Illamasqua Eye Liner Cake...

Hi Everyone!
Hope you are all well....

A few posts ago I shared a haul of Illamasqua products (http://mizzworthy.blogspot.com/2009/03/illamasqua-haul.html), and one of the ones I was asked most about is the eye liner cake, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on it since I've had more of a chance to play with it!

Picture - Illamasqua website.

The liner and sealing gel come together and cost £16... Just to compare with a few other high end liners, MAC's fluidlines cost £10.77, Bobbi Brown long wear gel liner is £13.70, and Urban Decay 24/7 pencils are £8.81. That makes this a pretty expensive eye liner!

Illamasqua say - Take the art of making-up to new extremes. Apply with an Illamasqua Eye Liner Brush to create bold, dark, dramatic eyes. Colour-intense, quick-drying and non-smudge, it comes with an Illamasqua Sealing Gel that ensures your creation lasts all night.

The product looks like an eye shadow powder, but has a very hard texture... It is used by adding a couple of drops of the mixing medium (ie Illamasqua sealing gel) to the cake and mixing to a cream like consistency. The thickness of the liner you produce can be adjusted - more mixing medium means a thinner and less pigmented liner, whereas less liquid produces a more dense and pigmented liner. I have found that you can also make the cake transform to liquid liner by using a spritz of fix+ or Body Shop Vit C/E Facial mists... I then use the sealing gel over the top of my finished look to make it smudgeproof.

Pros

- love the way you can adjust the shade, and this cake will last for ages - I've barely made a dent in it yet!

- Makes you feel like an old school hollywood starlet when you mix upthe colours, and "paint on" your liner

- Some pretty colours available (I have it in the shade Zest, a dark green, but I like the look of Suggest, which is purple, and Danger, a dark teal blue)...

- Once set with the sealing gel this stuff is going Nowhere! Doesn't sweat off, smudge or flake off.

- Colour stays true and doesn't fade.

- Stay on til you decide to remove it

- Gives a matte effect when dry, which is different to gels and liquids...

Cons

- I suspect a lot of people will baulk at the cost of it...

- It takes practice (esp if you aren't massively skilled with eyeliners like me!) to perfect applying the liner.

- Doesn't dry as quick as a gel liner, so therefore a bit more difficult to work with, which I'd say doesn't make it a great liner for people who aren't used to using gel/liquid liners...

-Not as portable as other forms of liner, so you may not find you use it for travel etc..

- Could be a bigger range of shades.

So What do I Think?

I think this is a product people will either love or hate... If you like trying different products and application methods then you'll probably like it, whereas if you like simple applications you may not like it.

I personally really like this, and I am planning to get the purple shade too (Suggest), but I can see that not everyone will like it and people might find this complicated to use and difficult to apply. To me the result you get in terms of colour and stayability are worth it, and I love the novelty of the product, like I said - it makes me feel old school glam!

To me, makeup and makeing up can be a stress relieving activity in itself. Lavishing time and effort on using different products to create new looks or even everyday looks with a twist is one of the things I enjoy doing... And this is one of those products that make me feel that way!

Hope you enjoyed reading this - if you have any more questions, please let me know!

Love MizzWorthy xxx