Makeup Revolution & MUA: £1 Lip Swatches

I recently had to order replacement toothbrush heads, exciting I know (!) and while doing so, I thought I'd check out the makeup. As you know, I'm a big beauty buff, but rarely manage to wear makeup these days, though I have maintained my usual skin and body care routines. For the past year, I've been aiming to wear makeup on the rare occasions I do leave the house and am starting to buy makeup again. It seemed so wasteful when I was very ill, to buy stuff I'd never get the chance to use at the time. It's an area I'm still hugely interested in though, so I've been keeping an eye on new releases (GWP's are still my ultimate weakness), but I'd say I've been spending more on skincare and less on makeup, when it used to be the other way around. I'm also keen to get back into blogging regularly about beauty and hope this is something you'll be interested in seeing here. So back to the toothbrush head order and I saw it was 3 for 2 on makeup with these lipsticks priced at £1 each. It was such a bargain, I was able to order guilt-free! I partly ordered these as an inexpensive treat and partly out of curiosity for blogging purposes! Naturally I gravitated towards the nude colours and for the third item, I picked up a lip liner, as it was also £1. Both Makeup Revolution and Makeup Academy, have really made names for themselves with trendy, quality but affordable items and I was genuinely interested to see how they fared.
First up are the lipsticks, both from Makeup Revolution. These come in plastic black packaging, with gold branding and one of those handy clear sections on the end with the lipstick colour inside. Well, handier if you bought two completely different shades, unlike me! The unusual thing about these is, the coloured tip is actually the lid, not the base. So the twist-up lipstick is contained in the black part and the coloured part is the lid. I like this because usually with the likes of NYX, you have to store the lippies upside down in order to make use of the self-coloured tip. My only gripe is once you've opened the lipstick and separated it from it's lid, you have no idea which shade it is. There's no name on the actual lipstick part. Probably not a big deal when you're using it, but for the likes of me taking blog photos (i.e. having multiple open at one time), it would be easy to mix them up. For £1 though, I'm more than happy with the packaging and the lipstick bullet is a nice size and twists up easily without scraping the sides.
The Amazing Lipsticks are promoted as creamy, long lasting and with high colour pay-off. The One is a pinky beige...
...while Nude is more caramel toned.
Both are shimmer free and applied smoothly. They don't feel super thick and creamy to me, but aren't thin and slippy either. I've swatched heavier at one end, but as you can see there's reasonable colour pay-off from a lighter swipe. On the lips, they apply a little paler (which I usually find with lipsticks) and they felt smooth and lightweight.
The lip pencil is Makeup Academy (MUA) Intense Colour Lip Liner in Caramel Nougat. Getting it out of the shrink-wrap was a bit of a rigmarole (note to self, don't twist a pencil when the lid doubles up as a sharpener)! The pencil is self-coloured and comes with a clear lid, which again helps if you own many and are seeking a particular shade. As I said, the lid contains a sharpener, just put the lid on the pencil and turn to sharpen. Try not to do it, when it's brand new and unused though! Caramel Nougat is again a nude lip colour, which looked warmer in certain lights. I prefer it when it's leaning cooler, as most "nude" lip pencils tend to favour a terracotta tone for some reason, which isn't usually what I'm seeking from a nude. There's certainly less of an orange tone than I was expecting (surprisingly and thankfully). MUA state these pencils are creamy with strong colour pay-off and can even be worn alone. It swatched smoothly and didn't feel like it would drag on the skin.
I decided to wear the lip pencil the other day and my goodness, I'm hooked! It felt beautifully creamy on the lips, when usually pencils are quite drying. It applied easily, with zero dragging and there was no orangey-red tone, just a beautiful nude-brown. I'm seriously impressed with this and can see this shade becoming a staple and I'm keen to check out the other colours it comes in. I can't believe it's just £1. I honestly love this more than my high-end liners, it's beautiful.
Overall the colours aren't particularly unique, though I didn't opt for anything remotely adventurous, but at £2 (on 3 for 2) for the lot, it's a serious bargain if you're short on funds but needing a treat. I'm truly impressed with the lip pencil and I haven't given the lipsticks a proper wear yet, though the quality of them all appears to far exceed the price point. I'm definitely curious to try more.  I might even make these bargain beauty buys a regular feature as there seems to be a lot of budget items out there that are intriguing me.  Have you tried any of these?

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