My soft spot for hard to get products got the upper hand again. Lately my instagram feed had been showing nothing but swatches of Stone by Dose Of Colors, or it could just've been my imagining. Anyway, it just seemed like the color was everywhere I looked and of course that had an effect on me. Unfortunately Stone is one of those colors that sells out super fast ant this color isn't available on Beautybay (where they sell a range of Dose Of Colors lip products). But then Dose Of Colors announced that Stone would be restocked and I wanted to be prepared this time.
Dose Of Colors ships internationally and to Belgium shipping costs start at $12,83 which is a bit much when you want to buy an $18 lipstick but it's not that much when you buy 4! I really wanted to try the more neutral colors in the Liquid-Matte range so I went for Bare With Me, Stone and Truffle and just to make sure I'm ready for summer I threw in Play Date, one of their classic lipsticks.
I don't do much shopping on US websites anymore, I usually only shop on the sites that offer international shipping by Borderfree or something alike. Sites like Nordstrom, Macy's ... all the big ones offer this now and you can calculate exactly how much shipping and duties will be and you can choose to pay duties up front, that way you know the absolute total of you order and there aren't any nasty surprises along the way. Since Dose Of Colors is a much smaller company I can totally understand why they can't offer this (because those services usually aren't for free) and hey, what is the chance that customs will pick out my package right? This one time I shop online in the US? Well, as it turns out, Belgian customs love lipstick too ;-) My package got picked out and opened. It was definitely by a man because they only opened the box of one lipstick, if it was a woman she probably would've checked them all out ... and I can just see the man rolling his eyes "you stupid woman, buying lipstick in the US, I'll charge you the duties and another €15 formality cost because I had to look at lipstick". That's right €15 formality cost for opening the package and calculating the duties. I had to pay an extra €34,13 at the post office. I always have bad luck when it comes to this, my packages always get intercepted by customs which is why I usually stay with European websites when shopping. And the custom guy (because I really am convinced that it was a guy) ruined the packaging that Dose Of Colors used to send me my goodies. It was a nice black envelope with their logo printed largely in front, a very nice packaging if it wasn't for the customs guy that taped a paper all the way over the front and that I couldn't get off without ruining the package. Allright so far for my custom ranting, let's get to the lip products because that's what it's all about isn't it?
It's always tricky when a brand gets hyped up, expectations are high and disappointment is right around the corner. But Dose Of Colors totally delivers in the quality department.
Let's start with the liquid-matte lipsticks. I bought the three colors I liked the most: Bare With Me, Stone and Truffle. I really was expecting Stone to be my favorite and it is beautiful but Bare With Me is just a bit more flattering on my skin tone. The quality of these is phenomenal. They don't tug on the lips, they don't dry out the lips and they stay put like forever. To test them I put on the lipstick in the morning on a typical day to work, which means tons of coffee, fast lunches and no time to reapply every hour or so. There was no need to reapply during the day and at night when I took my makeup off before going to bed, I even had to use makeup remover to get the lipstick off! I couldn't believe there was still some left on my lips. I even had a hard time removing the swatches from my arm, I had to turn to an oil to dissolve the color and even then it took a lot of rubbing to get the colors off. I feel very confident wearing these when going out to dinner and I've been out to dinner with a matte lipstick before and ended up with an ugly line of lipstickresidue on my lip so I know the struggle. With this formula, that struggle is in the past!
I also wanted to try out a classic lipstick of them. Just because you can never have enough lipstick and with spring and summer around the corner I wanted something that screamed sunshine. Hence Play Date. I looked at swatches before buying it and I was expecting it to be bright but this is a real in your face peachy pink. I have a light/fair complexion and the color is flattering on me but it is at its best when I'm bronzed up (since the sun doesn't help me in that department, it's up to Benefits Hoola to get me a bit of a bronze). Once again I can't say anything bad about this lipstick.
One thing I was surprised of was the smell. They smell a bit like Mac lipsticks which is a very comforting smell to me. The smell is not overwhelming, it's just there like with the MAC lipsticks.
Dose Of Colors doesn't only do lipsticks, they also have eyeshadows. Not just any shadows but glitters!! I definitely want to try out their Eyedeal Duo's but these are available at Beautybay so I'll be buying them there.
Where to buy:
If you live in Belgium and you want to buy Dose Of Colors lipsticks I would highly recommend checking out Beautybay.com first. They carry all the different formulas but don't restock frequently so you have to be patient and check regularly. You can't leave your email for notification in case a certain color is restocked which I think is a shame.
If you want to buy these from the Dose Of Colors website directly like I did, here's what I paid for it:
Playdate was $16, the 3 matte lipsticks were $18 each and shipping was $12,83 making the total $82,83 which converted to €74,11, add the €34,13 duties and formalities and that's a total of €108,24!! For 4 lipsticks!!! That's a total average of €27,06 a lipstick which is still cheaper than a Chanel lipstick but way more expensive than the initial $18. If you buy a matte Dose Of Color lipstick at Beautybay you'll pay €18,40! So if you can wait until Beautybay restocks, I strongly suggest you do so.
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