Back in March or so I decided to try out the Maybelline Great Lash Lots of Lashes mascara. I was feeling frisky and I've had pretty good luck with Maybelline mascaras in the past so it seemed like a safe bet.
The thing that surprised me about this product was the brush; I knew it was going to be small and kind of funky-looking but I didn't realize
how small until I pulled it out of the packaging and started playing with it. Look at those tiny nubs!
I found the formula to be rather wet (tends to stick lashes together) but very dark and easily workable; it doesn't keep pulling product off when swiping the brush through already-coated lashes, nor did it blob ALL OVER the eye. I only applied two coats and I didn't notice significant clumping.
It doesn't really lengthen lashes much, but makes the natural length more noticeable--that is, it coated the entire length of each lash and emphasized it rather than leaving the tips slightly bare, which is something that I've experienced in other mascaras. This may be due to the slightly thinner/wetter formula. It holds curl nicely.
My thoughts: I dislike the brush. Fo sho dislike it. The narrow inner portion made the lashes along the inner corner of my eye stick together something fierce, probably because the 'bristles' are so short that they deposit too much product without combing through the lashes . The thicker outer portion provides much better separation to the outer half, and the overall effect is a flared outer corner with stuck together, albeit thicker looking, inner lashes. I love the way the longer bristles separate but I found that getting my lashes to look the way I want them to took much more time than I'm willing to spend on a mascara---doing this swatch took me around three minutes, which is too much time for me to spend on mascara. I'd rather just pull out the eyelash curler and leave it at that. At least the brush isn't so fat and huge that it stabs my eyeball.
This mascara actually works pretty well on the lower lashes if you're careful and take your time. I'm usually not into time-taking and I blobbed mascara under my eye when I first tried it, but it was easy to wipe away with a damp Q-tip.
Other pros: washes off pretty easily, good solid BLACK-black instead of a wimpy grayish color
Other cons: maybe it was just my tube, but this thing flaked on me within the first week of opening it. This was enough to turn me off forever.
I just don't think this was the right product for me. I like thick, dark, dramatic lashes with a NON-waterproof formula that does not flake, and I understand that this can actually be pretty hard to find. If you have full, somewhat straight lashes that take well to curling mascaras, OR like a natural yet defined look, this might work well for you. It's cheap enough that you don't have to feel bad if the product makes you want to break a chair, and I've found that Maybelline is actually pretty darn good with their mascaras. Some of them might not work as advertised but I rarely have a truly awful tube, just one that doesn't give me what I want.
