Tarte

I’m picky when it comes to liquid liners… Pickier than a crabby reality TV show judge on a singing competition!

Seriously, if there’s even just one thing wrong with them — ONE THING! — I’m like Liam Neeson in the Taken movies when he threatens the kidnappers. “I WILL FIND YOU!!”

That said, Tarte’s Precision Longwear Liner ($24) passes the Liam Neeson Test with flying colors.

This dark chocolate neutral matte brown, which looks like a rich blackish brown in pics, is an absolutely legit alternative to errrrday black liquid liners. Great for when you want a cat-flicked liquid liner look with less contrast than black.

The long and firm, but flexible, felt tip draws precise flicks and lines with smooth edges, and you don’t have to freaking arm wrestle the damn thing to use it (it seems that way sometimes with liquid liner, doesn’t it?).

And — HUGE pro — the liner applies smoothly and filled with pigment. None of that uneven patchy nonsense that plagues lesser liquid liners.

It also layers well, doesn’t flake off my skin and lasts about seven hours. As far as where it sits in the liquid liner pantheon of all-time greats, I think it’s easily comparable to LORAC Front of the Line Pro, Rouge Bunny Rouge Nocturnal Ink and Tom Ford’s Eye Defining Pen.

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Tarte’s new cruelty-free Colored Clay Tinted Brow Gel ($21) comes in three shades, and the one we’re looking at today, Taupe, is actually nowhere near my natural brow color. It’s the lightest of the three shades, and the one best suited for blondes.

Buuut, I thought I might be able to use it for the inner part of my brows to do that whole ombre brow thing, or when I just feel like wearing my Lil’ Kim/Nicki Minaj wig to scare the UPS guy.

Good times, my friend… Good times. 🙂

Just to see how it would look, I also pulled the color all the way through my brown to the outer tail, and HOLY WOW MAMA! — this stuff is unbelievably pigmented.

Despite it being way too light for me to use as my primary brow gel, Taupe still completely covers Raul, also known as “the bald spot in my left brow.”

Taupe also keeps my stray hairs from flapping in the wind and has so much pigment that it even lightens the overall color of my dark brunette brows by several shades (only while I wear it, of course).

Kind of shocking, considering that the tiny brush, which doesn’t look like much, has bristles so small that they look like they wouldn’t be able to hold much product at all.

“No frickin’ way,” I thought the first time I saw it, but it works, both the brush and the gel. Together, they fill in all the sparse spots, lay down plenty of color (on the hairs and the skin), and corral those wayward hairs into place.

It’s a firm, yet manageable hold, and I can still run a brush through my brows when the gel dries down if I want to, so the hold isn’t as firm or stiff as, say, Anastasia’s Clear Brow Gel, which could hold those hairs down through a category 5 storm, I kid you not.

But it is firm enough to hold the hairs in place when I dance in front of my Beyonce fan. #truestory #dontjudge 🙂

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