Review: Makeup: Benefit Creaseless Cream Eyeshadow – My Date’s my Brother

When I previously wrote about my Benefit Creaseless Cream Eyeshadow in Skinny Jeans, I mentioned that a friend picked up a light shade – My Date’s My Brother. So, here’s a guest review by Monstro on My Date’s My Brother by Benefit Cosmetics. The first ever guest review on My Women Stuff! 🙂

I got hold of one of these recently, so I’m putting it to the test! The one I have is “My date’s my brother”.

The looks

I have to admit, it’s pretty cute. Check out those love birds on top of the box and jar. Adorable. And inside, is this note card–on one side is a picture of Ms Lana, and on the other, a quote that says “Love awaits you, so put on your lipstick.” For this, a little slap on the wrist to the twins for adding unnecessary packaging and adding to landfill waste. On the other hand, it is a lovely touch that makes me connect with the personality of the brand. So a little tip to Benefit: Keep the quirky personality, but maybe print that stuff within the box, rather than adding to it?

The goods

This is a lovely light baby pink cream shadow. As you can see from the pictures, this is extremely light and on my skintone, it almost doesn’t show up. This is not to say that it isn’t pigmented, but the colour itself is very close to my skintone. I chose this colour because I wanted to use it on lazy days, days when I didn’t want to worry what colour eyeshadow would go with what colour clothes. I’d call it a nude pink.

In terms of appearance, there is definitely a shimmer in this cream but it is so finely milled that after applying, I do not get an obvious shine. Instead, what I see is a bit of a glowy pink hue on my eyelid. I tested this initially over my regular daytime eye cream–Dermalogica Total Eye Care. Unfortunately, this eye cream does not agree with cream shadows as I’ve come to discover. The effect is an uneven, almost chunky texture on my eyelid. Which is not a good look. So, ladies, if you’re using this Dermalogica eye cream, best to skip it when applying Benefit’s Cream shadow. However, the next day I tested it with my regular Dermalogica moisturizer (for face) over my eyelids. And the effect was perfect. Smooth and easy to apply. I tried using both a brush, as well as my fingers to compare the difference. And overall, I preferred using my fingers as it was faster, and gave me much better control.

Making sure that I got real value for my money, I used this Creaseless Cream in several ways.

Here is a picture of a super lazy night look I created using the cream shadow with a bit of black pencil liner. It’s pretty sloppy, but you get the idea. All I did was apply “My date’s my brother” on my entire lid. Followed by the pencil liner, which was smudged a bit. And some mascara. Done.

Something else I did, was use the cream shadow to highlight the top of my cheek bones. I know it’s not meant for the cheeks, but I reckon if it’s safe for the eye area, it should be safe on the cheeks too. It’s not real obvious in the photos, but I did get a very light glow from it, which is not bad if you’re traveling and need to multitask with this product. Though in the long run, it’s no substitute for a proper powder highlighter.

Which brings me to the finish of this product. This is a cream to powder finish. So the first time I tried this stuff, I swiped some on my lids and went to the gym. It’s ridiculous I know, but I really wanted to test how creaseless it truly was. And Benefit has completely lived up to it’s claims of a creaseless cream shadow. What can I say? I put in an hour at the gym and my lids remained creaseless. This has never happened to me. Ever. I have oily lids, and almost all shadows crease on me. For comparison, I have tried Shiseido’s Hydropowder cream shadow. That stuff creased so badly on me. One more thing about this cool product is the fact that it has almost the same finish as Urban Decay Primer potion, but not quite as drying. I noticed it provides a very grippy surface, which leads me to believe that it will make powder eye shadows last longer if applied on top of it. I did test that out, but not at the gym. It lasted at least 8 hours. So Benefit’s Creaseless Cream shadow could also serve as an eye shadow base.

For Benefit to brazenly name their product like a straight-up claim, would mean that the product better deliver. And it did, hence “Creaseless”. The copywriter who labled this product must have taken 2 seconds to name it. 😀