Mascara = Makeup Magic
When you think about eye makeup, what do you think about first? For us, it’s mascara. Since the early 19th century, almost everyone who uses makeup has had mascara in their beauty bag. Mascara is guaranteed to take your makeup to the next level. Its primary use is to emphasise, elongate, and enhance your natural eyelashes. If you browse through the beauty aisle, you will see many mascaras marketed as being capable of improving your lashes – but how many of these actually do the job? With so many variations, brands, and styles available, choosing which mascara is best is not an easy task. If you look at the packaging and branding of each, you’ll soon find they all say the same thing. They claim they will darken, thicken, curl, and even lengthen your eyelashes.
This blog post discusses our top mascaras and which ones actually achieve what they say on the tube.
Estee Lauder Extreme Black Mascara
The first on our list is Estee Lauder’s Extreme Black Mascara. It has a rich formula which helps lift and curl your lashes. If you are after volume, this is the mascara for you. Its thickness creates the illusion of a false-lash effect. This makes your eyes look bolder, brighter, and more seductive.
Estee Lauder uses a conditioning vitamin complex as part of this mascara’s ingredients which help keep your lashes soft and healthy. This also keeps the product lasting longer.
The brush has two types of bristles on it. The first type of bristles are flexible fibres, which hold a lot of the formula. The second type is solid fibres which separate and comb your lashes for isolated definition.
Second on our list is Eyeko’s Black Magic Mascara. When we first used this product, we were surprised by its packaging. Unlike most mascaras – which come in a hard tube – Eyeko uses a squeezable tube for all of their mascaras. Like us, you might be wondering why they would do such a thing? Well, the squeezable tube is a game changer. It allows you to control how much formula to put on the mascara brush. Instead of the repeated in-and-out movement we all find ourselves doing with our mascara wands, Eyeko mascara tubes can be squeezed so ample product is released onto the brush.
The formula (which features keratin and shea butter) leaves your lashes conditioned and soft, whilst offering a considerable curl effect. We found this product lasts really long and doesn’t flake off easily.
Maybelline Colossal Curl Mascara
The third on our list is Maybelline’s Colossal Curl Mascara. You have likely heard of this one before as it’s practically a cult classic. It’s marketed as a two-in-one mascara and lash curler. The formula uses an adhesive polymer which helps form and fix lashes into place. For most of us, the desired look is to have our lashes fixed in an upward curl position. Maybelline’s mascara attempts to achieve this with their memory curl formula – and we think they do a good job at it! We noticed a considerable difference in hold when using this mascara compared with others.
If you have quite flat lashes, this is the product for you. It gives your eyelashes that boost they need to stay upright and lightly curled without sacrificing their suppleness. We have to admit, we were a little apprehensive at first, using a product on our lashes which had an adhesive in its formula. However, this mascara is gentle and easy to remove.
Maybelline New York Lash Sensational Sky High Mascara
The fourth on our list is Maybelline’s Lash Sensational Sky High Mascara. This mascara actually went viral last year, boasting incredible results shown on Tiktok and Instagram.
Its formula is said to promote lash lengthening. We found that it was more of a buildable formula than anything. If you applied enough layers, you’d get excellent results. Now, we have to be completely honest here. This technique can be totally hit or miss. Whilst sometimes having 2-3 layers of mascara can lead to bold and luscious lashes, other times it looks like a clumpy and flakey mess. So you’ve been warned!
That being said, we didn’t find this product clumpy. It managed to maintain and build upon each application without ruining the overall desired effect. We recommend trying this product one layer at a time to be sure though!
Picking the Right Mascara
We hope you get the opportunity to try one or two of our recommended mascaras. Finding the perfect mascara can be a challenge, but once you do, it quickly becomes a makeup bag staple.
We learned through much trying and testing that some of the best mascaras are the ones that aren’t waterproof. This can actually be quite hard to find on the market these days – guess we must all be wanting to protect our mascara on those days where we can’t help but cry! But the truth is, we mostly don’t need waterproof mascara day-to-day. All this does is make the formula stronger and harder to get off. We found that when we made the switch to non-waterproof mascara, we spared so many of our lovely lashes from falling out when removing the product using a makeup wipe. Even when we were being extra gentle, those pesky lashes clung to the waterproof formula so well that losing a few was only to be expected. However, if you’re losing a few on the daily, you’ll sooner realise your lashes aren’t looking as full as they used to – and absolutely no one wants that!
