Thursday, December 22, 2011

Urban Decay 24/7 Liners

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm a fan of Urban Decay's 24/7 eyeliners.  I'm such a fan, actually, that I currently own 10 pencils in a variety of shades and am planning to invest in more in the future.

Yeah, I have a bit of a problem with eyeliner these days.

The thing about eyeliner that's so appealing to me is that it can add another dimension to my eye makeup without being hugely obvious or flamboyant.  It can certainly be those things as well, but it doesn't have to be, even when I use a bright color, which is why I like it. 

My first foray into color was with the purple-toned Rockstar shade:



Rockstar is dark enough to look like a brownish black on the upper lid, but you can definitely see the purple when it's applied to the waterline.  It's almost nothing like its sister color, 1999, which is a much lighter and more vibrant purple with glitter:



1999 doesn't show up well at all on the upper lid when paired with shadow and mascara, but is great on the waterline.  I'm experimenting with wearing a line of black (either Urban Decay's Zero or my faithful Caviar Ink Bobbi Brown gel) at the lash line and a line of 1999 just above it to make the color a bit more noticeable.  So far, I like it.

I was raving about these liners to my mother last month when she was visiting, and she asked me to explain what made them better than, say, the $5 drugstore liners she'd always bought.  In terms of colors, I really don't know.  I assume that you can find dupes for pretty much all of Urban Decay's shades (perhaps not with the glitter) in the drugstore if you look hard enough.  For me, the difference is in application.  Even Clinique's quickliners don't go on as smoothly or with the kind of color saturation on a first pass that Urban Decay's do.


(Left to right: Rockstar, 1999, Yeyo, Stray Dog, Gunmetal, Zero, Underground, Demolition, and Bourbon)

I'm a mother with two very young children, and already get up before 6:00 every morning in order to get all of us out the door on time.  It's been hard to justify spending an extra 10-15 minutes on my makeup since I started doing more than swiping on a bit of mascara and lipstick before declaring myself done in the bathroom.  Going over my eyeliner more than once just isn't an effective use of my time.  The fact that Urban Decay and Bobbi Brown liners are pigmented enough for me to be able to make one pass and go makes them worth the extra cost in my book.

2 comments:

  1. In my experience with Urban Decay 24/7 liners I feel like I might as well just use cheap drugstore ones if they are just going to fade and smear. I have tried putting it on my waterline and upper lashline and even setting it with a powder and they still seem to just slid right off my waterline and transfer on my lid without me touching my eyes. Do you have any suggestions of how I can reduce the amount of smearing? (because I do have two full-sized pencils sitting in my makeup drawer right now and I feel like these are a bit pricy to just not use)

    http://aswrittenbyabiggirl.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have you tried putting primer on the are where you're seeing smudging on your eyelid? I have to apply it under my eyes to avoid raccoon circles from my mascara, and it works great.

    ReplyDelete