A not-terrible $3 brown liquid liner: Jordana INCOLOR Fabuliner Liquid Eyeliner Pen

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I always intend to write really concise reviews for products I don't feel particularly strongly about, but then my rambly nature takes over and I go on and on anyway. For real this time, I'm going to make this quick. FOR REAL THIS TIME.

The Jordana INCOLOR Fabuliner Liquid Eyeliner Pen is a felt tip eyeliner. It's like a sharpie for your face. Previously, I wrote about a couple of other brown liquid liners that were cheap ($3) and sucked. One objectively sucked, and the other I just wasn't into. So I got another cheap option to try. It's brown, because I already have way too fucking many black eyeliners. I wear brown fairly often, because it's a little less harsh with my coloring than black.

First things first: make sure you store this tip down in a cup or something, because otherwise the tip will be dry when you go to use it. When you do use it, you'll have to apply a medium amount of pressure in order to get a dark, opaque line. I don't mean an uncomfortable amount of pressure, but more than you might use with a brush, for example. If you use a light touch, you will get a dark enough line on the first eye from whatever liquid has saturated the outer layers of the tip, but by the time you move on to your other eye, the tip will lose saturation, and you won't get it back even by leaving it sitting upside down for several minutes. You need to press a little harder to get stuff flowing.

With a light touch: okay on the first eye; very faint on the second eye.

The pen is easy to use, and the shape of the tip makes it easy easy to vary the thickness of the line you draw. The downside of this pen is that tip gets frayed easily. I've only used it a handful of times, and it's already getting a bit floppy and imprecise. You will have some slight smearing if you get it wet (no crying!), but otherwise it wears well. It doesn't bleed or crumble or anything like that. It's good. There's nothing about it that blows my mind, but it does the job.

 Jordana INCOLOR Fabuliner Liquid Eyeliner Pen (applied using medium pressure)

Swatches and mini-reviews of all my retractable/automatic eyeliners

Disclosure: This post contains some Amazon affiliate links.
This is another one of those posts that is the result of my swatching all of the products I own in a certain category in order to determine if I want to keep them all. I'll write a more detailed post in the near future about how I decide what's working and what's not, since I'll be moving in a couple of months, and so I'm try to sort through my hoard and do away with things I don't need. For now, here are swatches of all the retractable eyeliner pencils I own. There weren't as many as I thought before I pulled them all out! But still too many, in general.

Oops, not the best camera setting. They are all quite straight in reality.

I swatched most of my regular pencil liners (i.e. the type you have to sharpen) a while back. As a rule, twist-up liners are stiffer and/or don't set as well as pencil types (for the reasons outlined here - scroll down to #4). Some of these retractable liners are just as good as some of my pencil liners, though.

On to the swatches!

Swatches (left to right) of:

• ULTA Automatic Eye Liner in Golden Eyes (wearing it in this post) ($8)
• Avon Glow Eye-liner in Copper Paradise ($6 I think? discontinued - but still available on Amazon)
• Jordana Easyliner in Eggplant ($2)
• ULTA Smokey Eyes Automatic Eye Liner in Cobalt (wearing it in this post) ($8, discontinued, but the cobalt one here might be similar)
• Stila Smudge Stick in Blue Ribbon ($20)
• ULTA Automatic Eye Liner in Teal Blue ($8)
• Essence Long-Lasting Eye Pencil in Tu-Tu-Turquoise ($2.50)
• Milani Liquif'Eye in Green ($7)
• NYX Retractable Eye Liner in Gray ($5)

Jordana Best Lash Extreme Volumizing Mascara ($3) vs. Urban Decay Big Fatty and Benefit They're Real (picture-heavy post)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Jordana Best Lash Extreme Volumizing Mascara is some cheap shit, and in my opinion, it's an excellent alternative to some of the expensive "extreme" mascara options. I'll let the photos do most of the talking, but here are a few thoughts. When I first tried this stuff, I thought it did a better job of lengthening than volumizing. As is the case with many mascaras, after several days it thickened up, and then it did its volumizing thing better. This mascara makes impressive eyelashes, period. Its performance is somewhere in between Urban Decay Big Fatty and Benefit They're Real. It's more lengthening than the UD and more volumizing than the Benefit.

I always think close up photos of mascara are kind of useless when I see them on blogs. Almost everything looks clumpy and spidery and terrible in a macro shot. But I hope these will at least give you an idea of how the three mascaras compare. First, let's start with the Jordana mascara.

Jordana Best Lash Extreme Volumizing Mascara on the left;
no mascara on the right.

Two coats of Jordana Best Lash Extreme Volumizing Mascara on both eyes.

Makes a big difference on my short little invisible lashes, right?

20% off at Cherry Culture and drugstore.com

Cherry Culture has 20% off everything from now until March 10 with code MMM2013. You can get makeup and nail polish brands from Cherry Culture that are sometimes hard to find in stores, like NYX, Jordana, Milani, Jelly Pong, and China Glaze. This is where I got the NYX nail polishes I posted about here and here. I have a tube of this $3 Jordana mascara that is supposed to be the shit, but I haven't tried it out yet. I also have this $1.49 lip balm in strawberry, and it is fucking good. I'm picky about lip balm. Most of them actually make my lips drier, but that one doesn't. They have a bunch of China Glaze polishes for $4, including the Bohemian Collection duochromes. These Milani Lip Flash pencils are crazy metallic and awesome.

Okay, that's probably enough recommendations, but if you want more, just ask. They also have a good sale section that's worth checking out. The prices above are before the sale discount, by the way. Shipping is free on orders over $40. Note that order processing from Cherry Culture can be pretty slow, and there are no returns on items bought during this sale.

If there's nothing there you want, drugstore.com is also having a 20% off sale on everything in the beauty department (so that includes skin care, hair care, makeup, etc.).

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Fix Your Face Quick Review: Jordana Color Tint Blush Stick

I got the Jordana Color Tint Blush Stick in Pink Adore in an attempt to replace my beloved Marcelle cream blush that is 8 years old and getting a little gross.

Pros:

• Good color selection.
• Not messy.
• Small enough for travel.
• Cheap ($3).

Cons:

• Disgusting baby powder scent. I can only smell it when I'm applying, but I still could do without it.
• Very stiff and dry. You can't apply it directly to your cheeks and them blend it out. You have to rub your finger firmly across the stick itself to pick some up and then rub that on to your cheeks. 
• Sheer. I'd prefer something more pigmented so that I only have to use a little, rather than something that requires building up with multiple layers. It's too much work, and it uses too much product.
• Small. The whole package is probably just over 2 inches tall and 1 inch in diameter.
• Fades quickly. It's pretty much gone after a few hours.

Overall, I don't recommend this, though I have only tried the one shade. I linked to it just because it's sort of okay for travel, since it's small and won't break like powder, but is a solid, so you can carry it on without separating it with your other liquids. I'm going to keep looking, though.

What's your favorite affordable cream blush?

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