[/caption]Anyone who's ever tried MAC's Liquidlast eyeliners will know exactly what I mean when I say that you CAN have such a thing as too much staying power.
The range was released in the summer of 2006, with the flagship shade Aqualine, a stunning gold-pearled bright teal, featuring prominently on advertising and in magazine pages.
Liquidlasts are eyeliner with a psychotic degree of staying power. They cling to your lids (and oh yes - lashes, fingertips, and anywhere else you accidentally get them) with the tenacity of a desperate ex-girlfriend. They are bright, beautiful, steadfastly reliable, and on the other side of the coin, pretty much impossible to remove without surgery.
The nub of the matter appears to be in the formula. The Fluidlines are not water soluble like regular liquid liners, nor oily or waxy like pencil liners. They aren't vulnerable to tears or body heat. Instead, the pigments are suspended in some kind of acrylic polymer, in the same vein as Blinc mascara with its little non-smudge tubes. Unlike Blinc, however, they're not removable with warm water and a little pressure. Instead, you need a lot of oil or oil-based remover, cotton wool and patience.
So MAC went in on the polymer-liner attack with all guns blazing, to mixed acclaim. Since then, however, the high street brands appear to have been getting their chemists on the case, and both good old Boots No. 7 and Superdrug-franchised Danish colour-fiends GOSH have developed Liquidlast-a-like products at very modest prices.
Best of all, they both seem to have toned the formula down for ease of use. Having tried both brands' offerings, I can confirm that both GOSH Extreme Artliner(not yet online) and No. 7 Stay Perfect Eyeliner are smoother and less goopy to use than Liquidlast, dry out less quickly in the tube, and best of all, offer a window of opportunity for tidying up application errors with a cotton bud before they set into the rock-hard steadfastness you bought them for. You can take them off with any oil-based remover, and they take a lot less work than Liquidlasts to eradicate when you've finished your Amy Winehouse impression.
Colour-wise, No.7 are offering a range of five shades in metallic colours from white-gold to royal blue (no black however - they missed a trick there). GOSH have a broader range with a spectrum of brights, basic black, browns and bronze shades. Both have produced a dupe of blazing teal Aqualine, and pretty convincingly too.
GOSH currently have a 3 for 2 offer across the range at Superdrug. And Boots are currently offering one of their lovely free gifts when you spend £18 on No. 7.
So if you've ever fancied having eyeliner that stays on without smudging, creasing, running, or generally misbehaving, or if you've tried Liquidlast and found it a little too zealous, give these babies a go.
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