I LOVE lip balms. I’ve loved them since my school days, when we all kept pots of Body Shop lip balm in our pencil cases. Even when I moved on to lipstick, I always kept a balm in every handbag.
In recent years my life has been altered drastically by chronic illness. I no longer get to wear my beloved lipsticks every day. The one thing I always have on hand though is lip balm, even when I’m stranded in bed by the pain and nausea; sadly that’s most of the time right now.
I was excited to read that MAC were releasing a range of tinted balms – the Tendertalk Collection.
The two shades I went for are Play With Me and Side Dish. These balms claim to produce sheer tint that is individual to the wearer, based on the wearer’s body chemist. Play With Me is a sheer red shade and Side Dish is a sheer plum.
The packaging is absolutely gorgeous. I am a bit of a magpie when it comes to shiny things and these tubes are reflective and change colour in the light beautifully, without being so over the top that you’d feel self conscious using one in public! The tubes are nice and sturdy as you’d expect from a product in this price range.
The signature MAC vanilla scent is present, which I’m pleased about. The balm does what you’d expect a decent balm to do – it makes lips feel soft and moisturised. It doesn’t particularly last any longer than balms like Benefit’s Benebalm but I find the tint to be more smoothly buildable (since they are very close in price, I’d choose these over the Benebalm which until now was my favourite). As the balm wears away, a hint of colour stain is left behind.
These are definitely an indulgent purchase as you can get nice tinted balms at a cheaper price point, but personally I love these balms. I’ll be needing to go into hospital some time soon to have a hole drilled in my skull and a monitoring thing put in there for a couple of days, so I figured I’d treat myself to these and include them in my scaled-back hospital basics makeup bag. I don’t mind admitting that pretty little luxuries cheer me up and I’m glad I bought these – in fact I’m trying to stop myself from buying the other shades!
Do you have a favourite tinted lip balm?
Wishing you good luck and happy days,
Kindra x
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Chronic Pain Cockney – The Little Things is also on Bloglovin.