You know, in all of my years of trying makeup, I’ve never once thought to consider Sephora Collection. Which is weird, right? I mean, it’s Sephora’s in house brand. The prices are usually pretty reasonable. And I rarely hear a bad thing about them. And yet, the only reason why I was even inspired to try this mascara was because one of my lovely readers suggested it when I did my mascara recommendations post. Which is how we got here. With me spending the last three weeks testing out the Big By Definition Mascara. Was it worth the recommendation? Let’s find out.
SEPHORA COLLECTION BIG BY DEFINITION MASCARA – $27.00 – sephora.com.au
One of the things that I have noticed about Sephora Collection is that their packaging tends to lean on the simple side. And that runs true with the Big By Definition Mascara. The Mascara is housed in a thin, lilac tube style packaging. There is black, red, and a deeper shade of lilac for the detail on the tube. The tube itself has that slight matte feel. But it doesn’t have the stickiness that that kind of packaging can occasionally have. The Big By Definition Mascara is cruelty free, vegan, and contains 8.5g of product.
The wand of the Big By Definition Mascara is, again, fairly simple as far as mascara wands go. Synthetic fiber bristles, straight, narrowing at the tip (I think I’ve seen this wand before…). If I had a nitpick (and I always do), this wand is a little on the long side. And I do wish that it narrowed more at the tip. As I found it difficult to reach my inner lashes without dinging my eyelid.
Getting into the formula now. And I will say, first impressions were quite bad. This starts off very wet and liquidy. It was the kind of formula where if you accidentally blinked too quickly after applying, you were going to have black smudgies all over your eyes, if you get my drift. Now that I’ve had it opened for a few weeks, I’ve noticed it beginning to dry down a little bit. And that has made it much easier to use. It clings to the lashes well and it’s rich in black pigment.
As far as interesting ingredients go, there are a few to be found here. There is a good array of healing seed oils that will nourish the lashes. There are also peptides to help strengthen and condition the lashes.
The two big selling points of the Big By Definition Mascara is that it’s supposed to make your lashes ‘big’ (volume), and give them definition. And if I’m being kind, I will say that this mascara does separate the lashes quite nicely. Especially when the formula dried out a bit. What it didn’t do in my eyes was make my lashes bigger. Like, can you tell that I’m wearing mascara on my right eyelashes? Because I built this up quite a bit. And it still looked like my everyday lashes.
The other big nitpick was that this made my lashes dead straight. Like, there was no lift, no curl, nothing. I’m not someone who gets lash lift, nor do I use an eyelash curler (yes, I know I should. It feels like I’m cheating). But I do have a natural lift to my lashes. And this mascara made them look almost dead straight. And my friends, very little is straight about me.
And now is as good a time as every to get into the wear test. As you can see in the after picture, there is some noticeable smudging under the eyes. In this mascara’s defense, this is generally about as bad as the smudging ever got for me. Most days, I would come home with my face looking pretty good. I will also note that my lashes did continue to droop ever so slightly throughout the day. There is a noticeable difference with my left eye with how far my lashes fell. Another notable thing is that this mascara, despite not being advertised as being waterproof, is quite difficult to remove. You definitely want to go in with an oil based cleanser to take this off.
All in all, the Sephora Collection Big By Definition Mascara isn’t a bad mascara. And the price point is a good one (especially seeing how often it goes on sale). But this isn’t for me. If you’re already blessed with long, lifted lashes, I would see this being a good option to further enhance them. But if you have easily droopable lashes, maybe give this one a skip. Have you tried the Sephora Collection Big By Definition Mascara? Let me know in the comments.
Cheers and love
Emily xo