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)

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 

Big fucking eyeliner comparison (also: an excellent alternative to expensive liners from brands like Urban Decay or Tarina Tarantino for significantly less than $10)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

First thing first: This post is loooong. I'm long-winded. You should be used to that by now. But gird your loins or steel your . . . buns, or something.

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again, until everyone is sick of it: ULTA brand makeup is underrated. They have some good shit, and it goes on sale very regularly for very cheap. There's no reason why you should ever have to pay more than $4 for most things, and often you'll get them for less than $3. (To be clear, I am in no way affiliated with ULTA. In fact, they kicked me out of their affiliate program a long time ago, because of the foul language, I'm sure. I've just been repeatedly impressed by their in-house line.)

But for whatever reason, it's relatively hard to find useful information on makeup blogs about this brand (maybe they don't send out press samples). Plus the photos on the ULTA site are not always very informative or accurate. I just went ahead and bought some of their gel eyeliner pencils on the basis of some good experiences with their other liners. I hope the swatches below will be helpful. I was also curious how these would compare to some other, more expensive favorites, like those from Urban Decay or Tarina Tarantino. You remember that all makeup pencils come from the same few suppliers, right? So these could actually be manufactured by the same supplier as those fancy brands. I got out all my pencil liners (i.e. ones that need sharpening) to compare (see above photo).

If you were thinking of picking up the Urban Decay Vintage 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Gunmetal . . .

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Don't.

I know, I know, the discontinued shades of the UD pencils are on sale for $6 everywhere, and it's tempting to go for Gunmetal because it's isn't acid green and seems pretty versatile. But don't bother. It's patchy and sheer. Maybe if you want to use it over another shadow to add some silver glitter, it would be okay for that, but it's pretty useless as either liner or shadow on its own. You can get much better eyeliners or eyeshadows for the same price or less, though.

Fix Your Face: How to experiment with winged liner without buying new eyeliner (with photos)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Some people like the way winged/cat-eye liner looks on them, and some people don't. Depending on your eye size and shape, and your general style, you may think it is the absolute shit, or you may think it is absolute shit. You don't know until you try.

I understand, however, that people who are not makeup hoarders like me might be loathe to shell out the extra cash for a gel/cream/liquid eyeliner, in case they decide they are never going to do it. There are cheap options, but you might have everything you need to figure out if this is the right look for you at home.

Here's what you need:

Fix Your Face Quickie Review: NYX Slim Sparkle Eye Pencil in Bronze Shimmer (with swatches)

Disclosure: This post contains an Amazon affiliate link.
I feel like I have a bunch of NYX products, but that I haven't reviewed many. But then I realized that it's because I feel kind of blah about them. They're not terrible, but not amazing - and usually it's one of those qualities or the other than inspires me to review something. So here is a review of an okay eyeliner, because if you're thinking of buying it, it's probably useful to know that it's okay. This is NYX Slim Sparkle Eye Pencil in Bronze Shimmer, which costs about $3.50, so even for just okay, the price is decent:

Without flash.

With flash.

Fix Your Face: Quick ULTA eyeliner photos

I took these photos a while ago, and honestly, I don't remember if I had a specific purpose for them. I just found them. You can see some more of the ULTA eyeliners I swatched here. These are the gold and cobalt blue liners from those swatches. They're really nice and bold. The gold actually isn't really showing its true splendor in these photos. It's very metallic and opaque, like liquid metal.

Fix Your Face: Recent ULTA brand makeup purchases (swatches and review)

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I bought a few ULTA brand products recently, so I thought I'd show you swatches, in case you're interested in your own spree. These are all good options.

From left to right in the photos below: (1) Metallic Automatic Eyeliner in Starlet; (2) Metallic Automatic Eyeliner in Golden Eyes; (3) Automatic Eyeliner in Teal Blue; (4) Smokey Eyes Automatic Eyeliner in Cobalt; (5) Automatic Lip Liner in Bloom; (6) Lip Crayon in Fashionista; and (7) Cheek Stain in Desire.

In natural light (colors of the gold and teal eyeliner and pink lipliner aren't quite right).

Cheap Crap: Jordana 7" Eyeliner Pencils

Cheap doesn't always mean shitty, of course. But in this case, according to Scrangie, these pencils are not even worth the $1.29. They sound terrible.

Fix Your Face Quickie: e.l.f. Studio Cream Eyeliner

UPDATE: This shit dries up FAST.

I mentioned before that I love this eyeliner in Copper. I recently got it in Plum Purple and Gunmetal too. I don't like them quite as much. They're a little more difficult to use, because when you try to put on a a second layer to build the opacity, it has a tendency to remove the layer below. It's doable, but it takes patience. I don't have the problem with the Copper.

I do really love the color of the plum one though. It works nicely with my pasty face and red hair. I'll probably be using it a lot.

(Sorry about the e.l.f. overload lately - I just got a box of stuff. I'll try to mix it up, but I want to give you my impression of these things before I lose interest. I'll be reviewing some Revlon, NYX, and Jordana things in the near future too.)

Fix Your Face: Garish Holiday Party Edition

Last night I violated the one feature rule, i.e. go dramatic on your eyes or lips, not both. But I'm not very good at rules. Also if you can't put shiny shit all over your face for a dimly-lit holiday party, when can you? I also lined my lower waterline for the first time. That's when you put eyeliner on the rim of your lid between the lashes and eyeball. I was worried I would just end up with watery eyes with black goo all in them, but it worked out pretty well. And I actually got a bunch of compliments on my makeup at the party (one included the word "glamorous"!) so I call that a success. My overdone face below the cut: