MAKEUP | VDL Expert Color Primer for Eyes with Swatches and Wear Test

As evidenced by my lack of makeup posts this past year, it is obvious I am not wearing much makeup these days. I actually think I made more of an effort to wear a full face of makeup when I was stuck inside during Quarantine because it made me feel more productive, but now that I am back to the grind of things I have become a mostly lazy girl with my routine on work days wearing various shades of neutral brown shadows. One thing that I always need to use though is an eye primer since the eyes are now the ONLY window into the soul and I need to make sure my eye makeup doesn't look like the "morning after" when it has only been four hours! Queue the primer specialists - Korean beauty brand VDL!

PR samples

I was much more familiar with VDL's Lumilayer face primers and when I received the Expert Color Primer for Eyes in the mail, it only made sense that they would have an eye primer too. VDL has three eye primer options: Original (keeps eye makeup fresh all day), Serenity (tinted blue to enhance dull areas around the eyes and make matte shadows pop) and Shimmer (worn alone for a neutral eye look or underneath metallic shadows to make them pop). 

Each come with a doe foot applicator which I then swipe onto my fingers and then blend onto my lids. The formula is a smoothing one with practically no dry down time. I actually prefer sticky primers for my eyelids as I find my shadows last longer which unfortunately was very much demonstrated by the photo below when I used the Original formula.

I am wearing Natasha Denona's Mini Sunset palette below and it did not fare well last the day at work and I noticed some major creasing and loss of shadow around the 5 hour mark. I know, ND's shadows don't work on everyone, but I have never had a problem with them creasing before when using them in conjunction with the Urban Decay Primer Potion or Mary Kay Primer. 

I next tried a different powder eyeshadow from the Sephora Collection which did better than ND with Serenity and Shimmer, but I still found that my eyeshadows had faded quite a bit before the end of the day and just looked muddy (I forgot to take a photo sorry!). 

One thing to note at least for someone like me who is a bit messy with primers, I like to smear them all over my eye, under my eye and in the corner. Basically anywhere I might apply eye makeup. This method of primer application does NOT work with a primer like Shimmer unless you are going for glitter all over! I was so used to applying my primer this way that I did not think anything of it when I first used it and let's just say it was a bit of a disaster!

Final verdict: Soooo, not my favourite primers as I found them unpredictable to work with. The Shimmer primer is definitely cute on its own, but I think this non-sticky eye primer is just not suited to my eyes which is unfortunate since I really liked the VDL Lumilayer primer!

You can find the VDL Expert Color Primer for Eyes at www.avon.ca or through your Avon representative.