[Description: Photo of four eyeshadow pencils of various colors.]
I need to take a moment to rave about Urban Decay’s 24/7 Shadow Pencils ($20 US) and how fantastic they are. These are basically eyeshadows in pencil form, and I’ve found them extremely useful, but perhaps not for the reasons you’d imagine.
As most readers of this blog know, I have moderate to severe chronic pain and fatigue issues due to fibromyalgia. Cosmetics, for me, are usually not an “everyday” thing (save for lipgloss or lipstick, because those take about 15 seconds to apply if I’m not doing anything fancy) because of the time that it takes me to do a “nice” makeup job. More often than not, the time it takes for me to do “nice” makeup translates into lost energy and/or more pain. Pain due to repetitive motion is one of those things that is outside the realm of most abled peoples’ experience, but on my bad days, putting cosmetics on–and screwing it up, and more often than not having to start all over again–can be physically painful. And yes, some people may be thinking, “Yeah, RIGHT, putting on eyeshadow can’t be that painful!” For me, though, it can be, and I’m sure a lot of people with fibro would say something similar. Just try putting on makeup when your arm feels like it’s been weighted down with a huge piece of iron. After a certain point, it just doesn’t feel worth it anymore, particularly if you’re in a lot of pain and yet you keep making mistakes with makeup application because you are in pain. Parts of it seem very chicken/egg.
Enter the UD 24/7 pencils. One or two swipes of the pencil is all it takes, and the actual shadow component of the pencil is large enough that it’ll cover your entire lid (downside: can lead to some imprecision). Granted, these aren’t going to completely prevent pain from repetitive motion, but the one or two swipes and you’re done thing is a huge improvement over having to apply eyeshadow primer, then apply shadow with a brush, then do it again if you screw up, then clean the brush(es) after you use them, et cetera. I haven’t tried blending these yet (and once I do, I’ll write about the results), but I will probably end up getting a few of these because they are awesome. I have the one in Sin (a very shimmery pink champagne/beige shade), and would like to try Barracuda (black with silver shimmer), Delinquent (shimmery eggplant purple), and Mercury (gunmetal gray). If you have chemical sensitivity issues, I am not sure if these would be appropriate given the list of ingredients (scroll down the page for ingredient lists; each pencil may contain different pigments and such).
In short, these things are awesome, and I highly recommend that you give them a go, if you’re so inclined.
[A slightly different version of this post appeared on my Tumblr.]
Anna Hamilton | Writer 