Guest Post! Tarte 24-7 Natural Lip Sheer

Today's guest poster is our good friend Natalia, and awesome and creative (did I mention lovely?) gal who is currently living in Paraguay and runs the highly recommended blog called Guide to Paraguay. She's got some nice things to say about Tarte's Lip Sheer line. Vamos, Natalia!

Living in Paraguay, I don't have to deal with the extreme weather I suffered through in my former home, New England. My lip balm needs changed as soon as I stepped off the plane into tropical heat, a glaring sun, and a population of women well-versed in the Latin tradition of looking put together at all times. While recently visiting the States I greedily lunged for a box of unopened balms proffered by Chaptastic co-founder (and, full disclosure, good friend) JavaJive and walked away with some tubes of Tarte's 24-7 Natural Lip Sheer. After a couple of weeks of testing I am happy to report that this product meets all my newly discovered lip balm requirements. If you live somewhere that's hot, hot, hot read on.

Price: $14 Ouch. Time for the sliding scale and justifications. When judged as a lip balm, the pricetag is ridiculous. For a lipstick- sorry, lip sheer- it is pretty normal but that does not make it any less painful. Think about what you can buy with $14... well, probably not much these days, come to think of it.

Appearance: A glammed-up version of a standard plastic tube - it has a lilac brushed metallic coating. Only the product name and SPF are on the tube, all other information is on the box. I suppose this makes it look more upscale and similar to makeup.

Glide: Conflicting signals: the consistency looks more like lipstick than lip balm, but the feel of the tube and lack of lipstick-bullet shaped top make it look more like lip balm as a whole. In the end I landed on lipstick-like glide since it is not as slick or greasy as balm can be.

Flavor/Smell: No flavor and the smell was again reminiscent of lipstick. Comes in day/event-themed colors like Tuesday and Champagne Brunch. [The colors on the Sephora site don't really match the colors in real life, just to warn you -Ed.]

Lasting Power: It soaks into your lips pretty quickly so if you are addicted to the supple-surface feel of lip balm you may want to consider applying your favorite non-pigmented balm on top. As previously mentioned, I have been using this product in intense heat, meaning I am constantly chugging water from bottles and glasses (barely leaves a lip mark) and wiping sweat off my face. The sheer color has surprising lasting power, still discernible after a couple of hours. However, only women who have trained themselves to detect who is wearing "natural makeup" and who is actually sans makeup will be able to tell (men won´t even notice). In theory this is similar to the color giving properties of gloss, but with this you can actually rotate your head without ending up with a mouthful of sticky, gooey strands of hair.

Product Pluses: The aforementioned "natural look," SPF 15, and it can also double as a blush with the same easy blending as Tarte's Cheek Stain (at half the price).

4.5 out of 5 tubes. The fact that it can do double duty as blush is a major bonus, especially if you´re traveling. Plus I like that I can use it both during the day (color: Wednesday) and for going out (color: Friday) and not feel like I have 20 lbs of greasy lipstick on. For lip balm addicts the downside might be the fact that it really is more of a lip sheer not necessarily made for constant OCD reapplications.