August Faves or "I Wear the Same Thing Every Day"

I basically wear makeup when I actually know someone will look at my gross face. And since people look at me in school and I hate waking up early, I basically just use the same few products every day. If, for some bizarre reason, you value strangers' opinions, here's my August's most used products.

1. Maybelline Dream Fresh BB Cream (in Light) ~$8 for 1 oz

I have ok-bordering-on-bad skin and it's been 100 degrees lately (no joke). So instead of slapping on Revlon Colorstay that melts off my face in a few hours, I've been using this BB Cream. It's basically just a diluted foundation, but it's very yellow-toned and neutralizes redness well, and has very good coverage. The best part is instead of getting disgustingly cakey on my disgustingly oily skin, it melts off in a way that looks like it's just getting absorbed. I don't have chunks sitting around on my skin and where it fades you just see my normal face.

2. Covergirl Clump Crusher Mascara (in Waterproof Very Black) ~$8 for 0.44 fl oz ($18.18/fl oz)

This was one of the first mascaras I got and it's still my favorite. The shape makes it easy to not get mascara everywhere and the dry-ish formula keeps it from transferring from my eyelashes to the rest of my face and body. Plus, for a waterproof formula, it's super easy to remove without makeup remover and doesn't move in extreme heat. Although, for a waterproof formula, it's not particularly waterproof. If my eyes get watery and I dab them with a tissue, that tissue can go straight to the trash.

3. L'Oreal Lineur Intense Liquid Eyeliner (in Carbon Black) ~$9 for 0.05 fl oz ($180/fl oz)

I already did a pretty in-depth review you can read right here. It's an awesome eyeliner and you should try it.

4. Wet n Wild Coloricon Trio (in Walking on Eggshells) ~$3 for 0.12 oz ($25/oz)

I don't wear eyeshadow every day because it's pretty much a given it'll crease and be ugly. I do use it for inner eye highlighting and this palette is perfect. It's pretty as an actual look, but the two light shades are awesome universal highlighter shades. They're buttery for drugstore, but a little bit powdery. It's a cheap and tiny palette that's just damn convenient.

5. Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade (in Soft Brown) $18 for 0.14 oz ($128.57/oz)

This was one of the first high-end products I bought and damn it was worth it. If you don't do your eyebrows, you should try it, since it really pulls your face together. The Dipbrow Pomade is a cream product and that makes it 100% easier to use than powder products. I apply it with an Ecotools Angled Eyeliner Brush (part of a ~$10 set) and the results are really natural and neat. Plus, $18 is really affordable for high-end, the color choices are pretty extensive, and this 0.14 oz pot will probably last you for a whole 12 months. What you see in the photo is about 2 months of use. I hardly made a dent. So as the saying goes, it's great and you should buy it.

L-R: Wet n Wild Browbone, Crease, Eyelid, L'Oreal Eyeliner, Dipbrow Pomade (Soft Brown).

6-7. Lipstick Queen Sinner (in Red) and Saint (in Berry) both $22 for 0.12 oz ($183.33/oz)

I did a lengthy review on both from the Lip Nouveau Set right over here. Overall, Berry is a pretty berry shade that's really moisturizing, but doesn't last forever. Red, on the other hand, is a vibrant poppy red that has a very matte finish and is somewhat drying. It lasts for ages, though.

8. Clinique Long Last Lipstick (in Heather Moon) $15 for 0.14oz ($107.14/oz)

Here's a review of this lipstick too. In short, it's a really awesome mauve/berry shade with a faint silver sheen and moisturizing formula. It lasts surprisingly long and reapplying is a breeze.

9. Revlon Colorburst Balm Stain (in Crush) ~$9 for 0.09oz ($100/oz)

Guess what, another berry shade. I love all the Revlon crayon-styled products, but I used this one a lot this month. It's perfect for an on-the-go or shit-I'm-running-late type of day. It's really moisturizing, but does fade after an hour or two, so you'll have to keep a mirror around to reapply. Just an overall quick and easy lip product. My only beef is the tube doesn't say the product size and I've ripped off the bar code, which doesn't say it either. A little bit annoying when comparing sizes.

L-R: Revlon, Sinner, Saint, Clinique

10. Revlon Nail Enamel in Eclectic, ~$5 for 0.5 fl oz ($10/fl oz) 

My favorite nail look ever is mint with white french tips. It's awesome. Try it. My main nail polish to use is Eclectic since it's the archetypal mint with a non-boring name like 'minty' or 'seafoam'. The brush is skinny, but after two coats your nail will look perfect. I didn't realize I should take some pictures, but it looks the same as in the bottle. Let me google that for you. Plus, I like the bottle. It's cute.

