Obsession: Maybelline Eye Studio Master Drama Cream Pencils

Maybelline Eye Studio Master Drama Cream Pencil in Midnight Master

After 6 hours of wear

New Maybelline Eye Studio Master Drama Cream Pencils promise creamy application, intense color pay-off, and 24 hour smudge-proof and water-proof wear. Let's break down the claims one by one:

• Application: SMOOTH as buttah! It glided on without any tugging or pulling.  The texture is really great and is super creamy, just as Maybelline claims. If you want to smudge it, you can, but I recommend doing so the second you apply it. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be. The pencil comes sharpened, but as you use it the tip becomes flat and stays flat as you twist up more product. That makes it difficult (but not impossible) to make really, really thin lines.
• Pigmentation: As you can see from the swatches, the color pay-off is pretty good. It goes on jet black in one pass and only gets better if you add another layer or two.
• Wear: Decent, but not even close to 24 hours. The first time I tried it, the liner lasted about 4 hours before I experienced some minor fading on the waterline. In the picture above, I set it with a a small amount of matte black eyeshadow and after about 6 hours it wasn't bad at all. Still some fading and a bit of smudging, but not bad. My top lash line stayed put on its own for the entire day until I removed it at night. Before I washed the swatches off of my hand, I ran some water over them and vigorously rubbed them with a dry paper towel. Didn't budge!

I wasn't a huge fan of the packaging. It was VERY difficult to twist up at first. For a moment I thought I had purchased a defective pencil, but it did eventually work after a minute of playing around with it. The pencils are available in 6 colors; Midnight Master (jet black), Sapphire Strength (blue), Bold Brown (warm medium brown), Coal Commander (dark charcoal gray), Vibrant Violet (dark purple), and Made of Steel (light gray.) Even though I really liked this, I prefer Eye Studio Lasting Drama Gel Eyeliner. It's a very similar product in different forms (pencil vs. pot). But for around $7 each, I'll definitely be going back for one or two more!