Lime Crime Lipstick Review

Now before you wonder if i've lost my mind, i didn't buy these from Her, Claire picked them up from a blog sale for me to try, along with some full sizes of her repackaged eyeshadows so i can swatch more colours against their TKB counterparts and get rid of any ideas that i might be lying about what's in my Lime Crime sample baggies :) Thanks beauteous xx

While we got them for a cheaper price they were brand new (had only been swatched) so I'm going to  review these as if we'd bought them brand new and paid the £14 Space N charges for Lime Crime.

Again i'm not going to lie, i'm hugely biased against these products beause of my feelings towards the company and my personal experiences with it's founder, however i'm going to try my best to just focus on these products and be as honest as possible. If i love them i'll tell you, because i want to have integrity and if anyone reading my blog wants to buy them and doesn't care about what the company has done in the past i respect that decision. However if you feel like you can't take my word that i'm being honest, here are a couple of more unbiased reviews:

Temptalia's

Lipglossiping's

Now please go under the jump to hear my indepth thoughts.

Firstly the packaging. Some people hate this because it's OTT and tacky and quite sickly, however this is basically my style so i really like it. I'm not too keen on the pinky-purple colour and would prefer to see it on a plain bubblegum, neon or magenta pink, however i still think it's very pretty. People have said it looks like the Mac Heatherette packaging or a vibrator, which it does, but i don't care, i still think it's nice and fun and not too similar to the Heatherette packaging to just be a copy. However, perhaps because i'm an artist myself and know lots of other graphic designers, or perhaps just beause i'm being hyper critical, there are lots of small problems that irritate me.

Firstly the box. My first problem is very small and very perdantic, but i can only assume one of the ingredients 'beswax' actually means 'beeswax' and is spelled incorrectly.

Also the fact that the box says it is made is LA and 'distributed' by Lime Crime this has led lots of people to think it is a private label formula (i assume because if it were made specifically for LC it should say 'made in LA for Lime Crime) but i don't know enough about this sort of thing to comment on that properly. I don't think it's a big deal personally, Lime Crime never claimed to handmake their lippies and there's no way of knowing how much control she had over the lippies.

 

(God don't my nails look awful!!)

Finally it just really bugs me that on the unicorn icon (which i think is otherwise nicely done) there is a tiny bump on the horn. As this is noticeable to me from the tiny picture on the box i can only imagine it was huge when first being developed for the packaging, so it just seems lazy to have left it because it's not too obvious on the small scale packaging.

Now the actual lipstick packaging. The casing is FAT. Here is it compared to my Mac Dame Edna lippie:

 

You can see that they are the same height but the Lime Crime lipstick is bigger in circumference and just allover chunkier. Personally i just think it's a bit odd, and probably why people think it looks like childs makeup. It's not a big deal, i can't imagine it's going to bother too many people but i just think it looks a bit clumsy and chunky.

I think the holographic unicorn is a great idea, and looks very pretty, however it's not executed perfectly. This is hard to show because of the lipsticks curved nature, but the unicorns tail and front hoofs are somehow placed wrongly. If you put the tail in the right place (so it matches with the bottom half of the image) the front hoofs are thrown out of alignment and vice versa.

If you line up the tube so the tail is aligned correctly the front hooves are wonky.

 

And if you line it up so the hooves look right the tail doesn't align.

But other than those little problems i think overall the lipstick packaging is very nice and very unusual. Some people have expressed they would be embarrassed to show other people, but i think it would be fun and a nice talking point. Other people have said that it also feels cheap to them, but to me it's not bad, just the plastic is a little thinner than, for instance, a Mac lippies casing.

Now onto the actual colours. Before they were released there was some speculation based on the photoshopped pictures that they were repackaged like her eyedusts (people thought of Stargazer which does have several good dupes for the colours) but this is absolutely not true. The lipsticks may possibly be private label but are not just repackaged. The Candyfuture range features several unusual colours as well as some bog standard pinks and a red. Claire managed to get 3 of the 4 colours that i would actually have been interested in trying (the other being No She Didn't) Airbourne Unicorn, D'lilac and Cosmopop.

 

Cosmopop, D'lilac and Airbourne Unicorn. D'lilac is slightly more pink in real life. These swatch nice and opaque and look pretty.

