Felt Eyeliner Pen: Maybelline Impact Express Smooth Felt Liner

Hello!

It has been a LONG time since my last post, partly due to laziness and partly because I've been trying to cut back on my expenditures. Not to say that I haven't bought ANY makeup since then, but I've definitely purchased a lot less in the way of experimental cosmetics, hence the lack of posts. But today I got a few things I was interested to try out.

This is the Maybelline Impact Express Smooth Felt Liner. It's a liquid eyeliner pen with a firm felt tip, like a marker. All the other eyeliner pens I've used have had brush tips, which kind of bend depending on how you press them to the eyelid. This felt liner has no give to it; it's completely stiff. Which in my case looks to be an advantage.

I tried it out, and it's possible to get a very fine line with this pen. I found the felt tip easier to use than a brush tip; the line turned out much smoother than usual. The color is a nice, solid black.

Out of curiosity, I also attempted a cat eye with the pen. The results are not super impressive since I'm pretty bad at doing cat eyes, but the liner itself performed really well. It was easy to get a smooth, clean line with no skipping, which I usually struggle with when using a brush pen. 

Overall, I'm very impressed with this product. I haven't worn it a full day, so I can't speak as to how well it stays put, but application was WAY easier than usual. Generally, I've had the most success using cream eyeliner and an eyeliner brush, but this may have been even easier than that, and I got a finer line. It seems to me that the best aspect of the felt liner is the amount of control it gives you. I would definitely recommend this one for folks who struggle with eyeliner.

UPDATE: It turns out that this eyeliner is not particularly waterproof. As in, if your eyes water a little bit, it will smear halfway across your face. Very disappointing. I wouldn't recommend this one unless you would be using it in a dry, cool area.

The Hair Donut

Today's product is something I've been using for quite a while. Something rather odd, but which I had mostly forgotten about because I've become so accustomed to it. It's what I call a hair donut. To clarify, it's not made of hair; you use it in your hair. Here's one in the package, which has a fairly clear illustration of how it is to be used.

And here's a closer view:

It's a donut made of dark brown mesh. I'm guessing there might also be some sponge on the inside of it, but I've never cut one open to find out. Maybe I'll give it a look when my current hair donut gets too battered to use anymore. They're lightweight but seem to be pretty dense, as you can tell when you start sticking pins into them. You can buy them in different sizes, though none of them are especially small, since that would rather defeat the point. I go for the larger ones since I've got plenty of hair to cover it with.

To use a hair donut, you also need some U-shaped pins. I don't think I ever used them when I lived in America, but in Japan they're quite easy to find. Drug stores have them, but so do 100 yen shops (essentially dollar stores) as well.

U-shaped pins are very convenient. Unlike bobby pins, they don't get ruined very easily. If a U pin gets bent in a weird way it's very easy to bend it back into the correct shape, whereas once a bobby pin gets messed up there isn't much you can do to fix it. You can use U pins over and over again; I don't think I've had to throw a single one away.

Anyhow, you use the hair donut to make a large, round bun. It adds a heck of a lot of volume. I've heard this style called a "sock bun", because you can also get this look using a rolled up sock. I've never tried it with a sock since most of my socks are very dear to me, and the mesh hair donuts are so readily available. But here's the look. Forgive the messiness; this style can be done very neatly, but I took these pictures after taking a nap, so there's a lot of stray hairs all over the place. But the style is surprisingly intact considering what I'd been doing.

The brown bow in the pictures is just a barrette. You can add a lot of different decorations, or you can leave the bun plain. It looks pretty good either way.

You may have already guessed how the hair donut works; the styling is pretty simple. First you put your hair into a high ponytail. Today I managed to get it right up on the top of my head, which isn't always the case. Then, you slide the ponytail through the hole of the hair donut. Once the donut is right against your head, you wrap the hair around it however you can and secure it with the U pins. There are different ways to wrap the hair around, but all that really matters is that you cover all of the mesh. It's especially important if you're using a donut that doesn't match your hair color, as I am. Black mesh peeking through my red-brown hair would look pretty odd. 

Overall, it's a really simple style. Wrapping the hair around to cover all the mesh can be tricky at first, but once you find your preferred way of doing it, it gets easier over time. I think it's a fun and cute look, and it stays put pretty well. You can make it smooth and tidy, or big and messy depending on your preferences. You don't need a ton of styling products, though it is helpful to use a little gel of some sort to smooth the hair that isn't in the bun. If you have a lot of stray hairs at the nape of your neck you may want to secure them with bobby pins, as well. 

Well, that's about all I've got to say about this one. Thinking about it, it really should've been my first post, as it's probably the first weird cosmetic product I tried out upon coming to Japan. They're very commonplace here, and it seems to be a very popular style for young women. 

