Clinique Bottom Lash Mascara

Clinique Bottom Lash Mascara - £12

Clinque's Bottom Lash Mascara is one of my makeup bag essentials. I cannot go a single day without using this product & in my opinion it's something that no girl should be without. It's one of those things where until you try it you won't realise what you've been missing out on. I've spoken before about how my mascara always used to end up migrating down my face during the day. I love the look of having thick, black, voluminous lashes so I used to really pile on the mascara & it always resulted in ridiculous panda eyes. Setting my undereye concealer with something like the Laura Mercier Secret Brightening Powder pretty much put paid to that happening. But this product goes one step further & stops your mascara from being able to smudge in the first place. If waterproof mascaras have failed you so far then look no further, this is the answer to your eye makeup woes.

Bottom Lash Mascara is a tubing mascara. Regular mascaras are normally wax or oil based & act like paint on your lashes. The formula of tubing mascaras is actually water-based & contains polymers that form tiny individual tubes around each lash once it dries. This makes it incredibly long lasting but it's also really easy to remove. Tubing mascaras can be taken off with just plain water yet they won't budge with normal eye watering, sweat or tears. The mascara doesn't dissolve & you can see the tubes coming off when you wash your face. I love the tiny little mascara wand. It's the perfect size & shape and it allows you to coat even the smallest of lashes. I can sometimes get a bit overzealous with my mascara application & end up with lots of blobs around my eyes. The size of the brush completely stops that from happening & I never make a mess anymore. The mascara tube is also really tiny, in fact it contains just 2ml of product. It lasts a surprisingly long time though. After using it every day for two years (I know, super gross! I binned that one shortly after realising how long ago I'd bought it!) it still hadn't dried up or run out. It wears really well without any clumping, flaking or smudging. It separates my lashes nicely, defines them & adds a good bit of length to them too.

When I first tried this mascara I really wasn't a fan. I was in the middle of an episode of trichotillomania & would compulsively pull off all my mascara shortly after applying it. If you use a tubing mascara then the tubes become more firmly attached to your eyelashes so when I started pulling off my mascara, loads of lashes would come out too. Bald patchy eyes are not a good look on anyone. Eventually this mascara helped me to kick the habit because it was slightly painful & I was losing so many hairs that I managed to snap myself out of it. I still naughtily pick at my top lashes sometimes but if I use this mascara then picking the bottom lashes is just not an option anymore. I also wasn't too impressed with how it made my lashes look at first. As I said I love thick black lashes & this didn't make my lashes fat enough for my liking. The formula is very wet so it was hard to build them up at all. This is definitely one of those mascaras that improves as it dries up a bit. After a couple of months the consistency becomes a lot better & the result is lots of beautifully defined lashes. Nowadays I'm a huge advocate of this mascara & I've not used anything else on my bottom lashes since 2011! Using a different mascara for your top & bottom lashes might seem like a bit more effort but it's worth it for smudge-proof eye makeup all day long. Forever repurchase.

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