Lavshuca Full Balloon Rouge swatches

Lavshuca is a drugstore brand owned by Kanebo, and they make my favourite drugstore lip products, hands down.

See here for a handy chart of the various formulas. The horizontal axis goes from Matte (L) to Glossy (R) and the vertical goes from Opaque (top) to Sheer (bottom).

These Full Balloon Rouge glosses come in a click pen with a weird long, bendy spatula applicator at the end. IMO the click is fun (it's a button you press, rather than turning), but the spatula is pure gimmick. It was very difficult to spread this thickish, somewhat sticky (not MAC lipglass or Illamasqua intense sticky but still...) gloss evenly with it, and the formula is not opaque enough to be forgiving. I kept getting streaks and having to go over each swatch 5-6 times to make them as even as possible. In gen, I'd say these are sheer-medium with varying degrees of micro-shimmer, with PK-4 being the problem child: the sheerest and packed with glitter.

You also get a tiny 1.6g per pen for HK$90.

There are 15 permanent shades... of which I swatched 14. D'OH! Totally failed to notice that empty niche where PK-1 should've been and my Sasa had sneakily confiscated the tester for it as they were out of stock. Will try to remedy in future.

Also, swatching glosses is HARD. Stupid shiny. hate shiny. must kill shiny.

Store lighting (but very GOOD store lighting -- pretty true to shade XD)

Different angle to show the shades a bit better