Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes & Opening Act Mascara

One of my favourite discoveries of this year so far was the Tarte Tarteist mascara, it was everything I normally wouldn’t like in a mascara, but that bad boy worked. Naturally it made me want to try some of Tarte’s other mascaras so when I saw this duo in Sephora whilst in Malaysia it was a no-brainer to give them a try – particularly as I know Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes has been a staple for many people for a long time.

This duo features a lash primer, Opening Act and Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara a mascara that I know has a lot of love by many and it’s always been one that I’ve wanted to try but never gotten around to trying it. I thought this would be a really handy handbag/makeup bag product as it’s slimline dual ended design is perfect for travel and on the go, despite that it’s basically sat on my dressing table in my ‘currently using’ mascara pot.

Lights, Camera, Lashes

Whilst it might make more sense in some ways to talk about the primer, the thing you apply first I want to talk about more how this performs by itself.  The full size of this has a leathery snake patent texture feel to it, which has been mimicked on both of these products with a subtle snake print echoed onto both.

The Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara has a very full hair bristle brush, the brush is long, but in terms of it’s shape/length it’s nothing extraordinary in terms of it’s appearance. The brush lifts up a decent amount of product but isn’t dripping with any excess, the formula is quite dry from the get go.

I find that it’s difficult to get the product off the brush and I have to layer and layer it up, I think because it’s so dry, but I really have to work it through my lashes, almost concentrating on a lash by basis to make sure that they’re coated. The mascara doesn’t add much length for me but creates a full and fluffy like lash which does look really pretty.

I could cope with the effort required as the lash look is really pretty, but there’s a big problem I have with this and that’s that it just doesn’t last through the day well. It doesn’t flake or smudge but it just almost evaporates off the eye, when I get home from a work day I expect my mascara to still be on my eye but with this it isn’t. It still has a rich mascara coated blackness to the lashes, but the volume disappears to a natural lash.

Pictures below are just mascara alone

Opening Act

So now for the primer – the brush on this is identical to the mascara, except for this time it’s white! I have a bit of mixed feelings on white primers, white is handy to know that you’ve coated the lashes over the mascara, on the other hand who wants to working harder to make lashes super black by having to work over a lighter base? Due to the dry formula of the mascara already described which is already hard work to coat the lashes and it is even harder work when the two are combined together to get the white covered.

I’ve found that the primer does help to add some length to the lashes prior to mascara, but I find that after that it’s harder to build up the volume on top of it. I’ve included an image below of me using the mascara below on left hand side, on the right hand side is the primer then the mascara, it’s not difficult to see the difference in volume and the length after a few coats becomes evened out between the two.

Sadly this duo was a total dud for me, whilst I actually quite like the effect on the lashes the fact it doesn’t last isn’t beyond disappointing. After a few short weeks of really trying with these and attempting to get it to work out for me, expecting some kind of epiphany moment where I’d suddenly discover why so many people love it, sadly that moment hasn’t materialised and it’s heading straight to be the first item in my empties for November.

Let me know if you’e tried the Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara, or the duo – I’m intrigued to know if I’m the only one who didn’t end up loving it!

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Email: helplesswhilstdrying@gmail.com

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