OFRA Cosmetics Liquid Lipsticks – Review and Swatches

After so many requests from you guys to post my views on OFRA Liquid Lipsticks as soon as I can, here I am in the middle of the night, all swatched up, in my PJs, wearing the darkest shade out of the range, writing the review, ah! Things we do for the sake of blogging...

Product Claims

OFRA Long Lasting Liquid Lipstick is a one step full lip colour that does not feather. These vibrant colours will give you a vivacious new look. They are creamy and soft in texture, moisturizing the lips and creating a long lasting lipstick effect. No need to use lip liner, this liquid lipstick gives a beautiful edge to your lip look!

All shades contain antioxidants and Vitamin E while the formula provides a lightweight layer of lasting colour to make you look stunning all day. Colour will last in a perfect condition up to five hours without eating or drinking. For best results do not eat or drink for 15 minutes after applying.

What Do I Think?

The lipsticks come as a pretty standard plastic tube with a doe-foot applicator and the product itself smells vanilla-ish, very similar to the fragrance Essence Stay Matte Lip Creams had, if any of you guys have had a chance of using those. I personally have no issue with any kind of scent in makeup products/moisturizers/shampoos unless it makes me nauseous and this one, I just keeping inhaling it, that’s how yummy it is to me.

The formula, which is very creamy and not liquid-y like ColorPop Ultra Mattes, reminds me a lot of DMGM Photofix Liquid Lipsticks but a bit creamier. People say it resembles NYX Matte Lip Creams as well but I cannot comment on that since I have not used those. The liquid lipsticks I have used until now pretty much set really fast after application but these took a little while, around 5–6 minutes, to lose their sheen and go completely matte. The pigmentation is excellent and the product goes completely opaque in a single swipe. What amazed me that although these set matte (I’d rather not say dry), the product remained and felt creamy on my lips and did not dry them out. My lips were a bit flaky and being my typical-lazy-Garfield-self I just wore the lipsticks without exfoliating the lips. Yes, I know, it’s a crime to wear lipsticks that way *insert rolling eyes emoji*. To my surprise, the formula did not accentuate any dryness, glided on smoothly and kept the lips supple and smooth throughout the time I had the product on. The wear time is pretty amazing too, 5 – 6 hours, with eating and drinking, until I noticed some product wearing off from the centre of lips. Because of this trait, a good makeup remover is what you will need to get these completely off.

I don’t know if it’s the piece I got is like that or if Santa Monica’s formula differs from the rest, I noticed it to be a bit thicker, less moisturizing and a bit harder to take off compared to the rest which although did not decrease its wear time nor made it drying but I did notice it set faster than the rest. In fact, I liked it the most out of the five probably because Fuschia colours are just my thing baby!

The only downside to these lipsticks I found was they transferred a bit probably because the formula isn’t made to dry out completely in the first place. The brand, although suggests you wait for 15 minutes after wearing the product and avoid eating or drinking anything during that time to get the best results but I found the product does not become completely transfer-proof even after you go through the drill (oh well, not the drill but you get the idea, right? :-D

Here is a breakdown of the shades:

Mocha – Mauve-y nude

Miami Fever – Burnt Orange with brown undertones

Hollywood – Dull neon-y pink with blue undertones

Santa Monica – Bright Fuschia Pink

Mina – Very deep berry with brown undertones (not oxblood colour)

I dug into my stash to find any shades that matched these and below is a picture of comparative swatches.

Please Note these are in no way dupes of OFRA Liquid Lipsticks, none of these are actually the same in terms of formula or shades.

Miami Fever remains unique; I did not have anything like that.

Price 

$19.90 USD (for 8 grams of product)

Note: Please refer to Makeup 4 U's page for price inquiry in PKR

Availability 

Makeup 4 U

Pros

Excellent pigmentation

Long Lasting

Moisturizing

Creamy formula

Set matte

Do not feather

Contain antioxidants and Vitamin E

Cons

Transfer a little

Pricey

My Rating 

4/5

Which ones do you plan to grab for yourself?

Love,

Fizzah

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

PR sample(s) for consideration. This, however, has not affected my sincere opinions as my loyalty is to the readers. For further details, check our Blog Policy.

