Eyeliner vs brow powder vs eyeshadow

[stefami]

Okay, here's a dumb question, but just wondering, is there a difference between the way powder eyeliner, brow powder, or eyeshadows are formulated? I mean is there any reason why I couldn't use one product for all 3 uses ( as long as the color works)? And if they are all the same, then why sell them as different things? Thanks!

[Xarata]

generally speaking powder liners and powdered shadows are pretty much the same thing. Sometime you'll relist liners in their own category because people just want the dark shades or you'll make "liners" especially dark- darker than most would want in a shadow. Karen offers cream liners which are different and most of them do not have an exact equivalent eyeshadow (tragically). For brow powders- they're usually matte (because who want shimmery brows?) and in SN's case specially formulated not to lean orange/red/plum/etc the way many of the brown-toned shadows do(because a red toned brown may look fine on your lids but isn't really believeable as your brows and probably won't match your hair). They're all rather taupey:



It's also possible (though i can't be sure) that one might formulate a brow powder with higher adhesion or pigmentation in mind to keep it from fading throughout the day.

[JenW]

I will fess up......on vacation, I use my brow powder as an eyeliner and contour eyeshadow. I usually am trying to minimize the number of things I have to mess with. I use Medium Ash. I would say that using your brow powder as an eyeliner will result in a soft eye, rather than a dramatic one. It does work, but you have to be good with the limitations.

(I will never use a similar shimmery colored eyeshadow as my brow powder, though.)

[karen]

It's not a stupid question at all. Liner colors like Coal are uber pigmented- like it's pretty much all pigment with a smidge of some other things so they stick and apply smoothly. The shimmery liners are just darker eye shadow. Brow powders and eye shadows are essentially the same thing, and really not a whole lot different from the white foundation bases. So you can modify brow powders with different eye shadows or even lighten it with foundation- or you can wear foundations as eye shadows if you'd like. McGuyver away!

The only 2 rules for McGuyvering are: Most dyes aren't considered eye safe by the FDA, so that means don't use some of our blushes as eye shadows. The truth is that I *know* some companies use dyes in eye shadows (Makeup Forever does it a lot- anytime you see bright matte pink it's a dye, and one that isn't FDA approved for eye use), and I've never heard of anything bad happening, but I'm not going to fly in the face of the FDA. The other one is ultramarines, ferric ferrocyanide, and chromium oxides aren't lip safe. The individual FDA use restricted pigments are all listed on our ingredients page.

Other than that you can pretty much do anything you want with any of our products...it's generally encouraged.

The reason I gave them different names was to make them easier to find on our site. I separated the brow powders because I didn't want to make people sort through 200 colors to find what's going to work on their brows. It's semantics.

[stefami]

Thanks! I just wasn't sure if there were special adhesion elements added in different formulas. And I understand separating them into different sections for ease of searching. That makes sense.

For the cream eyeliner, in dark brown/black, could that be used on the brow? If you applied it lightly with brush, kinda like you would with a brow pencil? Just curious and trying to figure out my options here.

BTW, thanks Sam - never thought about the possibility of added shimmer in the eyeshadows that I probably wouldn't notice. Yeah, that would be funny if I did that and didn't notice the shimmer. Or people would think that I am weird, but that is another story.