One of the upsides to not being a particularly hairy person is that I don’t have to tweeze my eyebrows. I can get away with not shaving my legs for over a week and no one would be the wiser, unless they decided to take a look at my shins from a mere 6 inches away. Unfortunately, these advantages also come with a few downsides – one being that I don’t have many eyelashes. Another is that I don’t have much hair on my actual head, but one problem at a time.
At one point I was toying with the idea of trying out eyelash extensions, but was turned off by the price tag and the need for repeat appointments so I never pulled the trigger. Instead I decided to take the much more affordable approach of buying and trying no less than 8 different mascaras. They were all, you know, fine. But none gave me the caliber of lashes that I was hoping to achieve. You know, the plush, fluttery, and feminine lashes that you see in every magazine add, television show, and movie. I knew they were either false lashes or extensions, but I was lazy and determined, so I continued to plow through any mascara I could find that promised me crazy (or often “sexy”) length and/or volume.
This next fact is going to sound like a random thought but I swear it’s relevant: I started a new job at the beginning of this year. This is relevant because one of my new coworkers had THE lashes I had been trying to achieve… and then some. They were so plush and thick and long that they often started to look like the eyelashes you would see on an American Girl Doll. I was constantly mesmerized by them, and assumed she must either wear falsies or get extensions, but I could never see any indication that they weren’t real. I badly wanted to ask her about them but wasn’t sure if that was too forward. That is until one day, luckily, she brought them up on her own when she mentioned a woman who had stopped her in a Home Goods to compliment her eyelashes.
“Wait, so those are your real lashes???” I couldn’t help myself.
She confirmed that her lashes were indeed real, and explained to me that I needed to get my hands on a lash serum called Babe Lash, which had completely transformed her lashes into the magnificent tiny face fans they were now. I went home and bought a tube on Amazon.
After a few months of use, I can’t say that the serum has given me doll lashes, but I can definitely notice a slight increase in length, as evidenced by my eyelashes now surpassing the bottom of my eyebrows when I am looking up. They also look shinier and healthier than they did before. The serum was definitely a good purchase, and little did I know it would be the first step in the holy trinity of lash products I had yet to discover.
Glossier’s Lash Slick was mascara number 7 on my list of attempts to find an alternative to eyelash extensions. It’s a good mascara. It adds length in the form of tiny tube-like lash extensions, but it does literally nothing in terms of volume. I kept it in my collection because I thought it was a nice option for every day/”no makeup makeup” type of looks.
The Hourglass Caution mascara was number 8, which I purchased almost immediately upon its release due to so many beauty YouTubers I follow and trust sharing that the mascara had blown them away. I tried it out as soon as it arrived, and boy does it give volume. So much volume, in fact, that I thought my lashes almost started to look… stubby?. Wondering what to do with this, I remembered that in high school I used to layer a volumizing mascara over a lengthening mascara (ahh, remember when the level of effort we put in to every little thing was 110%?). I tried a foundation of the Glosser Lash Slick on my other eye before applying Caution and, lo and behold, a holy grail favorite was born.
Please enjoy this amateur before and after infographic so you can see the results for yourself. Apologies that the bare photo came out slightly fuzzy, but I think you can get the gist that my lashes look pretty non-existant when they don’t have anything on them. I also curled my lashes before applying Lash Slick, but otherwise, this is entirely the result of the three products I mentioned. I still tend to wear just the Glossier mascara, if any at all, on a regular day to day basis. But when I’m going out this is a great combination that I will definitely continue to use. The cherry on top of the eye lash sundae is that neither of these mascaras smudge at all; something that I routinely struggle with with other formulas.
What do you think? Do you guys have any favorite mascaras or mascara combinations? What do you look for most in a mascara?