MAC Shade and Smoke Review and Swatches

Ever since my blue smokey eye, I've been on the lookout for more stick-like shadows that I can use in minimal time, create a unique look and last forever.


Through the magic of Photoshop, I am showing you both ends of each pencil next to each other. (I know this is amazeballs, I have mad skilz.) You can see that they pair up really nicely for pretty eye looks.

The consistency of the pencils is a bit... drier? Ok, quite a bit drier than many of the other sticks that I've used. A bit more like a crayon. I can't really describe it any better than this. It's super easy to swatch and build up color, but when applying to the eye the best use seems to be just applying the color right on to my eye, smudge with a finger, and that's it! Oh... if only it was that easy.

The truth is that when I draw on my lid with these pencils, they don't transfer very easily to my lid. I've tried with and without primer, and neither works any better. I had to go over my lid a few times, and then quickly blend a bit with my finger. Work fast, that dry consistency means that it has very little time to blend.

The rounded shape of the "shadow" side was nice, but I found the "liner" end to be too large to work in that area. It is better suited for the lid as well.

I did manage to get it to look ok, but not enough that I felt like taking pictures and leaving them on the internet for the world to see would be a good idea. They lasted about 10-12 hours before fading a bit and were water resistant, so I did need to use a good eye makeup remover to clean it off fully at the end of the day.

While this was a great idea, I feel that the formulation wasn't quite right for this one. Hopefully MAC heads back to the drawing board and fixes it. A collection of sticks like this (perhaps with a more traditional liner on one end?) with neutral shades could be a holy grail product for many time crunched women.

MAC