Etude House Play 101 Pencils (Swatch + Review)

Korean brand - Etude House, has a range of multipurpose pencils called Play 101 Pencils. The general idea is that you can use them anywhere on the face - for example, on the eyes, lips, cheeks and eyebrows.
My mum and I have slowly accumulated quite a few after she picked up more of these when she went to Seoul (as you might have seen as part of her Asia haul). So today, I thought I would put up a swatch and review of our combined collection for you.

The shade selection is huge, with up to 50 (maybe more now) colorus available. They are divided into 5 different formulas/finishes: Creamy, Matte, Glossy, Shimmering and Glitter. Etude House has a cute little chart too that maps out the colour range and some proposed uses for them:

I love the design of these pencils. They are retractable with the colour caps at the bottom doubling up as a detachable sharpener. The colour caps are pretty true to the colour of each pencil too.
Here are the colours that my mum and I own, in order of shade number and a breakdown of each one:

3, 4, 5 - Glitter - Sparkly silver, pale pink and pale champagne-gold

12 - Glossy - A bright orangey red 

19 - Creamy - A true magenta

28, 31 - Glitter - A sparkly peachy pink and muted purple grey

33 - Matte - A very neutral rosy pink

35 - Glitter - A navy with shimmers

36 - Glitter - A vibrant turquoisey/blue with silver glitter particles

42 - Matte - A light cool-toned taupe brown

48 -  Glitter - A deep brown with some slight shimmer

Onto the actual formula of the pencils. Most of these are very creamy, pigmented and glides on with easily. I haven't tried using them all over the eyelid as an eyeshadow yet. They are not as creamy as cream eyeshadows or eyeshadow sticks and they do have some drag to them so I didn't want to drag it around my eyelid too much trying to blend it out. The super glittery ones (such as 3, 4 and 5) are slightly harder to work with and need more effort to build up as the glitter particles are chunkier and there's no actual base colour.
If you intend to blend any of these pencils, you should do it quickly because they don't take long to set and once they do, they do not budge. Especially if you want to use it as a blush, I would suggest using your fingertips to warm up the pencil nib before dabbing it onto the skin, gradually building the colour, rather than drawing directly onto the cheeks and applying across a large area at once.
The pencils are extremely long-wearing and I had no issues with smudging or fading around the eye area. I found the glossy and creamy formulas were the easiest to work with across the board. The matte formula was a little too dry for the lips. Number 12 and 19 both went on very smoothly and gave a beautiful, vibrant matte finish without being too drying however 33 was definitely much dryer and looked patchy. I don't know what I'm going to use 33 for now because I bought it with the intention of using it as a lip colour and it's going to look like I have pinkeye if I use it as a liner.
31 is perhaps my favorite and most used one out of the lot. It's a really flattering colour and I love using it on my bottom lash line.

My mum was gifted with her purchase this 4-in-1 brush designed to be used with these pencils. This brush can be pulled apart and reassembled with the 4 tips available: an angled and a normal liner brush, a short domed shadow brush and a sponge tip. As all of the brush tips are quite densely packed, it actually really helps blend out the pencils once you have applied them on or around your eyes.

All in all, I do like the concept of these. It's quite clever and it means that you have a wide spectrum of colours to choose from. I suppose they do work all-over the face but only to a degree. In my opinion, they still work best as eyeliners. There are just better or easier products I'd use for everything else.

Have you tried these Play 101 Pencils from Etude House? What do you think?

chloé