little white truths

We received this eyeliner in March 2016's Lust Have It Women's Box (reviewed here). 

While I was happy to see it when I saw the nice antique golden colour of the shade I received, that happiness started to fade from the moment I swatched it and was gone completely when I first tried applying it to my eyes. The damn thing is too hard, lacks pigment and barely shows up on my face - no matter how many layers I apply. Foo!

Be a Bombshell can be a bit hit and miss, in my experience. The brand's blushes are fantastic, but the eye products I've used so far - a few eyeshadows, eye bases and this liner - aren't anywhere near as good. 

This particular product is among the worst of the bunch and I'm not sure I can even give it away: it's that bad. I might use it to decorate Christmas cards, although I'll be writing those until Christmas 2017 if I can't get the colour to show up without layering it on!

There's the colour:

There's a swatch in direct sunlight above, heavier on the left and lighter on the right. I had to apply so many layers to get it to show up, and it does show up better on my arm (which is paler than my face) than it does on my eye, so it might fare better for lasses with paler skin than mine.

I left it to dry for a couple of minutes and then gave it a wipe (see below). 

It does shift easily, although the transferring isn't so bad on my eyes. I've left the below shot slightly out of focus so you can see that it does contain bits of glitter, but they're tiny so you might be ok with this if you don't like glitter in your makeup.

Verdict

This is a bad product: there's no other way to say it. The liner is really hard, meaning that it tugs when applied and I have to use so much pressure to get it to work that I feel like I'm poking my eye out. Not what you want from a dedicated liner!

Because the product is hard, this may be part of the reason why it's so sheer and so difficult to get much pigment from. I tried warming it first with my breath and then with a lighter (don't try this at home without adult supervision!), but all that did was cause it to melt and then set immediately, so it wasn't any softer when I applied it and I couldn't get more softness/pigment by using that trick.

I also tried using this both with and without a primer, and found that this made no difference in terms of intensity or how easily the product applied.

The above swatch did shift with the faintest rub of my finger - both the lighter swatch and the heavier one - which made me worry that it would transfer to my hooded upper eye area in a heartbeat. Fortunately this didn't happen, so one good thing we can say about the product is that it does stay put.

I did consider using this as an eye base when I saw how bad the pigment was, but I would be here for decades if I did that because the product takes so much work to apply. Unfortunately this means I can't use it for anything, so if I can't find a home for it, it's going straight into the bin.

It may be that the colour shows up better for those who have different skin colouring than I do, but given how hard and sheer the pencil is, you may still struggle to get good pay-off from this so I wouldn't go out and buy it.

Also, the damn thing is super drying: you can see in the above photos how crepey it makes my lids look, so I'm not going to wear something that makes me look ten years older than I am!

In sum, this is a bad product and I have little else to say about it. It's also over-priced, given how little product you receive, so it's definitely not worth the outlay.

Blurgh.