Review & Swatches: Limnit Lipsticks

I bought 2 Limnit mini-sized lipstick some time ago and got a free sample!

Customer Service Review

Here's the TAT:

• Ordered: June 27
• Shipped: July 07
• Arrived in NY: July 09

Customer service was great! I wasn't expecting the order to take so long to ship, so I had to contact Trina to ask her to ship to a different address since I ran out of time on my forwarding address.  I got a reply within the same day and she made sure my order was shipped to the right address. 

Lipsticks Review and Swatches

These come in tubs and as far as I know, there's no option to buy them in a lip balm/lipstick tube yet. There's also no option to buy samples, which is why I only have swatches of 3 colours.

The tubs come shrinkwrapped, so that's awesome:

I got the old formula, which apparently is prone to crystalizing and will be improved soon:

While I didn't have any problems with crystalization, I did find the consistency a bit hard and waxy, but I guess that's to be expected with matte lipsticks. They do get harder with time though. Here's a gif to illustrate how stiff it is:

It's a bit dark, so it's hard to see, but my brush didn't puncture a hole through the lipstick.

I don't know if I'm imagining it, but I swear it was softer when I first got it about 4 months ago. 

Here are the face swatches:

All under natural light..I wish I can go to work in these pretty colours! Oh, and for these face swatches, I cheated on the make up detox I'm supposed to be on and used 1 layer of Dior's Hyrdalife BB Cream. May my dermatologist forgive me.

As you can see from the photo above, the pigmentation is great. I struggled a bit with the formulas of Abracadabra & League of My Own though, since they kept going patchy. Abracadabra was worse than League of My Own, and as you can see from the lip close ups below, I couldn't get it smooth no matter how hard I tried. Luckily, it blends well with my lip colour, so it's not too obvious. 

Left: Under yellow-toned artificial light
Right: Under natural light

Ok, the reason I did 2 swatches is because I don't have a mirror in the spot where I get a good amount of natural light. That makes it really hard to focus, and I also found out I tend to make funny lip movements when I'm trying to take pics of my lips without a mirror.

UPDATE Jan 28, 2015: It's been an additional 2 months since this review, and the lipsticks hardened further to the point where I couldn't get the colour off. I contacted Trina and she responded so quickly. She suggested scouring the surface of the lipstick, and that definitely help make the lipstick more usable. I asked about melting the colour and mixing it with oils/lip balm to soften it, and she suggested against it since it dilutes the colour. I love the colours so much, I don't think I'll risk destroying them. Scouring works well enough for me!