Drugstore has jumped hard on the brow pen vagon and here we have a spin on the felt top eyebrow pen from Essence, one of my favorite drugstore brands of all time.
The Essence Tiny Tip Precise Brow Pen is a semi-permanent felt tip brow pen with buildable intensity. The tip is truly tiny so you can get the best precision and it's also very flexible. It comes in 3 shades, I have the shade 02 medium brown and it retails for around 70 Crowns. You get 1.1ml of product and it's vegan and cruelty-free.
The packaging looks just like a liner and they even have an eyeliner with the same type of felt tip so look out for that so you don't accidentally pick up and eyeliner instead of a brow pen. I really like the shade medium brown because it's nice and neutral. It doesn't lean red which I really appreciate. It has a very tightly fitting lid so I feel like it's not going to dry out quick.
I was a little scared of the felt tip at first because felt tip products usually get clogged by other makeup and stop working but I've had this brow pen for months now and nothing like that happened so far. Overall, it's very comfortable to hold and use and I would say it's one of the best brow pens I've tried so far.
It's decently pigmented but not as much as a pencil for example. The tip is very thin so even if you go a little too hard is doesn't smear or make a mess because the tip doesn't let it. I think it's very beginner friendly. The strokes are look quite natural but it takes a little bit of practise to really get them as thin as a hair. That being said, even if you're not skilled with it at all the result it not going to be bad at all because it's very fool-proof.
Wear test
For today's wear test I used just the Essence brow pen and a clear brow gel to really show you how the pen looks in the eyebrows. The application was quite alright even though I was in a hurry. The gel applied on top just fine, it didn't change the color at all and it also didn't move the product at all. The pen dries really fast so you have to be a little precise with it because it's not a pencil so you cannot just blend it away if you overdo it.
I didn't have any problems with it and if I had more time I would've done a bit better job at the brow tails. Overall though I think the brows look very fluffy and natural and I really enjoy this look. On the left there's a picture from the morning and on the right there's a picture just before I took my makeup of.
List of used brow products
Essence Tiny Tip Precise Brow Pen, shade 02 Medium Brown
NYX Control Freak Brow Gel, shade Clear
Wear time 11 hours
As you can see in the after pic the brows look pretty much the same. The gel is quite a keeper so the brows were still fixed to one place and the brow pen still made them look very nice and fluffy. The pigment doesn't fade or move so I would say that it's very longlasting. It's been snowing too so I'm glad to know that the snow won't mess it up either.
Final thoughts
I think that brow pens are a great trend and I really like the look they give me. Often I struggle with the packaging and the application a lot though because there's not much room for mistakes and the product tends to be hard to fix or re-do. This brow pen is probably my favorite in terms of usage.
The tip is very thin and flexible so it's easier to do the thin hair strokes. It's not overly pigmened, it doesn't bleed and really it looks quite natural. It's very longlasting and it doesn't seem to stain my skin which I prefer so I don't think it's really semi-permanent at all because I can remove it perfectly fine with my cleansing balm. That doesn't bother me at all though.
It gives me amazing fluffy and natural looking brows and it's fairly fast to use once you get used to it. The one thing that kind of sucks is the shade range. I feel like if they included more shades, people would probably be way more excited about the product because many people go for cool-toned blond and taupe shades which are missing from the shade range. It's an amazing brow pen but people are probably going to miss out on it because there's not a perfect shade for them.
But if you feel like one of the shades could match you, go get this because it's super cheap and it works and lasts really well. This is the brow pen I am most excited about so far and I use it the most.
Have you tried brow pens? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!