Maychiri's Thoughts: 2025

New Stuff - Part 59 [Essence Yee Haw! Limited Edition Spotlight]

August 03, 2025

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Essence Yee Haw! Jumbo Eye Crayon [01 - Big Dreams In Big Boots] Review

August 03, 2025

Let’s end the Yee Haw! LE with something that isn’t a lip product – this is the Essence Yee Haw! Jumbo Eye Crayon, shade 01/Big Dreams In Big Boots!

Oh my god! Ever since I first saw this crayon I knew I had to have it! It’s got a little cowboy hat, eeee! How mega cute is that??? I like the colour as well; I like golden shimmers on my eyes and how they typically mesh with my skintone. Plus, with it being a thicc crayon, applying the eyeshadow should be a breeze! See how excited I am for this? I really, really am – and the previous items being pretty good is a good omen for sure, right? Surely, this last item won’t be bad? Well, I am positively shaking in my (cowboy) boots to try this out finally! So let’s see what it’s like – I am dying to find out!

Reminder that you can see a video of the swatch on my Instagram Reel here!

Packaging: so, this is an eye crayon but jumbo sized! And they meant that! It is sooo thick and wide! I love the soft brown colour of the crayon, it totally gives off leather and cowboy vibes! The darker gold text is gorgeous but it is a bit hard to read because it blends with the brown colour. You have to angle it towards light just to read it clearly. Whatever, I don’t mind this too much. The colour of the text looks quite similar to the lead. The crayon is made of plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap, not really. I wonder if this is a retractable or sharpenable pencil... oh! It’s a retractable one. The retracting mechanism is very smooth and precise and holds its position very nicely. It feels quite high quality! I love the Western font they used and the little cowboy boots!

But this isn’t the only cowboy-themed detail here... check out that cap! Oh man, that is just soooo cute!!! It’s clear and plastic but it looks like a lil cowboy hat! Awww! So this crayon is a dapper lil cowboy with that hat on! I wonder if this would fit a LEGO person... hmm. Seems a bit wide for that, no? In any case, I fully plan to cut it just so that I have the hat alone. For what purpose? Oh I have no idea, but I want to do it! I just want to have this little clear plastic hat! Anyways, the cap closes extremely tightly, with a very satisfying ‘click’ once it has been closed properly. I am really impressed with the design, wow, this is sooo cool!

Source: www.essence.eu

Ingredients: vitamin E for nourishment. No parabens. Also, it’s got castor oil (hydrogenated). Lots of mica, it seems – well, it is shimmery, after all! The scent is barely noticeable, maybe a bit powdery. And a bit creamy. The expiration date is 18 months after opening.

Colour: gold. But a slightly orangeish kind of gold, as it does look a bit toasty. Almost like rose gold. Ah! This colour is a very close match to Crayola’s "gold", but slightly more vibrant and intense. It's got quite a lot of orange pigments in it, which reminds me a lot of old hay that’s been out in the sun. How very cowboy! It’s a fantastic colour for summer, matching the summer sunsets and heat. However, here’s the problem: it barely shows up on my skin. Damn. I mean, you can see it, but it’s not a vibrantly golden as I would have liked it to be. What a shame :( ... I guess this is one more item that is meant for tanned skin, but not all of us want to have that dark skin... oh well, if I use it with a lighter and darker gold, it will look good, I’m sure.

Ooh, this is one greasy formula! It is very creamy and so very soft! It also feels somewhat heavy on the eyelids, and a bit occlusive. Not the most comfortable formula around, and I can already tell that it’s not going to be on good terms with my oily eyelids. The creamier a formula is, the more it creases on my oily eyelids is the general rule. Hope this doesn’t happen here, I was so excited for this. But, this creaminess allows it apply better. So, you know, there’s a bit of good and a bit of bad. But I think I would prefer a slightly drier formula.

Soo... remember how I said that the formula is super soft? Well, that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Bad, because it is quite fragile. The pencil fell once and it broke from the base. Man... :( ... I had only used it once by then. But not all is lost! Such soft formulas are pliable – with heat! What I did was probably not exactly recommended, but it was the only way to salvage the pencil.

I retracted the pencil all the way down and then separated the broken off piece, warmed both it and the base with a lighter until the waxes started to melt and “glued” them back together, pressing down until the waxes started cooling. This has, so far, kept the pencil from breaking again. So just a heads up: be careful with this pencil as the lead likes to break! UPDATE: the lead is breaking again, seems like it cannot be glued with heat, not for a longer time at least... damn.

Such a soft, creamy formula is a dream to apply! It just glides across eyelids without ever tugging at them. And that’s without any sort of eyeshadow base. It applies better to bare skin, though. You don’t even need to press harder to get a nice thick, pigmented layer; a soft touch is more than enough. And it applies so incredibly evenly! It can look a bit chunky in places if you pressed too hard, but mostly it is smooth like molten gold. I love how simple it is to apply! Just swipe and go! If you are careful, there’s little need to even blend it out! It just ends up looking awesome from the start!

Ah, but it’s not too precise. After all, this is a jumbo pencil, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. Obviously, this is meant to be used to swipe colour across the entire eyelid, not make graphic eyeliner looks with it. That’s what fine-tip pencils are for. I don’t mind it not being precise, it is easy enough to get an even look on both eyes without having to spend a long time perfecting it. It truly is beginner-friendly in the best way!