I'll go through these one by one. Firstly Airbourne Unicorn.

Lime Crime have made a big song and dance over their lipsticks being opaque in one stroke (though i cant find it in the description on the website anymore, it's mentioned lots on her blog and in videos she's done and things) so here is Airbourne Unicorn in one stroke:

 As you can see it isn't opaque, it's quite patchy. Having said that it isn't bad, the coverage for the most part is fair, no worse than the average lipstick but certainly not any more opaque than average.

So i built up a few more layers and ended up with this:

 

This is the lip swatch from the Lime Crime website:

 

photo property of Lime Crime makeup.

In real life the colour is the tiniest bit pinker than in my photo, but nowhere near the official swatch which is a lovely pinky purple shade similar to the companies packaging. In real life it's more cool toned, darker and slightly greyer. It's less bright and more 'heatherish'. I still think it's a very nice colour though and would absolutely wear it if the formula were good.

Cosmopop in one stroke looks like this:

With a few layers:

 

And here is the official lip swatch:

  

photo property of Lime Crime makeup

The official swatch is lighter and less dull with a slight peachy tone, not just a pale orange. I don't think the colour would be very flattering for many people and tends to make my teeth look very yellow. Having said that i like the idea of the colour, just not how it looks on me.

And finally here is one stroke of D'lilac which came out the worse. Much more patchy and less opaque than the other two colours. 

                                              

Here it is after a few layers (though the photo looks more blue than in real life, the above photo is closer to the real colour, slightly more pink)

  

 

 And here is the official swatch.

 

photo property of Lime Crime Makeup

This is probably the closest to how the lipstick looks in real life, though the swatch it is more blue and brighter. The real colour is slightly dulled and greyer. I would still wear it but it's nowhere near as nice as the website swatch.

It's quite obvious that the photos on the website are photoshopped. If you look at them all the same exact photo of lips is used for about 3 different colours of lipstick and... well you can just tell. All the website photos seem a lot brighter and lighter and just prettier colours than in real life.

Now onto the formula. Once you started adding layers of the lipstick it got quite hard to work with, i ended up pushing the colour around my lips leaving me with bare patches. However i managed to get it looking ok after a bit of work. The  finish was alright to start with, though not matte as Lime Crime used to claim (again i can't find it on the website but i definately remember seeing it, anyone else remember?). The main thing i notice about this lipstick is how incredibly drying it is. As soon as i put it on i just wanted to scrub it off, it felt like it was sucking all the moisture out of my lips. The worst culprit for this was Cosmopop which was as drying as Illamasqua Underworld (one of the driest and most uncomfortable lipsticks i have ever used) i managed to keep it on for about an hour because i wanted to test out it's longevity but i just had to take it off after that as it was driving me mad. You might be able to stop this problem by using a lip balm before the lipstick but i've never had to with other lipsticks so i wasn't going to give Lime Crime special treatment that i don't do with other companies. The other two were very drying and uncomfortable too but not quite as bad as Cosmopop.

Another very odd thing that happened was that when i wore D'lilac (this only happened with D'lilac) my lips started itching. Really itching. I don't know if i'm allergic to one of the ingredients or something, i've never had this problem before but it was really unbearable. It stopped as soon as i scrubbed the lipstick off.

After a while the finish goes really weird, even though it feels really drying it starts to look 'slimy'. It also begins to settle into every tiny line and crack in my lips, it's not very flattering. It makes my lips look very old and wrinkly and sometimes forms little 'balls' of pigment in the lines. It's weird because they all just seem to make my lips look worse instead of better. It's most obvious when i stretch my lips in a smile. If you have any dry or flaky skin on your lips this will show it up and Cosmopop and D'lilac look very chalky.

 

 D'lilac (you can see the lines in my lips)

 Airbourne Unicorn with a smile.

However the weirdest thing about these lipsticks is what happens after you remove them. They stain. Badly.

Here is my hand where the swatches were after i removed them with a makeup wipe and a cleanser:

 

As you can see Cosmopop stains a similar colour to the actual lipstick while oddly D'lilac and Airbourne Unicorn stain pink. I can only imagine that this is because the pink dyes or pigments in the formula stain while the blue don't. 

