Automatic Eye Pencil

Catrice The Great Christmas Advent Calendar Multi-Chrome Eye Pencil [C02] Review

By Maychiri's Thoughts - February 02, 2025

Ah, yes, the other eye pencil. I am not thrilled about it at all, not after seeing the debacle that the first one was. I am hopeful, though, because this pencil has a chance of redeeming itself and showing that I will have at least one eye pencil to work with in this calendar. Because I really need one to go with the Eyeshadow Palette. This one appears to be bluish-purple, which would be awesome if it actually worked, unlike C01. So let’s see how good it is!
 
 
 
 
Packaging: just a black plastic pencil, but it has some nifty details. The Catrice logo, as well as the rest of the text, is multi-chrome! It switches from a rich green into a blue and then into a purple. Wooow! Hope this is what the pencil itself will look like on the eyes! However cool this effect may be, it makes it hard to read the text. The pencil feels like it has okay build quality; it doesn’t feel loose or cheaply made. The cap is solid black and closes very tightly. 
 
 
Inside is the retracting mechanism that isn’t too bad. It sometimes feels a bit loose, but it’s mostly good enough. It’s easy enough to rotate it to get the lead out, and it generally holds its position. Sometimes it can be a bit hard to rotate, though.
 
 
Ingredients: vitamin E, squalane for nourishment. No parabens. The scent is barely noticeable; it smells a bit soapy. The expiration date is just 6 months after opening, way too short.
 
 
Oh boy... yeah, the swatch isn’t looking too good. Just like C01, it’s very patchy and filling in the blank spaces was pretty much impossible. Great... so am I going to have another pencil that looks decent in a swatch, but is completely unusable in actuality?
 
 
 
So, the colour this pencil is supposed to be, judging by the swatch, is like a peacock bluish green, going into bright purple and then vibrant blue. Supposed to be, because that is not what it looks like on the eyes. On the eyes, it is pale blue for the most part. Well, at least the colour is visible to some degree... unlike what C01 had. But it is still way too pale and muddy. And the ‘multi-chrome’? Barely visible on the eyes, though it is more noticeable than C01’s pathetic attempt at this. 
 
 
It’s not even that the camera doesn’t capture the effect properly, it just flat out isn’t there, for the most part. The colour is a bit more vibrant when you apply it to bare eyelids, and the shimmer becomes slightly more visible, but it is still way too bland. This is supposed to pop – to be in your face! Not... whatever this colour is... peacocks would not be proud.
 
 
 
The texture is very chunky shimmery. It looks extremely messy and ugly, but at least it doesn’t look like dirt, unlike C01. I can see some of that ‘multi-chrome’ if I close my eyes and angle my head, but it is far from what it should be. The shimmer is way too chunky and messy and the end result is overall... not good.
 
 
 
 
Well, the pigmentation isn’t as bad as it could be, I guess. At the very least, it is not C01-level of bad. There is some pigmentation, enough to make the eyelids slightly blue, but you cannot make any extremely bright lines with it. I was envisioning making a peacock-like eyeshadow with this but obviously, that’s a bust. Granted, I did apply like 5 layers, but it still isn’t very pigmented. So it seems like a critical lack of pigmentation is a shared ache between the two eye pencils.
 
 
 
The formula is just a tiny bit less dry, compared to C01. It’s still very dry, but at least it doesn’t feel like I am trying to scratch my eyes out with it while I am applying it. But I still don’t get why it’s so dry... the calendar is newly made and the pencil has squalane so it shouldn’t be this dry. And because it is so dry, it applies very unevenly and looks very messy. It is next-to-impossible to make it look good, and that doesn’t just apply to using it as eyeshadow. 
 
 
 
Even just drawing a winged eyeliner is impossible as it skips across skin and deposits the pigment unevenly. So what can it be used for??? Excellent question because I have no clue. I guess I am glad that it doesn’t tug at the eyelids quite like C01, so at least I am not killing my eyes trying to squeeze out whatever small amount of pigment there is. But it is not at all blendable. Yay. As soon as I tried to blend it out, it started to crumble. So now I have a crumbly mess on my eyelids, which is just fantastic...
 
