Rimmel London Brow Shake Filling Powder

The good: The packaging is nice and compact for chucking in a handbag, and it seals firmly. The powder itself is a good formula too. It adheres well to the brows, and once it's on (and given a few moments to settle), it pretty much stays put. It definitely makes my brows look thicker, sort of volumising the hairs that are there. For sparser areas, you obviously can't create hair-like strokes like you could with a pencil, but the powder does adhere to the skin, filling those areas with colour, so unless you're close up, the effect is still quite good. If I don't apply it too heavily, I can get an overall natural, fuller look to my brows, which is exactly what I want. It's deeply pigmented, so you don't really need to apply a lot for it to have an impact.

The not so good: First is the colour. I've got very, very dark brown hair, almost like a slightly auburn black, but pure black for my brows looks terrible and unnatural. So I got the next colour down - Dark Brown. It's certainly quite dark, but it's got a definite reddy tone to it. And even with the reddy tones in my hair, it looks a bit too auburn on my brows. I can kind of get away with it, but a true neutral dark brown would have been perfect. (Maybe I should buy the Black and mix it in...?!) And secondly is the applicator. It's a slim, padded wand that makes it really hard to apply exact amounts of product. I always ended up overdoing it. So I use an eyebrow brush. It's a bit fiddly - I load the product onto the wand, then transfer it onto my brush - but it's workable, and I get a much better result.

I'd recommend the product generally, but only to someone whose hair colour happens to match one of the few colour options available, and who doesn't mind using a separate brow brush to apply it.