These are just some of the lip balms I’m carrying around in my handbag right now. For one, winter always wreaks havoc on my lips, even though this hasn’t been much of a winter here in Northeast PA. Warm one day and then freezing rain the next…my skin is going a little crazy. Second, I love that none of these lip balms smell alike. I adore scented lip products and depending on the kind of mood I’m in, each of the lip balms pictured always suits me perfectly.

eos Smooth Lip Balm Sphere: Not only do I love the scent of this pink sphere (Strawberry Sorbet), my 4 year old Brody, loves it too…and has been known to sneak some when I am not looking. It’s comprised of shea butter and Vitamin E. It’s 95% organic and 100% natural. It gives long lasting hydrating and I LOVE it.

NouriSHEA Lip Balm: This is another 100% organic shea butter and essential oil lip balm. The scent is Mango, which I typically don’t tend to gravitate to, however, it does smell good and the lip balm is very moisturizing.

Pacifica Coconut Pearls Luminizing Lip Quench: This is by far my favorite of the bunch.  It is 100% vegan and uses coconut oil, avocado oil, cocoa seed oil and Vitamin E to nourish dry, cracked lips. It gives a beautiful iridescent sheen to your lips as well, so many times it doubles as my “lip gloss.” The coconut fragrance is heaven. This is also a very large lip balm and has lasted me about 8 months so far (it looks like I’ve barely used it!)

Barista Bath and Body Indulgent Lip Balm: I love coffee. No, I mean I LOVE coffee. I have a Keurig that gets so much use, you’d think I’m the area Starbucks. I found Barista Bath and Body while at Cosmoprof North America last summer. They have a complete line of coffee-branded products, but froth is my favorite. It smells of peppermint and coffee, is vegan, and uses olive oil, shea butter and jojoba oil to moisturize the skin. Yum.

Not Soap, Radio lip balm: The bottom two pictured are lip balms from Not Soap, Radio. The first one, Cherry Cordial, is from their Cocoa Nostra Confectionery collection. It’s vegan, natural and contains cocoa and fruit extracts. Cherry Cordial smells of milk chocolate and cherries and is yet another lip balm Brody steals from me (who can blame him?) The second lip balm is You’re the Cutest from their Greeting Card collection. It’s hard to pin down exactly what flavor this is as it is different in every batch (according to their website), but the one I have tastes to be a strawberry-cherry combo. The greeting card lip balm has a little more weight and lasts longer than Cherry Cordial, but both serve their purpose.

Have you tried any of these lip balms? Which is your favorite?

*Disclosure

Shannon Nelson

Shannon Nelson launched A Girl's Gotta Spa! in 2005. She currently works with beauty brands as a social media consultant, freelance writes for magazines and is a public speaker at beauty industry conferences.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

Yes, I know all of you are aware by now that I am absolutely insane about exfoliating…after all I’ve only blogged about it a gazillion times. Well now exfoliating is  my way of saying goodbye to summer and hello handsome to fall, so I have more of a reason to be insane about it.  Only problem is that I’ve noticed my lips still have not bid adieu to summer where some dryness abounds.  The body scrubs that work so well on my body just seem a bit too harsh for my lips.

That said, I decided to try pura Body Naturals Mint Exfoliating Lip Scrub in an effort to remove the flakiness from my lips.  The lip scrub smells great…minty and refreshing and is also really moisturizing.  But alas, those were it’s best features.  It did nothing for my lips in terms of exfoliating them.  I could feel the beads on my lips,  but they just seemed  to lightly massage my lips instead of sloughing off the dead skin cells. I held out hope for the Cocoa Mint Lip Butter.  Much like the lip scrub, the lip butter also smelled great…faintly of cocoa and a lot of mint.  It was also moisturizing and left my lips really soft, but it would work a lot better in a pot instead of a stick as it comes off in chunks on my lips whenever I use it.  I actually removed it from the stick and placed in into an empty lip gloss pot I had and I love it in the pot a lot better.