 
 
Well, I will say that this pencil is a bit more usable than C01, but it is still borderline unusable with how bad it is. I had to press very hard just to get any pigment out, and even then, it was unevenly pigmented. Plus, all that squeezing made the lead break more than a couple of times. So yeah, it’s a miserable experience but at least it is gentler on the eyes than C01. My eyes didn’t feel sore or like they are burning, which is tiny consolation for everything else that is horrible. 
 
 
And I don’t know what I am doing wrong; I tried to apply this pencil going both left-right and up-down and it still ended up being so goddamn patchy. Why doesn’t it want to apply like a normal pencil... why?? Why can’t I get my nice peacock-like eye look??
 
 
And just like C01, it seems to hate being applied to anything other than bare eyelids. I use foundation/concealer as eyeshadow base (a trick I learned from professional MUAs) and this eye pencil just hates that. I can use other eye products just fine this way, but this pencil ends up being so pale, so washed out and so horrible. And no, I am not about to stop doing this just for these two crappy pencils.
 
 
 
Here’s one good thing: it is extremely lightweight. Hey, that’s something! Not much, but something. I cannot feel it on my eyelids, it’s that lightweight. I don’t even feel it on my crease... wait, hmm.
 
 
Ah yes, it figures that I wouldn’t be able to feel it in my crease when it creases so badly that there is no pencil left in the crease! This is atrocious. And it started to crease immediately, while I was still applying it! Talk about trash wow. So no, it cannot be used as an eyeshadow or like any graphic look that would go over the crease. However, it doesn’t fade during the day and it doesn’t seem to migrate vertically. It seems to stay in place the whole day. It doesn’t crumble further, either. Meh, this is awful... there really is no way to wear it, is there?
 
 
 
While the pencil itself is quite easy to remove, the shimmer is very stubborn. Of course, that is normal for such shimmery products, but it is always annoying. That’s why I suggest using a specialised remover instead of micellar water; that way, at least you’ll prevent the shimmer from going everywhere. Another thing to note is that this pencil doesn’t stain the eyelids, so that’s nice...
 
 
 
And lastly, can this be sharpened? Well, yes, technically, if you had one of those tiny automatically eye pencil sharpeners. But I wouldn’t bother. It’s not worth the time or effort.
 
 
 
 
So, overall, what can I say about this pencil? Nothing good, unfortunately. It is just slightly better than its C01 counterpart, so this means that it is still garbage. But slightly better garbage... yay I guess? I still don’t understand how they managed to ruin both of these pencils so badly. Catrice has good – great, even – eye pencils, so what the hell happened here? And how does it go from having a decent swatch to being so terrible on the eyes? Nothing is good; the pigmentation is awful, especially for what should have been a majestic bright blue turning into purple and lighter aqua blue. The swatch promised a peacock-feather-like effect but what I got on my eyes is a watered down mess that doesn’t resemble that at all. The multi-chrome effect is barely visible from how pale it is overall. I can maybe see it if I turn my head a certain way, but it isn’t as visible as it was on the swatch. This, to me, is the biggest disappointment. Sure, I could forgive it being poorly pigmented if only the effect it was named after was visible. Because what’s the point if having a multi-chrome pencil without it actually being multi-chrome? It’s barely duochrome as it is, let alone multi-chrome. And it applies so awfully; believe me, I tried to make it look good but it is basically impossible. It ends up being patchy and very uneven no matter what I do, and it cannot even be salvaged by blending it out as it crumbles when you try to do that. Oh, and it creases immediately- by that, I mean, while I am still applying it! So what if it doesn’t fade during the day? It’s useless either way. And this actually makes me sad. Whereas C01 made me very angry, C02 being so bad just makes me sad. Because I envisioned having this great colour-shifting blue eyeshadow look... only to get... this. This... garbage. Oh well... maybe the next day will have something to cheer me up because I am feeling bluer than this eye pencil... 



Rating: 2/10
 
 
 
 

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