For those of you not familiar with Mariposa, it's an in-house makeup brand at Dollarama (a dollar store found across eastern Canada). Today, I saw Mariposa's new liquid lipsticks and picked up two shades for $1.50 each. Most of the shades in store were pinks, mauves, reds, and I saw a single, adventurous bright purple (shade: “Ms. Paris”).
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| Lollipop in its packaging |
I purchased Lollipop (medium pink-red) and Dreamer (brown-red). They come in 8ml tubes with doe-foot applicators. With the applicator it came with, I was able to apply the lipstick cleanly without the help of a lip brush. The pigmentation is great and it only took one coat for opaque coverage. I also immediately noticed the scent – it smells like a coconut tart to me. I normally hate artificially scented coconut, but this doesn’t veer into sunscreen territory. When it dries completely, it gives a fully matte finish. They're called matte lip stains but to be honest, they don't feel like a traditional stain. Instead, they feel like liquid lipsticks.
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| Swatches in natural light on NC15 bare skin |
Immediately after application, I noticed that these don’t wear comfortably on the lips. If you’ve ever used the MeNow liquid lipsticks sold on eBay and other online Chinese vendors – this is exactly how it feels. You can feel that you’re wearing a product, and it doesn’t feel nice. Another similarity to the MeNow lipsticks is that it leaves a tacky feeling, which never really goes away, i.e. if you press your lips together, it’ll stick together. When it comes time to remove these, you'll need an oil-based cleanser and you're going have to scrub hard because these are not easy at all to remove.
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| These don't budget under water. You're really going have to scrub with an oil-based cleanser. |
Overall, if you’re in the market for budget liquid lipsticks, these are a great option to play with. I don’t think these will make it into my daily rotation because I’m not a fan of how they feel, but these are fantastic in every other aspect, especially for the price.
VERDICT: B+
