Makeup Academy Lip Boom- LMK, Bring It, It's A Situation

This, my friends, is how insomnia, YouTube, and online shopping can make a beauty blogger do some very odd things. Also, it's another proof that Lisa Eldridge can sell me just about anything. It was a late December night and I wasn't feeling well. I think I was waiting for the NyQuil I took to start working, so I was still up at some odd hour at night catching up on YouTube videos. I saved Lisa Eldridge for last and ended up watching her Day-to-Night tutorial two or three times in a row, just because. Realizing I own almost every last product she used for the look, I was intrigued by a super cheap lip product, Lip Boom (£3.00, less than $5) from a UK brand I never heard about before, Makeup Academy. Somehow I found myself on the Makeup Academy site ordering Lip Boom in the three darkest colors: LMK (the one used by Lisa Eldridge), as well as Bring It and It's A Situation. Finally the NyQuil kicked in and I went to bed, promptly forgetting about my online shopping adventure.

A week or so later when the little box from Makeup Academy landed on my door step I was not quite sure what it was until I saw LMK and remembered my late night with Lisa. The Lip Boom Packaging was tackier than I remembered, but I took out a couple of lip brushes and set out to play. Lip Boom is two products in one: one side is a satin-to-matte lipstick and the other one is a high glitter gloss. It's not a new idea, of course, everyone from Chanel to Revlon had a similar product at some point.

Let's be clear, Makeup Academy is not exactly a luxury brand and Lip Boom is not a Tom Ford lipstick. What you see is what you get: an intensely pigmented lipstick and a disco ball lip gloss that can go over it. The texture is decent, the caramel scent is strong but pleasant, working the lipstick into well-prepped lips with a brush the way Lisa Eldridge gives good results; as long as your lips aren't dry to begin with and are absolutely free of flakes the finish is nice. I've worn all three lipsticks and had an occasional drying incident, so when I say prep your lips I really mean it- exfoliate and nourish before and after. I've also mixed the color with good balms to get a sheer coverage and add moisture. This technique worked especially well with Nuxe lip balm because it has a matte finish yet hydrates very well. The glosses, well... I'm not quite a glitter girl. They're fun, but I skip them.

Now for the colors:
LMK is a dark plum (cool pink with silver glitter gloss)
Bring It is a classic red with somewhat of a pink based that's more pronounced on my lips (reddish pink gloss)
It's A Situation is burgundy (nudish pink gloss).

Bottom Line: one could do far (FAR!) worse at this price.

Makeup Academy Lip Boom- LMK, Bring It, It's A Situation (£3.00 each) can be purchased from muastore.co.uk. They ship to the US.