Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Eyeliner Trio kits review

Posted on Sunday, at bought • 1693 views

  • Manufacturer: Physician's Formula
  • Availability: beginning winter 2010 through drugstores, some beauty supply stores, and midrange "all-in-one" stores (Ulta, CVS, Rite-Aid, Fred Meyer, Target, Kohl's, et cetera)
  • Description: three eyeliner pencils with built-in sharpener
  • Cost/Amount: USD$11.95 for .03 ounces / .85 grams
  • Would you buy these kits again? yes
Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Eyeliner Trio kits

I haven’t had the best of luck with retractable eyeliners. I’ve tried Sephora (difficult to apply, uneven application) and Bare Escentuals (pricey, crumbles when sharpened) with less than satisfactory results. I’d just about decided to write off the whole “retractable eyeliner” thing as Something That Did Not Work For Me - because I love my fluidlines, gel liners, loose powder liners, and Sephora’s Flashy Waterproof Pencils. I have had excellent luck with these, though. They apply easily, they have good color payoff, they don’t tug or crumble or skip, and you get a decent amount of product for the money you’re paying. Each pencil contains just over .28 grams of product, you get three pencils in a set, and the sets are either $10.95 each or $11.95 each, depending on where you buy them.

Photos that show how the product actually performs...! See how I create my swatches

Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Eyeliner Trio kits

There are four kits, each "customized" for a different eyecolor:

Blue Eyes

  • blue-black eyeliner pencil
  • blue eyeliner pencil
  • bronze eyeliner pencil

Brown Eyes

  • copper-black eyeliner pencil
  • copper eyeliner pencil
  • violet eyeliner pencil

Green Eyes

  • green-black eyeliner pencil
  • green eyeliner pencil
  • purple eyeliner pencil

Hazel Eyes

  • violet-black eyeliner pencil
  • brown eyeliner pencil
  • magenta-violet eyeliner pencil

Even though I have blue eyes, I wasn't initially interested in the "blue eyes" customized kit - it looked like black, brown, and blue. I wanted other eyeliner colors. So I disregarded the "this is best for this eyecolor" labels and picked a kit with three colors that I actually wanted: the Green Eyes kit, with green, purple, and black eyeliner. I wore the purple (top lashline) and green (lower lashline) for a few hours one evening, and was impressed by the performance. They applied smoothly with no skipping or tugging, the color payoff was good for both shades, and they wore for three hours without smudging or fading...with no primer, and no other eye makeup at all. The purple, on my top lash line, started fading a little after hour three, but it never transferred to my eyelid (which is what most eyeliners end up doing.) After five hours, the purple liner wasn't as thick as it had been; but I was still seeing liner on my upper lash line, and was not seeing it transferred to my lid at all.

Okay, now I'm impressed.

I headed over to Fred Meyer and picked up the kits for Blue Eyes and Hazel Eyes. I wasn't all that thrilled about having two more black eyeliners, but thought - well, there's the blue and the magenta-violet, and the two browns aren't exactly the same color, so I'm not getting tons of dupes. When I got home and tried out the pencils, I noticed that the blacks all had a faint shimmer of color: green-black, blue-black, and violet-black. The "black" eyeliner pencils actually reminded me a bit of the Blackstar micas from TKB, or the blackened Pure Drama eyeliner colors from Aromaleigh: a definite black base, but also a definite color-shimmer overlay.

I have not tried using thesharpener that is built in to each pencil, though I suspect that they will not necessarily crumble when sharpened. I'll probably just use the "cheap" method of sharpening: rub the product on one side until its worn to a slope, and then use the pointed edge to get more precision.

If you've been at all curious about these, I highly advise you buy one set - whichever set you personally want, not only the one "customized for your eyes" - and try them out. You may just find yourself going back for some of the others! They travel well, the lids stay securely closed, and even with the blacks, they're "color-banded" so you know if you're grabbing the blue-black or the green-black (if you're like me and just have to have all of the kits.)

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