11. OPI Nail Laquer in Alpine Snow, ~$9 for 0.5 fl oz ($18/fl oz)

I do a lot of french tips, since it's cute and protects my nails from breaking at the tips, so I need a good, one-coat white. Well here you go: a one-coat white. It dries super quick, too. There's not much to say about a white nail polish. It gets the job done, if you're looking for a functional snow white.

12. NYC In A Minute Quick Dry Nail Polish in Grand Central Station,  ~$2 for 0.33 oz ($6/oz)

This is technically just a clear nail polish, but oh my god this makes an amazing top coat. I'm on my third bottle. Yes, it's better than Seche Vite and basically everything else in the world. The polish you see above was on my hands for 6 days, without chips and only 2 fingers had tip wear. Yeah, it's an awesome top coat. It dries super quick and doesn't ruin the polish underneath if you touch something. I put on two coats over my polish, on the tip, and then one halfway through the week if I feel like it. If you want me to rave more about it, then here's another review.

13. D&G 3 L'Impératrice Eau de Toilette, $69 for 3.3 fl oz ($20.9/fl oz)

I have a big giant bag of perfume samples and they all smell like headache-inducing generic perfume. Yeah, some smell like a lily but with that same smell equivalent of aftertaste. This was the only one I found that continuously smells nice. Sephora lists a long list of stuff I can't really smell, but I really get 'apple'. Like a fresh-cut apple. It's the kind of perfume that reminds me of spring and makes me want to throw on a sundress and spin around in a sunflower field. If someone was to wear it, it would be Anna from Frozen or Rapunzel from Tangled (and I guess Frozen too, since she had a cameo). I have a shitty sense of smell and it lasts 6 hours on me, before I'm not sure if I'm smelling or imagining. Also, let me stress how amazingly cheap this perfume is. It's fucking $20 per fluid ounce. Most are about $80 for one ounce. It's going to take me a while to finish this huge bottle off, and I don't have to feel bad about using it since it's only $20. Amazing. Go get yourself a sample because it's spring in a bottle.

Review: L'Oreal Lineur Intense Liquid Eyeliner and Why Do I Love Flaky Eyeliner

I'm a greasy girl. In middle school I once got Sharpie on my eyelid. A black, permanent dot right on the eyelid. You know where I saw it when I came home and inspected my 12 year old face? All up in my fucking crease.

Pencil eyeliners might as well be an eyeshadow substitute for me. My eyelids are both greasy and somewhat hooded so basically everything migrates into my crease. Again, gross and unfortunate. Pencil eyeliners just don't cut it. I'm too impatient to wait for gel eyeliner to dry, but it stays ok. Ok, though, isn't good enough when I want my wing to be sharp enough to kill a man.

I googled 'best liquid eyeliner' and got a bunch of $20 products. What am I, made of money. I refined my search to drugstore, and decided to pick up Lineur Intense Liquid Eyeliner in Carbon Black.

T-B: Maybelline Line Stiletto (~$8), L'Oreal Lineur Intense (~$9)

This sucker is fantastic. That's kind of a subjective statement, since different people want different things out of the squiggles on their eyes. So for the sake of simplicity and objectivity, I thought I'd break this shit down for you in the case you have an eyeliner checklist sitting on your lap.


1. Packaging

Admit it, pretty packaging is worth it. I could buy some generic brown-bottled Walmart perfume--or I can throw my $100 at a Sephora employee and get a fancy, breakable thing.

Source
What are these? Why are they so ugly? Why do they appear in my house as though by magic?

The Lineur Intense packaging is fine. It doesn't use comic sans and doesn't shed glitter. For the sake of a funny image, I google searched 'comic sans perfume', but instead I found Helvetica The Perfume. Yes, it's real. It's $32. It's also just distilled water.

L-R: Maybelline Line Stiletto, L'Oreal Lineur Intense

Anyway, the Lineur Intense packaging is fine and functional. The tip isn't a brush that can flay out and get misshapen, but a nice, stiff wedge sponge. It has a fine tip and is flexible enough to not stab you in the eye. It's a little bit longer than Maybelline's Line Stiletto, if that matters to you.

