Sleek Eau La La Liners

A quick google will reveal that these multi-use pencils are almost universally beloved across blog-land. I was rather taken in by the hype surrounding these products and I picked up four quite soon after their launch last year.

Above left to right: pumpkin, Red Sky Night, Moulin Rouge, Blue Moon

Eau La La pencils (£4.99) are waterproof and can be used on eyes, lips or the body and are available in 20 different shades from traditional nudes and neutrals to loud and bold brights. They have a lovely smooth and creamy consistency that glides on and lasts and lasts. When I wear them on my eyes they last all day long and while I don’t tend to wear bright lip colours all day long so I can’t confirm exactly how long they last on my lips, they certainly last several hours.

So far, so good. However, they do have a problem and that is with their formulation. I think that one or more of the ingredients evaporates from the pencils and leads to all of the problems I’m about to mention.

I encountered the first problem the very first time I opened and used the products. The lead on every single one pushed back into the barrel. You can see this clearly with the orange and red pencils in the shot below. However, having had the pencils for some months now I’ve recently encountered another problem, which is that the force of pulling the lid off actually pulls the lead right out of the barrel – this can be seen clearly with the blue and pink pencils in the shot below.

The next problem is that they are horrible to sharpen. In the photo below you can see how much I’ve sharpened the blue pencil already when compared with the full length red pencil. I’d love to say that that’s because I’ve gotten so much use out of it, but unfortunately it’s because the lead breaks so much whenever I try to sharpen it. The wasted product is so frustrating!

So there you have it – in a nutshell, a potentially great product is let down by a bad formula. My advice is not to fall in love too much with those bright colours because the hearbreak of all that wasted product just isn’t worth it!