Product Review: Cover Girl SmokyShadow Blast!

 I haven't bought eye makeup in an amazingly long time. I usually use my Coastal Scents 88 palette if I am in the eye shadow mood but more times than not I stick to a neutral eye, usually some shade of brown or bronze, and pair that with a bold lip color. It's my comfort zone. Anyway, I've always wanted to learn how to master the 'Smokey Eye', especially since it's usually done with bronze colors and is very subtly sexy. I have attempted it the old fashion way but when I saw a product that claimed to deliver a smokey eye in two steps (AND I had a coupon) I had to try it.
Meet Cover Girl's Smokeyshadow Blast in the color 'Bronze Fire'.  I also picked up some brown Lash Perfection mascara.

Looks simple enough...

This product  promises to make an easy, bold, colorful smokey eye. This is only one of six shades but the only bronze or skin tone pairing. Both tips of the stick are creamy and full of shimmer for extra shine. The directions are pretty straight forward, not a lot of tips or tricks to make it look better:

Step one: Apply the lighter color (the rounded tip) generously to your eye lid

Step two: Apply the darker shade (tapered tip) to the crease and lash line of your eye. 

Ta-da! Your done. And you look crazy. 

I hated this product.

The Good

The application was only two steps as promised. This is about the only good thing I can think of...

The Bad

This is not the smokey eye I was looking for! It just looks like a lot of glitter on my eye and you can't really even tell the colors apart after a while. I also found that I didn't like the color of the first step. It was more white than tan or brown. It didn't compliment my skin at all. Strike 1

I had to seriously cake the product on for it to even show up on my eye and when it finally did the lighter color looked really cheesy and metallic-y. I'm really thinking it has something to do with my skin tone. Even though my skin is relatively light I had a hard time seeing the product on my eyes. I checked out some Youtube reviews by women of color and they felt the same way, even those who used an eye shadow base. Besides, if Cover Girl claims that this is a two step deal the extra step to apply eye shadow base shouldn't even be needed!The pigmentation of this product just sucks. Period. A few women even said that the product wears off extremely quickly, leaving residue in the crease of your eye. I didn't keep it on that long but I can definitely see how that could happen. Guess this product isn't for black girls. Strike 2!

It also has a major flaw in it's design. If I were to continue using it eventually the tapered, darker shade would round off... so what do I do then? It doesn't come with a sharpener, so I guess you would have to only use it on one side too keep it sharp.. who knows if that would even work. Strike 3!

Bronze smokey eye done right!

Probably the worst part is that this product is priced at $9.99!! Cover Girl is seriously stealing money from people. I only paid $4.99 for it at Walgreens (Which is still too much) because it was on sale, since apparently no one is buying this crap. I also had a coupon: $4.50 off any two cover girl eye makeup products (which I found inside of my last Cosmo magazine). The mascara was $4.79 so I did get a deal on it but I probably wont be using it again. I would be pissed if I spent $10 on this stuff. Strike 4.

Overall I think the bad out weights the good. I wouldn't recommend buying this product and if you want to try it do not pay full price for it! I might play with this again and see if I can get it to work or maybe use it for something else but I was really disappointed. It doesn't look horrible on me but it isn't a smokey eye, it's just two different shades of shimmer. I'd much rather just go bare!