HOW TO FIND TRANSFER-PROOF EYELINER PENCILS
Here’s something that made a big difference in my life in 2023: I discovered the formula for eyeliner pencils that won’t transfer on my oily skin.
Well, first of all, I have super greasy eyelids – so if I wear eyeliner it just smudges or starts to transfer after a few hours. Transfer-proof pencils weren’t really a new innovation, but I never really knew what to look for. I’d read about eyeliners being extremely smudge-proof, but when I tried it, it’d smudge on me – so, clearly I have eyelids that are way superior or something!
Here’s what you’re looking for…
1 Volatile solvent at the top of the ingredient list
2 Snug packaging
3 No oily ingredients near the top of the ingredient list
4 Recommendations
VOLATILE SOLVENT AT THE TOP OF THE INGREDIENT LIST
Volatile means that ingredient evaporates really easily. These are the most common ones you’ll see in makeup:
Like I said, most products that you see are made of water. It’s quite interesting.
• Cyclopentasiloxane
• Isododecane
• Methyl trimethicone
The solvent itself is not the component that is responsible for the longwear, but it’s an indication that there are film-forming polymers in the product that will stick to each other after those solvents have evaporated off. You are smudging your smear on and the film is a smear. It needs to change to make itself smudge proof. These products, the solvents evaporate off, then the film-forming polymers can bind together and cause a durable, longwear film.
SNUG PACKAGING
Again, however, this demonstrates the presence of sufficient quantities of volatile solvents such that they must be encapsulated in gas-tight packaging. Such packaging retains the volatiles, resulting, after your product has dried off and withered, in a very dissatisfied consumer.
If you remember the ‘grabby’ gel eyeliners in pots that were huge 5 to 10 years ago – they’re way less common now, and that’s because what was the technology for that has now been encapsulated in pencil format, again really as a result of these packaging innovations. Pencils are a lot more useful as a product because you don’t have to be fingers or carrying around brush and stuff or washing brush. Of course, it’s not like this was never done before, just that you have far more brands doing it now.
A good gas-tight seal can be guaranteed only by a hard component pressing (mashing) into a soft component, as in 3. This is how screw-tops work, too ― they create a pressure between the hard element of the ‘screw’, as it pushes its way into the soft sealing element of the bottle, lid or whatever.
Most of them are like this: with a thick lid that you can feel like it really clamps down, with a little squeaking sensation: They often also come with pretty hefty bands inside of the lid as well, to make a tighter fit: