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After hearing rave reviews about the Honest Beauty Mascara, I decided to pick it up to try it out for myself. It’s full name is actually Honest Beauty Extreme Length Lash Primer And Mascara, and it is a double sided mascara.
If you’re not already familiar with Honest Beauty, it is a beauty brand by Jessica Alba featuring makeup, hair care, and skin care products.
Makeup products are geared towards highlighting your natural features. From the Honest Beauty website, their products are “a collection that’s as effective as it is safe.
The Honest Beauty Mascara was rated a 3 on the Think Dirty app, if that is something important to you. So on the clean side for sure, with some room for improvement. But definitely a cleaner mascara.
All beauty products in the Honest line are formulated without parabens, paraffins, silicones, mineral oil, and synthetic fragrances.
The Honest Beauty Mascara is dual ended, with one side for primer and one for mascara. It is supposed to lengthen lashes, give volume, and definition without any clumping.
According to the directions, you apply the primer to the lashes, wait 30 seconds, then apply your first coat of mascara. Additional coats can be added of mascara for added drama and definition.
In terms of price, it’s somewhere in between drugstore and high end, I’d say. Pricier than other drugstore mascaras for sure, but cheaper than ones you’d find at Sephora or Nordstrom.
The primer brush is a short bristled wand. The mascara wand also has short bristles, but is the plastic spiky kind, like a little comb.
I was a little worried about clumping since you layer the primer overtop the mascara, and how that would go. I don’t typically use a mascara primer, so I wasn’t really all that familiar with any tricks to applying or ways to avoid clumping.
I’ve been using the Honest Beauty Mascara for a few weeks now, and overall I really like how it looks on my lashes upon first application.
The application process is really simple, not as complicated or tricky as I thought it would be. Even if you’re not used to using a lash primer, it’s still super easy to use and get the hang of.
The primer is a thick formula, you can see it on the wand. I thought it would apply thick on your lashes, but it doesn’t at all. You can see the white on your lashes after you apply (see pic below), and it really just leaves a thin coat on them. Not clumpy or thick at all.
I apply the primer on both lashes before moving onto applying the mascara in order to leave enough time in between application, since you’re supposed to wait 30 seconds. So, I apply primer on left eye, then right, then mascara on left eye, then right. No additional time to wait needed.
Applying mascara is really easy with this wand. The bristles are short and a bit tapered, so it’s easy to apply onto each and every lash, even on your bottom lashes. It doesn’t clump at all, I think the fact that the wand is a comb helps with that big time. After one application the primer is totally covered, so it doesn’t show white on your lashes at all.
Definitely left my lashes looking longer and more voluminous. Not clumpy at all, even after applying additional mascara coats. I typically don’t do more than two coats of mascara, so I can’t really speak to if a third coat would clump. But like I said, since it’s a combing type of mascara wand, it really helps to avoid clumps.
It’s fairly easy to remove, with minimal residue left behind. I have been using either my Farmacy Green Clean or Murad Time Release Acne Cleanser to remove, and it definitely removes better with the Farmacy product. When I remove with Murad, I typically need to touch up with some Micellar Water and a Q-Tip on a few spots.
Alright, now let’s discuss how it wears.
I did notice a little bit of smudging on my lower lash line at the end of the day. If you’re someone who needs a smudge-proof mascara, this might not be the one for you. I don’t typically have this issue with a lot of mascaras, but this one did it to me. Applying a setting power underneath my lash line fixed this for me though!
Unfortunately, as the day went on, I did experience some serious flaking with this mascara. It didn’t happen every single time I wore it, but it did happen. I find that cheaper mascaras tend to flake on me more often than higher end, not sure why.
If you have problems with mascaras flaking on you, then I do not recommend this mascara. I do think part of this is just how your lashes are, so if you don’t deal with that issue with mascara, it is a good one to try.
Before that though, I really really liked how this looked on my lashes. Bummed it flaked on me. But I don’t think that will automatically be the case for everyone. I think how your lashes “grip” onto mascara, varies from person to person.
It has plenty of really great reviews, on Target is has 4.3 stars out of 1283 reviews! And on Amazon it has 4.2 stars out of 169 reviews. So clearly it’s working for some people. I didn’t see many reviews stating that they experienced flaking, so I don’t think it’s a very common problem.
Overall, this mascara is on the cleaner side, and at a pretty solid price point, but does flake on me. If you don’t deal with flaking, this could be a good mascara to try. It offers great definition and length! Plus you’ll be supporting Jessica Alba who shares my birthday, so that’s a win 😉
I picked mine up at Target, but you can also pick it up on Amazon. I know that Target accepts used products, so if you’re worried about flaking, you could try it and return if you have any issues.
