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Rant & Rave: Ultra Black Eyeliner

This Week’s Topic: Ultra Black Eyeliner

Your Mission: Tell us what you love, hate, or are otherwise indifferent to about ultra black eyeliners. What drives you bananas? What makes them necessary?

my answer: Sometimes they’re TOO bold for a look and can make my eyes appear smaller. A lot of the time, though, they can add definition!

36 Comments

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Ryou Avatar

I love using ultra black liner on my upper lashline and just a touch of soft black on the outer corners of my bottom lashline. I find it lifts my eyes nicely as well as making me appear less tired.

HeavenGlam Avatar

I used to love extra-black liner, but I’ve kind of shied away from it since I’m doing more neutral eye makeup on myself now. I find that ultra-black or any black looks harsh with neutrals on me. I’m using Bareminerals liner in 9pm. It’s a dark chocolate brown and !it almost looks black,but it’s notQ

Carrie Avatar

I’m pale enough that dark dark black just is too much against my skin, it looks too harsh. I prefer charcoal gray for every day if I want to go darker with my eyeliner.

Mariella Avatar

So long as they stay put, I’m fine with them. I can always smudge out a very dark black liner to soften and blur the effect. It’s when they smudge themselves that I’m not so delighted!

Gina Avatar

Sometimes they can be too much if I’m going for a really soft look, but most of the time, I love them! If I’m going to wear black eyeliner, I want it to be super intense. Otherwise, I’ll just use brown. I have no use for soft blacks!

xamyx Avatar

My eyes are very dark, and fairly large & on the rounder side, so I find a dark, black liner to be the most versitile in terms of playing around with different eye shapes. I also keep my hair on the darker side. Even if I do a soft, neutral eyeshadow, I can always do a very thin, fine line on the upper lash line, paired with black mascara on both upper & lower lashes, and smudge shadow on the lower lashline, and it still looks very natural. Honestly, if I could only use one shade of liner for the rest of my life, it would be black. In fact, although I have several “colored” liners, I don’t find myself using them (with the exception of reds). I just picked up UD Perversion with the Smoked palette, and I’m really hoping to have better luck with that than Zero, which is just useless for me.

Wwendalynne Avatar

I’m so enthusiastic about the Smoked palette! You?? I’ve been wearing a different colour each day since I received it last week. I seem to be able to find either a UD pencil from the Loco Ocho set or one of the TT pencils I recently grabbed which works perfectly with every shadow in this palette. Score! I’ve been so busy with the colours, I haven’t tried Perversion yet. Today was UD Loaded with TT Sparkling Ammunition.

xamyx Avatar

I think Loaded is my absolute favorite shadow. Ever!

I haven’t tried the palette yet, but I already had 5 of the shades, although Mushroom & Rockstar were in the old formulation. I figured since I wanted to get them in the new formula, plus the Perversion pencil, I may as well pick up the whole palette. It’s been too hot here this week to really do anything heavy, but hopefully we’ll have (near) Autumn weather *soon*!

I’ve had no luck with the UD 24/7 pencils, except as color bases, blended out, but when I swatched Perversion, it actually felt different, so *fingers crossed* it works out!

I’m contemplating the Ocho Loco set, but the tarte Carried Away set looks amazing, too…

Wwendalynne Avatar

Tarte Carried Away set is an amazing deal and it has some pretty darn good reviews too. I think if I was still living out of a suitcase it would be a must have for me. Still, I might pick it up next month if it is still available. I’ve been bad this month..again

blueraccoon Avatar

I bought Ocho Loco during the UD sale and it arrived yesterday, and oh, man, are those eyeliners gorgeous. I don’t wear much because I’m really bad at getting a straight line, but these make me want to learn. Mushroom is beautiful, so is LSD, and…really, there’s not one I don’t like.

Wwendalynne Avatar

Ditto!! I’m shocked at home much I love this set. A couple of things you can do if you such at drawing a straight line: 1. Put a bit of co-ordinating eyeshadow down first and line over top..it will look fuzzier and less like a child drawing over the lines with a crayon.. just an analogy, not a dig (you dig?)..
OR 2. Draw crazy arsed line down and then go over it with a brush. The brush will follow a much straighter line without too much effort. Sometime like this works:

http://www.maccosmetics.com/product/145/814/Products/Brushes/Eye/212-Flat-Definer-Brush/index.tmpl

Such a great set (of eyeliners surely) needs to be used frequently 🙂

Liz Avatar

black eyeliner looks ridiculous on me unless I just apply it between the lashes and the upper waterline… so I prefer a muted black or grey, or just brown

Danielle Avatar

I have fair skin but really dark eyes, so I can get away with ultra black liner. However, I typically only wear black liner in A/W. And brown is really my go-to liner, anyway.

