gild the lily vs put lipstick on a pig

gild the lily

verb
  • To embellish or improve something unnecessarily. 

  • To add superfluous attributes to something. 

put lipstick on a pig

verb
  • To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality. 

How often have the words gild the lily and put lipstick on a pig occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )