Illamasqua Week - Medium Pencil Review

Today's review is on Illamasqua's Medium pencils, so named because they also have a larger 'fat' pencil and a very thin 'fine' pencil. These are about the same size as your average lip or eyeliner pencil, come in over 30 colours and retail for £12.50. I only have 2 colours so far but love them so much i am desperate for more.

You get 1.5g of pencil and they are rather simple looking, ordinary wooden pencils with a clear lid and shiny black handles and, like all other Illamasqua products, come in a shiny black cardboard box with cream writing. The packaging is practical but could be a little more interesting. Still it looks fine so i am not put off at all. The colours range is amazing with several shades of pinks, greens, blues, greys, yellows etc as well as basic reds, black, white and brown. These pencils can be used anywhere, they are equally good for lining your lips or eyes or even just drawing freehand on your face or body. To me it's wonderful to find a product that actually is designed to be used on both eyes and lips. Usually you can use an eyeliner as a lipliner or vice-versa but i do find problems (eyeliners usually are harder and 'pull' more on my lips and lipliners are often unsuitable for use around the eyes because of non eye-safe ingredients) but these are specially made to be safe, and work well anywhere you choose to use them.

The two colours i own are Deonair, a bright, cyan blue and Whiplash, a yellow lime green:

The colour payoff of these pencils is amazing. They're incredibly pigmented and rich, but also so so creamy and soft. This makes them a dream to apply, especially on the lips. But once they are on and have dried a little they are, while not entirely smudge-proof, pretty good at resisting smearing and pretty much entirely transfer resistant. As a lip or eyeliner i find there is little to say about these that differs from most high quality eyeliners. They last very very well and resist smearing, the colour is true-to-life in one stroke and they are easy to use. For me the true test of a liner is on my waterline. I've used many different liners in the past from drugstore to high end (Barry M, Mac, Urban Decay, Estee Lauder etc) and never found one that lasted well on my waterline.  I don't know if i have watery eyes or something, but colours usually fade or smudge off my waterline after less than half an hour. Urban Decay 24/7 pencil lasts for maybe 2 hours on me (one of the best), but these pencils have become my Holy Grail eyeliner because my god do they ever last on my waterline!

 

Above is Whiplash freshly applied. Oddly this looks like i've barely applied it, but it was much brighter in real life. I think you can see it better in my FOTD pictures in my last post.

This is after about 4 hours. It actually looks brighter than in the first photo, but in reality it was basically exactly the same. It has hardly faded and wasn't patchy.

 

And this is at the end of the day, after about 10 - 12 hours. As you can see it has faded a bit now, but is still hanging in there!

I am incredibly impressed. By the end of the day the colour had faded only a tiny bit, it was still noticeably lime-green and the colour had not smudge or travelled to my lower lashline at all!

Here is a blurry photo of my eyes doing a very unflattering about-to-blink look, but it shows the colour off really well:

 

Can you believe that's after at least 10 hours of wear?

 

So, i can honestly say that these are the best eyeliners i have ever used for the water line. Debonair Works just as well, i was going to take photos of it too but ended up having a huge cry-fest that even these beauties couldn't stand up to. Though to give it it's dues there was still a very pale blue colour on my waterline after a solid half hour of hysterics :P And they work equally well, if not better than, other lip and eyeliners when used on the lids/lips.

I highly recommend you try these. £12.50 might seem a bit expensive but i honestly think they are well worth the price. I need want so many more colours of these. If you are into black liner then i highly recommend their SOPHIE pencil as every pencil sold in this colour donates £3 to the S.O.P.H.I.E. charity. That's the next one on my list :)