Maybelline Baby Lips Electro

 Yet another collection from Baby Lips, I think there is 4 now if you count the originals.


These are only 4 of the six shades because, as I have mentioned before, I am allowing myself no more hot pink lippies. Every time I say this though it seems like pink would have been a good option to swatch, but it is what it is.




The tubes with a little product rolled up so that you can see what I am putting on my lips:

The MSRP on these is $4.




Here is the product swatched on my hand (I also discovered that they look beautiful on a tissue but that is not an accurate representation of this product so it isn't here), the yellow and the green are very sheer, only the orange and the purple seem to have any real pigmentation.

It was this difference in pigmentation that made me wish I had bought the other two pinks, because I can't say how those would react.







Fierce N' Tangy (Yellow)- There is nothing fierce about this product. I do get a slight yellow sheen, but it is so sheer that the only thing its going to do is make you look jaundiced. It does smell lemoney though, so that is pretty fun.

Minty Sheer (Green)- it is sheer alright, basically a clear lip balm. There is almost zero pigmentation to this one. This one smells minty, like spearmint.






Oh! Orange-  Finally something with pigmentation. It makes my lips a very subtle coral color, nothing particularly electrifying about it. I think they tried to do an orange scent with this one, and then failed miserably. The scent is weak a little weird like they couldn't be bothered to choose between Orange Crush and True Orange.

I don't know how you mess up the smell of oranges, especially when you clearly understand the smell of lemons.

Berry Bomb (Purple)- This was what I was expecting from all of them. It has the traditional Baby Lips scent and a sort of electric sheen to it.

To the right are swatches of the Clinique Baby Tint in Flowering Freesia. Clinique's runs a bit pinker, which is why it is not as electric, but they look similar enough that if you want that very sheer wash of moisturizing color without the 17$ price tag, you could pick Berry Bomb up instead.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the collection seems okay. I did go ahead and do some searching for lip swatches of the pink and red colors, and those ones looked pigmented as well, so they just happened to completely fail on the two most interesting and unique shades in the whole collection. I would recommend these to young girls (they have coordinated scents, and bright packaging, but are so sheer it's pretty difficult to screw up) and people who like the idea of a truly sheer moisturizing lip color but not the price tag of higher end products

Pixi Shea Butter Lip Balms

I'm fairly certain I mentioned these in a favorites at one point, and I discovered they carry the whole line at Target, so it's not even difficult to go get them. While I was tempted to buy the entire collection my wallet and vast lippie collection has thanked me for not doing so. Instead I have almost the entire collection, minus Pixi Pink because I told myself I was not allowed to buy more hot pink lippies.







Price: 8$ per lippie
If you are really into them though they do a set of three (comfort clear, honey nectar, and ripe raspberry) for 16$.

They also do sets of 4 on Birchbox.com for 28$, but that is only a 4$ savings where the set of three for 16$ you actually get one free, so its cheaper (even if you want the whole collection actually)

Scent: They have a sweet scent to them, which I personally find absolutely delicious.

Feel: They go on smooth and don't have any of the waxy feeling you get from original Chapstick or EOS, but they still feel quite moisturizing.





Colors and Swatches:

Left to right; Ripe Raspberry, Coral Crush, Natural Rose, Honey Nectar

Comfort Clear- clear, it is weirdly pink in the tube, but goes on completely clear, and without any noticeable formula change.







Honey Nectar- a pink nude, my personal favorite as it is my go to MLBB color.








Natural Rose- a semi-mauvey pink and a close color match for UD's Revolution Lipstick in Rush. When I was working through a lipstick sample of it, I brought along Natural Rose to be my lip balm touch-up color.



Coral Crush- An orange leaning coral.

Ripe Raspberry- A raspberry red. I was concerned about the hand swatch, because it looked very pink, but it is subtly raspberry colored, like after you've eaten a whole bag of frozen raspberries (no? just me? okay) except that it is evenly colored.

