Scandalous Fluttery Eyes: Rimmel London's Scandal'Eyes

In my Tom Ford Sahara Haze post last week, I used the Rimmel Scandal Eyes mascara to complete the look. Today lets take a closer look at the mascara.

Rimmel London Scandal’Eyes Mascara

This mascara gets your attention immediately. The bright over-sized orange tube means you cannot misplace it anywhere in your makeup stash. It also means that it takes up precious space if you are packing it into your makeup bag for on-the-go uses. But that’s the only negative about this product because it was all love when I put it to use!

The rounded brush is massive with dense bristles that help to grab my sparse lashes, coating it with a good lashing of the mascara formula. Due to it’s size I didn’t even try using it for lower lashes because I cannot do precise coating on my almost non-existent ones with such as big brush.

Formula wise, it contains collagen and keratin to build up the lash volume and help strengthen them up. When applying there were no clumps experienced, nor were there any flaking fall outs, and it did great job of giving defined separated lashes that give the fluttery full lash look that doesn’t droop at the end of the day.

Tip: start at the base of lashes and use a wiggling (zigzagging) motion to coat your lashes from base to tip to create volume and length.

After 5 hours of wear, there was slight smudging on my eyes (due to the fact I blink heaps and have rather watery eyes so others may not experience this).

Overall I’m very pleased with this new Mascara from Rimmel and am glad it launched this month because I've finished up with my much-loved Mirenesse Vibralash as an every day mascara.

12mL RRP A$16.95 at Priceline, David Jones, Kmart, Target, Big-W and selected pharmacies.

This featured product was provided for consideration.

Review: Mirenesse Vibralash Mascara

I haven’t done a mascara review for a while. That’s because I haven’t been using any other mascara for the past 2 months other than one product. Which one is it that has me utterly in love with it and unwilling to stray to any other product – it’s the Mirenesse Vibralash

Mirenesse Vibralash 
Now my last foray into vibrating mascaras didn’t turn out all that well so I was a little hesitant when I first tried this product. But I had nothing to fear with this beautiful formula  This mascara is fom Mirenesse's Boutique M collection which is it’s latest runway inspired range of eye and face makeup. 

Mirenesse Vibralash with vibration protective cap on; wand brush close up

• It comes with a push button at the end of the wand (make sure you remove that protective cap at the top end of the wand) that activates the vibrations and comes in 3 speeds that you can toggle through. #1 gives the gentles vibration movements and #3 is the strongest vibrating my hold hand and I actually found it quite uncomfortable to control the wand when it was buzzing around so much. My preferred speed is middle of the road #2
• I find the best way to use the wand is to start at the base of lashes, and then very slowly move the wand up and outwards, letting the vibrations do all the wiggling work for you to coat and define the lashes.
• The formula is quite thick and rich and really benefits from use with the vibrating wand as when I tried without it, I ended up with thick deposits on each lash, making my lashes look rather clumpy. On setting 1 or 2 my lashes were perfectly separated, volumised, lengthened and very fluttery. Yes they do give the false lashes look
• Claims to give 24 hours lasting power and I’ll pay that because once dried, it just doesn’t budge. There is no smudging, no fall out no droopy lashes after half a day - no a single bit of change and still looks fresh 15 hours later (I didnt' test for 24 hours as I took it off before bed that night). I can’t say too many other mascara give me this results. 
• What I love most is that for such a great formula, removal was very easy with any gentle eye makeup remover. The formula just comes off easily without having to tug and rub and with a final warm water rinse, any residues remaining were washed off easily. 

Check out the definition, lift and curl of the lashes after using Vibralash on my short sparse lashes!

After 2 months of almost daily use, my tube is still going strong and it hasn’t dried up or changed consistency, which is very important as I find many mascara start off well but in a month or so time, they just dry up and become unusable. The vibralash has renewed my faith in vibration mascaras and has become one of my top rated mascaras of 2011. I'm definitely looking for refills when I’m finish with the current tube.

RRP A$49.95 online at Mirenesse.com and 20% off if you are their VIP member (subscription fees applies).

This product was received during last year's ABBW event.

Clinique High Lengths Mascara

Unfortunately I'm not blessed by the lash fairies and have short stubby Asian lashes. For this reason one of my favourite makeup products are mascaras as they give me fluttery lashes and help to open up my eyes. In fact, it'd be the one makeup item I won't leave the house without (along with lip gloss and sunscreen)!

Always wanting to test out the latest on the market,  I tried a mascara with an interesting brush this month and have been surprised by how well it worked despite my initial scepticism.

Clinique High Lengths Mascara

check out the teeth-like brush head!

• Has the weirdest flexi plastic brush design I've seen lately - the brush look like curved bow with stubby green spikey teeth but don't let this alien looking brush fool you, it works amazingly well at coating each individual lash to give defined separated looks. 
• Not so much of a curling or volumising formula, it is slightly thick with works well with the flexible brush to really lifts lashes at the root and lengthens my short lash by more than 60% with 2 coats that is still very natural looking. Any more coats to achieve volume gave slightly stick-like lashes which had to be combed out so I would advise against going having more than 2 coats with this mascara.   
• I didn't experience any clumping or flaking but did have slight smudging at the end of the day (I'm a serial blinker with teary eyes which could have contributed to this). 

look at the lift & length I got with this mascara! <3 <3

If volume is not your priority and you want defined, separated and flutteringly lifted lashes, this latest Clinique mascara will meet and exceed all those requirements. I'm as pleased as punch with the results I get with it and would definitely re-purchase.

RRP A$38 at Clinique counters or Clinique Online.
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Review: Lancôme Hynose Drama Mascara

As the seasons change, I tend to also change mascaras. Not for anything else other than the fact that you are meant to change mascara every 3 months to prevent bacteria growth (leading to eye infections) and the product usually dries out and give clumpy lashes in that time frame.

