks, but the high cost is, well, high, and it's not quite long-lasting or large enough to bump this score up)
Quality: 9.5
Ease of Use: 5 (it's sheer enough to apply without a mirror, and as a normal lipstick, it's pretty foolproof application––this score would be a 4 as you have to apply with a brush or wash your hands before doing so with your finger)
Pigmentation: 5
Duration: 4.5
Consistency: 5
Grade: B
It's a lovely color, and it wears a decent amount of time. Plus, I love the stain it leaves behind. But the high price tag brings this one down in the price and value categories (which account for 40% of the grade--it's an important consideration for some of us!).
Have you tried any of theBalm's lipsticks? Would you want to? Comments give sugar gliders meal worms (actually the most adorable thing in the world--I'll try and get a video of it to show you)!
