Battle of the Brown Liners

Since I had so much fun writing my “Battle of the Black Liners” post, I thought I’d go ahead and write one about my other most used category: brown liners!

I love me a good brown liner. With a brown smokey eye, it’s the perfect addition to a look to make my blue eyes pop. Brown liner is much more conservative than black in my opinion, especially when it comes to applying it in the waterline. For this reason, I find myself wearing a lot of brown eye makeup to work. It usually consists of a light MAC shade like Patina, with Handwritten in the corner/crease, and a heavy brown liner, sometimes smoked out with a pencil brush. When I’m not sure what to do with my eye makeup, brown is always my eye makeup go to “safe” zone because I always feel confident wearing those colors.

Here is what I currently house in my collection.

Left to right: MAC's Coffee Eye Pencil, MAC Teddy Eye Kohl, MAC Powersurge Eye Kohl, Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Lucky.

Swatches, left to right: MAC's Coffee Eye Pencil, MAC Teddy Eye Kohl, MAC Powersurge Eye Kohl, Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Lucky

The fact that I only own 4 brown liners kind of amazes me. But at the same time, I think these 4 are all the shades I could ever need. As you can see from the swatches, these are all VERY different from one another.

I’ve had MAC’s Coffee Eye Pencil for years with no complaints. As you can see, it’s quite dark, almost to the point of being black. It wears quite well in the waterline and is surprisingly long wearing. What I like most about it is that when it does fade out, it doesn’t look grey or like my mascara smudged under my eyes - it looks worn in a sexy way, not in a "I didn't have time to look in the mirror" way. It's great for those long work days where's you feel like you're running like a headless chicken, hypothetically speaking, not that that ever happens to me ever. 

MAC’s Teddy Eye Kohl is quite new for me. I’ve only owned it for a couple months but I’m finding a lot of uses for it. The way I like to wear it is to smudge it along my upper lash line. The first time I wore it I was surprised at the red tones in the liner - it looks very bronzy in the swatch but it pulls towards red on me. If I wear it with warmer eyeshadow colors though, it doesn’t pull towards red so much. The only downfall to this liner is that it’s not very long-wearing. It doesn’t stay put on the waterline for more than an hour and sometimes smudges on my lids by the end of the day. If you don’t have oily eyelids you shouldn’t have this problem though.

I don’t often get to use my MAC Powersurge Eye Kohl or my Urban Decay 24/7 Glide On Eye Liner in Lucky too often because of this simple reason: I don’t know how to use them! I have a thing where I don’t like to use eyeliner that is lighter than my eye makeup! Is that weird? I just don’t think it makes sense if you’re trying to accentuate your eyes. And I almost never wear really light eye makeup - I find it looks odd on me! If I do wear them, I’ll usually smudge them on my lower lash line, or on my inner corner. They both have great color payoff and Lucky is ridiculously long wearing.

I’m quite content with my brown eyeliners. I might pick up a medium-brown non-shimmery eyeliner at some point in my future though now that I think of it. There are all products I can definitely back up as being excellent products - I’ve had zero issues with them.

Sadly, unless I do a "these are the rest of my liners" post, there will no longer be any Liners Ready For Battle posts as I don't actually own many other colors! I think I have a purple in there and an emerald color and that's it! I am on the hunt for a nude eyeliner so there may be an update on that though!

How do you use lighter colored eye pencils? Are there any awesome brown liners I’m missing in my collection? Do you have a day to day brown liner you love?

Hope you're having a wonderful day! Today is my boy's best friend's birthday (well, for another 30 seconds). Happy Birthday Clayton!