Influenster is promoting Marc Jacobs‘ new Velvet Primer and Velvet Noir Mascara and I was chosen to review them!

For those unfamiliar, Influenster is a site and app where you can apply to get makeup for free. You don’t have to be a blogger or YouTuber – you just have to have some kind of social media account and be able to provide reviews on the products you try out on Influenster’s own web site. 

While the Velvet Primer is the primary purpose of the promotion, Influenster also sent along Marc Jacobs‘ Velvet Noir mascara. I hadn’t tried either product before so I was happy to give them both a shot. But I have to say… I was super skeptical. Lash primers tend to be white products which only end up making your mascara look black.

Thankfully, I was happy to discover that the Velvet Primer is actually a peach tone!

Marc Jacobs promises that the Velvet Primer is “an ultra-plush lash primer with a conditioning base that maximizes the benefits of your favorite mascara for a false-lash look” and that the Velvet Noir mascara “an ultra-volumizing mascara that delivers instant dimension for epic lashes”. Both wands are shaped the same: they have natural fiber bristles and a slight hourglass-shaped wand. The curve on the hourglass isn’t extreme though (like the Too Faced Better Than Sex mascara) which made it a bit easier for me to apply since I’m not a huge fan of hourglass shapes.

For application, I would coat on a thick coat of the primer and let it sit for about a minute before applying mascara. I found the Velvet Primer was easy to apply and the peach tone does a great job of showing you which lashes you’ve covered (in case you missed any). I then went in with the Velvet Noir mascara and coated directly on top of the primer. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the mascara covered the primer without any issue. There weren’t any gaps I had a hard time filling, and the primer didn’t leave my lashes looking grey after I’d applied mascara (which was my biggest concern).

Final Thoughts

But did it… do anything? I mean… a bit? But nothing massive. The shot above has primer applied before mascara on the left side, and only the mascara on the right side. I think you can see a little bit of extra girth to my lashes at the root, but it’s not super obvious.

I found that is I layered a lot of primer on my lashes I could get my lashes to look quite chunky… but a lot of the extra primer ended up at the tips of my lashes which didn’t look great so I would just pinch them off. I also don’t like the look of super clumpy lashes so I feel like I stopped applying primer before I got to that stage (which is maybe why my results are not that impressive).

What I did like was that the primer can add a little extra oomph without going totally overboard. I like that it was covered by the mascara easily. And above all else, I like that the two products worked very well together AND they were flexible together – my lashes never felt crunchy. They also never flaked on me (which is impressive since I tend to have a decent amount of issues with mascara flaking on me).

Do these replace false lashes for me though? Absolutely not. Would it help you out if you have particularly thin lashes? Yes, but not in a massively voluminous way. For me, I’ll continue to use the mascara since I think it’s quite good, but I don’t think I need the hassle of the extra step of the primer (even if it is goof proof) in the morning.

The products featured in this post were sent courtesy of Influenster. Post contains affiliate links.