LipSense Review: A Story of Love, Trust, & Turtlenecks

If I had to choose my two favorite features on myself, I’d go with my collar bones and my lips, with ears coming in a close third.

Sadly, I get more compliments on my derriere (good thing big butts are back in style) than I do on anything else, but I guess I’ll take it. Still, I wanted to point you all to the less, erm, popular features I like about myself, because I’m a big believer that all of us can find something to be confident about, even within a society that tells us we have to look like a hybrid of Carrie Underwood, Kim Kardashian, and Olivia Culpo. For me, even on my worst days in the mirror, I can always count on my trusty lips, ears, and collar bones to remind myself that God is a merciful God, even if I eat half a pizza and forget to do squats for 3 years.

For a girl who is pretty pleased with her lips, I am surprisingly disinterested in lipstick. You see, in addition to their lovely shape (is this getting weird yet?), I actually really like the color of my lips. The Big Guy Upstairs did a really nice job choosing the best shade to compliment my skin tone. Besides that, it doesn’t help that I am generally far too lazy for beauty regimens and makeup as a whole (see HERE and HERE for some entertaining descriptions of the few products I actually do use). I’ve walked into Sephora one time in my entire life, and it was because my friend forced me to join her. Afterwards, I drove straight to CVS to pick up some mascara.

However, when I’m feeling particularly sassy and/or have to attend a pageant event, I spend 25 minutes scrounging around for a stray tube of lipstick that smells vaguely of play-doh and sour berries. All this effort only to watch the color immediately transfer from my lips to my wine glass in a matter of minutes, before I even have time to take a good picture. To top it off, my husband won’t kiss me for the rest of the night because he’s convinced there is still some residue on my lips (even when I point out that my wine glass got the worst of it), and doesn’t want to answer questions as to why he’s wearing a shade called Wine About It.

And yet, when my friend from high school asked if I wanted to try something called LipSense by SeneGence, I agreed to give it a review. Mostly because I’m tired of the wax smell emitting from the one tube I found at the bottom of an old purse last week. New lipstick sounded pretty good to me!

JK, that’s not the only reason I said yes. I was pretty stoked to try LipSense because its whole shtick is that it doesn’t come off. Not on your wine glass. Not on your husband. Not on your pillow when you fall asleep without taking off your makeup. And not on your puppy when you smother her with kisses until she starts crying to be left alone. SIGN ME UP.

The look of concern and silent pleading on my dog’s face right before I douse her with kisses and dangerously tight squeezes:

The first time I put it on was a Friday night when I had nothing going on except to finish an old season of Survivor on Hulu and torture my puppy with a bath. But I was curious to see if I liked the color, so in my workout clothes that I’d put on earlier in the day with big plans of going to the gym (LOL), I slapped on some LipSense and stared at my reflection. One should never put on lipstick with no other makeup, or while wearing workout clothes. Heed my advice. Still, after squinting my eyes and using my imagination, I could tell that this color would look good if I wasn’t wearing an orange t-shirt.

Since this jank is supposed to last awhile, I didn’t bother taking it off. Let’s see how it does. So, in full on lipstick, I gave my puppy a bath, drank a glass of champagne, and sat around the house like the classy lady I am. Three hours later, I was ready for bed, and still looked like a freak on wheels**– which is actually a compliment to this lipstick. It hadn’t faded or budged in the slightest. I used the special remover that comes with it, and decided that this would be an excellent trust exercise when my husband returned from deployment.

**I was not wearing roller blades or wheels of any kind, but I’m just going to write this disclaimer instead of coming up with a different way to describe what I looked like.

A week later, I found myself in Philly with my husband, LipSense, and the promise in my heart to stay up past midnight with our friends. It was a big night, because I’d agreed to go “out”, which is something I don’t do unless it’s to an Irish Pub or some sort of establishment that pretty much requires putting on pants and that’s it. But our friends were bringing us to a trendy restaurant followed by a speakeasy, so this was big. The perfect opportunity for some LipSense, and to put my husband on the spot to kiss my Roseberry-colored smackers.

The big night arrived. I pulled on over-the-knee boots (it would take an act of God to get me in heels at this point in my life), a turtleneck that screamed “I’m married and it’s cold outside”, and three layers of Roseberry LipSense. Honestly, the lipstick was by far the best part of my outfit, which led me to some serious online shopping the next day, but that’s beside the point.

As you can see, applying lipstick is not my forte. The instructions said to swipe three layers in the same direction, carefully outlining your lips and filling in the rest, then to apply lip gloss (which comes with it). Based on my bottom lip, we can either blame my inability to follow directions or the wine tasting and glass of whiskey I drank prior to getting ready.

I swiftly approached my husband and did something along the lines of this:

He looked alarmed and backed away slowly. I told him that he had to kiss me because this lipstick wouldn’t come off on him. He looked wary, but was also itching to get to dinner, and realized from the glimmer of crazy in my eye that he wouldn’t be let out of the house until he agreed to go along with my game. #marriage

Although it looks like I’m pointing to his fantastic ears (our kids are going to have the best ears around), I am, in fact, pointing to his cheek, which has no lipstick on it after I kissed it. You can also see that his lips came out unscathed, as did our relationship:

For the record, I really hate this picture of me because I hadn’t bothered to shower that day (WHAT OF IT), but this is about the lipstick, not my greasy hair, mmk?

In case you were wondering, the lipstick outlasted cow tongue tacos (it was an adventurous night), chips and salsa, liquor drinks, and even the inside of the turtleneck that engulfed my face like a balaclava when I haphazardly removed it before diving onto the futon at the end of the night.

So, what’s the moral of the story, kids? I’m glad you asked:

1. If you want lipstick that your significant other won’t hate, LipSense is for you. They have a bajillion colors, so if Roseberry isn’t your jam, you can always get dark purple or something like the freak that you are.

2. If you want lipstick that won’t get in the way of drinking wine, because nothing should get in the way of drinking wine, LipSense is for you, too.

3. If your husband is hungry, he will agree to anything you say just so he can get to the restaurant. Use this piece of intel wisely.

4. Putting on workout clothes won’t help you lose weight unless you actually go to the gym.

To wrap up, I’ll have you know that I stayed out until 12:30 a.m. BOOM. I like to think it was the LipSense that kept me going. Without it, I probably would’ve called it a night around 10:30 like the granny I am.

Ladies, consider buying this as a Valentine’s Day gift for you AND your man. Simply CLICK HERE, request to join Courageous Kisses (my friend’s distribution group), and order using the form she has pinned to the top of the page! Or just private message her if you think technology is hard like I do.

If/when this saves your relationship because your beau is more willing to kiss you in public, YOU’RE WELCOME.

Speaking of kissing in public, a new episode of The Bachelor comes on tonight, which means another recap on the blog tomorrow. Ohhhh goodie.