Review: NYX Gel Liner & Smudger in Samantha

Gel liner has been the latest and greatest thing to come about recently, as well as potted cream eyeshadows, such as MAC's infamous Paint Pots, Maybelline's Color Tattoos that make some nice Paint Pot dupes and Estée Lauder's recent "Paint Pot" dupes as well. NYX has joined the band with their gel liner AND smudger combo (admittedly, people have been smudging gel liner and using it as a base long before but hey, these colors are pretty nifty). Yay for crazy colors!

It's pretty obvious I'm a NYX fan-girl. Affordable product with quality and fairly easy to find, especially with all the e-shops that carry NYX. Some of them do jack up the price in comparison to Ulta or NYX's own webshop on their site. I also love gel liner, even if I'm not the best at applying it. It's usually user-error but in the case of a drugstore purple gel liner, it was the product, not me.

A collection name too?! AMAZING!

The box is simple, as is the jar. Tells you what's inside, and actually tells you it's collection! There are also storage instructions (see picture below), along with the usual shade name, product code and surprisingly, a color description. These all have girl's names on them: Bettie (GLAS01; "intense matte black"), Charlotte (GLAS02; "matte true brown"), Danielle (GLAS03; "matte teal"), Samantha (GLAS04; "matte cobalt blue"), Scarlette (GLAS05; "matte deep brown with red undertones). I didn't see Scarlette amongst the displayed shades, only Bettie, Charlotte, Danielle and Samantha. Poor Scarlette was left out of the group!

"Store upside down." What?

What I thought was neat about the box was the way it gave you use suggestions. Liner or smudger. Each box says something different but shows the product used the same way: liner or smudger. In the case of Samantha, its Sweet Samantha or Shocking Samantha. Obviously, you have a sort of "day to night" use with these. They are definitely matte, so if you want a little sparkle, apply a matching (or non-matching!) eyeshadow on top.

This jar is tiny. I didn't expect it to be tiny to be honest. It's a glass jar with a black plastic cap. If you look at the product photo, you might notice its cracked. I got worried when I opened it and it was cracked that the product was dried out! I poked it with my finger to realize its a very soft product that will sort of melt under the heat of your finger. When I dipped my Smashbox Travel Cream Liner brush in it, the product grabbed onto the brush. Really soft and beautifully creamy!

Looks really dry right? Haha, you can see my fingerprint.

So I don't have this used in a look unfortunately because when I tried to use it, due entirely to user-error, it looked bad. I had a very crooked, messy cat eye. It also will become sheer if you try to layer it for more intensity, so maybe letting it dry before doing a second layer will help. Do one eye and the let the liner set while you do the other and layer it as the other side dries. (Swatches will be up tomorrow) WOW. I never did swatches. I'm sorry!

Daylight

Basic lighting

Flash

You can check out the colors at NYXcosmetics.com and Ulta. Per usual, these are more expensive directly from NYX as Ulta has these for $6.49 and NYX has them for $8.00. Ouch! Big difference. Aside from that, you have two fun shades and three work-safe shades to pick from. I kind of hope they bring out more colorful shades aside from two different shades of blue. Navy or indigo would be really nice though, preferably navy! Don't worry, it can be also be pretty work-safe.

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