My apologies for a lack of posts- the time of year caught up with me, both as a student and as a retail worker. Plus I was almost through all my pending orders to review. Luckily, I made a few Black Friday orders, and this one came through really quickly. I made the order on the 28th, I believe, and it came in on the 7th. That’s with shipping to Canada. That is ridiculously fast. I’ve ordered from shops in Canada with longer times to get here.

I ordered the pack of six samples, since I don’t know anything about the formula or anything like that. I requested five colours and asked that the owner surprise me with the sixth. She obliged, and even wrapped the surprise in brown paper, which I thought was a really cute touch even though I was just going to rip it open anyway. Merry Christmas, me.

I do have to admit, I was a bit confused by the sample jars. They’re about twice as tall as 5 gram eyeshadow jars, and they don’t seem to be used for any other products in her shop. They were pretty big for the product inside. As well, I did have a few application issues because my house is really cold and a few of the balms hardened up a lot. I have a feeling that they would work a lot better from a tube directly on my lips, but in the pot, they weren’t warmed up by my mouth-heat at all. They didn’t play well with brushes in their frozen state, so all the application was done by finger.

I noticed that all the balms were a tad more moisturizing than a normal lipstick. If you are a person with really dry lips, I don’t know if they would do it for you, but they worked well for me. They were all unflavoured and unscented (or so subtle that I didn’t notice.)

B.S. is the black one. Of course I got the black one. It comes off pretty opaque- the picture on my lips is actually after a few hours and a drink, so it had kind of faded down to a deep charcoal gray. It’s a pretty good everyday black that doesn’t require too much maintenance.

Coconut is a perfect milk chocolate brown on me. I found it to be the easiest to spread when it was cold in my room, possibly because it’s actually Nutella. I don’t know if it’s technically flattering on me (it’s very 90s) but it would look really lovely on darker-skinned people.

I was surprised by Lychee. Normally when I go for brick red colours, they’re a lot darker. I really liked Lychee on my face, though. It comes off as a warm sort of terra cotta on me. It wouldn’t swatch properly when I was doing the arm swatch, but it looks super neat once it warms up.

Mulberry was my surprise balm. It’s a slightly mauvish pink- it didn’t swatch very well, but again, that’s probably because my cold bathroom isn’t quite Miami temperature-wise. I can see this working well for people who want to look like they have normal lip colours. I’m not really in love with it, but it’s certainly not bad.

The owner of Kae Q recently made a post about how she thought the purple balms, including Passionfruit, were a bit too sheer and she wanted to reformulate them, so by the time you read this, this bit could be invalid. That said. Passionfruit was about as sheer as I expected it to be, since it’s a tinted balm and whatnot. It was a bit prone to turning into a line around the outside of my lips, and it was the most high-maintenance of the balms, but, again, it was exactly what I expected.

I also got Seaweed to fulfill the wacky coloured lipstick part of this review. It’s a shiny metallic emerald green. It is a tad bit sheer, which kind of shows since it’s green, but two layers is pretty much completely opaque. In the photo, I had been wearing it through a bacon and mimosa brunch, and you can see it didn’t wear too badly at all.

Overall, I really like these balms. While a few of them were a bit sheer for me, I think that will be solved when I get full-sizes and use my lip heat to melt them. In retrospect, I really wish I had gotten the LE blue one, since I do find the formula pretty good.