L-R: Maybelline Line Stiletto, L'Oreal Lineur Intense

I like how the handle is nice and long. For me, it makes it easier to draw a smooth line.


2. Product / Application 

Being called Carbon Black, you'd expect this eyeliner to be black. It's black. It's very black in my swatch and in my eye (literally). Sorry if I misled you with the first line.

L-R: Maybelline, L'Oreal, L'Oreal after a vigorous rubbing.
Maybelline was noticeably more watery.

It applies very smoothly, and doesn't need more than one layer if you're precise. You may need to go over it again if you don't dip your brush in on the first stroke. The only problem is that you need to wait for it to dry before drawing over. If the eyeliner is still semi-sticky, then trying to mess with it will actually take off some. It dries very quickly, though, and I'd call the finish somewhat semi-glossy (although nothing awful like Maybelline's Glossy Liner), rather than a true matte. The Line Stiletto has a similar finish, but was significantly more prone to flaking when you tried to go over it again.

The bottle doesn't need much shaking. It's a nice consistency: not watery, but also not clumpy and dry. You don't get any patches when you apply and it doesn't tug at the skin. Just like with all liquid eyeliner, you probably should wait a few moments before looking up if you have hooded eyes. I've forgotten and gotten some on my lid, but a tiny dot that was super easy to remove.


3. Wear Time

This thing is fantastic at wear time. It stays on me for 12 hours and then some. If you didn't catch on, I have semi-hooded eyes and greasy eyelids.

Awkward photo of my eyeballs. See how much of the eyeliner touches my crease?

I blink as much as everyone else and every time my eyeliner rubs the rest of my eye. Nonetheless, it definitely stays on. I've put swatches on my arm through the shower, and if I don't rub, they stay on fine through running water.

I don't have a 'before' picture (it looked perfect, trust me), but here's a 10 hours later image.
Looks fine from afar, I would totally go out like this.

L'Oreal's Lineur Intense flakes. I, personally, think it's a nice combination of flaking and not. Like I said, my eyeliner is constantly rubbing my lids, but that's not enough to flake it off. I also fuck up my wings often and removing them is easy, but leaves a few flakes here and there. The eyeliner goes smoothly on top of them and wears the same.

In this swatch, I rubbed the last one rather hard. Harder than I would rub my eye.
My eyes are really oily, so it flakes much easier on my eyes than my dry hand.

Here's a closeup of 10 hour wear. No one will be looking this close at my eye when it's closed, so I'm ok with it.
And don't forget I am super oily and this is a pretty extreme case.

On the other side, for the sake of a test, I gave my eye a quick rub.
Again, extreme case. Dry people will experience less flake.

Also a point to note: I never touch my eyes. Maybe scratch under my eye, but I never touch my lid. You shouldn't either, but if you compulsively rub or if you have itchy eyes, this eyeliner will flake off on you when you rub it: more if you're oily, much less if you're dry. It's easy to reapply, though, and if you clean it up with a wet q-tip, people probably won't notice you're missing a chunk.

I also conducted an extreme-extreme test. I applied my eyeliner in a less chunky wing than above (not much touching my lid) and wore it from 8am to 12am. That's 16 fucking hours on my oily skin. The only difference was some slight fading on the left side, and a few minuscule flakes on my eyelid. There wasn't even any fading towards my tear duct.

It looks like my eyeliner is uneven, but trust me, that's just the bad-flash-photo angle.
My eyebrows stayed on awesome too. Four for you, Anastasia Dipbrow Pomade.

So there you have it. If your skin is less greasy than mine, your results should be even better.

Note: I have tried this eyeliner alone with a few eye primers and the results were worse than without. It seemed to smudge and crease and flake faster and easier.

4. Removal

I can find a kick-ass eyeliner--but if removing it is a pain in the ass, I'll probably never use it. Eyeliners that flake off are awesome. They just rub off. So easy.

If I wanted, I could just rub off L'Oreal's liner with my fingers. I'm not that filthy, though, so I use Yes to Cucumbers Facial Wipes and they easily get it all off. I have yet to find a decent mascara I can just rub off.

This eyeliner is fantastic.


L'Oreal Lineur Intense Liquid Eyeliner retails for around $9 for 0.05 fl oz ($180 per fluid ounce), depending on where you buy. For comparison, Urban Decay 24/7 Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner retails for $19 for 0.058 fl oz ($327.58 per fluid ounce).