Again, the positives of having such a creamy formula continue to show! This pencil is extremely easy to blend out – too easy, even, as you can quickly go from ‘perfectly blended out’ to overblended, which can make it look messy and uneven. So be careful how you blend it! It seems like fingers are the way to go, they lead to a more natural blended out effect compared to a brush, which can overblend sooner. But like I said, oftentimes, there is little need to blend it out in the first place so... see how there’s both positives and negatives?

This is a very shimmery eyeshadow! It’s practically metallic, which goes fabulously with the golden colour! However, the shimmer can be rather chunky sometimes, which is not ideal. Most of the time, it is fine enough, though still obviously textured. Like, grainy. And it’s completely opaque, even if the colour might look sheer on me. But nope, it’s covered all the veins so it’s obviously opaque! I must say that I really like the texture, it looks almost like molten gold! So awesome!

Despite feeling so greasy at first, which is uncomfortable, it dries down into a drier, more comfortable formula. I can still feel it on my eyelids, but it doesn’t feel like a greasy mess anymore. It actually feels incredibly lightweight! Hmm... wonder if that’s got something to do with the longevity because it is weird that it’s changed so much and why I can’t feel it anymore...

Longevity unfortunately sucks. This is all because the formula is just too creamy, so it starts to crease within literally minutes. Now, yes, I have very oily eyelids (and skin in general), so most creamy or liquid formulas tend to be... problematic for me. But to see it crease within 5 minutes? Now, that’s just unacceptable. And I tried to wear it on top of a powdery eyeshadow, on top of foundation as eyeshadow base (which yes, works, 90% of the time), and on bare skin.

It doesn’t matter, it still creases badly no matter how you apply it. This is very bad. It honestly makes the pencil unwearable. And it will make anything under it crease as well, so... like, what’s the point? And it’s not like there’s just a bit of creasing – it is extremely bad, like, 50% of the eyeshadow disappears within 10 minutes, leaving just 2 lines where it collected in the crease. This makes me so sad. And so disappointed.

I was really looking forward to this pencil, thinking that it would give a nice golden shimmery glow to my eyelids but what I got in the end is a creased up mess... Of course, I have no idea how it lasts on dry skin, but it is likely a similar problem. If not, then... sigh, another item that only oily skin cannot wear – and there’s plenty of us with oily skin, so this is very annoying. I am so pissed off... Oh, I almost forgot to mention: this pencil does not tolerate water at all. Or touching it. Basically, any sort of contact and it will slide right off. And it’s not just that it creases; it fully disappears by the end of the day. All that’s left are two tiny stripes where it creased. Completely unwearable...

This pencil is extremely easy to remove. Yes, it is super shimmery, but the shimmer doesn’t explode everywhere... most of the time. It is equally easy to remove with micellar water or with a specialised remover, the only difference being that makeup remover gel or such remove the shimmer more effectively so it doesn’t spread everywhere. But you can avoid that with micellar water as well, with a bit of care. Also, no staining or any other sign that the pencil ever was on the lids! Oh I do love when shimmery eye products are this easy and painless to remove!

Okay, so this might be a horrible idea. I am going to try to sharpen this pencil because, in the process of gluing back the lead, the tip has become flatter than Earth, according to flat-Earthers. Fingers crossed! Yeah... no. Not because sharpening the lead damages it but because it cannot even fit inside a sharpener! The outer case is too wide to fit a standard wide-pencil sharpener. This might have saved me from making a HUGE mistake. But, unfortunately, this also means that, once the tip becomes blunt, that’s it. Oh well, not like this is meant for precise lining anyways.

All in all, well, this was a wreck. “Surely, it won’t be bad” she said. Yeah, suuure. I don’t like to end on such a bad note. Look, I wanted to love this pencil, I really did. I was giddy with excitement ever since I first saw it, and became even more excited once I bought it. But that all quickly deflated once I actually started using the pencil. When I swatched it for my Reels (here & here), it all looked okay, but literally 5 minutes later, as I was done filming, I looked at the mirror and... oh god, the amount of creasing that had already happened. And remember, maybe 10 minutes had passed! I get that I have oily eyelids but it should be able to stay in at least decent shape – especially if it is applied on a base, not on bare skin. But no, however much I tried, I couldn’t get it to stay crease-free. On top of foundation? Nope. On top of powdery eyeshadow, so that it has a powdery base? Big fat NO. It’s just unusable. That’s the sad reality of it. I cannot even express how sad and disappointed I felt when I realised that I won’t be able to use this pencil. I believe that it’s all due to that creamy, greasy formula that, at first, felt so good to use. It applies very evenly, it is extremely easy to blend out, and it is actually very pigmented (even though the colour doesn’t show well on my skintone). It all seemed well... but, the formula is oily, my eyelids are oily. Ergo, disaster waiting to happen. Oil dissolves in oil after all. It’s also such a shame that this colour barely shows on me... I wanted a nice golden shimmer, but what I get is a barely-there straw-light gold kind of colour with some chunky shimmer. Which is a lovely colour on its own, but it just isn’t suited for pale skin. Which has been a recurring issue for Cosnova recently. Why is it so bloody difficult to make stuff that is suited for more than just tan skin? Oh also, the thing that angers me the most is how delicate and fragile the lead is. I know, makeup isn’t meant to tolerate falls, but for the entire lead to snap off at the first fall? And then be impossible to fully glue back together using a lighter? Like, what gives??? So yeah, this was a misery. I just feel so sad and defeated... the second most-excited-for item in this LE and it is a complete botch-job. Great. Just flipping great. No, I won’t recommend it. I cannot. No matter how cute it is and how adorable the cowboy hat is, it is pretty much unusable, so how can I recommend something like this? Bugger...

Rating: 3/10

Would buy again? Very sadly, NO 😥