Review & Swatches ~ Portland Black Lipstick Co. lipsticks (part 1)

I have been a fan of Portland Black Lipstick Co. for a while now, ever since I discovered them whilst looking for the perfect black lipstick. After that me and the owner of the company and creator of the lipsticks, Kim struck up conversation, drawn together by a mutual love of these lipsticks. She offered to send me the new colours and some of the originals and being eager to swatch more exciting colours I jumped at the oppertunity. Having said that I always keep my opinions honest and my honest opinion is that these lipsticks are really great. For this lot of swatches I have four of their new colours (in this post) and eight from the main collection (in the next post)!

First of all the new ones. All of these lipsticks were applied straight from the tube without primer or anything else and the photos were taken with flash, apart from the combined swatch which is in natural light.

Chaiborg

A beautiful opaque metallic milk tea medium brown. 

It may not sound amazing but it's actually really wearable and one of my current favourites. Looks great with turquoise hair!

Difficult Island

A really bright, matte, opaque blue teal/turquoise colour which you can see my wearing here! 

A pretty good dupe of Lime Crime's No She Didn't. In the tube the ingredients aren't blended completely properly but it's fine once it's on lips.

 Lux et Voluptas

Pretty much the definition of rose gold. A pretty rose pink with a golden bronze shimmer.  

This one starts more sheer than the rest but is easy to build up. I think this is such a great summer colour, it just makes me think of garden parties for some reason. 

 Good-bye, Little Yellow Bird

A slighty pastel, bright matte yellow. 

Not a colour I would wear on my lips normally, but great for dressing up and also as an eyeshadow. It looks like a possible dupe for Lime Crime's New Yolk City or Ka'Oir's Banana Milkshake which looks really similar.

L-R: Good-Bye Little Yellow Bird, Lux et Voluptas, Difficult Island and Chaiborg

Review

As always they have a slight peppermint scent which is actually really refreshing. One of my favourite things about these lipsticks is how long lasting they are! They can survive hours of talking as well eating and drinking with little fade, migration or feathering which is more than I can say about a lot of high street brands I own. Having said that it can be a challenge to remove them - lots of scrubbing involved but no staining as far as I can see.
What I also think is really fun about these lipsticks is that they have multiple uses; I've seen them used on lips, or on the face as either eye shadow or cream blush and amazingly if you look at their Facebook page photos some people have used them as temporary hair colour and it looks amazing - even on dark hair! I need to try this at some point.

PROS:

• made from all natural ingredients
• very long lasting
• a huge diversity of colours
• no migration or feathering
• affordable 
• highly pigmented

CONS:
To be honest there aren't many

• paper label means it quickly gets grubby
• some people find that the chap stick style tube means application can be a little tricky (but I don't really mind it)
• can be difficult to take off

Some of the new shades haven't been added to be the website yet but can be found on Etsy. If you're a UK buyer I would recommend buying from Etsy since the P&P turns out cheaper.

In the next swatch post I'll be showing some more of their normal, safer colours and two really out there ones which you can now find here!
If you'd like to see some more of their regular (specifically metallic) shades I have swatched Indigo Bridge - dark blue and a metallic dupe to Illamasqua's Disciple, Coffee Black - dark brown, Metallurgy - a dark green/gold, Blue Lagoon - dark teal, Artificial Amethyst - dark purple and Pewter Cauldron - silver grey here.

Which is your favourite colour?