Recently I've been using a new Lancôme mascara and I am very happy with its results compared to the last Lancôme one I've tried.

Lancôme Hypnose Drama in Expressive black

• Has a slight S shaped curved thick bristled brush to provide extra lifting power to lashes. Usually I think it's gimmicky but the shape of this brush really agrees with my lashes and gives great lift.
• The bristles grab lashes well and gives a even coating of the formula for excellent volumising and defining results -ravishingly thick and lengthened lashes.
• Non-clumpy, flaking or smudging, these are probably the next things I look for in mascara to avoid the 'racoon eye' look. This mascara didn't give me any problems during the entire day. 
• Love the signature rose scented formula - although my lashes don't appreciate it, my nostrils do and it adds to the pleasant experience of the mascara application. 

bare lashes

Lancôme Hypnose Drama - 2 coats, no eyelash curler used

This is a beautiful mascara that delivers what I need most - volume and length and best of all it doesn't give me panda eyes. If the budget permits, I'd be using this every day for the rest of my life

RRP A$52/US$25 at Lancôme counters and selected pharmacies.

Review: Rimmel 1-2-3 Looks Mascara

Having finished up my favourite mascara last week and not quite taken by the Lancome Oscillation one, I opted to test the next mascara that I had at my disposal.

Rimmel 1 2 3 Looks Mascara

Supposed breakthrough adjustable volume mascara – a dial to turn for 3 settings to achieve 3 different glam looks in 1 mascara!

How it performed 

• With the dial base, I found the mascara harder to open up in the mornings (I know I'm still sleepy, but the dial mechanism sure isn't helping).
• The dial setting is supposed to give adjustable looks with 1 being the most natural looking and 3 being the most full and dramatic look that you can achieve. Obviously I amp it up to the max with setting 3 but found that there was too much formula on the brush with that setting. Instead I do the first coat in setting 1 and once my lashes have built up some thickness, adjust it to 2 and give it a second coat to avoid over clumping. I sometimes still have to use a brush comb to de-clump and remove excess mascara from my lashes - not so good when I'm in a rush. I think I'll stick with setting 1 from now on and just do an extra 3rd coating.
• Comes with a full bristled but short-sized brush so you can get into corners of eyes and lower lashes with ease. While I'm used to a larger and longer brush with my Max Factor False Lash Effect (my current benchmark when comparing all mascaras out there), it does do an effective job and is quite comparable in terms of results. However because of the smaller brush, it takes me longer to get the same effect.
• Not prone to smudging but there was slight flaking during the day.
• Provided a great lift to my straight lashes and wasn't clumpy on setting 1. It does give lashes closest to my favourite mascara in terms of volume and length (after a comb through) but my search will continue for something easier to use.

Overall thoughts
Not a bad mascara, but the dial settings failed to do much for me. Sometimes, simple and easy to use features give the most effective products.

Rating: 7/10 The formula isn't bad whilst the 1 2 3 dial is gimmicky and the brush too small for my personal liking but that's just fussy old me for you. RRP A$18.95 at Priceline, David Jones and all good pharmacies.

Hopefully sometime in the next week, I'll do a post and list the mascaras I'd tried over the years that were underwhelming on my lashes so be sure to watch out for that. Which mascara have you tried that didn't perform as it claimed?


This product was sent to me for review.

Review: Lancôme Ôscillation Mascara

I've run out of my beloved Max Factor False Lash Effects Mascara this week. That has been my staple for the last 2 years and I have not strayed from it because it delivers me what I want in terms of volume and length . It curls and thickens my thin and relatively short lashes like no body's business and yep, honestly gives me the natural looking false lash effect (oxymoron I know, but I swear it's true!).

Normally I would buy a refill, but with the mascara market evolving with better formulas and products over the past few years, I thought it would be time to give something new a try.

Lancôme Ôscillation Infinite Vibrating Mascara

• claims to infinitely extend, reshape and mulitply lashes. 
• Comes with a battery powered vibrating mascara wand so it will do all the wiggling around to coat every inch of your lashes. 

Ingredients listing and mascara wand

How it performed:

• I found the vibrating wand hard to get use to initially, but the trick is to hold it at the base of the lash horizontally and quickly move vertically up to the tips of lashes, letting the vibrating do all the hard work for you. 
• The formula is quite thick so it can easily create clumpy spidery lashes if you are not careful. Because of this, I could not really build up any substantial length with the wand which is a shame. 
• Once dried, is smudge-proof which was great as I was rained on the other day and there was no panda-eyes afterwards for me and this isn't even the waterproof formula. The mascara doesn't flake and comes off easily when you are ready to remove it. 
• The downside - the formula is quite slow-drying so if you look down blink too much while your lashes are still drying, there's bound to be a chance of a smudge that will need cleaning up. 
• The small short silicone-bristled brush deposited way too much formula on my thin sparse lashes, creating spidery like lashes that required combing out to give them a nicer look, especially if you are not quick moving with the vibrating movements. This would be great for those who have longer lashes so there are more length for the formula to coat. 

Final Thoughts
This mascara is more for those with longer lashes looking for more fullness and definition and not really suited my my thin and short lashes. I'll be trying this out with a different wand as I do like the formula, I just don't think the wand is helping me much. I prefer Lacome's Hynose Drama mascara, which is more than a dream to use.

Since I've decided to experiment with different mascara, do you any recommendations that I can try to create that 'false lash effect'?

Rating: 6/10. Nice enough formula but the small vibrating wand deposited too much formula on my thin sparse lashes. RRP A$65/US$34 in leading departments stores and counters.

This product was sent to me for review.