Makeup

Wearing Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar in Belladonna

Gardening. I’m obsessed with gardening. But not the botanical kind, at least not today. Today, I’m obsessed with Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, and the new Lip Tars from their Garden collection.

It’s easy to get lost in this garden because it’s filled with psychotropic plants, dude (like Kava Kava). And poisonous ones (like Belladonna).

Lip Tars from the left: Pennyroyal, Kava Kava, Ophelia, Digitalis, Belladonna and Chlorophyll

For their spring and summer 2012 Garden collection/harvest, Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics (OCC) is growing six new Lip Tar shades for the company’s permanent line, and all of them are named after plants.

No, not roses and daisies. 🙂 Not this time. You won’t find any ruffles and bows here. This Garden is wicked! — as you can tell by the color names, but most of the shades themselves, which range from pinks, browns and corals to a smattering of edgier purples and greens, are actually pretty wearable.

OCC has a full range of 100-percent vegan and cruelty-free makeup made without parabens and preservatives, but the Lip Tars are probably their most popular product.

Sticking with the botany metaphor, if you crossed a long-wearing, full-coverage liquid lipstick with a gloss, and then squeezed it into a tiny tube, you’d get a Lip Tar, tada! Opaque coverage and out-of-this-world wear time makes them special.

Just squeeze out a tiny bead, and spread it over your lips with a lip brush or finger (yea!). They start out glossy but dry down to a satin finish.

SO pretty!

Of this bunch, I think I like brown Pennyroyal and coral Kava Kava the most. I think they look the most natural/wearable, but some of the others also look fun.

Pennyroyal

Kava Kava

So how long do they really last?

We’re talkin’ hours and hours. They’re total long-wearing rock stars. On my lips, they start looking sketchy after about six hours, when a visible line of product begins to build up along the inner part of my lower lip. No biggie — I just scrape it off.

It’s only after about six hours when they start to fade, slowly and evenly, until they eventually disappear between hours 8-10.

They even last through meals, beverages and repeated kitty kisses (“Give mama a kiss, mwah!“) without migrating or fading at all.

More details…

• Texture: So lightweight and comfortable! Sometimes I forget I’m wearing anything on my lips at all.
• Packaging: On the one hand, the tubes are great. They make it easy to precisely control how much product I use, cutting down on waste, but they aren’t the most elegant products in terms of presentation… Still, I think it fits their personality.
• Flavor and scent: It’s faint in both cases. A combination of peppermint…and wax. I don’t mind the peppermint part so much, but the wax? I could do without. Thankfully, both are very faint and fade in under a minute.
• Hydration: I wouldn’t call them exceptionally moisturizing, but at least they don’t make my lips drier and worse, which is good for a such long-wearing product.

Now, if you’re looking for something funkier than Pennyroyal and Kava Kava and don’t mind a bit more work, Belladonna (a bright grape), Digitalis (a pinkish violet), Ophelia (a pink) and Chlorophyll (a bright green) might be more your speed. I find that I get better results when I use a brush to apply all four of these.

NOTE: The lighter pastel colors appear to slightly emphasize the vertical wrinkles in my lips, and the green shade, Chlorophyll, applies a little patchy.

Ophelia
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