$30 Cocoon Lip Stain Peel Vs. Kool-Aid Concoction

Posted on September 15, 2015 Updated on September 16, 2015

I have always preferred lip stains to lip gloss and lip stick for practical reasons. It wont smudge or smear everywhere if I forget i’m wearing it and wipe my mouth with my sleeve (ya know, like a lady), it doesn’t bleed all over my face, and it doesn’t need to be re-applied post-burrito. I can appreciate that.  Not to mention I feel like it looks more natural -like I was born with flushed, rosy lips, thank you very much. I am also a pretty big fan of unusual products, ones with strange ingredients or unorthodox methods of application. So I was super excited when I found this guy – a lip stain with an unconventional twist? Score.

Cailyn Cosmetics Cocoon Lip Stain, Pink Desire

I saw a demo of this product done by Bunny A.K.A Grav3yardgirl and I thought it was so weird, I just had to try it. You can watch her demo here.

This stuff is a lip stain with a texture very similar to that of the gel candies you can get in those squeezy tubes (my favorite was sour apple). You brush it on your lips and wait 10 minutes, it acts like one of those peel-off face masks in that it dries and you then peel it off, leaving behind a stain with “10 hour staying power.”

At $22 from the Cailyn Cosmetics website and $26 on Amazon, its a tad pricey. The Orange color seemed to work pretty well for Bunny, so I had high hopes for myself. Its supposed to come with it’s own little brush, but mine did not so I used a regular lipstick brush.

Oh my god, it was so weird. I brushed it on as precisely as I could and then stood there for 10 minutes while the goo cured on my face. Protip: keep your mouth open while it dries so your lips don’t stick together. As you can see on the right, I wasn’t too enthralled with the result.

Really $25 lip stain? Really? Not impressed. I’ve drank cups of Kool-Aid that cost $0.20 that stained my mouth better than this stuff…

And that’s when it hit me… Kool-Aid! As countless after-school care Latchkey kids and their unfortunate laundry-doing parents know – NOTHING stains like Kool-Aid! People dye their hair, fabric, and yarn with Kool-Aid! I had seen people on Pinterest melt lip balms in the microwave and mix Kool-Aid in to add some tint, hell even I saw some people straight up rub the powder on their lips (eww). But I had something better in mind, I would create a Kool-Aid lip stain masque to challenge the likes of Cailyn Cosmetics in a side-by-side, lip to lip battle! And with that, I gathered my weapons.

I really just guessed on the ingredients, I didn’t want to just melt down another lip balm and mix – that has been done before and I wasn’t really going for a balm. I wanted to create a masque that would go on thick, stay put, and stain to my hearts content until I wiped or licked it off. I figured coconut oil because its relatively solid at room temperature, so it would spread thick and moisturize, almond oil in case the coconut oil was too thick, and sugar because I might want it to double as a scrub (and this was unsweetened Kool-Aid, so I didn’t want it to taste gross).

I went to Target and found a set of TSA approved travel containers that came with two little lip-balm sized pots to put my creation in. I sanitized it first by washing it and then wiping the inside with rubbing alcohol.

As any Knitter, painter, or crafts-person in general knows – when in doubt, swatch it out. To test out what colors I had to work with I sprinkled a little powder of each on a paper towel and added a couple of drops of water to see what the colors diffused into. I couldn’t really tell a difference between Cheery and Tropical Punch, the picture may not show it, but it seemed like Tropical Punch was a tad more orangy-red. Grape mostly diffused as blue and it wasn’t until I added more water that the reddish part came out and made it look a little…purple brown? I decided to stick with Cherry and Tropical Punch and save the grape for another time.

I definitely did not steal this little ramekin from Chili’s, how dare you even think that.

I mixed the Tropical Punch and the Cherry together and added about 2 teaspoons of it, a tablespoon of coconut oil, a dash of Almond oil, and a sprinkle of sugar to this thing and put it in the microwave for 8-10 seconds to melt the oils and give me an even consistency.

And the 1st try is definitely a fail.

Oil gets very hot, it headed up the sugar. You know what happens when sugar gets hot? It melts and doesn’t mix with oil. So I made a lump of cherry punch candy that wouldn’t work as a lip masque, but stained the ever-living Christ out of everything it touched.

At least I was on the right track.

I quickly decided to 86 the sugar. If I wanted this to work as a stain, adding an exfoliant was a dumb idea. You would just end up exfoliating off the skin that was just stained. No bueno.

I also noticed that oil doesn’t dissolve the Kool-Aid mix, which meant I wasn’t really getting an effective color payoff. So I first diluted it in a little dash of water before adding the coconut and almond oil. I zapped it for about 8 seconds in the microwave to completely melt the coconut oil and give me a smooth consistency, then sat the ramekin in a bowl of salted Ice water and stirred constantly until the oil re-solidified.

And Voila! A soft mass of highly-pigmented coconut-almond oil ready for packaging and testing.

I even got super creative with the little pot I put it in. Someone call Sephora, I have a new product to pitch.

To make myself look extra ridiculous, I drew a fancy line with some black eyeliner right down the middle of my face after carefully applying the two products to half of my lips. I then set a timer for 10 minutes and let them do their thing.

And here is the immediate result, with the Cailyn Cocoon on the left and my Kool-Aid concoction on the right. The Cocoon is definitely more of a pink shade whereas I went more red with the Kool-Aid. I could definitely see more pigmentation with the Kool-Aid side, but both sides felt very moisturized.

I’ll tell you what though, the Kool-Aid tasted absolutely HORRIBLE. That side of my mouth was so awkward and sour and kind of tingly? I don’t really want to add sugar, but mayhaps I could add some Splenda? Though I am not sure how that may effect the consistency.

So this is how dedicated I am to beauty science. I went out to dinner with my boyfriend like this, with two different colored lips. I took this picture on the left once I stepped outside because he noted that in the different light you could especially tell the difference.

So. Fabulous. Starting a new trend.

In Conclusion

And this was the result about 6 hours later. I totally feel like I win on this one. The red Kool-Aid side is still pretty red, whereas the pink Cocoon side is basically flesh colored at this point. Mind you this was 6 hours, a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate malt later.

I WIN! I AM FABULOUS!

I don’t mean to toot own horn here, but I am very pleased. I might even actually use my Kool-Aid concoction again. Its an effective stain in a flattering red color and is very nourishing, I just gotta work on the flavor of it. That was the only gross part.

Sorry Cocoon lip stain, you’ve been upstaged.

P.S. – No joke, this stuff stains everything.