Sana Make Essence Concealer Review

We all got pretty damn excited last week when I posted about the Sana Make Essence Concealer (CLICK!). It wasn’t the concealer that got us so hyper but the packaging and the cute little bear prancing around the packaging with angry dark circles under his ickle eyes! Awww the cuteness was too much for everyone to bear (pun intended hahaha…”everyone to bear…” get it? The Muse is hysterical isn’t she? And corny as bloody hell!)!

Of course, buying into the bear’s kawaii image was easy enough for the Muse! Who wouldn’t get sucked in by a bear being depressed about his dark circle eye problem. After all, who better, then a cute little bear to relate to our problems of dark circles under our unrested eyes…right?

Wrong.

Sana Make Essence has the cute bear going for it but that’s about it. Sadly, this doesn’t work worth a damn and the Muse is still suffering from dark circles and in need of a something WAY more pigmented to conceal her under eye woes.

Jenn, from Japan, kindly pointed out that bear and circle are actually the same word in Japanese….who knew right? Which explains why Sana went with the bear image however I personally think Sana was trying to suck in schmucks like the Muse who dig cute packaging!

Awww who could resist this little guy?

So what is this stuff anyway?

It’s a yellow based concealer that actually has the potential to be great but somewhere along the way it fails miserably. The concealer comes in a small squeeze tube with a needle nose applicator for application. You can squeeze a bit out on your finger or dab some on with the applicator, it’s entirely up to you how you use it. As we all know, I hope we all know, yellow is normally a good solid color for concealing dark circles. If you have particularly bad dark circles you’ll want to seek out a strong yellow based concealer. In this case, Sana Make Essence, isn’t yellow based but actually yellow in color which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’ve used completely yellow concealers before and had successful results at concealing my dark under eye circles.

One of the main problems with the product is that it isn’t pigmented enough to conceal anything. The concealer does lighten the area a tiny little bit but as far as concealing dark circles that’s not happening anytime soon. The formula is nice enough in that it’s not too thick nor is it too runny but just about perfect in it’s consistency however it does seem quite a good deal drying when applied. I did notice that it has a rather interesting texture that’s partially silicon feeling. If it was pigmented enough to conceal it’s texture would be nice for filling small lines however it fails terribly at actually concealing so anything else that could possibly be good about this is killed off in the long run as it doesn’t perform it’s most basic and primary function of..simply..concealing. One of the second problems with the product is the scent. I suppose they were going for fresh scented? Or maybe not? But it has a faint plastic, just out of the tube scent that’s rather off putting.

Sadly, the only thing that’s awesome about Sana Make Essence Concealer is the packaging and the nice price. At 800 yen the concealer is super cheap but honestly it could be free and it would still stink! If you’re really lemming it you can get it around the Internet with a price tag that’s jacked up around $4-$5 on top of retail but I seriously don’t recommend it.

The Muse no likey and says skip this one! Not worth your money and just doesn’t do what it promises!

Although the bear is prancing around happy and dark circle free the Muse sure isn’t!

Happy dark circle-free bear! Yay! (the Muse thinks he used something else to conceal those dark circles!)

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