Review: Etude House Drawing Show Dot Liner

Hey guys! As promised, I'm back with a review of Etude House's Drawing Show Dot Liner. A lot of people have been anticipating this review considering how unorthodox this liquid liner is.

Most of you will be familiar with a normal felt-tip liquid liner. The concept in itself is quite simple. A liquid liner similar to a felt-tip pen for no-brainer application. I mean really, it's almost akin to using a Sharpie on your eyelids. The more popular felt-tip liners are that of brands like MAC, K-Palette, Dolly Wink etc. But I'll just be honest and say I'm dirt poor and can't afford those brands, okay? Plus, the tip of this liner intrigued me. I mean who wouldn't be intrigued by a three-pronged fork-like tip? haha

That being said, I've been trying out a few felt-tip liners in search of some alternatives. After having gone through Cover Girl (it sucked), and Maybelline Impact Express (meh), my attention  settled on Etude House's Drawing Show Dot Liner.

In my haul post I mentioned that I was quite impressed after trying out the tester at their boutique. It looked pretty worn out but it still had some bite to it. Plus, it looked particularly eye-catching with it's jet black application. So I gave it a try.

Description
"Brush pen eyeliner conveniently produces smooth clean lines for stark definition"
It's pretty straightforward. Practically all pen liners claim to do this anyway, so just by the description, I can't say I was really expecting much. But then again, this liner isn't like other liners at all, and you'll see why later.

Directions
"Use brush to trace lines along upper and lower eye lines. For stronger look trace thick lines along upper and lower eye lines in one motion"
I like the fact that this liner gives you options. Some felt-tip liners are so one-dimensional, either they're too flimsy or to rigid, so it's hard to get a flexible line unless you're an expert at application. Some people thus prefer brush liquid liners or gel liners for that certain flexibility, but that comes with a level of expertise during application to get the desired effect.

Amount of Product
You get 0.9 grams or 0.03 oz NET WEIGHT. Most of that will probably be from the packaging so this isn't exactly a steal being the same price as Etude House's Drawing Show gel/cream liner equivalent, but then again, they're two different products that do their job in completely different ways so I don't think it's fair to compare.

So for all that hype, a mediocre amount of product and a rather odd-looking tip, does the liner actually do its brand justice?

Precision (4.5/5)
Precision-wise, it did pretty darn well. You'll observe from the close-up of the tip that while it's essentially felt, it's mixed with a little bit of rubberized matterial that doesn't make it as fiber-y as other felt-tip liners. This gives it a little bit of rigidity whilst also affording some flexibility to your lines. Obviously, the tip does its job of allowing thin lines and thick lines. And heck, why have one line when you can have three? I admit, I went a little overboard with the hand test but it was fun to use, okay!?!?

But one thing of note is that this product does settle into fine lines so be careful. I know eyelines aren't very creasy and all, but you never know.

Color (4/5)
You'll also see that the color pay-off is pretty good as well. This was one of the things that I observed just from the tester. It was a jet black that dried matte and looked like it would stay that way. Surely enough no fading or graying occurred throughout the course of  12-hour wear. That's something that some pencil and gel-liners lack.

Endurance (4/5)
But just because the color lasts doesn't mean the product will withstand the test of the elements. The liner itself did pretty well when subject to vigorous rubbing, only losing a bit of its darkness, but the good thing is that it didn't smudge. The lady at the boutique stressed that it was essentially smudge-proof, and in all honesty, I'm glad she was right. When choosing an eyeliner, you always go for one that doesn't smudge as opposed to one that stays dark but runs all over your face. Because fading, you can retouch, but smudging is another ordeal in itself.

click to enlarge

I give this my seal of approval, because after 12 hours straight of wear, it still manged to stay still on my lids. I'm honestly quite impressed. But then again, I don't have overly oily skin.

I think it's also worth saying that I stored this liner UPRIGHT for three days and it didn't dry out. Some liners *coughCOVERGIRLcough* dry out in just a few hours =_=

Is it Waterproof? (3/5)
For a product that doesn't claim at all that it's water proof, it did pretty darn well. You'd usually expect liners like this to run like mad, but when run under water and rubbed, only the superficial product came off, but the product embedded into fine-lines remained. It's actually not bad. But don't expect it to do so well for swimming conditions, lest you come out of the pool with raccoon eyes.

Removeability (4/5)
One of the things you should be careful with when choosing makeup is that while you want your makeup to last long, you also want it to be easily removable when expected to. My pet peeve with cosmetics is when you have to go through great lengths just to remove a product. Thankfully, for this liner, soap and water/ regular makeup remover / cold cream did the trick.

Application (3/5)
One of the things you expect with pen or felt-tip liners is no-brainer application. So does this product live up to that? Not exactly. While it retains the convenience of being a pen-liner, dispensing just the appropriate amount of product for use (unlike pot liquid liners where there's a danger of blotting because of too much product), Etude House's Drawing Show Dot Liner still somehow requires that you have a certain level of skill to manipulate its tip to get the desired effect. In that sense, it functions almost like a pen/brush liner.

To illustrate: To get a thin tapered line, you have to turn the tip horizontally so that all three tips lie on the same plane and smooth out the line so you don't get any bumps. To thicken out the line, you have to slowly angle your tip so that you can expose more of the tip's surface area. If you do it well, you get the result above. You can get various liner styles this way and thus I admire this liner for its flexibility. But I can't vouch for how easy it is to use this product because I'm used to manipulating brushes from experience with art. Thus, this tip may not be for everybody out there.

Novelty (5/5)
But one cute novelty that comes with this eyeliner is the fact that you can use it to draw in bottom lashes as in the third picture in the macro above. From afar, it actually does look like you're wearing false under lashes haha. It's sad but I don't think I'll be able to put that novelty into good use because bold under lashes aren't really my thing :P

Will I repurchase?
Maybe, maybe not. I'm still hunting for that perfect pen liner, and I'm still leaning towards K-Palette 24hr Tattoo Liner once I get my budget straight haha. But this seems like a pretty nifty alternative for now. It may not be the right liner for everybody, but it's worth a try :)

So that's it for another review. You can sift through my haul posts (the most recent one is here)and see if there's anything you'd like me to review. And please do tell me if you want an in-depth tutorial on how to use this kind of liner properly. It's actually quite worth it if you know how to use it, but it's useless if you don't.

Also, stay tuned for an FOTD using some of the products I purchased from my recent haul :)

Ada, signing out.