So maybe the lip scrub did not let my lips  say goodbye to summer as I had hoped and I had to rely on the ole warm wet wash cloth instead…but this just means I am focused on the task of locating a lip scrub that will actually exfoliate my lips…know of any you can recommend?

Gail Lewis

Gail is at times a model, most of the time a blogger, but always a beauty junkie.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

So ladies, a lot of us love our ginormous purses.   What’s not to love…we can load them up with all those things we think that we “need” to carry around on a regular basis, they’re our fashionable security blanket.  But the days of lugging around everything but the kitchen sink in our purses seem to be coming to a very sad end.  It seems as though every  fashion magazine I flip through lately has been featuring a much less compact version of our favorite everyday suitcases.  These “new, fashionable” purses seem barely capable of holding  a respectably sized makeup bag much less my fold up flats in a bag, magazine, snacks, bottled water and change of clothes…  It looks as if  it’s about time to downsize and what better way to start the process  than by trimming my beauty products.

Although I knew I might face a few anxiety provoking moments while undergoing the trimming process, I was very unprepared for just how much trimming would be required to make the fit…no wonder we couldn’t find my younger brother, he was squatting at the bottom of my super sized hobo! The process was going to be tougher than I thought, but thankfully I had one product that made the process less painful, My Smith & Vandiver  Aromatherapaes All-Over Balms.  The balms come in a .5 ounce very easy to carry stick (very lip balm like) and are available in two aromatherapy blends; Sweet Orange and Vanilla for REFRESHING Moisture and Neroli and Lavender for SOOTHING Moisture.  Besides smelling great, not too heavy or cloying, but more natural and being the perfect size to fit into any sized purse and easy to carry, the balms are very moisturizing.  I use it on my hands, cuticles, lips sometimes, heels of my feet (especially on airplanes), to smooth flyaways …I use it just about everywhere and it works great on just about every part of the body.

I don’t know if it was the knowledge that I had an all over moisturizing product that would fit in my new teeny purse that erased my anxiety, or if it was the Neroli and Lavender essential oils in the Soothing Moisture Balm. Either way, the balm works great, smells great and can give me energy when I need it or relax me when I need it…fashion can be as fickle as it wants to be…carrying around my Aromatherapaes All-Over Balms shall remain a constant.

Gail Lewis

Gail is at times a model, most of the time a blogger, but always a beauty junkie.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

One beauty product that we all seem to have in common, both men and women, is lip balm. Although there are a lot of my male friends, and family members, who do not consider lip balm to be a beauty product but as more of a necessity (sorry guys it may be a necessity, but it is also a beauty product.)

Lip balm is one of those products that most people refuse to leave home without and also own a lot of.  I know of quite a few people, myself included, that have a lip balm (or two) in their purses, cars, desk at work, pockets, gym bags etc.  Admit it, we are all crazy about our lip balms.  It is an easy impulse item to justify because they are fairly inexpensive and for some odd reason, much like socks, we tend to misplace them a lot…I blame this on the size, so it makes perfect sense to have multiple balms stashed EVERYWHERE (even then I always seen to lose them.) What if someone made a balm that wasn’t so teeny so it would last longer and be pretty difficult to misplace?

Well, someone did, and that (or those) someone(s) is glōminerals and the lip balm is called, the mint balm.  It comes in a stick that is .65 oz, most sticks of lip balms are .15 oz, so the mint balm is a little more than four times the size of most lip balms.  The mint balm of course has a minty fragrance (perfect if  you are out of breath mints or gum) and is really moisturizing but without feeling thick and goopy.  I love that my lips feel cool, tingly and refreshed after I apply the balm, a welcome sensation in the summer and especially in 95-100 degree temps.  In addition to the light feel of the balm, it is also perfect for summer because it contains SPF 15.  It is also great as an after sun treatment for your lips because it contains ingredients such as hemp seed oil, meadowfoam and mango seed butter, which soothe and heal.

