Bite Beauty Luminous Lip Library

Friday, March 15, 2013

I recently saw that Sephora had the BITE Beauty Luminous Lip Library on sale and realized I had never actually posted a review. Whoops. I bought this last year and have really enjoyed using it despite my hatred of lip palettes.

Why do I hate on lip palettes? I'm a clumsy individual. I'm prone to dropping things and tripping. Beautiful, exposed pans of lip products have a way of becoming nicked up, gathering unwanted particles and smearing all over the place. That being said, I still really love this palette by Bite Beauty because it has a nice array of colors in a formula I adore and is very travel friendly.

The Library is a simple black matte cardboard "book" with a large mirror on the inside of the magnetic lid. It contains small pots of Prep (lip butter), Prime (line & define primer), Protect (sheer balm), a small lip brush and nine pots of lipstick. The colors (with the exception of Poppy which looks to be a color from the High Impact Matte Pencil line) are of the Luminous Creme formula, meaning sparkle and shimmer free but a bit glossy looking.

With so many shades, I opted out for lip swatches and decided to stick to arm ones. From left to right: Cava, Rosette, Pepper, Fig, Cin Cin, Poppy, Carmenere, Rose, Tannin.

Cava, a pale cooler pink.
Rosette is darker, dusky pink.
Pepper looks daker than Rosette in the pan but is about the same shade, only warmer.
Fig is a beautiful medium pink, brighter than the other pinks.
Cin Cin is coral in the pan but leans vibrant orange on the lips.
Poppy is very pretty intense red with only a hint of orange.
Carmenere is a darker raspberry red.
Rose is a medium pink, warmer than fig and a bit darker.
Tannin is a stunning dark red with a hint of wine.

Like before, when I reviewed the Discovery Set, I have to say that I like the formula. The lipsticks are emollient and not drying to my perpetually chapped lips. The darker shades do stain but very lightly, a bit of a flush to your lips after wearing it for a while but do not bleed. My favorites are the bold Tannin, the delightfully bright Carmenere and the delicate Cava shades. This palette is great to travel with, a whole range of lipsticks at your hand.

There are however two things worth noting about this palette. The first is that a few of the lighter shades do look very similar. I wish that there were more plums or nudes instead of so many shades of pink. One other thing is that I noticed that the small pot of Superfruit Butter does not contain specks the way the regular sized product does. That being said, I still like the Superfruit Butter a lot and am considering buying a full pot. The Prime seems just ok to me, not bad but nothing to write home about either. The Protect Sheer Balm is the only product that doesn't come in regular size, which is too bad because I found it really moisturizing.

Each 'B' shaped pan of lipstick is 0.025oz meaning that the Library is the equivalent of almost two regular sized lipsticks (0.13oz each) with the addition of Prep, Prime, Protect and the brush. A regular full sized Luminous Creme lipstick is $24, making this $30 (marked down from $36) palette a good value in my book.

Spot any gorgeous shades in this BITE Beauty Luminous Lip Library you like? How do you feel about lipstick palettes in general?

By the way, special (long overdue) thanks to Larie for letting me use that code!

Products featured were purchased by me for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.