My order from the Shiro anniversary sale came in, and I am super excited to get my first-ever custom glosses.

When you are ordering a gloss from Shiro, you can pick any of their lip-safe colors, your requested opacity level (sheer, moderate, or opaque) and a flavor, if desired, and they will make up a custom gloss for you. At my request, they even labelled my creations with the names I made up for them!

Here are the glosses I will be swatching:

Arm Swatches

Outside, in the shade Indirect Sun Inside Inside Outside, in the shade Inside Inside

To create the swatches on my arm I dotted the wand to make a heavier splotch, then drew the doe foot across to show how it applies. At the end, I blended each gloss out with my finger.

The lip swatch images were taken outside in the shade; I tried to get various angles to catch the way the light plays across the colors. For reference, here are my bare lips (photo taken inside). My skin is cool and very fair, with a good bit of facial redness.

I wiped off the glosses with tissues in between swatches and cleaned off any residue with a makeup wipe.

Lip Swatches and Reviews

Baby Don’t Hurt Me is described as “opaque plummy-mauvey-greige with a subtle pearl-lacquer finish.” The flavor is “sweet rose frosting.” I ordered a clamshell sample.

I have some kind of bizarre ability to make lip colors pull super gray or brown, so even though the swatch is a lovely purpley color on the web site, on me this goes on really grayish. I applied from the clamshell with a cotton swab and put too much on, so these images are of a lightly blotted application.

I don’t get rose at all from the scent; to me it smells plasticky sweet, like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. Application is a little streaky but you can sheer it out into a really pretty stain of color. When applied heavily, on me it went kind of pearly-gray. Not bad overall, but I don’t think I’ll be purchasing a full tube.

Cognitive Recalibration is described as “medium burgundy with a strong blue shift.” I ordered this custom gloss in moderate opacity, but it is still quite sheer. It has a very strong blue reflection, which makes it quite fun, but I think I’d like to try it as an opaque gloss to see if I could get more of the burgundy color that is so lovely as an eyeshadow. This gloss is quite streaky when applied but it’s pretty easy to smooth out, you just have to make sure that you don’t have any little blobs of thicker color.

I am not a fan of the cherry pie flavor; it’s another artificial plastic fruit smell.

I Am Iron Man is a mixture of two shadows, Violence Solves Everything (“bright, bold, somewhat shifty red – pinker in some lights and oranger in others”) and Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist (“metallic copper-tinted gold with a subtle red shift”).

This is one of my favorites from this batch of glosses. It is a really unique, shifty coppery red that flashes gold in certain lights. I ordered in Opaque and the texture is lovely – stiff and thick with pigment but creamy. It feels more like a liquid lipstick than a gloss. The cinnamon flavor smells great, but unfortunately it stings my lips pretty badly when applied and doesn’t stop until the gloss dries down. I would not suggest ordering cinnamon flavor in your Shiro gloss if your lips are at all sensitive! I will likely be contacting Shiro and asking if they can replace this gloss with a different flavor that I am not sensitive to (none of the other flavors have given me trouble.) Edited to add: I sent this request to Shiro and they shipped out a replacement with a different flavor today! I continue to be tremendously impressed with Shiro’s customer service. They are rapidly becoming one of my favorite companies to do business with.

Goddess of Thunder is another of my two-color mixtures, this time Sanguine Addiction (“bold, cool-toned red, with subtle sparkles and shimmer”) and He Loves His Hammer (“silvery pewter with complex red tones”).

This gloss is a deep, almost blackened cool wine-red with strong metallic pewter sheen when it hits the light. It’s unusual and very very pretty. Even though I ordered moderate opacity, this is another one that is more liquid-lipstick feeling than lipgloss, which I actually quite like. It’s a creamy, comfortable, very wearable formula. The French vanilla smells like a yummy vanilla cupcake and is one of my favorites of the scents I tried.

Red In My Ledger is described as “blackened mulberry” with a “deep fruity black walnut” flavor. It is a lot like the red of Goddess of Thunder but more sheer and without the silvery metallic component.

This is a very pretty gloss with good color payoff, but it applies fairly streaky – you need to spend a little time evening out your application because otherwise it’s easy to get parts of your lips darker than others. It’s more glossy than lipstick-y, but is a very nice gloss, not sticky or overly slippy, and the color payoff is great. I also really like the walnut scent.

SuperPaca is another of my custom combos. This one is Alpaca Picnic (“soft pinky-red highlight with an extra level of pink shimmer”) and I Tried (“that gorgeous rose-gold that everyone’s been wanting”).

Even in the moderate opacity, this is another liquid-lipstick-like gloss, and it comes out an intensely metallic coral pink. It’s creamy to apply and comfortable to wear, and overall a super fun color. The “strawberry sugar” scent is pleasant but I don’t like it as much as the vanilla or the walnut.

Warboy is described as “matte bruisey red-purple-brown.” I got this in opaque, and it is very intense and dark. This one I would be interested to see in the moderate or even the sheer opacity to see if the redder tones of the shadow come through a bit more.

Warboy is a deep, deep raisin-brown, and if you apply too thickly it looks almost black. It isn’t as streaky as Red In My Ledger, though. This color is probably my least favorite of my custom glosses, but I will probably enjoy wearing it more in the fall and winter. It’s a bit much for the summer, though. The honey scent is sweet and powdery; I neither love nor hate it.

Ziggy is described as “brightened, slightly metallic Marsala red with blue shimmer.”

In the moderate opacity gloss, this is a very metallic mauvey rose that shines almost champagne-gold in direct bright light. It is super, super pretty, and one of my favorites of the whole batch. The texture is more liquid lipstick than lip gloss, creamy and easy to apply. I got this in the champagne scent, but to me it smells more like grape candy.

Overall, I am extremely happy with my glosses and look forward to ordering more in the future. Now that I have a little more understanding of how the shadow colors mix and how they play in the gloss, I’ll have fun thinking of new combinations to try.