I feel like mascaras are such a hit or miss. Either you love it or you don’t. With any other makeup product, I feel like you can often make it work half-decently at least. But with mascaras, if it’s the wrong wand or formula, you suddenly have a clumpy, spidery lash mess on your hands. Thus, that is why I am so picky with my mascaras. I need a mascara to work great and turn my lashes into a full, voluminous array or else I’m not even going to waste my time with it. But, unfortunately, this Almay One Coat Mega Volume Mascara was not one to work to my advantage.
First of all, when you pull the wand out of the tube, it looks so dry. I am never one to like the drier formulas of mascaras so I was disappointed right off the bat. However, when I went to apply the mascara, the seemingly dry formula suddenly turned into a wet, clumpy mess. I’m not sure if you have experienced this but if I use a really wet mascara on my long lashes, they tend to all stick together and form 3 or 4‘mega’ lashes. It’s not a cute look. That’s why I usually like a happy medium between a wet and dry formula. (Think somewhere along the lines as Dior Pump n’ Volume or Lancome Monsieur Big).
The second thing to note about this mascara is the shape of the brush. It’s described as a megaphone style wand, which I really don’t understand the purpose of. I think it’s more of a gimmick than anything. Almay recommends using the flared end to add extra volume to the outer lashes, but when I tried to do that, once again, it just turned into a clumpy mess. You can also comb the flat end of the brush verticallythrough the lashes, but, probably to no one’s surprise, that didn’t work for me either.
But even though I did give this mascara a less than stellar review, I do want to stress the fact that mascara is such a personal preference. There are so many mascaras that I love that other people hate and vice versa. Everyone has different lashes and thus, everyone is going to have different tastes for mascara. So if you disagree with everything I said above and found this mascara really worked for you, be sure to let me know down in the comments!