Dr. Hauschka Liquid Eyeliner

I was on the last legs of my third (fourth? Fifth? Millionth?) repurchase of the ZuZu Luxe Liquid Eyeliner when I spotted the Dr. Hauschka Liquid Eyeliner, usually $20-something, on sale for $14-something, at my local Whole Foods. Unable to resist a sale, especially since it was around the same price as ZuZu, and for the sake of science, I grabbed this instead of another ZuZu.

I pretty solidly love ZuZu (you can read more here), its brush is fairly stiff so it gives the user lots of control. That is the only place where I think Dr. Hauschka’s liquid eyeliner fails. The brush is very thin and flexible, which if you want to create a very thin line, is possibly ideal. Unfortunately, because of my monolids, I usually make a pretty thick line of catty eyeliner (see me on the right in second picture) so that it is actually visible on my eye, and I find it a bit difficult to precisely draw a thick flick with the fairly flimsy brush. For a couple weeks, I initially made an outline of my desired eyeliner shape with an angled eyeliner brush + rms beauty cream eyeshadow in Karma and then followed over with the eyeliner since I had trouble maneuvering the brush. But after streamlining my kit, leaving the brush at school for break, and practice, I am able to apply my eyeliner almost as fast as I can with the Zuzu, so issues with the brush are overcome-able. A reward for my effort? A friend commenting, “Wow…such a deliberate, precise line…I am amazed…” #win

Besides the brush, the formulation is awesome. The failing of ZuZu is the smudging that gradually gathers over the day, and this is where the Dr. Hauschka rocks. I never get any smudging on my lower lid throughout the day. Or on my upper lid where the eyeliner folds over. The formula, as per its description, glides very easily on thanks to the rose wax, and mostly stays in place all day. Because of the constant eroding of my eyelid folding over, my eyeliner in the middle tends to look a bit crackly after 12 hours (see awkward winking eye in third picture), similarly to the ZuZu, but if your eye doesn’t fold monolid, then it will probably wear much better on you.

My eyes never get irritated by the formula, on the contrary, there are some side benefits, like eyebright which soothes the eye area and neem extract which conditions the lash area. The formula is pleasantly surprisingly resistant to water and contact lens solution. Example: this morning I decided, of course, after I applied eyeliner that I wanted to wear contacts, and after I put in my contacts, moisture/contact lens solution coats the surrounding of my eye and lashes for a couple minutes afterwards–and normally this totally obliterates any eye makeup I have put on previously. The eyeliner was completely in place after putting in my contacts. I’ve also put it to the rain test plenty of times as well as the crying test (both unintentionally) and it’s retained its shape. (Though during the irritated-eye-with-contact-lenses-in-while-driving test, all but the outline of the eyeliner disappeared, so as long as I didn’t blink, my eyeliner looked good.)

tl;dr Love the formula, hate the brush, but no smudging ever, now if only Dr. Hauschka and ZuZu Luxe could come together and have an eyeliner baby with Hauschka’s formula and ZuZu Luxe’s brush, I’d be on that in a flash.

Have you tried this eyeliner? If not, have any liquid eyeliner favorites?