THANK GOD IT'S FAVOURITES: Revlon ColorBurst Balm Stain

First off, apologies for the unhelpful photo, I love it so much that the tube is looking rather worse for wear and the pictures were not coming out brilliantly! 

I was struggling to think of a favourites for ages and then had to go out last night and wanted something super-quick to update my work make-up just a little, and reached for this automatically, and realised that I always do. It is hands down my number one go-to in that situation. It is partly to do with the colour, but also a lot to do with how easy it is to wear because of how well it wears, so definitely a favourite!

I have this in the shade 005 Crush, a berry colour, and I have just realised how weird it is that I never tried another shade, I am definitely going to have to pick some more up, but anyway, this shade is just my absolute perfect colour. It is a bit bolder than I would wear everyday for work say, but definitely an evening or weekend colour if you don't want to go as far as lipstick. It is not sheer (I generally hate sheer lip stuff), but it's just not quite as intense as lipstick, which makes it a lot more wearable. For me, this shade is just the absolute perfect pick-me-up, it is super flattering and as well as a good boost to everyday make-up, it is also what I reach for if I am feeling crap or all my other make-up has gone terribly or whatever. This makes me look instantly better but without being hugely attention-drawing, i.e. perfect if I am feeling rubbish.

I bought this ages ago, I guess I have probably kept it a lot longer than I should have but oh well, I haven't died yet. I use it regularly in a maybe once a week regularly sort of thing, not every day, so it just doesn't go down that much. Also because it is a stain, you don't need to constantly reapply it, so it is super economical, and already a pretty good price. I find it really hard to find lip colours that don't fade horrendously in the middle of my lips and leave me with lipliner, but this is really great. The intense balm bit of it does wear off, but it leaves a great, really even stain, so as I said, I wore it for dinner last night - super difficult to find lip colour for dinner #amiright? I ate pizza, it was delicious and I was constantly licking flour off my lips, the balm wore off but my lips were universally berry-pink underneath, hurrah. Also I have barely even mentioned the balm part, but it is indeed very moisturising and lovely, so you're left with stained but not dry lips, my holy grail.

Just a quick note on packaging, you can see from my pictures that all the words have worn off - that doesn't really bother me, I think it actually looks quite nice plain, but the lids are pretty useless... After a while, they just fall right off, but by the time this happened to me, I had used it enough to be able to wind the stain down into the tube so it is not a complete disaster anymore if it does fall off in my bag. Just a word of warning though.

Final note: I just went on the website to check I got the shade name right and see how many other shades they have etc, and have just seen they have the coolest feature! They have ten shades, and for every single one they show how it looks on four different models with different skin tones - how clever is that?! Big fan. It's so hard to tell what a shade is going to look like just from a picture of the tube, but that actually gives such a good idea for different skin tones and ethnicities. The one thing I would say is that it is really packed on in the pictures, and I actually prefer to dab it on and really work it in to the lips because I find it wears better like this. I will be uploading a #motd look featuring this on our instagram later so be sure to check it out!

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this, have you ever tried any of these? Having looked at the website, I think want to try Charm, Honey and Smitten, what about you?