That color tho.

When it comes to eyeliners, I'm definitely 100% a gel liner girl. I definitely can say that I'm more comfortable with gel liners than with liquids and pencils. That with my trusty liner brush, the EcoTools Angled Eyeliner Brush, I feel like I'm more likely to be successful with a cat eye haha! I've featured quite a lot of potted liners here in my blog before and while I've stopped using them for a while, I'm slowly getting into them again. Can't believe I'm saying this but I missed lining my cat eye liners!

I had to throw my old potted liners for hygienic purposes (and honestly, they're quite old already) so I'm slowly acquiring new ones again. Damn, nobody told me potted gel liners are hard to find nowadays! Every time I search for potted gel liners in Shopee, Lazada, or BeautyMNL, the results are pretty scarce, at least when compared to liquid and pencil liners. Thankfully, there's a brand that still sells potted gel liners so I thought I'd give one shade a try first before getting their other 4 colors. This is Focallure's Stay Max Smooth Eyeliner Gel in 04 Dark Byzantium (or Brandy Red in their Shopee page).

Shade 04 is a nice dark red-purple, kind of like an in-between of shades 03 and 05 (which is a red and a violet respectively). It's similar to a wine color that's deep red with a hue of purple. I find it really pretty! I feel like it complements my brown eyes really well and I think it'll also look great on hazel and green eyes. It's the kind of color you can use in place of a black liner except this one's less harsh and definitely more interesting. I can definitely see myself using this more than a black one!

I think what I was really skeptical about it was its formula. Considering how much it was (only Php99 when it's on sale in Shopee!), I wasn't really expecting a spectacular formula. Well now that I've used it, I can say that I am pleasantly surprised with its formula! It was far from the formula I was expecting that was either too dry or too creamy that it's thick; surprisingly, the formula was so easy to work with as it was smooth and thin but also buttery and just applies really fluidly on the eyes- no tugging required! I experienced no stray chunks of liner and I also didn't experience any skipping while drawing on my liner. I have to say though, the liner has the tendency to be a bit less dark sometimes so I have to refill my liner in some areas to achieve a solid block of color. Not really a huge deal but I guess it needs to be said.

Longevity-wise, this formula isn't as budge-proof as MAC Fluidline in Blacktrack. Now that liner has been through the wringer and has come out victorious every time. With the Focallure Stay Max, I don't feel too confident in its longevity. I've been wearing this liner at home (most of the time anyway) and even though I don't get sweaty that much, I still experience some transferring or flaking in the inner and outer corners of my eyes (where it gets oily and wet). This just shows that this isn't immune to pretty much any oils so priming beforehand and powdering from time to time is important to avoid major transferring and flaking.

Overall, I'd say this liner is a good buy. Is it MAC-level superb? No, but I still consider it a good buy. Its formula, color-range, and price are pretty good, and did I mention that you can also use this as a brow product? Pretty sure I'll be buying the other 4 shades, specifically 01 Midnight Black and 03 Bright Red- a girl should always have a nice black and red liner in her stash, no?

PS. When I purchased this liner, I also got two free brushes, an angled brush and a flat rounded brush. I didn't include them here in my review because well, I don't really use them. They're quite small brushes and I'm just not used to using such brushes for my brows and liner. So yeah, there's that!