Making The Mistake Of Falling For Cute Packaging

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Eyeliner is one of the 3 make up products that are in my absolute necessity pile. I can't go without it. I usually stick to the same eyeliner as I go through so much of it but I've recently been trying to expand and try other ones out to see if I can find a well performing one for a good price (I don't like to go expensive since it's such a disposable item for me). Gel liners are something I've never used but I'm usually recommended by people because of their staying power so, of course, I decided to pick up the cutest one I could find and give it a try! But is picking up the product with the cutest packaging always the best idea?

Korean beauty products have been a staple in my beauty collection for over 7 years now and there are just so many products to try with new releases coming from most brands each month. Packaging is such a key point when it comes to it because who doesn't like their beauty table looking cute?? But sometimes, the only benefit of the product is how it looks.
Unfortunately for me, one of those products is the Tony Moly Inked Cushion Gel Liner in Black. As soon as I saw the gorgeous ink pot with quill styled brush I was like I NEED IT I NEEEED IT. Quickly got my photos taken for the blog so I could get it tried out as soon as I could and quite frankly I was left a little disappointed in how this product performed. 
Packaging
The eyeliner comes in a super cute ink pot and a brush that's handle is stylised into a quill. The brush pops out of the top to reveal a small eyeliner brush, the brush itself is of decent quality and is narrow enough for accurate application. The bristle holder is rose gold (which will cater to the majority of bloggers, I don't care how basic it is I do like a little bit of rose gold!). To actually get to the cushion you have to screw the top half of the bottle off which will reveal a little black cushion underneath. 

The whole product from each aspect of the eyeliner to the box it actually comes in is very sleek and is built with good quality durable materials.

Application
The texture of this gel liner is actually quite creamy and soft. Which sounds ideal but it's not. It only applies in faint lines onto the skin so you need to go over the area a couple of times to get a full black line. However, the gel dries so quickly that when you go to apply more to build it up, the gel almost entirely flakes off. So it can be incredibly difficult to apply. You can also forget about applying this with eyeshadows on (especially shimmers), it just doesn't adhere to the skin following application of eyeshadow and it just looks a real mess. 
This was the best application I could get with it and even then it seemed to take a while for me to actually achieve it. Only a small section of it seems to be a decent shade of black while the rest is very pale, this is due to the flakiness of it when trying to get that solid black. 
It's just not an easy product to apply and I've tried on numerous different occasions to try and make it work and I haven't had much success.

Longevity 
There is an extent of longevity to this eyeliner, not much but it still lasts maybe a couple of hours before it decides to either flake off completely or smudge from a little bit of sweat. 

Overall
Super SUPER disappointed in this product which I hate to say as I love Tony Moly and their products and I was so looking forward to this possibly being added as a staple as I had heard great things about their standard gel liners so I hope this would follow up. I wish I liked it and that it worked better but it just sadly doesn't. 

Repurchase?
Nope. I am keeping it to sit on my beauty table because well....I MEAN LOOK AT IT. I was contemplating buying some of the other shades if I was successful with this but that won't be the case now. However, I will go back and try their regular non-cushion liners. I will probably keep using the brush for other liners and applying dark eyeshadows for tightlining but that's about it really.

This has definitely been a lesson in looking a product online and not just going I'M BUYING IT just because it looks nice on the outside. It has happened a couple of times with me when it comes to K-beauty that I thought packaging first and then learnt when the product arrived that it just didn't live up to expectations. 

Have you ever bought a product just for how cute the packaging was and been sorely let down? Or have you had more success with this product than I did? Let me know in the comments down below!
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