By Terry Eye Angled Eyeliner Brush

Angled eyeliner brushes are a great tool for applying cake liners, because the moistened powder liner can be a bit uneven and/or hard to control when used with thin pointy brushes. A wider angled brush grabs and holds the product better and is easier to use for those of us more used to the pliable texture of gel liners. These angled brushes are often mistaken for eyebrow tools and can sometimes be interchangeable, but most good eyebrow brushes are thicker and sometimes have a softer rounded edge for more natural results.

I picked the By Terry Eye Angled Eyeliner Brush about five months ago when SpaceNK was phasing out the old design  of By Terry brushes- the plain black ones (By Terry brushes now have a shiny silver colored handles that make me confuse them with the ones from Dior). The brushes were 50% off, so I picked what I found and stocked up on my favorite contour brush.

The thing about By Terry Eye Angled Eyeliner Brush is that it's so outrageously overpriced it's hard to review it objectively. Brush prices are based on materials and craftsmanship. The angled liner brush is synthetic and relatively small, so you know you're not paying for uncut unicorn hair that was hand picked and carefully arranged and bound. Full retail price of this By Terry brush is $35. For comparison, Hakuhodo brushes of similar size and shape, including Kokutan and S100s are priced between $26-$34, and we're talking top quality, all natural weasel or water badger hair and ebony handles.

At half the price, though, By Terry Eye Angled Eyeliner Brush is very decent and a good performer. The hair is firm and densely packed into a thin ferule that allows for a crisp and precise application. It washes easily and so far have maintained the spring and all its hair (unlike a similar Eco Tools brush, RIP), so I'm not kvetching. I also like the width, because it allows for fewer strokes (I never had the patience for lining dot by dot). You can see that in this aspect the By Terry brush is better and firmer than MAC 208 (not to mention the wobbly looking Sephora Professional, but then again this one is about 8 years old). The eyebrow brushes in the photos are here mostly for size and shape comparison. They live in separate drawers and I haven't tried to make them multitask for eyeliner.

Bottom Line: for its price, this brush should operate itself.

By Terry Eye Angled Eyeliner Brush ($35) is available from SpaceNK and Barneys.