Tarte Skinny SmolderEyes Amazonian Clay Waterproof Liner

J. and I were huge fans of Three Flash Performance Eyeliner Pencil. It boggled our minds that Three would discontinued these, only to replace them with the Meh-smerizing Performance Eyeliner Pencil so bland not even the LE colors could tempt either of us!

In the end, I moved to secure my favorite Flash backups while J. moved on to these Tarte Skinny SmolderEyes Amazonian Clay Waterproof Liner. She really liked them and recommended them to me, so I picked up four colors when they went on sale last summer: Deep Amethyst, Emerald, Jade, and Slate.

All pictures taken in natural light without flash.

There are many eye pencils out there with a smudge-tip end, so I wondered why J. picked these Tarte ones. Sure, the formula is lovely, pigmented, buttery smooth, and easily blended. But while the four colors are pretty, they're nowhere near the complexity of the Three Flash pencils with all the multi-dimensional sparkles. They all have very fine shimmers that give more of a satiny finish, but nothing visible or obvious.

It took me one wear to understand why J. moved on from Flash with these. They're pretty amazing! I have very oily lids that will crease, smudge, and melt the vast majority of cream eye shadows and eyeliners. Even the rare few eyeliners that I could wear without them bleeding into my eyes, staining, and ruining my contact lenses, I needed primers for extra security.

But not with these Tarte ones. It was a bit of a crazy gamble, but I went on a date with hubby wearing L'Oreal Paris Infallible #039 Magnetic Coral on naked and primer-free lids, and lined with Jade below just along the upper lash line. By the end of the night, both the shadows and the liner held up spectacularly well with zero creasing, smudging, or bleeding. I already knew the Infallibles were awesome, the very reason I collected a gazillion of them in different colors. But I was also duly impressed with the Tarte liner, folks. So glad to have bought the colors I did and will probably return for more. 

- Deep Amethyst: a purple that's bluer in my swatch picture, thanks to the blue-wash I get when as soon as sunlight shines away from my window. This color is more violet in natural light.

- Emerald: pretty green, again appearing more blue in my swatch photo than in natural light. Probably the most "shimmery" color out of the four but still not exactly visible.

- Jade: a mossy olive green.

- Slate: pewter gray.

Deep Amethyst, Emerald, Jade, and Slate.