Sunny Avatar

I still don’t own any super black eyeliner! I’m happy with black gel liners and UD Zero. Perversion for example could seem a bit too matte, opaque, and flat. But that’s really just my bias. I’m sure if I get out of my comfort zone and try one I might find ways to use it!

NeutraKris Avatar

Rant: L’Oreal’s Carbon Black Extra-Intense Liquid Pencil Eyeliner in Carbon Black. This sucker just does not stay put! While it’s perfectly black, it doesn’t seem to set, and it’s the only pencil liner I’ve tried that runs when I use it on my waterline. One my lash line it transfers (I have hooded lids), and sometimes setting doesn’t help. I love how rich the pigmentation is, but it’s just too much work for me.

GlowMyWay Avatar

I like Perversion and similar uber-black liners for lining my upper waterline. It just makes my dark lashes look that much fuller, which is never a bad thing. Beyond that, it adds a lot of drama to any look so I can only use it when I want that kind of drama. And even then, you do have to be careful to wear it in a way that flatters your eyes. I find I can only wear it all the way around my eyes when I’m wearing cooler colors – taupes, grays. With warmer colors, I stick to just lining the outer half of the upper lashline and REALLY smoking it into the eyeshadow seamlessly. I don’t know what it is about the warm/cool colors – it seems to blend flatteringly with cooler ones but jump out from my eyes with warmer ones. LOL!

kastehelmi Avatar

I love ultra black eyeliner–it suits my features. I have deep/close-set eyes and wear glasses, glasses don’t necessarily make the eyes look smaller but they do kind of hide them. I have bronze skin, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes that are close to black, so while I can wear other colors of eyeliner, and sometimes experiment with brown, green, or purple, nothing makes me look as nice as winged eyeliner drawn on the upper lashline, to make my lashes look longer, and make my eyes pop. I am a winter according to “color me beautiful”, and I think brunette winters with deep-set eyes may look nice with some jewel tone eyeliners, but black eyeliner can look almost natural on us.

Susan Nevling Avatar

My eyeliner favorite Ultra black is UD Perversion pencil.

I don’t remember brand names but many of the eyeliner pencils are too hard to even use.

Quinctia Avatar

I tend to use the thinnest line possible when using liner, so if I’m going to wear black, ultra black is what I prefer.

I can’t make anything that isn’t powder kohl to even stay on my waterline, and I find that too messy to attempt in black, so I wouldn’t want an ultra black for that purpose, because it won’t stay or will be too smokey for my preferences.

Kesha Avatar

I think I’ve mentioned this before but I absolutely LOVE UD Perversion…and admit that I treat UD Zero like that step child you send to boarding school as soon as the ink on the marriage certificate dries! It definitely does something special to my eyes so I use it 90% of the time. I do smudge it most of the time to take some of the pop out of it (unless I am doing a dramatic eye of course)but I find that I can play it up or bring it down with ease so I it works even with a lot of my neutral eye looks (thin line smudged to soften).

Ultimately though I am conservative with it’s use because it IS easy to over do it. I used to be a strictly brown liner girl (if I used it at all) because I feared the raccoon eye effect…so that would be the one thing that drives me bananas about ultra black liners.

Veronica Avatar

I prefer a slightly softer black (or even brown) if I’m filling in around the entire eye or when I want my lashes to stand out, but my everyday liners are generally very bold since I tend to only wear it on my upper lash line in either a thin line or winged/cat eye look. This probably goes a long way to explaining my predilection for liquid liner. 😛

Donna Avatar

I rarely use black eyeliner, usually dark gray, navy, green or brown – anything but black. Black is too harsh for me. I do use black smudged on top of a color if I’m going with a dark eye. I use NARS or Armani for this in a pencil form. If I’m really wanting to get a bold eye look, I’ll reach for the black (usually after 5:00 pm) I use Bobbi Brown gel eyeliner black for this.

Phyrra Avatar

I prefer black eyeliner most of the time. I do like pops of color, but I find in most of my looks I reach for black over and over. I love UD Perversion for that. I like the high contrast between the black liner and my skin.

Sandra JT Avatar

I rarely use black liners. They make my eyes look horrible – smaller, like burning black holes in my head, & always wind up gooped up in the inner corners of my eyes. Yuck! The only time I will use them is right against my lashline, to intensify the look of my laager at night. But only a very thin line, on top of my main liner color. I normally go with dark forest greens, very dark plums, cobalt blues, shades like that. Never brown, can’t stand that shade of liner either. HATE all Urban Decay liners with a passion, especially their black ones. Nastiest, most overhyped liners I’ve had the displeasure of using.

Bianca Avatar

The two things I can’t stand about my ultra black eyeliner is the application process. I have to be very careful with placement because fixing a mistake is extremely difficult. The other issue I have is its removal, when removing it the eyeliner smears all over my face instead of just coming off on to the cotton swab.

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