Lip Crayons: Combination Lip Balm/Lip Stain

Today at the department store, I saw something of interest in the makeup section. They look like over-sized crayons, and are for use as lip color. It's Revlon's "Just Bitten Kissable" Balm Stain. All of the colors looked pretty appealing to me (red, orange, light pink, hot pink, mauve) but I managed enough discipline to only buy two, the hot pink (#20, "Lovesick") and the mauve (#01, "Honey"). Here I'll talk about the hot pink.

Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain, "Lovesick"

As you can see, it's a lip crayon. It's fairly large, and very easy to apply. It doesn't take a whole lot of precision. It's fairly sheer, so you can layer it to get as much color as you want. It goes on slightly shiny, though it's not super glossy. It also has a slight mint fragrance to it.

I definitely like the shade of pink. It's bright but wearable, and I could've made the color weaker by putting less on. I went over my lips several times to get this shade. It goes on smoothly and looks more or less like a sheer lipstick.

To test the lip stain component, I waited about half an hour and then pressed a tissue to my lips a few times. Only a little bit of color came off onto the tissue, so it would seem that my lips absorbed most of it. Here's the result:

My lips certainly aren't shiny anymore, and the color is a little faded, but it's not that far from the original shade. I'd say it definitely works as a lip stain. You wouldn't have to reapply all that often to keep it looking plenty bright, since this is what it looked like after I tried to remove it with a tissue. Now, two hours and one nap later, it looks more or less the same as it did in this picture. So it's very long lasting. But makeup remover and a cotton pad are sufficient to remove nearly all of it if you want it off. 

I really like this product. It's bright and slightly shiny like a gloss, but not at all sticky or thick. It looks a lot like lipstick but doesn't have to be applied as often, and is easier to apply well. Although it looks like a crayon, it doesn't need sharpening; as it wears down you just twist the bottom end like you would with a tube of chapstick, and it advances. I think it will be handy in a lot of situations. You could also wear it under glosses or lipsticks to make sure the color won't completely fade off your lips at any point. And once you've had it on for a while, very little of it comes off onto other things, like cups, or people. Okay, so I didn't test it on people. But you can drink out of a glass without leaving a major lipstick stain on it.

I especially like the color options for this balm/stain. I would have happily bought all of them, but I figure I should save at least a little money for use on other things, what with Christmas coming up. Still, it's nice that in addition to the several very bright shades, there's one more subdued option, which is the mauve ("Honey"). I'm not posting any pictures right now because the light has gone and I can't get an accurate shot of the color, but I've tried it on and I think it's a great shade. It's not a nude shade, but I'd say it's business appropriate. I'd be comfortable wearing it to work, or to a nice dinner party. Although I love bright colors, I think "Honey" might be the one I'd recommend the most strongly.

Attempting Eyeliner: Maybelline Hyper Glossy Liquid Liner

Today I thought I'd give liquid eyeliner a shot. I typically use cream eyeliner and a brush, so I don't have a lot of practice with this kind. I bought some Maybelline Hyper Glossy Liquid Liner (waterproof type) in BK-1. The katakana for the color name looks like it should read "Piano Black".

Maybelline Hyper Glossy Liquid Liner

Well, I experienced some difficulty with this stuff, so the results aren't going to be too pretty this time. I was going for a cat eye look. Because I messed up on one eye and went off in a different direction with it, I've got two looks happening here.

Things did not go as planned.

First, the eye I  messed up. After I applied some of the liquid liner, I didn't let it dry long enough before opening my eye all the way, and some of it ended up in the crease of my eye. So I went ahead and lined the rest of the crease, connecting the line to the regular cat eye liner. Then I attacked it with metallic eye  shadow. Here's where I ended up:

I left the mascara off so you could get a better look at the eyeliner. Here's what it looks like with mascara:

Yeah... Let's move on to the other eye. This one turned out a little bit closer to what I intended. Still not gorgeous, but that's more an issue of applying liquid liner with shaking hands.

Again, I left the mascara off for this step. The eyeliner is glossy, as promised. It's possible to get quite a thin line with this brush, but I went over it a few times to make it thicker. 

With mascara this time, and with my eye closed. It's possible to get a nice line, although I had trouble with it bleeding into creases a bit. You can see a little of that toward the outer corner of my eye. I also found that the eyeliner seemed to flake a bit when dry. I don't know how well it would last if worn all day, since I've only just tried it out at home this evening.

