Cover Girl SmokyShadowBlast

Cover Girl's SmokyShadowBlast is one of those items that suffers from poor packaging, at least for me. Maybe someone else, with nimbler fingers, would have better results when it comes to using the overly thick, awkward plastic tube that houses the two eye shadows that make up this product.

On one end, we have “step 1”, which, according to the instructions on the back on the packaging, is the lighter shade that should be applied first and to basically the whole eyelid. Seems simple enough except, in order to fully saturate the eyelid with colour, you have to press down with almost an uncomfortable amount of pressure.

Initially, I used a much lighter hand but then only a faint amount of the pretty, sparkly white shadow ended up on my eyelid. In some situations, that might be all you need but if you want to “achieve colourful smoky eyes” like the package offers you, you’re going to need to use a bit of force.

The other end of the tube contains step 2, which is your darker colour and is shaped on an angle, in order to let you line your eyes. However, this angle could have been sharper; between it and the overall awkwardness of the tube, I found drawing a thin line quite tricky. And I imagine that creating that line will only get trickier as usage erodes step 2’s angle.

According to the packaging, you use step two to line your eye as well as its crease. Maybe it’s because of the colour combo I was using (onyx smoke), which is essentially a paring of white and black, but following these instructions left me with eyes that were more “dark” than smoky. Thankfully, it’s easy to remove this product so I could easily start again and this time, just faintly apply the black liner to the outer part of the crease.

This product’s big line is that it give you, “…an easy way to achieve smoky eye perfection.” Personally, I didn’t find this but I will agree with the “expertly matched shades” line since the colours did work quite nicely together.

Unfortunately, after just a couple hours wear, the impact of those lovely colours is diminished as the shadow migrates to the eyelid crease and rubs off on your fingers.

This product is cheap (under $10) but it’s also not very good. Since I have it now, and I do like the colours, I will use it but once it’s gone, I won’t be buying another SmokyShadowBlast.

Would I Buy This Again: No.
Should You Buy It: No.