Cover Girl Lash Exact

My Lashes and What I Want

My lashes are long, but thin. They're brown with lighter tips, which I find boring and not dramatic enough for my dark hair. I always want the blackest mascara I can find, and I'm a fan of the false lash look (no "natural" look for me when it comes to my lashes!). I don't necessarily need L'Oreal Voluminous' Carbon Black, but black-brown and brown shades just won't do.

I also like my products to multi-task. I don't want to have to buy a mascara for lengthening to layer with a mascara for volumizing. I'm a little spoiled; I want it all—and in one product. Cover Girl doesn’t come right out and say this mascara will do it all; promising only defined lashes with no clumps. Reviews on Makeup Alley lead me to believe this one could be my holy grail, though.

On a convenience note, I like mascaras I can buy at any drugstore because every now and then, I get the urge to try new ones at 10:00 p.m. when department stores aren't open. And who really needs to drop $25.00 on mascara that should be tossed within three months anyway?

I love my department store cosmetics, but mascara's one of those areas I'll go for cheap. I love getting a good product for roughly $6.00 instead of $20.00 or more. Cover Girl Lash Exact delivers. It's good, it's inexpensive, and it's available at all hours thanks to 24-hour Walgreens and Wal-Mart.

Cover Girl Lash Exact: Two Versions

As a contact wearer and a chronic allergy sufferer, I love the benefits of waterproof mascara. I also hate that it's hard to get off, so I don't wear it daily. Being the mascara junkie that I am, I went ahead and bought Cover Girl Lash Exact in both versions. Of course, I bought the blackest black in both.

Non-Waterproof

The formula here is pretty thin so it applies nicely and you can keep building it up as needed to get your lashes as lush as you'd like. I can usually get pretty dramatic lashes with two or three coats.

It didn't smudge even though it's not waterproof. My lashes looked good after hours of wear, so the mascara didn't smudge under my eyes or flake off of the tips.

Waterproof

This one stays on, I'll give it that. It flaked a little on me, but nothing like other brands I've tried. The application was a little drier than the non-waterproof version, which took some getting used to, but it was no big deal. The results were still the same—long, thick, defined lashes.

The Package and the Formula

Cover Girl jumped on the bandwagon (or did they start it?) with the small, rubbery brush that it seems every brand has under their belt by now. I'm no mascara brush or formula expert so I can't tell you why I find this one superior to almost all the others, but the combination just works.

The brush has tiny little teeth all the way around, so be careful when you get it close to your eyes! It's still the same basic shape as a traditional mascara wand, unlike L'Oreal Telescopic's brush, which has flat sections and pointy sections.

The package itself is pretty and discreet without disappearing into your makeup bag never to be found again in its dark depths. It's a bright pinkish purple. The waterproof version has a metallic blue ring right around the top of the tube, so if you're like me and buy both kinds, you can tell them apart in a jiffy. It's not as bright and gaudy as Maybelline's metallic lime tube of Define-A-Lash, a mascara with a similar brush and similar claims.

Color

As I mentioned earlier, I like to have the blackest black I can find, so I bought Blackest Black. It doesn’t seem exceptionally dark, but it's not gray or brownish either, which is a problem with some other brands. It's just a good, standard black.

The Verdict

I am surprised to say that a Cover Girl mascara has earned a spot as my second favorite mascara, second only to L'Oreal Telescopic (which also took a while to grow on me). Normally, I go for L'Oreal and Maybelline mascaras exclusively. I have already bought this mascara three times. As long as it stays available, I will continue to keep myself stocked with it..