Aside from the problems I had applying it, which are a reflection of my own lack of skill, I had a few complaints about this eyeliner. For one thing, it bleeds pretty easily, even if you're careful not to apply too much at once. It also seems to flake a tiny bit when dry. The shiny finish is nice, but I found that the coverage isn't great; it cracked some at the outer corner of the eye. Overall, I'm not especially impressed with this one.

I might try this one out again sometime when I'm going out dancing for the night. I'd like to see how it holds up. If it's really waterproof, it might be good for use in a sticky-hot club. And it does seem like it should be quite smudge-proof when dry. At night the tiny cracks in the coverage might not be such an issue, either. I won't be throwing this away, but it doesn't seem likely to become one of my favorites.

Shorter False Lashes: Eyemazing

Today's false eyelashes: Eyemazing Ciffone Line no. 402, "Party eye". Side note: I'm pretty sure that "ciffone" is a misspelling of "chiffon". These lashes are somewhat shorter than a lot of others I've tried, so I was curious to see how they'd look. Here are the lashes out of the packaging:

Until you get to about two thirds of the way out toward the outer corner of the eye, the lashes really aren't very long. But the way they cross to form little points gives an interesting look. The band the lashes are attached to is a little thicker than what I'm used to; I mostly use D.U.P. lashes, and those tend to have very thin bands. But these lashes did cost less than D.U.P. lashes, so that's also a consideration.

I didn't take any "before" pictures this time, but I think the effect of the lashes should be pretty visible even without something to compare it to. First, here's my whole face:

 I didn't do a great job of applying the lashes symmetrically,  so you're going to get a different effect depending on which eye we're looking at. But first, let's see how the pointy tips look.

On this eye, I didn't apply them quite as close to the lash line as I usually try to, and the pointiness is more visible this way. It wasn't done deliberately, but it does give me an idea of the effect of placement.

Here's the other eye. I applied the lashes much closer to my lash line, and they don't look nearly as pointy. 

And this is what both eyes look like. You can see a big difference between the two. Although the lashes on the left side of the picture look more unnatural up close (they are further from my natural lash line), I think the effect is much more interesting. I prefer the pointy look.

These were the first Eyemazing lashes I've bought, and I have to say that while I like the style, I'm not very impressed with the quality. I trimmed the bands to fit my eyes properly, but even at the right length they were somewhat uncomfortable. Usually after a few minutes I more or less forget that I'm wearing the lashes, but I couldn't really adjust to these ones. I took them off fairly quickly. I'll probably give them another shot sometime in the near future, but it doesn't look like Eyemazing will be a brand I buy more of.

Side note about the incidental makeup: 

In these pictures I'm wearing a new lipstick I just got two days ago. It's "Centrifuchsia" by Lime Crime. The lighting in my bathroom isn't great, so I'd say that it's actually even brighter than it looks here. It's probably my new favorite lipstick; the color is really rich and it goes on very smoothly. It also smells like marshmallows and is vegan (contains no animal products and is not tested on animals), which is pretty cool as well. 

I'm also wearing some gold eyeliner from Lime Crime. The shade is called "Rhyme". These pictures don't show it very well, but it's quite beautiful and the color is really solid. I put it over the top of my black eyeliner, and all you can see is the gold. It's also nice and shiny. 

Since my photography is pretty crap, I'd strongly recommend checking out the actual shades of the eyeliner and lipstick on the Lime Crime webpage. My lighting is very poor, so my pictures didn't come out true-to-life. The ones on the web site are much, much more accurate.

Lime Crime Lipstick: Centrifuchsia

Lime Crime Eyeliner: Rhyme

See you next time!

Partial lashes: D.U.P. Secret Line "Girly Eyes"

On to our next batch of false eyelashes! This time I'm looking at D.U.P. Secret Line "Girly Eyes", Model's Type 920. They're partial strip lashes that are meant to be worn at the middle of the eye. Which is to say, they don't extend all the way to the corners of the eyes; they just add fullness at the center. I've actually already worn these out once or twice, but am just now getting around to taking some pictures.

Here's our baseline. I'm wearing some pink eye shadow, black cream eyeliner (Sephora), and Maybelline Volum'Express Turbo Boost Mascara. I didn't think to curl my eyelashes, which will have some consequences later.

Now, for the eyelashes.They're part of the "Aiku Maikawa Model's Selections" series. Sorry for the poor lighting and glare, but this should give you an idea of what the packaging looks like, at least.

Secret Line, "Girly Eyes", Model's Type 920

And here's what they look like on my eyes. I think the effect would've been even more natural if I'd thought to curl my lashes ahead of time, but that didn't occur to me tonight. Still, the added volume is quite nice, and they blend in pretty well.

Even looking very closely, the lash band is nearly invisible. Like the other set of D.U.P. partials I looked at before, they come on a clear strip, so they blend in with your skin (or in this case, my eyeliner). 

