The Great Battle of My Eyeliners

You know those questions about "what is the one beauty product you would take with you to a desert island?" you see in beauty mags? Despite how ridiculous it is (WHY would you need a beauty product when deserted?), I often NEVER understood how any celebrity would answer anything but "eyeliner". It is SUCH an essential beauty product, and to me, really changes one's whole look.

I probably started wearing eyeliner when I was in college, and multiple eyeliners have been ground to a stub. I've tried pencil liners, gel liners, liquid liners... but I keep going back to pencil liners. I do like the precision of liquid liners, but I need more practice and I'm usually in a rush. *bad excuse* Also, I don't really need a dramatic winged look most of the time as I'm a busy office gal who doesn't go out much during the weekends anyway. I've given up on gel liners cos they dry up too quickly and I find it annoying to keep using a brush to line my eyes.

So I keep on picking up eyeliner after eyeliner cos I'm "so sure" that I'll definitely use it. At the moment, I actually have 5 opened eyeliners in my beauty drawer! 5!!! Ok, I mainly go to 2 or 3 of them, but I decided to do a blogpost about all of them in one go. Easier to compare, right?

Today, we will be comparing :
a. Clio Gelpresso Waterproof Pencil Gel Liner in Golden Black #7 (forgot the price because I bought it in a Clio set which cost me nearly SGD50 already)
b. Cherimoya waterproof eye pencil (free with purchase from online site, now it's not even being sold on the site anymore, lol)
c. Sephora Nano Eyeliner in Coffee (Forgot the price! But about RM15-RM20)
d. Maybelline Masterliner in Black (RM15.90)
e. NYX Super FAT eye marker in Carbon Black (about RM30)

Erm.. as you can see, most of my eyeliners are black in color, barring the Sephora one! I decided to use brown cos people keep saying that brown is more natural and more suitable for the office. However, I have so little (eyes! lol!) to work with that I might as well make it as OBVIOUS as possible (without making Amy Winehouse-ish style eyes).

Here's how they look like, drawn on paper. You can already kinda guess the quality of each item from the paper... :( Which would explain why I choose certain pencils as my faves and the rest remain not-as-loved.

So, first off, we have the Clio Gelpresso Waterproof Pencil Gel Liner in Golden Black. I really, really like this one! It glides on so smoothly, so easy to wear. Also very dramatic and long lasting. The "golden" bits are not that obvious, so I find it suitable to wear to work as well. It's an autoliner, so I don't have to sharpen it, just a twist and keep on using. Pretty good quality pencil liner as well, has never broken on me, unlike some RM80 MAC autoliner that I bought before. It goes on quite thick as well, which is ok with me. The only drawback would probably be the price -- but then again, it's still considered drugstore lah.

I like how controlled and neat the lines are when I wear it. Definitely on heavy rotation on my make-up table. :)

Next is the Cherimoya waterproof eye pencil. Honestly, I don't use it much because it's truly awful. =p I only opened it and started using immediately because it was a free gift (as I mentioned) and I wanted to test it out. If it was good, I would've wanted to purchase a new one, cos the Cherimoya brand is really cheap. Cheaper than discounted Nyx items, that's what I always say. It also looked pretty impressive because it comes with its own sharpener... too bad it is not big, so I can't use it for ALL my pencil liners, it is special, custom-made, Cherimoya sized. :P

Why I dislike it? Doesn't go on smoothly and mutha hurts my eyes as well because the pencil graphite (??) scrapes along my lid. Yes, even when it's not super sharpened or whatever. It's as if there is micro-thorns inside the pencil. -___-" You can see in the picture below that it is not so evenly drawn, and I couldn't taper off a nice line to "elongate" the eye like with the Clio pencil. *grr*

I bought the Sephora Nano Eyeliner because a blogger said that it was her go-to liner. She looked quite pretty, so I decided to follow suit even though she's not known for beauty blogging. :P It is also reasonably cheap, so if it was good, I could buy another one. Straight off the bat, the nano eyeliner is really not for me! The pencil is so small and hard to grip... I guess I can tell from the name "nano", huh? My gorilla hands are unable to hold the pencil confidently. I really don't see the point of making eyeliner in nano sizes. It's not like it helps you save more space in your handbag...

Also, from the test swatches in the second picture, you can see that the Sephora liner is one of the most "rough" liners. It doesn't go on smoothly, and the more I try to "correct" crooked lines, it ends up looking worse and worse. Definitely not a repurchase for me. Plus, the pencil gets blunt soooooo fast, I kinda ditched this to the side since I don't have an eyeliner sharpener on hand (too pampered by autoliners). Again, you can see from the picture below that I can't do a nice "taper" off at the end.

I bought the Maybelline Masterliner even when I had so many eyeliners rolling around because the price is SO WORTH IT! Come on, it's the chapest one in my drawer right now, and I think this is the umpteenth Maybelline liner that I've ever bought. The quality is always standard, so I know I won't be disappointed. I was also afraid that the RM15.90 price was actually a printing error and later it goes to beyond RM20. :Pp So fasterly took out my wallet and paid for this.

No regrets, for the price, I get an autoliner that lasts pretty long (I yawn a lot and "tear" a bit at the office, so it does wash off a bit towards the end of the day) and is an AUTOLINER!! No need to look for sharpener, and again, quite a good quality pencil (for me). Has not broken off and is quite easy to glide on. Not as smooth as Clio, but can't complain since it's probably a third of the price. Cannot do sharp taper, but can taper further than liners #2 and #3. Can see it's a bit rough, but at least pencil doesn't feel rough on my lids, and probably also caused by me rushing to go to work. =p

Finally, NYX Super FAT eye marker was something that I got during my last Nyx haul. I actually have the skinny marker as well, but I'm not sure where I dumped it, so it got left out from my eyeliner battle post. :( Anyway, as you can see from the earlier swatch, this one is the thickest and BLACKEST eyeliner that I have, and no doubt that it deserves the title of being an "eye marker". My goodness, I do believe that I could actually use this as a whiteboard marker as well!! If you like drawing THICK dramatic liners, this is definitely the one for you! And I hope you have steady hands coz this is going to be super unforgiving if you screw up halfway. :)

Having said that, pros would adore the smoothness and precision. The main peeve I have with this is actually the smell. It really smells like marker... the xylene fumes just hit you right between the eyes. =p I actually prefer the super fat marker to the skinny marker. The skinny marker is just way too skinny. You can see from the picture below that the line isn't THAT "fat" anyway...

Well, that's all I have to say about my eyeliners. They come and they go... right now loving the Clio, Maybelline and Nyx fat marker. I think I'm going to stop using eye pencils that require me to buy a sharpener. Autoliners all the way for me from now on. Oh yeah, I also really loved the Maybelline Hypersharp that I got last time. It took me a while to get used to because I had to be very careful in order to draw a proper line, but it is definitely SUPER precise + long lasting + DRAMATIC. I remember that it was pretty pricey, but a lot of bloggers hyped it up, saying you could even draw flowers or hearts and stars on your face.

Ok, not like I'm going to do that, but it really looks nice! See:

Maybe I'll repurchase it ... after I finish all my other liners.... :)