Review: eBay Gel Eyeliner (bought from TAMANALA)

I Bought This

It doesn't have an actual brand name or anything, so I'm only calling it "eBay gel" because of that.

But I did get it from eBay and China.

As I mentioned in my Purple Plum wig review, I don't have brown eyeliner and prefer gels over pencil. Reason being is so many pencils are sort of hard and waxy, which flattens my brow hairs. That feels so WEIRD (kinda looks weird too). I rely heavily on Urban Decay's 24/7 Glide-On pencils for this but being that they're $19, it's an inconvenience and I can't exactly find the just right brown for my brows. They also didn't have brown as part of the permanent range for the longest time!

Now I know NYX's Slide On, Glide On Mouthful of a Name pencils are comparable but I haven't swatched any of them to get a feel of the formula. They're also $8, which is still kind of high! I also don't find any of the brown shades of gel eyeliner they offer to be very decent options for my brows. I also wanted pink, which is hard to get! Only Inglot offers a pink and a nice looking brown but at $12 a pop along with shipping... No way! Cannot do!

So much description!

 Thus I turned to eBay and looked for any reviews on the formula before buying. At $2.98 with free shipping, they aren't terribly expensive, but I'd rather not waste my money on something horrible. That would really suck. There was, at least for these, a swatch photo in redbeauty88881. Yay!

Shade #11 True Chocolate

So these look like your average gel eyeliner: tiny glass pots with a black lid. I like that the glass is frosted, its a nice touch to pretty them up. They come in a plain black box and on the bottom of the pots are numbers that correspond to shade names in the eBay listings. You can see the shade you're grabbing easily by looking at the bottom where it's clearer. Not too shabby for a completely random eyeliner. I'll have to save a list with all the colors and numbers for future reference.

I already have a brush but some of the other listings I was looking at offered a kind of nice looking eyeliner brush. I might have to scoop one up later because the brush head is smaller! But anyway, the shade I bought was #11 True Chocolate. I intend to get two more later on, #09 Silky White and #28 Rose Purple. (If I hadn't found those bodycon tank dresses, I would have all three colors.) I want white gel eyeliner because I don't have a decent white eyeliner (bugger!) and I can use it to make pastel brows, if the need ever strikes me. If you're thinking, "But wait, you already have Milk?!" Milk, sadly, flattens out my brows. Ewwwwww! For now, it's only my base for brightening neon shades of eyeshadow and giving the less pigmented ones a little more oomph. I'm aware NYX has a white base (not primer) but its about $5. I also don't have the patience to pot my Jumbo Pencil!

So I ran around trying to get an idea of whether or not these were worth my trouble from reviews, which are very few and far between. This swatch filled photo (from redbeauty88881) helped me get an idea of the pigmentation, so I wasn't afraid of them being completely awful on pigmentation.

There was a safety seal on top of the pot, hence why there's residue around the edges

#11 True Chocolate is like a tiny pot of melted chocolate. Yummy. It does have very slight red tones but reads cool to me overall, which makes it very perfect for my brows! I dislike the really red-toned browns. Just personal preference. It's the perfect mate to my beloved Too Faced chocolate brown eyeshadow, which is sadly a palette exclusive and nameless. I'll have to search out another matte brown that's as close as I can manage. This is crazy creamy, creamier and much softer than my so loved NYX Gel Liner & Smugder (which is nice for my brows when I cosplay Stocking ~ ). It's sort of more emollient but still matte and not so dry-looking like the NYX Smudger. (Don't let appearances fool you though!) Something I noticed, which I also noticed with NYX's formula, is if you go over this, it can become sheer. Oh well; working in layers isn't terribly hard! I'm kind of used to it.

Pigmentation is epic, but it doesn't really set. Not that gel liner is known to set on its own. Eyeshadow on top is always a must, because it intensifies and helps the lasting power. It also prevents any ugly creasing on the eye! Even though I won't be using this on my eyes so much as my brows. This wore amazingly well with eyeshadow on top, even with me occasionally touching my face during the day. I really like it!

For $2.98, this isn't bad. I would happily recommend this particular shade and the black is apparently good too. I have more than enough black eyeliner however. If you want colorful gels but don't want to spend a fortune, try these out. I can now not only do colorful brows but also more "normal" brows! Sweet!

I'm kind of excited to get more, whenever I can.

PS: I've had a really bad week of photos recently, so I'm sorry. My dress came Monday afternoon though, woo!

SPOOKEHDOOM