Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Color Eyeshadow Pencil Swatches

Remember back when I had a Laura Mercier makeover? It was a pretty darn awesome one, which actually hid my huge acne spots! If you haven't seen it, you really should, because the transformation is just impressive. Anyway, if you remembered, I promised to swatch the Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Color for you guys, and then...I didn't. Until now.

So behold, the uber-late (but better than never, right?) swatches. The Caviar Stick Eye Colour is really an eyeshadow pencil. I have one of the colours, and I've found it to be pretty easy to use. The eyeshadow is blendable, but sets fairly fast and doesn't move after that, which in my opinion is the best of both worlds. In my experience setting time is pretty important for a good eyeshadow pencil: too fast and it becomes impossible to blend (and makes you feel like you're really just colouring with an eyeliner pencil), too slow, and you get smudges.

Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Color Swatches

You can read my thoughts on each individual colour below.

Solone Gel-Like Smoody Pencil: Eyeliner and Eyeshadow in One

I think I've found something that is just like the Urban Decay 24/7 Eyeliner Pencils - the Solone Smoody Pencils! Solone is a Taiwanese cosmetics brand, (not Solone the drug, or Solone the place in Ukraine - man, Google sure does enrich my general knowledge!), and the Smoody Pencils are one of Solone's star products, and has won some awards here as well.

The idea behind the Solone Smoody Pencils is that you can use them either as eyeliner or eyeshadow. And also one of their selling points is that they dry fast, and are advertised as drying in 30 seconds flat.


The pencils themselves are long and slim, and are double-ended. One of the ends is, of course, the pencil tip itself, and the other end is a blender. The concept is that you can use the pencil tip to line your eyes, and if you want, colour your eyelids in with a Smoody Pencil, and then use the blender to blend out the colour for an easy smokey eye.


Here's the blender tip. It's a tiny sponge tip, good for blending in tight areas. This is why the Solone Smoody Pencils are so popular - the selling point is that you smudge, blend, and go. These pencils are supposed to give you a foolproof eye look, either day or night.


Here are swatches of the three colours of Smoody Pencils I have - Peach, Jade and Stardust. These are all gorgeous colours, but Jade is my favourite - it's not quite jade in colour, but is a lovely olive green. I actually also like Peach - it actually sort of reminds me of NARS Orgasm, but in pencil form.


Now I know you're wondering - so far so good, but how do the Smoody Pencils measure up? Well, I tried using the pencils a couple of times, and here is my attempt at using Peach and Jade to make an eye look. Jade was used on the lid and blended, and Pearl was added to give an extra zing of gold glitter!


As you can see, the blending wasn't perfect. I think this is because the pencils set very fast, and don't budge once they're set, so you have a short window of time to blend out the colour. As you can see, I wasn't always quick enough, so my blending wasn't that great in some spots.


Here is the same look, eyes closed. As you can see, I guess my reflexes just aren't fast enough to blend the pencil out in time. I have to say though, this eye look stayed on from the afternoon right until the evening - and I just used these pencils on my bare eyelids, without any primer or base. So they really don't budge at all once they've set.


The only bad thing though, was that since the pencils set so fast, I was tugging at my eyelids roughly in an effort to blend out the colours before they set. After a few tries, my eyelids started to hurt, LOL. Obviously, I can't quite get the hang of blending these out yet.

My final verdict? Overall, these are good eyeliner pencils - they set fast, don't budge, and have good colour payoff. As eyeshadow pencils though, I'm less keen on them, simply because I can't blend them out fast enough, and I don't like to tug at my eyelids. But if you're more skilled at blending than me, then the Solone Smoody Pencils may just be your thing - after all, what's more appealing than a smokey eye in a pencil?

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)

Insiti Eyeshadow Pencil: EOTD and Review

I'm a demanding customer - I hate high prices, but at the same time I can't tolerate lousy quality cosmetics. Thus, I always find myself trying out various cheap-as-chips brands to see if they fulfill my desire for something cheap but good.

My latest experimentation with cheap makeup comes from Insiti. Insiti is a drugstore cosmetics brand hailing from Asia - although to be honest, I don't exactly know which part of Asia it's from. My guess would be Taiwan or Hong Kong, because their Facebook page is in Traditional Chinese. I got mine from KKcenterHK, the Hong Kong-based online purveyor of cheap Asian cosmetics and other related products (false lashes are one of their specialties). The website may look a little dodgy compared to other more sleekly-dressed online counterparts, but my dealings with them have been trouble-free and pleasant.



The Insiti Eyeshadow Pencil itself is a simple dual-ended eyeshadow pencil with a plastic cap at each end. I got shade no. 12, which consists of a simple light pastel pink and a medium-toned purple.

Here are some close-ups of the two ends of the pencil. As you can see, the pastel pink is actually pretty frosty-looking in the tube, and the purple looks like it might have this interesting blue sheen.





Here are swatches. The pastel pink shade is indeed quite frosty when swatched, but the blue sheen is only very slight, which isn't bad, but is a bit of a pity.



I did an eye look with the pencil, just to test it out. I'm afraid working with the eyeshadow pencil was slightly tricky for me, and the eye look wasn't the best. But I hope it's demonstrative of how the product might look like on the eye.



One of the things I found about this product was that it's very emollient. It does slide around the eye and feel a little greasy on, which means, yes, it does crease, and would fade and shift if you didn't use a base under it. In fact, I'd suggest using a base under this, and then perhaps setting the eye look with some transparent setting powder for better lasting power.



Colour-wise, the pencil was decently pigmented, but I had to build up the colour a bit to get the colour intensity that you see in the photo. Building up successive layers of colour can be a bit tricky, though, since the product does tend to move and shift around the skin a little.



Would I recommend this? I guess it's cheap, and if you were willing to use a base and a setting powder on top, it could be worth it. But if you're lazy like me and don't have the patience to fiddle with a base or setting powder, then this may be a bit more trouble than it's worth.

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)

Barry M Shimmering Lip and Eye Crayon Swatches

Barry M's Shimmering Lip and Eye Crayons are supposed to be highlighters for the eyes and lips, although looking at the colour range that is available at my local Superdrug, you'd probably end up using them more on the eyes than on the lips (unless you wanted an unusual lip colour). The colour palette for this is very pastel with some shimmer.



Gold 1 is a light pastel gold with shimmer.

Turquoise 4 is a light pastel blue with shimmer. It looks a little more blue than Turquoise to me, but it could just be the pastel-ness of the colour.

Marshmallow 5 is a shimmery light pink.

Violet 6 is a cool-toned pastel violet shade. I quite like this one, it's a colour that's right up my alley.

Bronze 7 is one of the colours that pops a little bit more, being less pastel. This one is a very gold-orange bronze with shimmer.

Green 8 is also one of the less pastel colours that stands out a bit more. This one is a muted pastel-ized forest green with shimmer.

The only thing I have to mention is that while I was swatching, these don't seem to "set" on their own very well, and are a little bit smudgy. They would probaby work best as an underlay or overlay for other eyeshadow colours. If you wanted a sheer wash of colour these are perfectly fine worn alone too.