Painting & Decorating: Mac Pro Longwear Lipstain Marker in Stylesetter

I may have mentioned a time or fifty how much I like lip stains. I bloody adore them - they're brilliant. Light-weight, long-wear shots of colour that you can wear solo, under balm or gloss, a stain is just a total lazy-girl must have. I will often apply before work and maybe touch up after lunch - they're not impervious to wear, but they do last a lot longer than lipstick, for example.

Bourjois' Rouge Hi-Tech range is what I usually go for, but I got handed a pre-release pile of Mac's Pro Longwear Lipstain Markers a while ago and naturally, I have been trying them out.

Part of the on-counter-now Art Supplies line (of which the fantastic Greasepaint Sticks are also a part), there are nine shades, all in the pink/red/brown spectrum, for €22 each. The sterling price is £14.50, so once again Mac, OUCH. Please, please look at your Euro pricing. You have so many fans here and they are starting to feel very ill-used.

That said, this is a nice little product. I favoured Stylestter, a neon pink, the most, and have been using it regularly. Any downsides?

Yup. The colour is great, but the applicator is not. I think the problem here is that these were designed to be used ON people, as opposed to you applying them yourself. So you can do the bottom lip perfectly well, but when it comes to angling the pen up to follow the cupids bow, the flow stops unless you draw downwards, and when you do that you've less control, so the marker applicator can become scratchy. You have to maneouver your hand around quite a bit to get a good shape and coverage on the upper lip - but you do get the hang of it after a bit.

So, that and price are my only gripe, and if you're a stain fan, you'll probably find you like these a lot.

Oh - and by the way, the ones you'll buy in-store are in black packaging, these were make up artist samples.