Carol's Daughter: Wet Shine & Lip Butter

When I first discovered Carol's Daughter a couple of years ago, my first thought was, "I bet that's something Oprah would like". No joke. That tells you something about both the character of the products and my insane, borderline stalker, intimate knowledge of Oprah's likes and dislikes (of which, let's be honest, any housewife with an hour a day is also aware). It seems that a lot of famous, pretty, black ladies (I'm looking at you, Mrs. Will Smith) enjoy Carol's Daughter, a company that is best known for its natural hair and bath products. CD has been featured not only on Oprah and The View but in Vibe, Glamour and every other magazine worth its salt. So what can a lowly blog have to say about Carol's Daughter? Not much in the way of negative, turns out. But CD, you do have the honor of being our first finger dip lip balm review. Holla, sistahs.


Price: $6 for a quarter ounce tub at the Carol's Daughter website or from Sephora (swanky!). Grumble.

Glide: See, that's the thing I never quite liked about using my finger to put on lip balm: what do you do with the left over goop that's coating your finger? Wipe it back onto the rim of the container? Onto your jeans? I've explored both of these options and found them to be undesireable. But I digress.

The criteria here will have to change a little bit because now the glide not only involves how it goes onto your lips but how it goes onto your finger. With these balms, the answer to both is "easily". No warmup necessary- each balm slides onto and off of the finger with ease. If your lips are chapped, though, it takes a few dips, or at least one really deep one, to get enough to stop feeling dry. The wet shine balms leave a nice, petroleum-free, makeup-friendly shine on your lips that enables you to pretend at any moment that you just walked out of the ocean slowly in a hot bikini.

Appearance: Very cute, in keeping with the au-natural, glam nubian princess vibe of the CD website. I prefer the sleek metal lip butter tin (slides almost seamlessly into any pocket) to the squat and bulky plastic wet shine cylinder (bulges tumorously in my jeans).

Flavor/Smell: Absolutely delicious. Light, tropical, pleasant. No actual flavor, but just the scent alone makes me want to eat the mango flavored one. The light and almond-vanilla lip butter may just be the best smelling lip balm I've ever sniffed.

Lasting Power: Surprisingly long for lip balms that at first glance appear to be more for looks than anything else. But with ingredients like shea butter, macadamia oil, and sweet almond oil, they have to last a while. The wet shine holds up pretty well, too. I wouldn't use these to heal chapped lips or during intense heat, but I can see slipping one into my coat for a night out, at the end of which I expected to be "invited up for coffee".

Product Plusses: Natural ingredients, no artificial colors/flavors, petroleum-free.

A delightful (if less than robust) dress up or dress down addition to any beauty regimen, which for me entails face wash and a quick saliva double-finger eye brow slick in the mirror every morning. 4 out of 5.