Mascara Disaster

I'm having a hard time not spending money on makeup at the moment. I tell myself that I'm going to be good but then five minutes later I'm swatching stuff on the back of my hand and arguing that it's my duty to buy things for research purposes.

One of these recent excursions to Superdrug (to get a sleek makeup brow set that they then didn't have) resulted in my buying, amongst other things, two mascaras that I'd seen advertised and wanted to try for a while - Collection 2000's Pump Up the Volume and Maybelline The Colossal Volume Express Cat Eyes Mascara in Glam Black. Both have similar shaped brushes, both offer more volume and both were a bit of a disappointment.

I am, in general, a big fan of Collection 2000. They offer good products for really reasonable prices, sometimes, however, they really let themselves down which I think is a real shame. Pump Up the Volume is supposed to give 12 times more volume and has a unique 'spoon' shaped brush (the uniqueness of which I'm dubious about as it is very similar shaped to the Colossal...). The shape and size of the brush is great - it makes application and coverage really easy but it is so clumpy and actually the size of the brush makes it quite difficult to get the really tiny lashes on the inner corner of your eye. The colour is good and for £4.99 I suppose a bit of clumping isn't too bad - I've definitely tried worse mascara's but it just didn't live up to the hype.

And the Colossal isn't much better. It has pretty much the same 'spoon' shaped brush but thinner which does make the application to the corner lashes easier but this gives a whole new meaning to clumpy and having spoken to other users I'm  not the only one to think so. At £7.19 this is still not the worlds most expensive mascara but for that money I wished I'd bought either Max Factor's Masterpiece Max which is wonderful or even Maybelline's own Define-a-lash which you need to build up but is clump free and covers every lash. It is supposed to give 7 times more volume which I think must just be measured in clumps. I think what makes me so angry is how photo-shopped the advert is - the outcome is nothing like how it appears. The only pro is that this product is collagen and jojoba enriched which encourages lash growth.

Both mascara's are OK - I feel that maybe I'm being a bit unfair on them. If you like spidery lashes then you'd probably think they are great but I just think with so much great competition out there these could be so much better - I'd always rather have a good, black mascara that gets every lash and that you can build up depending on how much volume you want. But maybe that's just me? xx