Faces cream matte lip gloss in "PUCE" and "PEACH LOVE" : Review and swatches

First of all, I don't like this looong name- faces cream matte lip gloss. What rubbish! Henceforth these shall be called faces lip creams. Much simpler and more effective. Capiche? Cool.

I've suddenly been obsessed with (amongst several other things) lip creams. Whats not to love? They're creamy, long lasting, pigmented and dry down to a matte finish. Sounds good in theory and many brands have jumped on this bandwagon but do all deliver? I'm in the process of researching this. How? By buying lip creams of various brands of course. Purely for research purpose you see. ;)
So the first ones that I'm reviewing is from the Canadian brand FACES cosmetics. These come in some 15 shades I think but I've never seen all of them at once, ever. Anyhoo, so I picked up 2 of these in shades 01-Puce and 05-Peach Love. The Puce I got from cosmetix.in and the other one from HealthKart. These online stores all offer varying discounts and I paid 343 for one and 391 for the other. The MRP is 399 for 4.5mL.

FACES lip creams-Peach Love and Puce

FACES lip cream applicators-Peach Love and Puce

FACES lip cream swatches- Peach Love(bottom) and Puce (top)

FACES Lip Cream 05 Peach Love

FACES Lip Cream-01 Puce

Puce is a mauvey pink with a bit of brown. I know it looks brown on my arm but on my lips it becomes more pink. It looks like a light mlbb type of shade. Very good for those no-makeup or all-natural looks.

Peach Love is a bright, almost neon peachy pink shade. I wore it and the first word that sprang to mind was Nicki Minaj! All I was missing was a fuchsia wig. This shade is light but still bright. Oh just see the swatches for reference. I still haven't worn this outside. This would need to be paired with the right eye makeup (sparkling blue liner?) and clothes to work. Definitely a night time shade, at least for me.

The pics below are clickable for a closer look.

FACES Lip Cream-05 Peach Love- in natural light, 10 mins after application

FACES Lip Cream 01 Puce - in natural light, immediately after application

FACES Lip Cream 01 Puce- in natural light, one hour after application

The good and the bad: Yay for:

• Good pigmentation. Gives full coverage.
• Decently priced
• Transparent tube allows you to see how much product is left
• Smells yummy- of Bourbon biscuits

Boo for:

• Very drying, needs a balm underneath. But this defeats the whole matte look purpose as it takes much longer to dry- about an hour
• Becomes flaky and crusty when it dries. Also turns patchy when it fades emphasizing fine lines.
• Lasts about 2 hours and then starts to fade.
• The mouth of the tube gets messy with the product coz every time you push the wand in, it makes a "glooshp" sound and some oozes out. So you really gotta be careful to not push the wand in too fast.

Overall, I'm not too happy with this product. I know it's got some good reviews on other blogs but didn't work for me. Maybe lips need to be really well exfoliated and smooth for this to work. I dunno. Or maybe I could make it work by layering a gloss on top. But defeats the whole matte effect. Sigh. Not. For. Me.

You can buy this online here and here. Also available at FACES counter at AMPA mall in Chennai, and at the Health and Glow outlet at Express Avenue mall. Not sure about other cities. :)

My rating: *