Geek Chic Cosmetics Power Up Primer

So, I was going to go ahead and just add this onto the end of the previous Geek Chic post, but it got long after doing two rounds of testing, and then I realized that I had only done black based shades,  and then I had questions about what swatches with this primer would look like compared to elf's Lock and Seal. In the end, I decided I would just make it a whole post of its own.



This is their new primer, and the only indie primer I have tried so I can't exactly compare anything else to it,but it has done the job for me.

You can see in the jar on the right that it is solid. It doesn't start out sticky, it feels just like a sort of balm,but as it dries it becomes very sticky. I put this on by itself for experimentation purposes, and when I blinked after a few seconds I could feel my eyelid sticking to itself. That is what you want in a glitter base though, because it will keep the glitter in place.

 For my first round of tests I chose Innocent and Twisted Alchemy's Illusionary Stars because it is dark, has enough glitter and color shift that I said in my review it could benefit from a better primer, and it's in a jar so it was easy to work with.

Left to right swatches of this shadow on bare skin, applied over elf primer, and using Power Up Primer. The bare skin swatch got some light color, no shimmer, and a few sparkles which would most likely fall into your eyes. The elf primer swatch enhanced the color, caught some color shift but lost the sparkles.  Finally, the power up primer brought out the whole shade range and the glitter, expressing the shadow as intended.

I also went ahead and swatched the power up primer against just wet application. The photos don't do the shimmer justice on these. Both applications held onto the glitter well, but you can see the left swatch (using power up primer) lets the back show through a lot more, while the wet application really brings out the blue of the shadow.











For my secondary tests I chose to use Clementine Will Remember because it looked like such a beautiful shade, but also like it could really benefit from a good primer.I transferred it into a jar for this experiment.

So, from right to left, bare skin, over elf primer, applied wet, over the power up primer.

The sticky base really brings out the true beauty of the shade, but I also think that applied wet or over elf primer it is very wearable so you could make multiple looks out of this one shade.

(I don't know what is up with the little black spot, but the red dot is a burn from me not knowing how to use a toaster oven)

This third set of swatches is from Aromaleigh's Sooo Changeable from her Sherlock collection. From left to right, bare skin, over elf primer, over power up primer, applied with Elf's Lock and Seal.

Elf's Lock and Seal is a fixative, but it is also wet, it is like super glue water and so it grabs and exaggerates all the shifting colors until you have no base.





Finally, I swatched Aphrodisiac from Brazen Cosmetics. I never thought it was a shadow particularly in need of a sticky base, and it is a lighter color that I haven't yet tested.

From left to right, bare skin, over elf primer, applied wet, over power up primer.

You can see it went on patchy over the traditional primer, applied wet it is a lavender type shade, while over the power up primer it becomes a deeper purple.

Geek Chic Cosmetics Swatches

Not going to lie, I got a huge batch of indie orders in at once, photographed and swatched everything, and then totally forgot to write up this post. Anyway, this is an indie which specializes in- you guessed it- geeky makeup. I ended up trying one blush and a few eyeshadows, but they also have their own lip glosses, lippies, a small shade range of foundations, solid scents, nail polish, finishing powder, and they recently came out with their own eyeshadow primer!  Since having made this order I have already made two more orders as gifts.

On the sample jars there is only the back label with the ingredients, but even the ingredients labels are adorable and themed, which I love. In addition they sent me a sticker and a button as well.

 I tried to swatch by fandom, which I managed to do with all except these two eyeshadows. For the record, this was done over elf eyeshadow primer like always. These are some of the most pigmented and easy to apply indie shadows I have ever seen, and the colors are amazing.

The top one is We Are Coming from their Timey Wimey collection. The swatch catches the base but there is some truly gorgeous red and gold sparks in there.

The bottom is Samwise the Brave, which I got because Samwise is the true hero in Lord of the Rings. Also, this is a beautiful antiqued gold color.

