Product Review: ColourPop Cosmetics Ultra Matte Lip and Lippie Pencil

I first saw ColourPop lipsticks on one of my favourite bloggers (as featured in this post), Nicole Alyse, as she’s a big fan of matte lip products. But they really appeared on my (/everyone’s) radar when Kylie Jenner’s “lipkits” were released; yes, unfortunately I fall prey to krazy Kardashian marketing sometimes (see what I did there). Consisting of a lipliner and a matte liquid lipstick in the same shade, they retail for $29/£20 plus nearly $8/£5.50 for (U.S.) shipping - if, that is, you can get hold of one (they frequently sell out in 10-15 minutes, and are restocked sporadically). So, naturally, many people - myself included - started searching for cheaper dupes. In fact, one conspiracy theory that went viral was that Jenner’s lipkits were actually ColourPop lipsticks simply repackaged. And whilst I have no idea if that’s true, a quick Google search for “Kylie lipkit dupes” throws up a ton of similair ColourPop offerings - at the incredible price of $6/£4 for an Ultra Matte Lipstick and $5/£3.50 for a Lippie Pencil (liner).

As ColourPop currently only ship to the U.S. and a select few other countries (with possible “additional duty fees”), I decided to take advantage of my American boyfriend by ordering some products to his student dorm in Washington D.C. for me to pick up when I next visited. As everything was so cheap, I ended up getting two Ultra Matte Lip colours and one Lippie Pencil; although shipping is $5/£3.50, you can get a $5 off coupon when you sign up for their newsletter, so my total was only around $17/£12! I’d heard some pretty bad things about the delivery, but mine got to my boyfriend within about a week and it was packed really well. I opened it up when I got to him a few days ago, and was really impressed with the packaging and appearance of the items.

The first Ultra Matte Lip colour was “Midi”, a “soft neutral beige” (according to the website description) that is close to Kylie’s “Candy K” shade. I rarely stray from dark red/berry/purple shades when it comes to lip colours, so I felt like this was a good opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone. My second choice was a copy of one of Kylie’s newest shades - a bright red named “Mary Jo K” that is much more my style than her three original colours. ColourPop’s version is named “Creeper”, and is described as a “true classic blue red”. As I thought I'd be wearing this the most, I also opted for ColourPop’s suggested Lippie Pencil in “Bossy” (side note: I think that's an awesome feature on their website; suggested products that match or go well with the product you're currently viewing!). With the help of my boyfriend and his DSLR, there are some pictures of the swatches I took of each item on my hand, and on my lips (apologies for my less-than-flawless face, I didn't want to edit the pics at all so you could get a proper idea of how the colours came out!). 

Strangely, I feel like the two different Ultra Matte Lip shades must have slightly different formulas, because Midi stayed on much better than Creeper, but dried my lips out a bit more. Both went on pretty effortlessly - the applicator is smooth and easy to use - but Creeper came off onto everything! By the end of the day, I'd gotten it on my hands, my boyfriend’s face, my clothes, his backpack strap, and it had completely blurred all around my mouth, despite the fact that I'd used the Lippie Pencil as a liner first. On the other hand, Midi looked great for most of the day and I didn't need to reapply it for a good three or four hours.

Both are pretty hard to get off (so good for staying power, but bad for when you just want to go to bed!) and Creeper leaves a lot of residue behind; I looked a bit like a clown! Taking value for money into account, I think I would repurchase from ColourPop, but stick to the more muted, nude-ish shades. I'm also going to try layering Midi over a lip balm, to avoid it drying my lips out; hopefully it will still appear as matte as it goes solo. And I'll stick to my clear Lord & Berry lipliner to keep it looking sharp, as I don't feel the Lippie Pencil worked well. I've heard that some people use the pencils as lipstick on their own, so there's always that option too.

Have you guys had any experiences with ColourPop? Let me know in the comments!

Product(s): ColourPop Ultra Matte Lip (3.2g/0.1 oz) and ColourPop Lippie Pencil

Ingredients: full list on relevant product pagesPrice: Lips: $6.00 (around £4) / Pencil: $5.00 (around £3.50)Colour(s): Lips: Midi and Creeper / Pencil: Bossy; full list of colours available on their website (there's too many to list here!)
Sold at: exclusively, ColourPop.com, who don't ship to the UK yet. You can get them from Amazon.co.uk and various other third-party sellers, but ColourPop don't authorise or recommend this, and you'll pay way above their original prices.