If you are looking to experiment with different beauty products this summer, the mint balm is definitely a perfect one to start with.  It is inexpensive ( just $12) and works great.  I have had it now for one week and have not misplaced it once (a record for me.)  I am sure this will be the first lip balm that will see me through summer, into fall and winter…and quite possibly even through spring into summer of next year, and that I would not mind one bit…all the money I will save from sticking with one amazing lip balm can go towards experimenting with other beauty items…I am remaining loyal to this one.

Gail Lewis

Gail is at times a model, most of the time a blogger, but always a beauty junkie.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

I am addicted to lip glosses.  At any given moment if one were to inspect the contents of my purse, they would be sure to encounter at least six lip glosses…sometimes in different colors but mostly in varying shades of the same color.  I love how easy they are to apply, just swipe and go, to me there is no other make-up product that is as user friendly as a lip gloss.  I don’t have to be too precise with the application process, there is no blending required…basically there is no way I can go wrong with applying  lip gloss (I just wish this were true for eye shadow, eye liner…eye anything.)

However, as much as I adore lip glosses, there are some attributes of a gloss that are  major turnoffs.  Scent is a big one for me, overpowering aromas have the tendency to become irritating throughout the day (especially since someone decided to place  lips  right below the nostrils.)  Goopy, heavy glosses are also a pet peeve, especially when your hair gets stuck to your lips and removing it leaves gloss residue on varying parts of your face (I once greeted clients with a line of berry gloss on my cheeks.)  There are also a few other attributes such as; taste, container shape and size and hydration factor, but texture and scent will usually determine right away whether a gloss gets added to the collection or not. 

At first whiff beautyAddicts SweetLips Lip Gloss was a “HECK YES!”  The gloss has a very subtle taste and scent of vanilla, not at all overpowering but extremely pleasant.  It’s also amazingly light with just the perfect amount of shine.  Also, unlike a lot of glosses that tend to leave lips feeling dry, this gloss actually contains Vitamin E and Jojoba Butter, so it hydrates as well as moistens and heals dry lips.  On a recent road trip from Orlando to Miami (with the A/C blasting in the car), I was out of my lip balm so I had to rely on the gloss to keep my lips hydrated and it did not let me down.  I am absolutely in love with the Sheer Peach shade, called Express.  On my lips it looks more nude than peach, but it is a perfect everyday shade that I think would be flattering on just about any skin tone because it is so sheer.  Another plus of this lip gloss is that the container is very “Evening clutch friendly” (it’s also pocket friendly…I sometimes find myself in situations where a purse…even a coin purse, is just not practical, so I have to resort to stuffing I.D, cash and gloss in the pockets of whatever I’m wearing.)  Because it tastes, smells, feels and looks so great, it will definitely occupy space in my bag, clutch or pocket on Valentine’s Day…..what can I say….I’m ADDICTED!

Find it at www.beautyADDICTS.com.

~Gail

Gail Lewis

Gail is at times a model, most of the time a blogger, but always a beauty junkie.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

If there is any one day in a calendar year that soft kissable lips are the most important, it would be Valentine’s Day. This winter has been brutal on the skin and chapped lips everywhere have abound. If you’ve been reading A Girl’s Gotta Spa! long enough, you’ll know I am quite a fan of Kaeline Argatherapie. Argan Oil does wonders for the skin and replenishes the hydration your lips need to be kissably soft. Their newest lip balm, Argabaume Levres, not only provides nourishment via Argan Oil, but also shea butter and beeswax.

Argabaume Levres has a soft light sent that is sweet and slightly fruity in fragrance. The balm is in a glass jar and softens to the touch of your finger tip. It’s not greasy yet spreads easily upon application. You’ll find that it won’t take long for your lips to feel re-quenched with moisture. If you love how this sounds, be sure to check out my reviews on Kaeline’s Radiance Day Cream, Argarome Bain and Argarome Jour. You can find them all on www.xandrarenouvelle.com

Photo Credit: Shazeen Samad

Shannon Nelson

Shannon Nelson launched A Girl's Gotta Spa! in 2005. She currently works with beauty brands as a social media consultant, freelance writes for magazines and is a public speaker at beauty industry conferences.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts