COVERGIRL lives up to easy, breezy, beautiful with Intense ShadowBlast and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner.
About Face has helped you get clean with LUSH shower gels, shine up your lips with Rose Salve from C.O. Bigelow and pamper yourself with some antioxidant-heavy cosmetics from Bite Beauty; now, in our last August post, we veer down a more drugstore route with two new products from COVERGIRL: Intense ShadowBlast ($7.99) and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner ($7.99).
COVERGIRL has really been stepping up its game lately — who could miss the omnipresent, in-every-magazine ads with spokeswomen Drew Barrymore and Taylor Swift? — and Intense ShadowBlast and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner are two fairly new products, launched earlier this summer. Each comes in six shades: Intense ShadowBlast in Platinum Pop, Forever Pink, Brown Bling, Extreme Green, Beige Blaze and Blue Bomb (all but Platinum Pop are reviewed in this post), and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner in Silver Spark, Green Glow, Blackfire, Brown Blaze, Violet Voltage, and Blue Boom (all but Brown Blaze and Green Glow are reviewed here).
Here are the details, and my thoughts, on Intense ShadowBlast: The shadow, which comes in a tube with a flexible, doe-foot-like applicator, can be used a liquid shadow on its own or a primer for powder shadow. As you can see in the swatch photo, the shadows are incredibly shimmery and have a mousse-like texture — you can build up the shades to be opaque, but I think they look nicer as a softer wash of color. Since they’re so ethereal, I think they can really provide a glowing and otherworldly eye look. These dry fast upon application (I didn’t have any creasing upon initially putting them on) but they definitely don’t last all day; I saw fading at around the four-hour mark. At six hours, the creasing is incredibly prominent, but they’re pretty while they last. Applied softly, I think they could be fitting as a special look for the office, and they’re also a nice pick-me-up on the weekend — not too fussy and wearable for an acceptable chunk of time.
Similarly making a permanent home in my cosmetics stash is Liquiline Blast Eyeliner, which promises “liquid-like intensity” and a “high-pigment formula.” Each liner has at one end a “patent-pending” smudger with an angled tip that is meant to help you create a smoky-eye look. Did I find the smudger completely useless? Yeah, basically. One of the best aspects of Liquiline Blast Eyeliner is the product’s opacity and rapid drying time, and the smudger just doesn’t work that well because the eyeliner sets so fast. I tried using it with every color I tested, and the uneven smudging looked like I was trying to squeeze into a pair of skinny jeans (curse them!) while putting my makeup on at the same time. Aside from the somewhat-irrelevant smudger, the product is pretty great: For the most part, the shades are creamy (only Violet Voltage was a bit dry), opaque with one or two swipes and last all day. I put these on at 9:30 a.m. and they stayed on through my shower at 5:30 p.m. — an eight-hour wear time is a wonderful thing.
My only real issue with both these products is that they don’t actually have their shade names marked on them anywhere. The packaging each comes in has the color printed on the upper right corner, but who keeps those cardboard and plastic slips? I know it’s not too hard to recognize that a purple eyeliner stick would be Violet Voltage and a pink eyeshadow tube would be Forever Pink, but it’s a little annoying that the products are nameless.
VERDICT: B for Intense ShadowBlast, B+ for Liquiline Blast Eyeliner. I wish Intense ShadowBlast had better staying power, but it’s a pretty, straightforward product; somewhat better is Liquiline Blast Eyeliner, which for the price is exceptional. A wider color range and a more effective smudger would be appreciated, though.
PRICE: Intense ShadowBlast, $7.99 for 0.27 fl oz; Liquiline Blast Eyeliner, $7.99 for 0.033 ounces. The prices may seem a bit high for a drugstore cosmetics brand, but both these deliver and stores like CVS, Ulta and www.drugstore.com often have buy-one-get-one sales on the brand.
AVAILABILITY: You can shop on COVERGIRL’s website and see what stores can fill your order; also available at CVS, Target, Ulta, Walmart and other chain stores, or www.drugstore.com.
Photo caption (top) photo of Liquiline Blast Eyeliner products: From top: Liquiline Blast Eyeliner in Blackfire, Violet Voltage, Silver Spark and Blue Boom.
Photo caption (middle) photo of Intense ShadowBlast products: From left: Intense ShadowBlast in Beige Blaze, Forever Pink, Brown Bling, Extreme Green and Blue Bomb.
Photo caption (bottom) photo of swatches of Intense ShadowBlast products and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner products: From left, swatches of Intense ShadowBlast in Blue Bomb, Extreme Green, Brown Bling, Forever Pink and Beige Blaze, and Liquiline Blast Eyeliner in Blue Boom, Silver Spark, Violet Voltage and Blackfire.
In middle school, Roxana Hadadi was a cosmetics-scorning tomboy; in high school, a glitter eye shadow- and black nail polish-loving trend kid; in college, obsessively committed to dying her hair unruly colors that upset her mom. Now a bit older and a bit more mature, she’s trying to figure out what hair, body and cosmetics products will work for her, you and your family in About Face, Chesapeake Family’s new beauty blog – and she’ll leave the sparkle makeup and neon highlights in the past. Roxana also writes movie reviews for Chesapeake Family’s Popcorn Parents blog.
Photo by Adam Fried
Product and swatch photos by Adam Fried.
