Stila A Couple of Crushes Lip and Cheek Stains

I picked up these Stila Lip and Cheek Stains for $10 from Sephora a couple of weeks ago and haven't had a chance to play with them until today. As regular readers may be aware, I have plenty of experience with cheek stains, so when I saw these babies for such a low price, I was a dead cert for adding them to cart.

My first thoughts on them is that the packaging looks gorgeous. I adore how Stila packages their products with those brushed steel and worn out courier font. They are in a twist-end brush form, exactly the same as their lip glazes. When I broke them open, it did take a lot of twisting for any product to appear, and then suddenly I had an avalance of stain to deal with. I have always had that problem with stila lip glazes, which is why I do not own a lot of them. I either did not have enough product, or far too much. Sigh.

The colors are gorgeous - a corally mango shade, and a deep pink pomegranate shade. Stila also claims that there are ingredients which react to the pH of your skin to turn the perfect tint for you. I'm going to have to take that with a pinch of salt, to be honest. They do have a hint of shimmer which is unusual for a stain, which are sheer matte.

mango, pomegranate, unblended

Pretty as the colors are though, I did not find them super easy to apply. I had thought that they might follow the same approach as Benefit's Benetint which is three dabs then blend. Stila's need a lot more product before they start to show up, and I found myself twisting the cap like crazy, and I have to admit I couldn't get mango to show up at all on my lips. Because I wasn't sure how much color to use, I found myself dabbing then blending, dabbing then blending, and my cheeks ended up red from rubbing, not blush. I took a break then, and checked back, and I do have a sweet corally tint now. The stain wasn't as liquidy as the Benefit product, and had just a tiny amount of tackiness, but nothing like the Tarte cheek stain.

mango, pomegranate, blended out

Do I love these products? No, not really. But they are fun for $10 to play around with, and if you aren't sure about cheek stains, then definitely this is a good way to find out if that style of blush is good for you.