TWO TONE

I’m currently writing this after eating far too much this weekend from Chinese New Year festivities (I’ve kept all CNY stuff over on Instagram this year) and maybe because of my delirious food coma state, I’m breaking my own rule of not doing two similar posts back to back as I’m bringing you  yet another beauty post….

One of my favorite things to do when I am chilling out at home is watching Korean dramas but I am also quite partial to the odd Korean beauty youtuber too (especially Pony, can I just BE her please?) and so I’m always super interested in the latest Korean make up trends. In my opinion, Korean brands really own the lipstick market and they create the BEST colours! I remember seeing these Two Tone Lip Bars from Korean brand, Laniege appearing on Youtube channels a year ago. More recently, there was some pretty heavy product placement in a recent Korean drama that I was watching and I was excited when my aunt visited from Hong Kong and gifted me the very same Lip Bar product!

I’ve kind of been doing two tone lips accidentally for a while now – using an Etude House lip stain but concentrating more in the middle of the lip to give a sort of gradient effect. These lip bars offer the look with a quick swipe so it’s a pretty unique product. I have the colour in no.6 Pink step which has a bright coral pink shade and then a slightly more muted coral. I applied it so that the deeper shade was applied to the centre of my lips.

Ok so the verdict? Well I’m sure you guys can see from the photos that this lip bar doesn’t offer enough contrast at all. I really struggled to photograph any kind of gradient colour and the colours just muddle together to this pink coral shade. I think the more contrasting colours would definitely have a better effect. I’d be super disappointed if I had bought this with the intention of gradient colour but despite all of that, I actually really like the colour. It’s quite a moisturising formula and has a slight staining effect and I’d totally reach for it again – but definitely not to achieve the two tone lip look.