Eyeliner is one of my favorite makeup products because the eyes are the window to the soul and it enhances them. Accentuating the eyes can completely change your entire look and add a beautiful mysterious depth to your eyes. In order to get the eyes as beautiful as possible, it does take some practice, so today, I will teach you all the basics that you need to know about eyeliner.
Formula and Ingredients
There are natural and mineral-based eyeliners, as well as chemical-based ones. Natural liners may be made with things like coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, aloe vera, wax, and water. Chemical-based eyeliners will include harmful ingredients like heavy metals, benzalkonium chloride (BAK), formaldehyde, and aluminum powder.
Both types of eyeliner are made with mica, which is silicate minerals. These minerals offer color and pigmentation to the eyeliner.
Pencil Eyeliners
Pencil eyeliners are traditional eyeliners, and then there are auto pencil liners. Traditional eyeliner pencils have to be sharpened and are made from wood. Auto pencil eyeliners come in a pencil form with an auto pencil sharpener built-in at the end of it. The body of these pencils are generally made from plastic.
Auto pencil liners are very convenient, fast, and easy to use since you do not have to worry about sharpening them. You also do not have to worry about the pencil being too sharp on the eye, so it is safer for the eyes and it saves a lot of time.
Traditional, Gel, Vs Kohl Eyeliners
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Traditional eyeliners have to be sharpened and they are wooden pencils, so the formula is not as soft, and it does not glide across the eye as easily and smoothly as gel liners do. However, these eyeliners do tend to smudge less because the formula is not very oily, so they stay in place quite well.
Gel liners are what you get when you take gel liner from its pot and put it into a pencil form. Gel liners tend to smudge more than traditional eyeliners pencils, but they are smooth, fast, and easy to apply.
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Kohl, also called kajal, is special because it is ancient. Kohl can be traced as far back as the earliest civilizations. Kohl is known for being an intense dark black color, darker than traditional eyeliners. Kohl was traditionally made by grinding stibnite, a gray sulfide mineral crystal, or galena, which is lead sulfide. Kohl today can be made from carbon black, oils, or iron oxide.
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Kohl/Kajal is associated with cultures and places like Istanbul, India, Egypt, the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Middle East (Arabs, Persians). In these cultures, lining the whole eye was, and still is very common for beauty/aesthetics and religious purposes.
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In these ancient cultures, both women and men used kohl/kajal, but in some of these modern cultures today, only women wear kohl. Young boys may wear kohl though to protect their eyes from the elements, and to protect themselves against evil; this is a common practice in India.
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Kohl/Kajal is great and super easy to wear for many reasons: Kohl is made with more natural ingredients. Kohl is very easy to blend so you can use it to line your eyes and to smudge out your liner to create a smokey eye. Kohl is a very dark intense color, so it will stand out prominently on various skin tones, and kohl glides smoothly and easily across the eye without tugging and pulling.
Comparing The Three Main Types of Eyeliner Which Eyeliner Is Best For You?
Liquid Eyeliner
Liquid liner comes with the liner in a pen form or with a pot. The liner itself is wet in a liquid form. These liners often come as a small thin ink pen with a felt tip to help give you a thin precise line.
Liquid liner is not for everyone. Lately, I do not like liquid liner because it does not last very long, especially if you wear eyeliner every day or if you like heavy eyeliner looks. Liquid liner also can not be blended out for a smokey look because once it dries, you can not move it around and blend it out. Some liquid liners also dry out fast, even when you do not use them, so they are not very cost-effective sometimes. Liquid liners are also a bit harder to apply since they require precision and a steady hand, so they can take more time to apply. Thus, liquid liners are not beginner-friendly.
One good thing about liquid liner is that once it is in place, it does not move, so it is great if you do not want smudging or if you are going to places like night clubs where you will be sweating a lot, and you need your eyeliner to stay in place the whole night.
I do feel that everyone should keep at least one or two liquid liners on hand at all times for special occasions since they are a great way to smudge-proof eyeliner or darken it.
Gel Eyeliner
Gel liner is my favorite type of eyeliner, and I go through a lot of them. Gel liner is a soft cream-like formula that can come in the form of a small pot or as an eyeliner pencil. You will need an eyeliner brush to apply gel liner when it comes in a pot since you will need to dip the brush into the pot and apply the product to your eyes. I put a drop of colloidal silver in my pot just to keep germs from growing in it.
I absolutely love gel liner because it tends to be very dark and pigmented in color, just like kajal. Gel liner is also inexpensive, and one pot can last months, even with daily usage. I have sometimes used the same gel liner pot for a year, so it is very cost-effective.
You can also use gel liner to smudge out your liner and create a smoky eye before it dries. Another benefit is that gel liner is very fast and easy to apply since it glides across the eye. I can easily apply full eyeliner on both my upper and lower lash line in as little as two minutes with gel liner.
Two downsides to gel liners are that they tend to smudge, and some formulas may irritate the eyes or become flaky.
Eyeliner Pencil
Beginners often start with eyeliner pencils because they come with all you need to start with makeup. You do not need to buy brushes to use these as you do with gel liner, and you do not need to have a very steady fast precise hand to apply it as you do with liquid liner.
Thus, I recommend beginners start with an auto pencil liner or a kajal eyeliner since these do not require you to have a pencil sharpener, and they are very dark and pigmented. These are also easy to practice with and use. These eyeliners will save you time as you get the hang of applying makeup.
