Friday 21 June 2013

The Search (Continues?): Eye Primers

How exciting, an eye primer collection. This blog just gets better and better. Haha, sarcasm aside, I have indeed been on a hunt for an eye primer that can keep shadows on my eyes for a day's wear (8 hours, just 8 hours please). My eyes aren't oily, they're actually on the dry side, but its their hoodedness that causes shadows to crease very easily. This is even more evident on my right eye which is the more hooded of the pair and shadows just wiggle around more so there. So as quite an eyeshadow lover, I've been on the serious hunt for something that just works, sans parabens, red cosdna.com ingredients  and now also cruelty free (slightly more "rules" as I want to stick to it daily). Here is my current journey, thus far..   


The Natural

I've tried both The All Natural Face eye primers with very little luck. Both crease on my lids themselves which is saying something. I have heard of those who have had better luck with these but unfortunately they don't work for me. I'm not counting out natural eye primers though, with my eye on  the Faerie Organic Fort Winks Eye Primer after Caitie's from Naturalla Beauty's review here.

The Drugstore
On a whim months go I decided to try the Rimmel Exaggerate Undercover Eye Primer as it was on sale on Asos (before the Aussie dollar starting slipping *sadface*). Yup, no luck there. I've also tried it with powder but it still creases rather quickly on me.

The Aussie
I heard of some good things about the Australis Eyeshadow Primer, and bought in in my very early days of my beauty obsession (before I started learning about ingredients). It is paraben-free which is cool and cruelty free too. Sadly shadows still moved quickly within the hour and I moved on.  It could still work for you and it is priced around $10 which is pretty good for Oz!

The High End
I forgot to include it in the picture but the MAC Paintpot in Nubile was one of my first primers to try. Its thick, creamy texture is lovely to work with but unfortunately shadows would crease between the 2nd-3rd hour. Okay if I'm going to go out for a very short amount of time, but for that time frame I'm rather unlikely to even wear shadows. I'm starting to wean myself off MAC so it's okay.  TheBalm Put a Lid on it received quite good reviews when it was first released and I decided to go for it as it fit my criteria nicely. I ordered it from Bath&Unwind for about $22 and had high hopes as it was my first expensive purchase of a proper eye primer (if you consider MAC Paint Pots more as cream shadows) . It lifted the bar slightly holding shadows down for roughly 3-4 hours on my eyes. My guess is that this would work very well on oily lids as it felt like it sucked the moisture out of my lids and they can feel quite tight and dry.

The Winner?
Well.. I'm not sure if it wins but it is the best performer of the bunch and it is the Nars Smudgeproof Eyeshadow Base. I've had this on my radar after the repeated ravings by Ingrid aka MissGlamorazzi and avoided it as it is one of the most expensive options out there. The verdict? It gives me roughly 6 hours wear, so it's closest to the 8 hour mark I've come. A slight disappointment but it still is the best of the bunch sadly. I will purchase the full size but I may move on afterwards out of sheer curiousity, we'll see.

So there it is, my sad eye primer journey. What does a hooded eye'd girl need to do to wear eye shadow! I've tried most of these with powders which help a little but I would like to just be able to use one product to do the job. Do you have any suggestions that might fit the bill? 
x, mai-anne

2 comments:

  1. Great post...I've been meaning to do some kind of an eye primer comparison post too now that I've accumulated a few different ones! Thanks for the mention also...the Faerie Organic isn't holding up QUITE as well in the summer as it did in the winter, but it's still by far the best I've found :)

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  2. oh really? thanks for letting me know! Looking forward to your post :)

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