The overall look is very natural, but definitely an improvement on my actual lashes. I've worn them out during the day and felt very comfortable with them. Sometimes if I wear false eyelashes out and about I'll hear random schoolgirls around me commenting on them (I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I have learned the word for eyelashes), but with these ones no one seemed to notice. These may be my new favorites.

Orange vs. Orange

Orange is one of my favorite colors to wear, but it's not always that easy to find. There isn't typically a huge amount of orange clothing in most stores, and orange makeup is even less common. So, when I found out that I could buy such unconventional lipstick shades as blue, green, yellow and (gasp!) orange from Lime Crime, I was thrilled. Along with a few tubes of Carousel Gloss (which I will certainly end up talking about in the future), I bought "My Beautiful Rocket", a bright orange opaque lipstick.

Since last winter I've been occasionally wearing my orange Lime Crime lipstick, and I'm quite happy with it. It's fully opaque with only one coat, has a wonderful scent (I think it smells like marshmallows), and the color stays bright for quite a long time. It doesn't fade or rub off easily once you've applied it. On a few occasions I've eaten a meal while wearing it and found that my lips were still fairly orange afterward. I think that's mostly the case if you've applied it a good length of time before eating, so that it has some time to sink into your skin. Of course, some of the lipstick does come off when you eat, but a surprising amount of the color remains. And it was fairly uniform, too; it wasn't just the edges of my lips that stayed orange, it was the whole surface. Sometimes I find that if I eat or drink while wearing a bright color, most of the lipstick comes off and I end up looking like I'm just wearing lip liner.

Anyhow, just recently I discovered orange lipstick from Maybelline at the drug store. I was very surprised; most brands typically stick to more standard colors. There were maybe three shades of orange. I think they were something along the lines of "Peach Nude", "Apricot Nude", and "Orange Nude". I might be wrong about those names, though. So, out of curiosity I bought a tube of the Maybelline Water Shiny Milky in OR615 (Orange Nude). 

Since this is a color comparison, I figured that I'd better try to get some photos in better lighting than the usual yellow glare of my bathroom lights. I took these pictures in my bedroom, in afternoon sunlight. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about photography or lighting conditions, but I think the colors came out pretty true in these shots. For the sake of comparison, I'm wearing "My Beautiful Rocket" (Lime Crime) on my upper lip and "OR 615" (Maybelline) on my lower lip.

Unless you look very closely, the shades are quite similar. But it seems to me that the Lime Crime is a truer orange, whereas the Maybelline has a slightly more papaya-y color to it. It's just a tiny bit peach-tinted, though I'd still definitely call it orange.

Some other differences between the two lipsticks are texture and opacity. The Lime Crime lipstick is high pigment, so it's somewhat softer and has a creamy texture. The Maybelline lipstick has a fairly standard texture, and feels a little more glossy, if that makes sense. It goes on in thin, smooth coats. For opacity, the Lime Crime is definitely much more opaque and solid. I'm only wearing one coat on my upper lip in order to get that shade, and there are no thin spots. The Maybelline goes on somewhat sheer, so I put on maybe two or three coats to get it to the intensity I wanted. 

Other considerations: The Lime Crime lipstick is higher pigment and higher quality, and as a result, it is more expensive. One tube is $15.99, plus whatever you pay for shipping. I can't do a direct price comparison because I don't know exactly how much the Maybelline lipstick would cost in the U.S., but looking at the prices in Rite Aid's online store, it seems that it costs around $7 for one tube. I think the price in Japan was somewhat higher, but that's a different matter.

Durability is possibly another issue. Because high pigment lipstick is softer, it can melt more easily. I've been hesitant to carry the Lime Crime lipstick in my purse on hot days for fear it would be ruined, possibly staining my purse in the process. I don't know at exactly what temperature you should start worrying, so I've been erring on the side of caution. 

This has been a very wordy post, so for my conclusions I'll just boil it down to the basics.

Maybelline Water Shiny Milky in OR615 (Orange Nude)

Pro: Inexpensive, easy to control color intensity by layering, widely available, as durable as most lipsticks

Con: Less long-lasting, lower pigment/quality

Lime Crime "My Beautiful Rocket"

Pro: Very true orange, high pigment, great smell, extremely long lasting, fully opaque with one coat

Con: More expensive, less widely available (purchase online), higher risk of melting 

Personally, I'm very pleased with both lipsticks. I'll continue using each of them, though for slightly different purposes. The Lime Crime is perfect for when I want a major pop of color and don't feel like reapplying often, and the Maybelline is great when I want more control over the intensity of the color and need something sturdy enough to chuck in my purse and forget for a while.