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How To - Super Easy Daytime Matte Smokey Eyes

Hello fellow beauty crusaders! I hope you guys have been benefiting from any tips or tricks we hand out from time to time. As always, your requests and suggestions are most welcome so keep them coming.

I know that social media teaches us that going out without a winged liner and ginormous lashes is taboo these days but I am going to show you how they are options not necessities. Especially when you are in a hurry (All my mommies out there can I get an Amen?!) or you are too young to wear those dramatic Instagram eye looks, it can be quite hard. These days, eye makeup is full of sharp angles and maximum definition which suits few people. So, this high impact eye look focuses on making you look soft and sultry rather than defined and drag.

I think makeup should be enjoyed by everyone regardless of their age so today’s look is universally appealing for ladies of all ages, eye shapes, eye colours or skin tones. If you have a naturally sharp crease, this will help soften it and if your crease is hooded, it will not showcase the fact that your mobile lid is barely visible from the front. Smokey eyes are about low contrast and based on grades of colour, i.e. lighten as it goes from lash line to brow bone. I wanted to go all matte because lots of people will have you believe shimmer and glitter is the only way to look “beautiful” which is once again, not true at all. I know beginners struggle with shimmery fallout and some just feel uncomfortable wearing shimmer during the day. You can also go day-to-night with it simply by packing a shimmery shadow on the lid and maybe the inner corner. 

I have used four colour combinations to show how versatile it is. As you can see you only need three matte shades other than your highlight to create one. I am using the reddish brown eye as an example. You may use black as the darkest shade for all but that is a bit too dramatic for most people particularly during the daytime and I wanted to stay true to the concept of a smokey eye. Products are listed at the end.

How To Do It

Step 1: Primer

Prime your entire eye area and dust it with translucent powder or a matte cream shadow. You can choose to highlight it with a matte cream at this point.   

Step 2: Transition

Blend your transition shade over your entire crease area and your lower lash line.

Step 3: Lid and Crease

Pack on your lid shade blending it slightly into your crease and add it to your lower lash line close than the transition shade already there.

Step 4: Lash Line Defintion

Tightline your upper and lower waterline too if you wish. Using a pointed brush, create a rough eye liner with your darkest shade smoking it upwards and blend your waterline kohl with it too.

Step 5: Mascara and Clean Up

Now all you have to do it put on tons of mascara, clean up the fallout and put on some concealer. Any opaque line with a true smokey eye is a big no because it ruins the gradient effect you just created. I don’t recommend lashes except maybe individual ones because they will cover up your hard work.

All done! It was that easy. I dare you to stuff this up.

The best part is that the messier a smokey eye is the better it looks so don’t worry about being neat or creasing as the day goes on. It will appear slept in and sexy.

Products Used

Eyes

•ABH Dipbrow Pomade - Ash Brown

•Makeup Revolution eye primer - Matte

•Catrice Prime and Fine translucent powder

•BH Cosmetics 120 shade 5th edition eye shadow palette

•Makeup Academy Smokin’ palette

•Essence I Love Long Lashes mascara

Face

•Luscious HD Mineral Foundation Ivory + Garnier BB cream-Light

•BH Carli Bybel palette highlighter

•Catrice Prime and Fine powder

•Makeup Revolution powder blush - Now

Lips

Colourpop Ultra Matte Liquid Lipstick - Clueless

Brushes

•Sigma Firm Shader - E57

•Morphe MB 23

•DMGM Eye Smudge

•Sigma Pencil - E30

Here is the full face look with the lavender smokey eye.

I hope you learned something new and useful from this post.

What is your go-to daytime eye look these days?

Love,

Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

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L.A. Girl Pro Conceal – Review and Swatches

L.A. Girl Concealers made it to the hot products’ list when everyone was raving about these everywhere. From concealing to contouring, these little tubes were seen used or rather abused by almost every other makeup enthusiast/guru. Of course inquisitive of all the hype, we had to give these a try.

Product Claims

Crease-resistant, opaque coverage in a creamy yet lightweight texture. The long-wearing formula camouflages darkness under the eyes, redness and skin imperfections. Provides complete, natural-looking coverage, evens skin tone, covers dark circles and minimizes fine lines around the eyes.

