Maybelline New York Define-A-Line Eyeliner Review and Swatches

Hi lovelies! I figured it’s time to review Maybelline’s Define-a-line eyeliner because I’ve been using it for a while and I have lots to say about it!

I have to admit that I am not very skilled with pencil eyeliner. Maybe I haven’t come across the perfect pencil eyeliner yet, but yeah, that’s another story. The main reason I bought this Define-a-line eyeliner because it’s tiny and retractable, compared to long pencil eyeliners. Its small size made it perfect for carrying around, and trust me I love carrying makeup around with me. I can’t deal with makeup that is too bulky because more often than not I’ll want to take it to-go and if it’s too big I won’t be able to.

Like I said, the packaging is small and the eyeliner itself is retractable, so it greatly reduces the chance that you’ll break it. When you want to use it you uncap it and twist it up, and when you’re done you twist it down and cap it again. Nice, right? On the other end there is another little cap that protects a smudger. This smudger was another one of the reasons I got this eyeliner in the first place. I thought it was a nice idea to have the built-in smudger to quickly aid the creation of a smokey-eye look.

This products is advertised as having a built-in sharpener, that for a long time, I thought referred to the fact that you could twist it up and get more product. Dumb me. The sharpener, is a actually, a real actual tiny sharpener that sits right under the smudger. So if you pull out the smudger, there’s the sharpener!

When you first open the product it is already sharpened, and the application is fairly easy. The product is really creamy and glides smoothly over your lash line. When the point isn’t sharp anymore, it creates a wider line unless you sharpen it. So I sharpened mine and guess what happened? It broke. Yes, really, it broke. Like, the point got stuck inside the sharpener. This eyeliner is so soft that you can’t really sharpen it without breaking it. It was a pain to clean up the mess inside the sharpener, but I did and tried sharpening it again. Guess what? It broke again. And again. And again. And I was left with NO eyeliner. That’s how many times it broke. So I trashed it.

Then I bought a new one, and thought to myself “I won’t sharpen it ever again!”. I hadn’t had the product for a long time before it broke, and so far I had liked what I saw, and that’s why I repurchased. I learned to use it without sharpening it by applying it sideways (like with the borders of an eyeliner cylinder). After using it for a while I noticed something. This product is way too creamy. I mean, I loved that it was creamy as opposed to being like the harsh eyeliner pencil I had tried before, but this eyeliner is creamy to the point that it never dries or sets or anything. It smudges, it transfers to any surface it touches (even lightly), it just doesn’t stay put. This eyeliner is so creamy that the smudger is actually more of an ERASER than a smudger. Seriously, when I used the smudger what it did was remove all the eyeliner I had just applied.

Overall, I stopped using the sharpener, stopped using the smudger, the color never sets on your skin. It’s smudgy, and if you’re having a particularly oily-face day, you’re getting raccoon eyes. One way I found to mildly stop it from giving me raccoon eyes was to prime my eye, even if I wasn’t going to wear eyeshadow. I wouldn’t recommend this product just because it’s way too creamy. And after having two of them, I won’t repurchase this!