For years I have been battling with one beauty difficulty – makeup just won’t stay on my face. Mainly my eyelids. I tried buying more expensive makeup, and I tried different kinds (like gel eyeliner). Nothing stays on – or if it does, it stays on the top of my eyelid…
So I have managed to make a small collection of things that supposedly glue my makeup to my face. I thought maybe I should review them all, just in case someone else out there has the same problem as myself. So, let’s get stuck in!
The first product I ever had for this is Benefit’s She Laq liquid (the blue bottle). Sadly this has now been discontinued but it seems that there are a few people selling it on Ebay if you are desperate for some. It came with lots of little brushes which I promptly lost, but the brush in the liquid is like a nail varnish brush so I use that to apply it now.
Sometimes when applying it, if I’m not careful it runs into my eye which isn’t nice. When it dries my skin feels stiff and I’m away of me having it on my eyes all day long. It keeps my eyeliner in place but places like the corner of my eye still have blurred makeup after a while. Out of all the reviews I saw online for this, I didn’t see a bad one. But this product just doesn’t sit right with me. I still have most of the bottle left.
Once I got back from Japan, I was able to buy Urban Decay products (yay for the UK!) so I bought their Eyeshadow Primer Potion. I saw a lot of reviews online suggesting that this was the answer to my problem.
As advertised, it is pretty good. You only need a tiny tiny blob of it – and in fact if you use too much, or don’t rub it in well enough, you can see where you’ve applied it – and it lasts a long, long time. This one really kept the eyeliner on my lids and made my eyeshadow’s colours a lot brighter. The problem I mentioned about it not being very blendable and showing where you applied it made me want to try something new instead. That’s when I headed over to Mac.
The gorgeous Yolande at Crafty Memories suggested them to me and said that they have an awesome spray. It happened to be that around the same time I watched a Youtube video talking about a Mac spray as well so with two recommendations at the ready, I thought I’d better go see what’s what. Mac have recently set up shop in my favourite shop Douglas in Frankfurt, so I went to the very nice man and told him my dilema. Sure enough, he produced some spray – the Mac Fix Plus spray. He also let me try some of the Paint Pot eyeshadow/primer in Bare Mineral.
I must say that out of all the things I’ve tried, this combo works the best for me. The key with the spray is to spray it once before you put your makeup on and then once again afterwards. When I’ve come home from work but need to go back out and don’t have time to re-do my makeup, one quick spray of that means that my existing makeup looks fresh again. With the Paint Pot, I use it as a primer under my eyeliner and other eyeshadow. It works really well by itself as well for a natural look.
Out of all the things I have, I use the Mac products mostly – almost every day – with the odd day where I use some of my other products too. The Mac wins for me because I can’t feel the products, they blend into my normal makeup and they really do the trick.
Do you use products like these? Do you have any recommendations? I’d love to know!
