The Great Mascara Experiment: Update #2: Pho-tos!

Well, that's a wrap: I'm declaring the first round of the Great Mascara Experiment of 2008 over!

First round, you say? Yeah, I'm likely going back for a second round. As you've probably gathered from past posts, I've been unhappy with my results. For one, I didn't get any really gross or icky growth on either of the petrie dishes. And the one that I did get some ickiness on... was the brand-new one. Say what?

Starting off, here's photos of day zero of the mascara petrie dishes, March 23rd:



Oooh, pretty, right? Riiight. On the left-hand side is the brand-new, just-opened mascara, and on the right-hand side is the mascara I used every day for seven weeks.

I gave the petrie dishes about a week and a half of sitting in my dresser before realizing that nothing had really (visibly) grown. Since bacteria loves dark and warm places, I added a heating pad and let them sit for a weekend. I turned it off and left it alone for another week. So it's been growing a while, but the agar actually dried up from all of the heating (oops?).

Here's today's (April 14th) photos:


No big change in the Seven Weeks, but the Brand New is growing a couple of bacteria colonies in light-grey/white. Ick! But why the Brand New? Did I get the lids confused when I did the initial swiping back on March 23rd? I made sure I didn't. Did something contaminate it?

My feeling is that if I really want a conclusive answer, I do have to go back and start from scratch and go for the three months, then take better care of my petrie dishes -- make sure I know the right lid is on, make sure they don't dry out, etc.

The thing is, I don't want to use Great Lash again! As I mentioned today on Beauty Addict's Great Lash post, it made my eyes sting and water up a lot more than they normally do (before Great Lash, they almost never watered up!).

Thus I have three new candidates to choose from, and I need your help picking one. My qualifications are that it has a bristle brush, and not a rubber one (so LashBlast and LashExact are out), and that it's easy for anyone to get their hands on, so preferably a drugstore-sold brand (I'll consider Sephora-sold brands, but I'm not dropping $50 on two tubes of DiorShow for science!). I've picked the following three options: Neutrogena Healthy Volume, CoverGirl Professional All-in-One, and L'Oreal Voluminous. Of course, I'm open to other options, too, so I'd like to hear which ones you're curious about.

What do you think? Which mascara should I pick? I've made a poll, which I'm leaving open until May 1st -- the day I start all over again...



images from periodicstyle.blogspot.com