eyeliners and eyebrow pencils

Use lousy eyeliners as eyebrow pencils! Today, I'm going to be looking at 3 products that I frequently use as eyebrow pencils. The Revlon ColorStay Liquid Eye Pen, a Kanebo Kate Liquid Eyeliner, and the Maybelline Eyestudio Eyebrow Pencil. All pictures on screen are as close as possible to the original colour my eyes see.

Design:

Revlon Colorstay: Pen, cover does not pop onto the back end of pen, has a nice length.
Kanebo: Same as with the Revlon, both tend to attract fingerprints and get greasy
Maybelline Eyebrow Pencil: Pencil form, needs to be sharpened. Very short.

Nibs:

Revlon: Marker like tip. I can't really tell whether it's meant to be flexible. It does bend if pressed hard enough, but mostly it's stiff to draw like a marker. I've had this for about 2 years, but mostly because I could not figure out how to use it as an eyeliner. Tip gets frayed with use.

Kanebo: Brush like tip, feels nice and cool on the face. Brush offers very good and fine control, allows a very natural look because it's almost like drawing many hairs to fill in the brows.

Maybelline: Pencil tip, can be sharpened to desired sharpness. Draws nicely and doesn't tug on the skin, the pencil is very soft so take care when sharpening. Also because it is soft, the pencil seems to use up quite quickly.

Swatched from left to right:
Revlon drawn lightly, Revlon pressed hard, Kanebo, Maybelline.

Revlon: This is one of the most horrible eyeliners I have ever used. The colour doesn't come out dark in one drawing, and drawing another layer over causes the first layer to come off. It is TERRIBLE as an eyeliner.
One day I gave up and decided to try it on my brows. It was then I saw the magic of using a pen to draw my brows.

The colour blends in with my brows quite naturally, and it offers plenty of control in shaping the brows. It is great for filling the brows in because even if drawing over a 2nd time causes the ink to disappear, the brows look all the more natural! It's ingenious! My pen nib has actually dried out, so the colour that comes out is less intense unless pressed hard as in the swatch, but it still works very well for me in terms of eyebrows.

Colour lasts all day too, as it's a liquid and hard to rub off like a pencil would rub off.



Kanebo: Another eyeliner that I bought because I enjoyed the fine brush tip. Then I realised that the brown colour was so light it did nothing for my eyes. Since I don't throw products away because that just feels like throwing $$$ away, I used it for my brows. Brown eyebrows are less harsh on the face and tends to make a person look younger. It also works very well should you have brown hair.

The brown of this liner is lighter than the revlon eyeliner. So light that the swatch above required about 3 strokes to reach that desired intensity. One stroke barely shows. This is good for the inexperienced or if experimenting with different brow shapes.

This liner is very similar to the K-palette 1 Day Tattoo Real Lasting Eyebrow Liner 24h in terms of the colour and the brush. Gently paint multiple strokes on brows to get a very natural looking brow.

Colour lasts all day as well.



Maybelline: This eyebrow pencil leans more towards a greyish brown. The intensity of the colour depends on how heavily shaded the brow is, or how hard the pencil is pressed. Colour comes out alot easier than any of the pens above, with a much softer effect as compared to pens.

Pencils are much easier to work with than pens because they are correctable. They can be smudged or rubbed off. slowly colouring/shading in with a blunt pencil is also easier than trying to draw lines with a pen.

This brow pencil seems to last all day for me, but then again, I don't really touch my brows. I do get a feeling that the colour does fade slightly through the day, but not enough to be too noticeable. In worst cases, just bring the pencil out for a touch up! It's so tiny anyway.

This is how the pens/pencil look like when drawn. If I had to rank these 3, it would be
1. Revlon
2. Maybelline
3. Kanebo

Unfortunately this is as far as my eyebrow experience goes because my pens never ever seem to run out. Ah well, whatever stays on, right? Just don't throw away useless eyeliners before trying them out on eyebrows!