Last weekend, while on vacation in New York City, my friends and I headed over to the Bite Beauty Lip Lab in Soho. The Lip Lab offers you the ability to create your own lip colour for a $36 USD price tag. You get to choose your finish, colour and even your bullet cap!

Of course, creating your own lipstick shade is actually kind of daunting. I wanted something unique, but wearable (so not like a hunter green or something), but I really wasn’t coming up with anything ingenious.

Instead, I opted to have them recreate my favourite lipstick ever – MAC‘s Relentlessly Red. I love Relentlessly Red because the colour is just flat out neon pinky-red gorgeousness, however the finish really could do with some work. It’s a bit patchy so it can look a bit chunky in places on the lips. (Not that I care, I’ll wear it till the cows come home regardless.)

I had the lipstick I wanted copied with me so Lip Lab technician swatched it on the paper and went to town. On paper, she actually nailed the colour right off the bat.  However, despite the paper colour being dead on, when I applied it to my lips it didn’t look right. It was too pink and not enough red.  I pointed that out and she started remixing the shade. I kept telling her I felt like it needed more red, but she pointed out it would lose the neonness if we added more red.

After a second try that still wasn’t close enough, she tried a different colour combination. It wasn’t as neon, but it came out slightly more pinky-red and I was satisfied enough to go with that particular shade as my chosen colour. I didn’t get the exact dupe I was looking for (shots below!) but I like thinking of it as Relentlessly Red‘s more mature cousin.

With the shade selected, I opted for a scent. I FINALLY learned that the “Wild Berry” scent is what they use on their regular Bite lipsticks. I could never really place the scent so I was happy to finally know what the heck it was! I was going to opt for just Wild Berry, but my technician convinced me to mix it with another so I opted for Vanilla. Somehow I totally missed sniffing the Citrus Mango one at the back (on the right), I totally should’ve gone with that one but by the time I got around to smelling it after one of my friends pointed it out, my lipstick ingredients had already been amalgamated. Ah well, next time!

Cute lip lipstick colour blobs.

Our lipsticks were set to cool into shape (one of those is mine and one is a friend’s – they look really similar on the block!) and then they were slowly pulled out with their casing by the technician.

And this is the end result! I opted for the flat slanted bullet case shape because that’s how I wear my lipsticks down.

On my lips it actually appears quite bright, which I, of course, love.

When compared to Relentlessly Red, you can see that it’s definitely not the same colour, but that’s because I had the technician tweak it (she really did get the swatch colour bang on the first time though).

And while it’s not as neon or even exactly the same shade, I do love it. It’s a comfortable matte finish and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to wear. I like that Relentlessly Red can still be my favourite shade of lipstick and the Lip Lab mix of it can be my interpretation of Relentlessly Red.

The Lip Lab experience was fantastic. It may have only taken about 15- 30 minutes, but getting to create your very own shade of lipstick is a fairly awesome experience. I now feel like getting a lipstick made at the Bite Beauty Lip Lab is going to become a ritual whenever I visit New York!