Last year I photographed a series for my makeup artist, Nicole Fourie, based on the Disney Villains, and lo and behold, a few months later out comes the MAC Venomous Villains range.

Needless to say I had been drooling over the range in the MAC shop windows, but with my freelance photographers budget (minimal and unpredictable) I didn't imagine owning any of the products, at best photographing some on a model.

Then last week a package arrived from my makeup artist, a MAC bag with an envelope and a box. She had given me a ticket to her final year body painting show (BodySpectra) and a MAC Venomous Villains Lipstick. Knowing my fetish for purple shades, she got me the Malificent shade of Amplified Creme Lipstick, Violetta. It almost exactly matched a lipstick i'd been wearing for years, a similar opaque fuchsia but without the quality and sheen.

The packaging is beautiful in itself, gloss purple text on matt black for the box, and gloss black with a Maleficent print on the tube itself.

The shape is perfect for applying straight from the tube, a nice sharp point to get edges with.
The colour is rich and opaque with a violet sheen, a particularly nice fuchsia shade with a twist. It can be used in a variety of ways, in a stain-like fashion as well as fully coated on the lips, as is or with gloss to bring out the shimmer and colour. I find the sheen comes out more with a few applications.
The shimmer doesn't leave a nasty gritty texture on the lips as some do, and the texture of the lipstick is creamy enough for most people to use as is, although my lips are very dry so I prefer to use it with a bit of lip balm underneath (my favourite is Palmer's Cocoa Butter Dark Chocolate and Peppermint Lip Butter, a glossy and delicious product). The flavour/scent of the lipstick is divine, a candy/icing type smell reminiscent of childhood days eating Iced Zoo biscuits. MAC products all smell deliciously edible though.

I find the colour is long lasting enough to last most of the night, at least a few hours, and strong enough to not need much else make-up wise, I just used concealer, liquid liner and mascara for a night out and the shot attached of me. The colour is also not too bright or crazy to look bizarre, it looked fine on my complexion and think it would suit a lot of people.

Attached are (in order) photos of the packaging (box, and tube, the product is the pink shade), a swatch i found and one shot of the shade on me