After I'd become sort of obsessed with lining my lips, it seemed a natural course of action to try out probably the most hyped up liner in the world.
MAC Lip Pencil in Cherry, together with MAC Spice, have been on the lips of all renowned beauty bloggers, so I thought they were absolute must haves in the category. As Spice was always sold out, and being a red lip lover I went for Cherry.
When my Cherry arrived I was both positively and negatively surprised.
The pencil was much longer than any other lip liner I owned. It was also creamier and applied smoother than other liners. The colour was the most perfect mid-tone cooler kind of red which was a good match for a ton of lipsticks in my stash.
But on the other hand the colour is not at all original, I found almost exact dupes in my own collection. And worst of all it never sets and transfers and smudges like only the cheapest liners do. It's not long-wearing at all, when used just to line the outer perimeter of my lips it disappears faster than my lipstick. However, when used to fill my entire lips, it does prolong the wear time of any lipstick substantially.
I really like the pencil, but I feel that for this kind of money I can find something better. Here are some alternatives which I found in my own collection:
As you will see in the swatches below, they're very similar in colour, I could barely see the difference in them when swatched on my pale arm, but used on the lips, tinted by the rosiness of my lips, they look identical.
MAC Cherry is the creamiest, but the least budgeproof.
Make-up For Ever Aqua Lips #8C is waterproof, smudgeproof, budgeproof, but it's shorter than MAC (making MAC better value for money) and less creamy.
Revlon lip liner in Red is the cheapest option, lasts just as long as MUFE does, but it's the least creamy of the bunch. It skips and drags on my lips and would certainly be drying if I wore it on its own, but it's still an excellent liner I reach for regularly. And it's a twist-up pencil which doesn't require sharpening.
And now for the smudge test. After I'd let these pencils sit on my hand for a while, I rubbed the swatches with my hand and as you can see MAC showed no resistance at all, MUFE barely moved and Revlon didn't budge at all.
To conclude I want to say that I like MAC Cherry, but I don't understand the hype at all. While the colour is perfect, there are better formulas out there like MAC Pro-longewar which I'm a great fan of and I'm planning to explore in greater detail. As for MAC Lip Pencils, this is the first and the last one I've ever bought.
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