Tarte

 smolderEYES Shadow Liner

Most Helpful Positive Review

Beautiful shade of bronze on my NW45 chocolate skin :)

I love Bronze eye shadow! Every woman should have a few metallic eye shadows in their shade of nude. It's a great way to wake up your face when you're wearing little to no makeup, perhaps a bit of mascara and a lip gloss, a dab or two of concealer or color corrector where you need it most. I do this... a lot. I'm very minimal these days. And a soft metallic eye shadow in my perfect shade of chocolate nude aka "bronze" is my secret to bright radiant eyes. I've been obsessed with "nude" metallic/frost eye shadows since I was a teenager. As a chocolate shade African American woman, think MAC foundation NW45, I was not always able to find shades that really matched my skin tone well. They usually tend to be "copper" which is more orangey undertone. Can still be lovely. But I was looking for my true nude shade. There are many more options now, and I have a few flattering shades. From soft to bright to warm to even smokey. I tend to collect them. If someone has a Bronze shade out there, I check it out. MAC used to have the perfect Bronze shade for me, and pretty sure I kept that pot for decades. It made my eyes glow from day to night. After it was discontinued, then brought back as a slightly different not-quite-perfect-for-me shade, my search began in earnest. So when this pencil crossed my path I had to give it a try. I really love it! It's on the slightly darker end of the nude spectrum for me, but it is a true "metallic brown", not coppery, not orangey, and not too sparkly. It looks very natural. I like to wear it as a liner/eye shadow at the base of my lash and go up a bit from there. It's got a bit of smokeyness to it too, so it also gives a hint of drama and definition to my naturally heavier lidded eyes. I could even wear it higher for a bit of dimension. But these days I keep my eye shadow very simple. On a darker skinned woman, this would be a brighter nude. On a tan skinned woman, a bit of metallic smokey eye. On a fair woman, this would be a metallic chocolate eye liner that would be less harsh than straight brown or black. In fact, Bronze pencil is the new secret eye liner shade for mature women with heavy lids. Smudge a little into the upper lash line from underneath, and you get subtle liner definition without overwhelming heavier eyelids. I even used it on myself that way and it works! This liner has great payoff. It deposits full color right onto my eyelid exactly where I place it, and does not budge on me at all. Not sure why they bothered with the smudge tip, it's useless imho, and a little too firm to be tugging at the delicate skin of the eye area imho. No matter. You can swim in this. You can sweat in this. And it won't move. It comes off with my micellar makeup remover completely very nicely. My only real negative is that it's not a twist pencil, so you will eventually need a pencil sharpener. I'm not looking forward to that bc the tip is softish and will likely break off a couple times. I almost always only use twist pencil/shadows for this reason because they're easy peasy. I don't want to wrestle with a pencil sharpener and the mess. And it doesn't come with a sharpener either. Oh well, I will enjoy this for as long as I can and when the tip runs low I'll decide how to proceed. Worth it, and keeping. It's very lovely! Make this a twist pencil please!