Stuck on Me

I was fascinated by the new face stickers/decals/tattoos as soon as I heard about them, but at the same time, they really didn’t seem like a good idea. Too unnatural, too uncomfortable, just too weird. I decided it wasn’t worth it to spend money on them, even when they went on sale around the holidays.

But one magical day, a golden set of Violent Lips arrived in the mail, tucked inside my February Birch Box. On the punkahontas Facebook page, reader (and cousin) Jennifer commented that she really wanted to try the lip decals, but had received eye decals. We arranged to share our stickers via good old US Mail, since there were multiple decals in each packet.

After the eye stickers arrived, I settled in to sticker up my face. I chose a time when there was no one home, and I had nowhere to go. I started from the top, with the Eye Rock Designer Liner “Instant Eyeliner Tapes.” Jennifer had been kind enough to include two sets, one a flippy double-wing style, and the other a thick squared off design.

I started with the flippy ones, because I liked them the best. The instructions were simple: Peel the sticker off, trim it to fit, stick it on your eye. I did this. The flippies went over my crease and sort of taped my eye open. I peeled it off and applied again, still no luck. One more try? On the other eye this time? Trimmed a little shorter? Yeah, no.

I went for the square style next, which wasn’t as long or complicated. I managed to get the whole sticker on in the right place on both eyes. It felt like I had tape on my eyelids (because I did) but it looked okay from a few feet away. Then my eyes started tearing. And burning. I moved on to lips and hoped I’d get used to it.

 

My eyes were bothering me so much I kind of rushed through my first attempt at the lip tattoos. I really wanted to take a photo with both the eyes and lips, and maybe even a temporary facy tattoo, which, for some reason, I also have around. Unfortunately, I could not stand those things on my eyes for one second longer. I found the packaging and looked for directions on how to remove them. (Yes, maybe it would have been a good idea to read the instructions for removal before I started.) Their advice was to “Peel off and remove residue with facial cleaner.”

Easy enough. Here goes nothing! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!! Worse than the worst band-aid ever, because it’s on YOUR EYELID. And there are TWO OF THEM. Fifteen minutes later my eyelids were still stinging.

I took a little break, wrote a little blog, and went back to work on the lips. Violent Lips “Temporary Lip Tattoos” in The Gold Glitteratti. I trimmed the top and bottom lip tattoos carefully, arranged my lips into my best “relaxed ‘ohh’ shape” per the directions and patted a wet cotton pad over the backing, just like a Cracker Jack tattoo. Easy enough.

Except for getting the tattoo positioned perfectly on your lips. Since the appliqué is on a stiff cardboard backing, it’s kind of hard to know where to apply. Both times I tried my liplines were wonky.

They looked totally insane and felt even crazier, if that’s possible. The best thing I could compare it to is when you put a thin layer of Elmer’s glue on your hand and let it dry so you could peel it off later. Or, if you took a temporary tattoo and applied it to your lips. For “some reason” it feels almost exactly like that.

You are supposed to avoid the waterline, but that’s possibly even more impossible than getting the edges in the right positition. Chances are, you are going to go over the waterline with the “tattoo.” But the tattoo won’t stay stuck to the wet part of your lips, which means you will have little curtains of gold glitter hanging from the inside of your lips, and they will get worse when you play with them, which you will.

Removing the lip tattoos, which I did pretty much immediately, wasn’t a big deal. I used a lot of argan oil (because that’s what was around) and was able to wipe them off without any pain.

All in all, it was fun to play with weird sticker-makeup, but mostly because it was free.