Here is what happens to my lips after i've worn the lipsticks (for about an hour or two) and removed the colour with tissues and a makeup wipe (no cleanser):

Cosmopop:

 

(check out my moustache and the cat hair stuck on the bottom right corner of my lip :P)

D'lilac:

(i forgot to take a photo when i took off Airboune Unicorn)

As you can see my lips are lightly stained and even after i've scrubbed the lipsticks off with makeup remover the the grooves in my lips are still full of product. Bits of Cosmopop got stuck on my lips and the area around my mouth was stained light orange.

Some people think the fact that these lipsticks stain is a good thing because... honestly i don't understand why they think this is a good thing! If you scrub the product off obviously it means you don't want to be wearing the colour anymore, and if you don't remove your lipstick then  you can't see the staining! Also the purple colours don't stain purple, they stain pink. And imagine if you were wearing a bright, odd colour, say No She Didn't (which is bright blue) and then the next day you had to work, your boss might not be happy with you having zombie blue lips!

Then i thought that if these stain on my lips what would happen if you kissed a loved one? So i kissed Claire:

 

and then instantly scrubbed it of with a makeup wipe:

as you can see there is a big light orange stain left on her face.

So what are the goods about these lipsticks? Well the colour stays the same as long as you wear it, no fading and they do seem to last quite long. I couldn't stand how they made my lips feel so i always removed them long before they would have worn off if i'd left them on. At least i think they would have.

Personally even if these were the most amazing lipsticks i'd ever tried i wouldn't buy them because of my experiences with the company and the fact that they have been proved to threaten bloggers for giving them a bad review, encorouging their fans to spam other reviews, insulted people left and right and tried to sabotage another company. But the fact is these lipsticks aren't amazing, they're less than mediocre in my opinion (and that's being quite kind) and terribly overpriced, even though we didn't pay the full price for these i can't see i'll ever wear them again so i would be very very angry if i had paid full price. And when the mediocre formula is combined with colours that, while Lime Crime want to convince you otherwise, you can get from other sellers who do not come with shady pasts i would  recommend shopping elsewhere. I don't think they'd be quite so much to be negative about if Lime Crime just hadn't made so many claims about their lipsticks (opaque in one stroke, shades you can find nowhere else etc). Apparently the more 'normal' the colour of the lipstick is the better the formula (so the pinks and reds are less drying and chalky than the blues or purples) but as i haven't tried any i can't say myself. However i don't see any point buying an 'ordinary' colour like red from Lime Crime when you can get good quality versions of these colours anywhere for a lot cheaper when the whole point of the Candyfuture collection is meant to be that the colours are unusual and hard to find. The only colour in the collection i can't find a near dupe for is No She Didn't, which is also my favourite of the colours. I like the idea of a bubblegum powder-blue lip. However lip swatches i have seen online make the formula look absolutely awful, thick and chalky, still i would have liked to try it myself. Having said that you can get other shades of blue from many many sources.

Now none of these are dupes but i thought i would mention some similar shades to the 3 i recieved because Lime Crime has constantly stated that no other companies (at least none that they know of) make shades this bright and unusual which just absolutely isn't true.

 

cosmopop, NYX orange soda. I think Orange soda is actually a lot more similar to the website swatch than Cosmopop itself.

 

OCC vapid, d'lilac, stargazer 115. Not the same but i think the OCC and Stargazer are more wearable and brighter.

A few more coming tomorrow.

So there's my review. I've tried my best to be absolutely honest however as you probably know if you follow either my blog or the Lime Crime drama i really hate this company. The colours are pretty and I would wear every one of them, while they certainly aren't unique some of them are definately hard to find and wouldn't be found in many drugstore brands. However the formula is awful and i personally am not pleased with it at the price we paid, let alone the £14 you will pay for them instore. You can get at least a similar shade to every one of the colours elsewhere if you know where to look and in general you will get a much better formula for a cheaper price.

On that note if you do want to buy one of these lipsticks and you live in the UK i suggest you purchase from the Lime Crime website itself and not Space NK (If you're near one you could always go to swatch the colours and then purchase online) as they cost £14 in store but just $16 (about £10) online, sometimes Lime Crime have discount codes and Lime Crime accept returns while Space NK don't.