 From the Superneutrals collection, the top color is Rock Salt which is a very heavy-on-the-glitter highlight. This swatch doesn't capture how beautiful the shimmer is though,

Idjits over Power Up Primer

The bottom swatch is Idjits which I expected to like a lot more than I actually do. The green/gold sparkles don't show up very well, even over the appropriate sticky primer. You might as well not be committing to green at all.

The top swatch is Clementine Will Remember. Now, as someone who has never played the Walking Dead game I don't know all of these references, anything having to do with Clementine included. However, the shadow was very pretty. It has a deep black base with tons of gold sparkles (look to the bottom of the swatch). This shade could really benefit from a glitter primer.

Inked in Pink in a vertical swatch,
He's Korean over Stay Don't Stray
horizontally. They intersect in the
upper right corner. 

The bottom swatch is He's Korean, it is gorgeous and sparkly and easy to apply. It reminded me a lot of the inked in pink Maybelline Color Tattoo so I did those swatches for you as well.





This is a terrible swatch of the nerdgasm blush, which according to Geek Chic is supposed to be their take on the Nars Orgasm blush. I don't have the Nars blush to swatch for you, but I've swatched it at Sephora a billion times, and  the Nars blush is so sheerly pink it may as well just be a highlight. Geek Chic has a very orange color to it, I will definitely experiment with it.

January Julep Unboxing

This month the Mavens got a special offer to get a free metamorphic top coat in January's box. This is a maven perk for people who were already signed up for Julep's subscription service. I was very pleased with my box this month, I didn't really settle at all, I am very excited about and have a use for everything in my box.

In the corner there are little junior mints, which I am excited about.

 The first thing I got was this Oxygen Nail Treatment, it shines up your nails, gives them a sheer coat of color, and is supposed to moisturize and strengthen them.

I've never tried anything like this, but I am kind of impressed. It is very shiny and has dried very quickly. My only complaint is that it chips relatively easily, but I will continue to test it and see if it does anything good for my nails (something that will justify the price tag).

 Then I got their Luxe Lip Conditioning Treatment in sheer pink. It is a new product that is supposed to moisturize the lips, give a sheer wash of color, sparkle and shine, and the tip is supposed to instantly improve circulation because it is made out of copper, zinc, and aluminum (called Zamac)

The pigmentation is absolutely terrible, this can't even be called a sheer wash of color, however, the sparkle and shine is true and it seems moisturizing enough for me. However, the major selling point on this for me is that it is very shiny and glossy without feeling sticky at all, so if you hate how stickly lip gloss feels, try this.

 Margit- the nail polish. This is a gift for a friend's mother as she has been very good to me in the past, so it isn't swatched or anything.

 Finally, the metamorphic top coat. I was super excited to try this. Mine came in the color Tilda and I will show you some swatches so you can see how it is.

 On my thumb, you can see the sort of green shift and microglitter in the top coat on it's own.

I then used one coat of four different colors on each of my fingers. It says it is meant for all polish colors, so I wanted to see if it would improve a large enough range of colors that I think this is a reasonable claim.

I understand the need to advertise it that way, but I think for a little bit more honesty some tips on how to maximize the beauty of your top coat would have been nice (ex; try it on dark colors). I think doing things like that adds a level of transparency to the company without seeming unprofessional or failing to promote the product.



Of course, that's also why reviewers who can talk about products and give out both pros and cons are so important.

Anyway, off of my tangent: I used one coat of a dark cream finish polish, a light microglitter polish, a light cream (although it does have a little metallic sheen) color, and a dark microglitter color.

Here are the finished results, with one coat of the metamorphic polish. It did the most on the cream finish colors, made the colors seem more vibrant and added some dimension. I feel the effects of the top coat were drowned out in the microglitter poishes, and that it looked best on the dark green.

My reccomendations would be to use this on darker cream finish colors for best results. However, it might also help to consider the undertones of your polish so that the glitter shift compliments the color your are using on your nails.