The pencil itself (minus lids)
Burnished Copper end of the pencil and swatches on paper
Golden Glamour end of the pencil
Swatch on my hand, Burnished Copper on the left and Golden Glamour on the right
How the burnished copper end looks on my friend Farheen's eye
How the burnished copper end looks on my friend Farheen's eye
How the burnished copper end looks on my eyes
Eye shut, not the best photograph sorry!
Price I Paid
I paid about £3 for this in the Avon sale although I think it now retails at about £6.
Design
Pencil eyeshadow is fantastic because it is easy to apply in the right shape and much less messy than powder eyeshadows. Although I love the fact that this pencil is double ended, I think the burnished copper colour is much more useful and therefore would have liked to have been able to buy this separately in smaller packaging. The other minor issue with eyeshadow pencils is they are much thicker than normal eyeliners and therefore you will probably end up needing to buy a suitable sharpener for them aswell but they are not too expensive from any drugstore.
Colour
I prefer makeup that is shiny and frosted to makeup that actually contains pieces of glitter because it tends to look much classier on and be easier to wear. I find glittery items sometimes look nice, but I used to pile glitter on when I was about 13 and ended up looking like something out of the musical Pricilla Queen Of The Desert. I saw it recently, it was good fun actually but as it is based upon alot of drag acts I don't think i'll be cranking that look out around North London any time soon.
The burnished copper side of this pencil is a really lovely brown shade with flecks of gold shine rather than glitter. I think this side to the pencil is very pretty but it is quite intense and I found that it was a bit too harsh for my pale skin.
As I still thought the colour was very pretty I found a friend with much darker skin to try it out on aswell. This colour really works well against her darker skin because it blends in much better and the edges seem considerably less harsh. A real problem with using eyeshadow pencils is that they are often very difficult to blend in so I would only use quite natural looking colours.
The other side of this pencil I am not particularly keen on as I think it is verging on the yellow side of gold rather than true gold. I don't like yellow colours anywhere near my eyelids as my skin has yellow undertones to begin with so it just makes me look drained. I didn't try out the other side on my friend either at the time but I would imagine she might feel the same way.
Texture
This product has quite decent lasting power, it will last a good 5 or so hours but if you have slightly oily eyelids then it will start to crease a bit. The good thing about pencils is that you can put it in a handbag for quick touch-ups.
Smell
No Smell
How to Apply
On my skin I just filled in all of my eyelid with the brown colour as I was in a slight rush and didn't have time to do it nicely. You can see from the photos that it is possible to create a really good shape from this pencil but as the colour is quite dramatic I prefer something that is better blended against my skin.
Against my friend's skin I used a different eyeshadow technique. My friend has big beautiful eyes but prefers to do her eye make-up in a way to reduce the look of the size of her eyelids. As the diagram below shows I only put shadow on the eyesocket and the eyelid closest to her eyelashes. I applied it in three strokes it doesn't matter what order you do it in but just running the eyeshadow pencil along the eye in the place/direction of the arrows will create this look. Using a dark shadow for the outer edges and leaving the center bit out in the shape of a smaller eyelid breaks up the solid area of skin colour creating the illusion of smaller eyelids. It is best not to go too close to the inner eye with this look and be very light handed as you get towards it. Don't go all the way into the inner corner it would create a weird looking empty oval shape on your eyelid instead which would look like you just outlined your eyelid and that is a bit strange.
Overall Reaction
This Avon eyeshadow pencil works really well and is very pigmented. I don't like the golden side of the pencil but the copper side is very pretty. Although I wasn't such a fan of it on my very pale skin, it looks great on Farheen so I am going to rate it based on people with slightly darker skin than me.
Overall reaction 8/10
