Two cheap brown liquid eyeliners that are kind of shitty (Review and swatches of e.l.f. Waterproof Eyeliner Pen and Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner)

Disclosure: This post contains an Amazon affiliate link.

Let me begin by saying that I have been doing winged liquid eyeliner for over a decade now (so old!), and I basically know what I'm doing. I'm not saying I'm an expert or that my liner is always flawless - just that I've been practicing for a very long time and I can handle it. When I put on eyeliner, and people look at my face form a normal distance, they don't think I look like a mess. Trust me, I have people in my life who would tell me. For evidence, here's a selfie from 2002 in which I thought I looked pretty artsy and hot. I like to think I've improved since then (but I used the same L'Oreal liner in the photo below as in that post - um, new tube - and I'll say more about that brilliant product at the end of the post).

My liquid liner game at 21.

I feel that I need to establish my credibility before you see some of the photos below, because they are a mess. The point I'm trying to make is that it's the eyeliner's fault, not mine! Or at least that I am only incompetent with a certain style of liquid eyeliner. 

First things first: the two cheap liquid eyeliners I'm going to review here are e.l.f. Waterproof Eyeliner Pen in Coffee ($2) and Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner in Dark Brown ($2). The e.l.f. liner is a felt tip pen, just like a marker, where the liquid wicks up through the tip. The WNW liner has a long narrow brush that dips into a pot and picks up the liquid that way. They are both kind of shitty, and I wouldn't recommend either one, but for different reasons.

Here are swatches of both:

Left to right: Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner in Dark Brown and e.l.f. Waterproof Eyeliner Pen in Coffee 

You can see right away the main difference between them, which is that the WNW liner is thick and opaque, while the e.l.f. liner is thin and translucent. The e.l.f. one really does look like a smear of coffee, but I'm not sure that's something that's desirable in a liquid eyeliner. Let me show you how it looks on the the eye before I describe how it works.

e.l.f. Waterproof Eyeliner Pen in Coffee 

e.l.f. Waterproof Eyeliner Pen in Coffee 

More or less what you'd expect based on that swatch, I imagine. In addition to being thin/translucent, it's really fucking dry. Maybe it was already dried up when I started to use it, but in that case, it dries up really quickly. That itself is frustrating, even for a cheap product. I store this pen point down to maximize the saturation of the tip, and this is still what I get. It's hard to build it up to any kind of opacity or to get a clean line. You have to go over it multiple times after waiting a bit in between attempts for more liquid to seep into the tip. You can tell that I started at the inner corner of my eye where it's a bit darker. I don't know how long I would actually have to wait for enough product to return to the tip of the pen that I could get that much of it on the the outer corner. It's just not very useful. Too much work.

This liner wears okay. It's fine. I don't think it's very waterproof. It's hard to tell at the end of the day how much it has faded when it started out looking faded.

Now let's talk about the Wet N Wild liner, which does not have the same problems.

Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner in Dark Brown

 It looks kind of okay with my eyes open, but when I blink, you can see the mess I made.

Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner in Dark Brown

The main problem for me is that I find this style of eyeliner really difficult to use. I've tried them before (and reviewed one briefly here), but I've finally come to the conclusion that it's best that I avoid them altogether. If you have had success with this style of liquid liner in the past, then you can probably ignore most of what I say below. Here's what the brush looks like:

Wet N Wild MegaLiner Liquid Eyeliner in Dark Brown

As you can see, it's a longish wand with a thin brush on the end. The brush itself is about 1 cm long. First of all, the brush is extremely wet with you pull it out. You really have to wipe it off on the edge of the bottle before using it if you don't want to start with a great big blob on your eyelid. Even after doing that, though, you can see that there is product all the way up the wand. This is what fucks me up. I always end up with droplets of eyeliner on the ends of my lashes that splatter or transfer onto my eyelid or below my eye. I've tried various techniques, including looking down while applying it, etc., and it's always a mess.

The other problem is that I find that the brush is too thin and flexible to get a clean line. I have to go over it multiple times trying to smooth it out, and that usually just makes it worse. And I end up with that mess you see above.

As for how this performs/wears, it's okay. It has a sort of painty or plasticky texture that I don't love, because it can flake off if you get oily or sweaty. It doesn't smear, though. 

In the end, I wouldn't generally recommend either of these products.  The only reason I can think to buy the e.l.f. liner is if you like a more subtle line - but in that case, why mess with liquid liner? Use some eyeshadow and a small brush. It will be easier and look nicer. Maybe the black e.l.f. liner is better? I'm not going to bother to find out.

The Wet N Wild is super affordable if you already know that you can work this style of eyeliner. It's basically the same as NYX's version, but much cheaper (and comes in a smaller range of colors). But if you are looking for a cheap liquid liner to experiment or practice with, I'd avoid this mess. 

It's really worth going up the drugstore price ladder a few rungs and getting the L'Oreal Lineur Intense (with the felt tip, NOT the brush, which is similar in design to this WNW liner). I cannot recommend that shit enough. It's incredibly easy to use, looks beautiful, and wears like a dream. Like a dream of perfect winged eyeliner. It's 4 times the price of the WNW or the e.l.f., but in this case, it is in fact at least 4 times better. It avoid the problem of both of the above, by not requiring the product to seep into the tip and not dipping a long wand into it. I recently ran out of my L'Oreal liner, and that makes me very, very sad. I have too many sub-par eyeliners in my hoard right now that need to be used up before I can justify buying anything new, but once they are gone, I'm going back to L'Oreal and never straying again. I swear. For real this time.