Review: CoverGirl Brow & Eye Makers in Midnight Black

I’m amassing quite a collection of brow products, it seems. I ran across this one in Walgreens and since drugstore brow products for black hair are a pretty rare beast, I decided to give it a try. I’ve been rotating it with my other brow products for a few weeks – let’s see how it stacks up.

Packaging

The Brow & Eye Makers comes with two plastic-capped pencils and a sharpener. Each pencil contains .03oz/.85g of product for a total of .06oz/1.7g (in case you didn’t want to math that). For comparison, Anastasia Brow Wiz comes with .003oz/.085g while the NARS Brow Perfector gives you .007oz/.198g. It’s not quite an apples to apples size comparison since you do lose some product while sharpening wooden pencils, especially if you do it often, but I think it’s safe to say that you get more usable product in the CoverGirl pencils.

The included sharpener is a nice idea, but this one is about what you’d expect from a free sharpener that comes with a $4 product. Turning the pencil required quite a bit of force, and it broke the tip off of one pencil. It also has no guard on it which could be an unpleasant surprise if you forget it’s rolling around in your makeup bag/drawer. I actually threw the sharpener away after testing because I already have a sharpener I like much more, and I was a little afraid of injuring myself with it.

The pencils themselves sharpen nicely to a fine point in my Urban Decay sharpener, though – they fit the ‘standard size’ side. The tip didn’t crumble and the wood didn’t crack. The pencils are fairly short, light and easy to handle. I like that it comes with two pencils, for a few reasons-

• It’s marketed as a brow product or eyeliner, and I wouldn’t really want to use the same pencil on my face and eyes at the same time. Ew.
• The shorter pencils are less likely to get broken than one longer one.
• I can keep one at home and one in my emergency makeup stash at work.

Each pencil has a clear plastic cap that just does its job quietly. The caps haven’t cracked, which I’ve found to be surprisingly common problem with less expensive pencils.

Color

Left: CoverGirl Brow & Eye Makers Midnight Black
Right: NARS Brow Perfector Suriname

Midnight Black is a little bit cooler/more grey-toned than NARS Brow Perfector in Suriname, which is only very slightly noticeable when wearing it. I’d recommend this for very dark cool-toned brown hair or black/blue-black hair. I don’t think it would be the best choice for lighter or warm brown hair. It also comes in-

• Soft Blonde
• Soft Brown
• Honey Brown
• Midnight Brown

As drugstore brow products go, that’s a pretty impressive color range. I’ve been told that Honey Brown works well for red hair, which I feel gets left out of brow color options way too often.

Texture/Application

Like the NARS and Anastasia pencils, Brow & Eye Makers is a fairly hard formula that applies most easily when there’s a little bit of oil present on the skin. For brows, it glides on softly and is buildable in color. Depending on how sharp the pencil is, you can fill softly or be very precise. It’s marketed to be used as an eyeliner also, but I had to press down uncomfortably hard and even then the color didn’t transfer well to my lids (possibly because I was using NARS eye primer, which is very oil-controlling). There are much better eyeliners out there in all price ranges, so I’m keeping this as a brows-only product.

Wear

This is an excellent pencil for wear time. I haven’t had any smudging or smearing over the course of a normal day, which is usually 10-12 hours of makeup wear. It does fade a tiny bit, but you’d only notice if you were looking for it. To see how it holds up to sweat and oil, I took it for a test run, literally. I applied it right before I left, then ran 2 miles in warm weather, with this result:

It didn’t run, fade or smear even though I was sweating pretty heavily. I was pleasantly surprised by the staying power.

In Short: This is one of those drugstore products that really makes you question whether high end is any better. I think the Anastasia and NARS pencils apply a bit more smoothly and I like their colors a bit better, but the CoverGirl Brow & Eye Makers pencil is a very acceptable substitute at a much lower price point.

CoverGirl Brow & Eye Makers is available at ulta.com and all sorts of drugstores; the price ranges from $3-5 depending on the store.