This blendable and buildable formula provides the ultimate, customizable coverage. This must-have concealer includes a soft brush-tip for easy application.

-Camouflages the appearance of skin imperfections

-Evens out skin tone

-Covers dark circles

-Minimizes fine lines

-Provides customizable coverage

What Do We Think?

The product comes in a pretty standard plastic tube with a brush applicator. You have to squeeze the tube to get it out and since there is no way to keep a check on that, you may end up with a lot more than needed. Since the consistency of the product itself is not too runny or too thick, you will get a better idea of how much to squeeze with time.

We both take concealing and concealers a lot more seriously than any other makeup product therefore in a whim of exploring the new hot product in town, we ordered four of these in shades Creamy Beige, Pure Beige, Toast and the very infamous Orange Corrector. Creamy Beige is a light beige shade, Pure Beige being a tone darker and Orange actually has deep orange pigmentation.

The concealers are quite pigmented and have a medium consistency which dries quite fast when dispatched out of the tube leaving you a little time to blend the product out. Not only you have to blend it fast, we found these a bit hard to blend. The product, however, is water-proof hence lasts long on the face which is a plus point.

Since I, Fizzah, have a medium tone with strong yellow undertones, a concealer with similar undertones is what goes with my complexion and sadly, none of the options in L.A. Girl Pro Conceal has a yellow toned concealer therefore I had to resort to Creamy Beige and Pure Beige with the former being lighter than my skin tone and the latter being a tone darker. So, shouldn’t have the lighter one worked for me? I had thought the same but a concealer with wrong undertones tends to make your under eye grey especially if you have purple-ish dark circles and that is exactly what Creamy Beige did for me. Pure Beige on the other hand, did conceal, but made the under eye darker instead. I tried layering the lighter one on top of that for brightness but the formula is unforgiveable when you do that. I have dry under eyes and need to moisturize a lot before I put on any concealer, and layering up products in that area is not my cup of tea, I want the job done with minimum amount of products when it comes to concealing.

If you do not have yellow undertones you might find a shade from the range that suits you but for all the yellow toned ladies, do not waste your money on these.

The corrector has strong orange tone to it and I always wondered how amazing the product must be that Youtubers put it directly on their faces and it blends so flawlessly, *bang* another lesson learned the hard way. Since the corrector as well is quite pigmented and hard to blend when used alone, I wouldn’t recommend anyone putting it directly. You will need to tone it down according to your skin tone and here came the Creamy Beige and Pure Beige handy for me. I used the corrector mixed with both of these concealers separately and it surprisingly did a better job than when used alone. Even then you don’t need much, a drop or two of the product is enough otherwise you will end up with an orange face.

We made these products work for us by mixing them in other concealers/ foundations as well or using them over dewy foundations. Spraying the brush with rosewater also helped blend them but it still took too much effort and time. If you insist on using a brush try one which absorbs lots of product and has a buffing quality.

Sadaf uses a Real Techniques Expert Face brush dupe to get this job done. Fizzah tried these with Beauty Blender and it alone gave the effortless blend and flawless finish for her.

We ordered Toast to try as a contour shade. You too might have heard like us that Toast is a cool-toned brown. It is not, as far as my medium yellow toned skin and Sadaf’s light neutral toned skin is concerned, Toast shows up as a warm brown on us so we use it as a bronzer. It however can be used for contouring on people with complexions similar to those of African-American origin as is clear from online swatches.

*Contour shades are NEVER meant to be warm. They are ALWAYS cool to mimic facial shadows. Yes, Youtube is lying to you.*

Newbie makeup enthusiasts are always at a lookout for inexpensive products that would deliver as well. Considering how tricky these products were for us to use, we do not recommend any beginner to try these.

Price

$5.00

Pros

Water-proof

Creamy

Full Coverage

Inexpensive

Cruelty-free

Wide colour range

Cons

Hard to blend

No yellow toned options

Quick drying

Our Rating

2.5/5

How have you found these? Yay or nay?

Love,

Fizzah & Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

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