You must have seen the ads.. Penelope Cruz with gorgeous eyelashes and perfect make-up. Did you buy into the hype of the New Breakthrough Mascara? Yes, it’s brush does remind me of those spikey acrylic earring beads in crazy neon colours that the skater kids wear, but I definitely got sucked in by all the ads.

I went to buy the L’Oreal Telescopic Explosion mascara today and I LOVE IT!!! The little tiny brush is amazing. You can get to all of your eyelashes – even the baby corner ones, it’s not clumpy or too heavy. Basically, it’s great.

And then, I was sitting here thinking what else to write – well, because that’s pretty much it, and I thought, “this L’Oreal mascara looks REALLY big… I wonder how much bigger it is in volume compared to the Maybelline mascaras. It’s going to last forever!!”. So I dug out all of my Maybelline mascaras and a CoverGirl one, for good measure, and started googling the fl oz and ml of all of them.. And to my complete surprise, the volume of the L’Oreal one is actually less – but CoverGirl was surprisingly the smallest of them all. Check it:

** Oh my god, right?!?! I know!! **

Who’d have thought that the tiny baby Great Lash mascaras had more product in them compared to the others. And the pictures above ARE to scale.

In terms of the L’Oreal product, I figured it’s the packaging. It’s deceiving. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Most things are like that. Wine bottles with the big indent in the bottom of them… They could fit a few extra gulps in there if they levelled out the bottom… Face creams in boxes that have hidden empty compartments in the bottom of them – so you think the tub of cream is GIGANTIC, but you open it and to your dismay it’s miniscule.. I could keep going, but I won’t.

But this mascara, in the packaging, looked really big. And with the cap on, it’s enormous. Nevertheless, this is just a minor thing, and I will keep using it and continue loving it! Also, I do enjoy the name – Telescopic Explosion! Say it in a gameshow host voice! It’s very amusing!

The retail price for this is around £10.00 in the UK and around $12 in Canada.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

L’Oreal Telescopic Explosion
CoverGirl LashExact
Maybelline Define-A-Lash
Maybelline Great Lash – Clear
Maybelline Great Lash – Very Black

So I decided why not, and clicked on the link. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just X the window when it requests my credit card information’ – but surprisingly, it never did. I signed up, and it asked me to upload a photograph. So my boyfriend took one of me – a pretty bad one at that… It had everything, raccoon bags, flat hair, un-sculpted eyebrows. This photograph really would put their Makeover Studio to the test!

After uploading this monstrous picture, the site asked me to map out various points on my face: around the eyes, lips, head and eyebrows. Which I did, growing more and more impatient with every click – I just wanted to play with the make-up!

And finally, I was done! It brought me to a page where I could try on thousands of beauty products and accessories, from concealers to lip-glosses, and contact lenses to hair styles. I was slightly put off at first because at first I only saw super high end products like Dior, YSL and Givenchy to name a few – and I even joked to my boyfriend that they should put the prices of the products so that you can see how many dollars worth of make-up you end up with on your face when your transformation is complete. But then I noticed they actually do have high-street brands like Victoria’s Secret, Maybelline, CoverGirl and Revlon.

The first point of attack was to apply concealer to my raccoon eyes, and foundation to even everything out. The makeover studio has every shade of concealer and foundation – from geisha white to fake’n'bake orange. I was pleasantly surprised at it’s effectiveness at removing my bags and blemishes – and making myself orange was fun!

Next I moved onto the eye makeup. The options and combinations were staggering! And because of the face mapping feature, I could choose exactly where I wanted the products to be applied. Also, since I have an asymmetrical face, I could map the areas around my eyes accordingly so I didn’t end up looking like a crazy person who let a 3 year old apply their makeup.

Another thing I found very cool was how you can change the style of the eye shadow (mono wash, two tone, three tone or smokey), liner (top, inner or outer bottom, water-line, etc) and mascara (top, bottom, etc). It also allows you to choose the amount and thickness of the product, which was great as I found the eyeliner had a very harsh line.

I think the best part of this site was the brow thinning tool. It was realistic and really completed the make-up part of the makeover.

Then the fun *really* began. HAIR! I think I spent around 2 hours clicking and trying on all manner of hairstyles – from the huge collection in the site’s gallery and also Celeb styles. They have Lady GaGa, Rihanna, Heidi Klum, as well as many ’10 Fashion Week styles. The fun thing about the hair styles is that you can flip them, rotate them and adjust the width and height to fit the shape of your head. There are also a whole array of accessories to try – glasses, sunglasses, contacts, necklaces, etc. They have elaborately embellished hair sticks which you can choose to place anywhere, and a huge selection of hats and berets.

If you don’t feel like clicking away through all the different products, you can try the 1-Click Looks, where the website offers a selection of pre-programmed looks that they will apply to your face. I found these made me look like a Vegas show girl, but it was still fun and gave my boyfriend and I a few laughs!

The only downside was the lag time, it was quite slow to load – but then again, when you take into consideration the amount of information it has flying back and forth with the colors and styles, this can be forgiven!

I strongly recommend trying this site out.

http://www.dailymakeover.com/makeover/virtualMakeover