Smashbox Limitless Lip Stain & Color Seal Balm + Soft Effects Powder Eye Liner Look & Swatches

So, by popular blather-voted demand, here's a look at some of the stuff that's available from Smashbox this season. Above are five of six so-hot-it-hurts Limitless Lip Stain and Color Seal Balms. These are on counter right now and at €26, there is no denying that YIKES this is a steep price, then there's another step to climb with an extra level of ouch built in.

Yes, there's a balm on one end of the tint to help account for the cost - but Revlon has done the same with its Just Bitten stains for a mere €11.

So what justifies the high price here? Ok, Smashbox's high end positioning is not the same as Revlon's mass brand offering so that's a start. Guava, the bright coral-orange lip tint above - which is the best replacement for the sadly discontinued Bourjois Rouge High Tech in Rouge Futuriste I've yet come across - is amazing. I mean it.  It is my ideal shade and it goes on like a dream. And it stays on.

I love and enjoy a tint in any case. A brand doesn't have to do much to convince me. And these are truly very good tints: easy to use, tons of colour, a non-scratchy nib and a sheer, tinted balm for over the top for extra comfort and a hint of gloss are all part of the package.

Guava was lashed on last night at 8pm before I headed out to see Queens of the Stone Age. It lasted all night with no attention and was pristine when I got in after midnight. The swatches I Twitpicced from the Smashbox meeting I went to yesterday (and that's where I got the samples you're looking at here)  were still firmly in place last night, despite my trying to get them off with variously, soap, Shu Uemura cleansing oil and hard scrubbing.

L-R: Guava balm, Guava, Sangria, Berry, Nude and Cinnamon

This morning, I reapplied Guava before heading out to RTE to go on The Tubridy Show. It's still there, in all its glory. There's no budging these babies. So, horrifyingly priced they may be, but they appear to wash their face for the cash based on my two-day trial anyway. Should bad behaviour occur/ if they dry up with lightning speed, I'll let you know.

PS: the bloody swatches are still on my hand. Someone asked me in concerned tones earlier "if I was alright?"

Four Soft Effects Powder Eye Liners have already launched in April. These are €22 each and three are matte - the aubergine, black and brown, while the gunmetal shade has some glitter. I like these a lot actually - they're perfect for someone with the dreaded crepy lids, for anyone who doesn't have a steady hand for drawing precise lines or just for when you don't fancy a really sharply-defined cats eye flick.

You can draw these on fairly precisely across the lashline, but the edges will always be a little less defined and subtle than razor sharp brush lines - which is more flattering for an older person in any case.

There's a soft, flexible tip and the powder is soft and highly-pigmented. These can also be used as shadow - I've been checking out gunmetal in the crease of my eye for a nighttime look and liking how it plays.

L-T: black, gunmetal, brown and aubergine

NIGHTTIME

Top pic is taken with flash so every pore and wrinkle is exposed to scrutiny! Here's a very quick face thrown on between legging it home from work and back home again last night before aforementioned gig. The two Smashbox products I used were the liptint in Guava with a slick of the balm on top and a line of the powder liner in the crease of each eye, then blended up and below.

I have very hooded lids so you can never get a good sense in FOTD photos of what shadow really looks like, but the aim here is to show you how these two products are just very nice basics that can work well in your kit.  The bottom shot shows you the other products I used - that's it. I don't go in for using jillions of things at a time and I didn't set my foundation last night, I just used blusher. Quite a lot of blusher! The mascara is a new Smashbox one too - it's called Full Exposure, the jury's still out on this.

DAY TIME

And this morning. Not a great shot - the taxi was waiting outside and it's slightly out of focus. Again, my hooded lids mean you can't really see what shadows I'm wearing but as per Lynnie's advice it's very neutral - a pale gold shade by Trish McEvoy with a small amount of L'Oreal Colour Infallible in Endless Chocolat at the outer edge and blended into the crease. Guava's on my lips again - this time without balm, my makeup's set with a Catrice powder to mattify it and trusty Coralista's called into play for blush.

Now, just as an aside, someone always likes to tell me how awful I am at putting on makeup/what a disgrace I am (old and cheap was last week's concerned citizen's helpful comment, which made me guffaw until the Queen Elizabeth 1-style leaded warpaint fell off my hundred year old visage) when I put up face of the day posts and that's grand - I'd be the very first to hold my hands up and tell you very firmly I am not a professional, nor would I claim to be. I'm a beauty writer. Not a makeup artist. I love makeup - can you tell? - but I'm not a pro when it comes to application, no matter how much I love to play with it. I don't intend for any look I post to be taken as instruction or advice to you guys - this is just how it looks on me and how I put it on my face.

So, all that said, what do we think of these two new launches from Smashbox then? Like or lukewarm?