Greetings from a rather particular…dungeon.., fellow rogues!
Generally speaking, one takes the paladin’s suggestions with a grain of salt, especially when it involves adventure postings. After all, they’re usually more preoccupied with charging off after lost causes than actually clearing dungeons or discovering treasure. Recently, owever, Hilarion came to the party with a singularly intriguing adventure posting – the quest for a priceless magical artefact filled with liquid obsidian! For some reason, he wouldn’t show us all the details of the posting, and he had been getting redder and redder in the face, but we put this down to his usual zealous fervour and set off on our latest adventure!
Hilarion, burning with righteous fervour (or so we thought!) as usual.
As soon as we arrived at the dungeon entrance, things started to become a bit clearer, and Khael the wizard started harrumphing and adjusting his pipe with unusual frequency. By the time we had, er, penetrated the depths of the dungeon, Susie the rockbard was snickering uncontrollably, because our innocent druid friend kept asking why all the orcs had been wearing such unusual leather armour and wielding whips instead of their usual jagged swords. When we finally reached the inner sanctum, Hilarion was marching very quickly ahead, striding over to the pedestal to find…Urban Decay’s Super Saturated Ultra Intense Waterproof Cream Eyeliner in Perversion! 😀
The attractively but unassumingly packaged goal of our rather unconventional dungeon raid…
Since Hilarion was standing motionless at the pedestal (with the air of one who has spent quite some time with their armour feeling a little tight, only to be disappointed), I deftly relieved him of his prize (burden?) and brought the ‘liquid obsidian’ down for further inspection. Khael was rather red in the face, inspecting some of the carvings on the wall, and Susie had had to take the druid back up for some fresh air, so I had the artefact all to myself.
The pedestal was covered with a suprisingly floral cloth, almost as surprising as the neat toxic green floral motif on the inside of the box (er, chest?)
Some artefacts aren’t so helpfully labelled. The name of this one, however, explained a lot about the dungeon in general…
Let’s start with the packaging, shall we? Once the rather nice purple and green box has been removed, you’re left with the usual glass pot with UD’s classic gunmetal, embossed lid. Inside you find a satiny disc of blackest black eyeliner – not liquid, as Hilarion claimed, but a creamy gel. I guess ‘creamy gel obsidian’ didn’t quite have the same ring when they were making up the adventure posting… 😉
When I opened the jar, I could have sworn I heard Hilarion mutter something rather hysterically about a ‘nipple’, but I’m pretty sure he just meant the way the eyeliner had been filled into the jar… I think he needs to get out more…
I decided we should all pop back to the tavern so that people could steady their nerves a bit (and because I had the feeling that Susie was going to snicker herself sick before long), and I headed on toward Rogue HQ to put this new artefact through its paces!
So here’s the thing – this rogue is a total n00b when it comes to gel eyeliner. I own one other one, the Maybelline version, and was glad that that one came with its own brush. The UD eyeliner brush is sold separately, and I don’t have it…and gel/cream eyeliner is something I really don’t think you can accurately do with your fingers, no matter how much practice you have!
Back at Rogue HQ, once everyone’s calmed down a bit…
The eyeliner is very smooth and creamy and easy to work with – it doesn’t clump up on the brush, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time smooshing it around to get the right amount. When you start with a lot on the brush, it goes on extremely black and opaque, if you have less (for more precision, perhaps), you’re going to need to go over it again in places if the brush runs al little dry. I wish I could compare to the Perversion pencil liner – I have it as one half of a travel pencil from a set, but sady mine is a dud – weird and dry and waxy, nothing like the Perversion pencil I hear so widely lauded! 😦 Fortunately, this cream liner is a worthy substitute for me!
Ooooo…macro…
One thing I particularly like is how easy it is to get right down into the roots of the lashes, and the front edge of the eyelid (where the lashes grow out) – you can do a great job at getting rid of that weird ‘pale lid rim’ thing that vampires like me suffer from particularly, even if we line our waterlines! The liner dries quite quickly, and once it is dry it is NOT GOING ANYWHERE. It’s stuck to your eyelid like Hilarion’s eyes are stuck to those magazines he thinks we don’t know he reads, and will require waterproof eye makeup remover to remove. I am a huge fan of waterproof makeup in general – it doesn’t get so hot or humid here, but it does rain, and I have slightly watery eyes (dungeons are full of dust, what can I say?) – so UD’s eyeliners are always a win for me.
The following photos are my first attempt at cream/gel eyeliner with no eyeshadow, no blending, no waterlining and no mascara/curled lashes to hide the results 😉
Does anyone else have a super sensitive inner-second-quarter to their eyelid? As soon as I touch it with anything, I blink and smear whatever it was up my lid 😛
As you can see, I attempted (hah!) one’normal daytime’ eyeliner, and one ‘fun cat flick’ eyeliner look. For daytime I’d usually go a bit thinner, but the brush is gonna take practice, fellow rogues. I think I’ll need to up my DEX, or maybe see if there’s a ‘gel eyeliner’ DEX based skill that I can specialise in. A couple of notes: You can see that the edges are a bit raggedy – aside from my natural incompetence with gel eyeliner, I left these so that you could see what the eyeliner does when the brush is ‘dry’ – it’s not as opaque and black, but still gives coverage.
All in all, I’m really happy with this liner – it goes on smooth (my n00bery notwithstanding), doesn’t budge and is respectably black with a nice satin matte finish. Say, Urban Decay – how about making the rest of your awesome liner colours in cream/gel format? I’ll be right there for Demolition, Junkie, Chaos and Woodstock at least! 😉 You might also consider marketing a little brush together with that liner (i.e. not sold separately/costing extra) – Maybelline managed a more than adequate brush this way, and it would be great for gel/cream liner beginners like me!
So, what do you think. fellow adventurers? Have you ventured into any Perversion-based dungeons recently? Would you give this eyeliner a go, or do you have another favourite black gel liner?
The practicalities: Urban Decay Super Saturated Ultra Intense Waterproof Cream Eyeliner costs USD 22.00 for 0.1 oz /3.0 g, is permanent, and may be acquired from www.urbandecaycosmetics.com. If you’re not in the US, they have a parcel forwarding service that they recommend, and if you’re in NZ, you can use YouShop from NZ Post to get a US shipping address. Importantly, there’s NO requirement to have a US billing address or credit card, which is usually where things go wrong for non-US consumers. Yay! 😀
Until next time, fellow adventurers, don’t forget to check for traps!
Syl
I am an adventuring rogue, not a mercenary for hire, and as such, all opinions expressed here are my own, based on a genuine fondness for/interest in this product. If you have any queries or suggestions, please do not hesitate to pin your parchment to the board (contact me) at thepaintedrogue [at] gmail [dot] com. All content on this website, including images, is the property of the owner/author (Sylirael The Painted Rogue, unless otherwise stated), and may not be reproduced without permission. If you do, I’ll let Hilarion pick your dungeons for you…
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