SERIOUSLY, SKIP IT: Maybelline Master Duo 2in1 Glossy Liquid Liner

If I could try every eyeliner in the world and compile a list of the shittiest eyeliners in the world, this would probably come in second. And I haven't even tried nearly all that exist.

The eyeliner in question is Maybelline's Eye Studio Master Duo 2-in-1 Glossy Liquid Liner. That's the kind of title that begs some editing and shortening. Why. Is there some word quota someone needed to fill.

Two. I bought TWO.

Anyway, this thing is called 2-in-1 because (supposedly) the tip is shaped like a pancake so you can use the thin (not actually thin) side to get vaguely thinner lines, and the fat side to get fatter lines. In theory it sounds good, but the tip of any regular liner can easily do the job of both and get you a precise point.

L-R: Fat side of Glossy Liner, 'thin' side, L'Oreal Lineur Intense Liquid Eyeliner tip.
That small variation in thinness makes a huge difference on your face. 

So, you're asking, why is this eyeliner so shitty? Well let me tell you, internet user. It's so shitty that I bought two to be sure I had something to write about. First off, this shit is literally dirtied, vaguely colored water in a neat container. Somewhere the whole Maybelline corporation is laughing evilly while googling their own product, knowing they successfully conned thousands of dollars out of curious customers. The bottle says 'shake well' probably as an excuse for being so shitty.

"But Mr. Maybelline, this is garbage."
"Obviously you didn't shake it enough."

I shook these for a good 10 minutes. My arm got tired, I made my boyfriend shake it. Still, I got some creek water-esque liquid on my eyeball. Gross.

Not only is this infused with an X-TRA DOSE OF WATER™, this eyeliner takes forever to dry and it still feels wet. You touch it and it feels like a big goop of school glue dried on your eye. They call it the 'glossy finish' but I feel like I've got tape on my eye. It pulls at my skin. I blink and I'm tempted to pull it off my face.

Here's the gorgeous, even-more-vibrant-in-person tags. The Teal is a lot more 'teal' in person, trust me. It's beautiful.

I've also got to address the misleading marketing. The fucking color. The one thing of the eyeliner you want to be awesome. I'd pay for a shitty, runny formula if the color I got was like a neon sharpie. The bottoms of my eyeliners show off an awesome, vibrant green and blue. I saw them in Walmart and thought, damn, I want that on my eyeball. It's also mildly annoying that the website doesn't state the size you're buying.

Even on the tip the teal was gray. The navy looks like it would be ok, but no. It's garbage.

L-R: Navy Gleam swatch without shaking, swatch after shaking, Glossy Teal swatch without shaking, swatch after shaking.
In person, these look even more gray.

Too bad what you get is sad and pathetic and kind of no excuse for such awfulness. The swatches look the same, whether you shake the bottle or not. You're telling me, Maybelline, no one stopped and said "hmm, the color is kinda gross and gray. Is this right?"

If the colors weren't advertised as being vibrant, I probably wouldn't mind the gray mess. Maybe someone wants a slate blue. If the formula was ok, that would be neat to have.

But they're advertised as bright, standout colors which is a clear indication someone fucked up somewhere.

Since I hate myself, I applied this eyeliner on my eyeballs and let it sit on my face for 12 hours. I sat at home all day, no sweating or anything. The blow picture too 5 fucking coats of eyeliner to get that color. A lot of it dripped into my eye, too. It burned.

Freshly applied. No mascara. See those clumps on the eyelashes? THAT'S EYELINER.

At the end of the day it looked faded and uneven. I never touch my eyes (you shouldn't either), so I rubbed it once to see what would happen.

See that little bit on the left? That's not a mole. That's eyeliner bits.

Haven't touched this side. Those faint bits are also eyeliner. Look how the color seemed to separate on my eye.

It basically peeled off just like a sticker. If you rub or touch your eyes throughout the day, you're going to have a disaster.

So overall, this eyeliner is garbage and you shouldn't even be looking at it in the drugstore. If you'd like to try a colorful eyeliner, try Revlon Colorstay Skinny Liner (~$8). It comes in a pretty blue and green and I've had much better luck than with this catastrophe.

Maybelline's Eye Studio Master Duo 2-in-1 Glossy Liquid Liner retails for $8 (more or less), for 0.05 fl oz of product ($160 per fluid ounce). That's not outrageous; in fact, most drugstore eyeliners are ~$8. You should still save your money, though. Even if it was free, it wouldn't be worth the gas you waste driving to the drugstore.