Gone Batty.

They say the eyes are the window to your soul. Well, if that's the case, I'm going to make sure I have lovely shutters. Mascara is undoubtedly my favorite and most essential beauty product. It's the thing I'd bring to a desert island, the thing I will wear if I choose to wear nothing else, and the most important piece in my beauty routine (besides skin care of course). The reason mascara is so important to me is not because I have terrible short or sparse lashes, but because mine are blonde. Let me tell you, blonde lashes do not do a good job of framing the eye.

Drugstore, or any mascara for that matter, can really be a hit or miss. Everyone has different mascara preferences and looks for different things in a product. For me, I like a more dry consistency than a really wet mascara because I find them to be more buildable that way. Buildability is important to me because I typically look for volume vs. length. I can't stand clumpy spider lashes, I really like a feathered and fanned out look. I typically buy the waterproof version of any mascara if it's available, one never knows when a sentimental and tearful moment may hit. With all that in mind, the following are my top favorite drugstore mascaras in no particular order.

1. L'Oreal Voluminous Original

• The brush is quite large and does a nice job separating the lashes and avoiding clumps.
• The packaging is classic and slim which makes it easy to travel with in a clutch or make up bag.
• The formula is not super wet and really buildable, it adds great volume.
• This is my tried and true, I've never had a bad tube of this mascara.

2. L'Oreal Voluminous Million Lashes

• Like the original, this mascara is great for buildability. With one coat, it's average mascara with great definition, but with two or three it's fabulous.
• I typically don't like the plastic brushes on mascaras but this one is different. I find that it separates and defines my lashes so well and is able to reach the little inner corner lashes because the brush isn't huge.
• I also like the brush for bottom lashes because it doesn't deposit clumps of product under my eye giving me the rabid raccoon look.
• The packaging is a bit glamorous, a lush thick gold tube, and who doesn't like a little glitz?

3. Maybelline Full N Soft

• This one is much like the L'Oreal original in brush and formula.
• Simple classic slim packaging.
• The formula really does stay soft (for a mascara), it doesn't make my lashes feel crusty or like hard little spikes.
• The brush does a good job for separating considering the size of the brush and I feel like I get good volume with two coats.

4. Cover Girl Lash Blast

• I find the orange packaging of this product to be hideous! The product itself, however, is nice.
• Great volume with a few coats with little clumping.
• The formula is nice, a little wet for my taste but not too bad and it still doesn't smudge.
• This brush is plastic, like the Million Lashes, but it doesn't scrape my eyes and defines really well.

Drugstore mascara fails: (I've had many so these are just the recent ones)

1. Maybelline The Mega Plush

• The brush is bizarre. There is no other way to describe it. It has a bendy bit at the tip which makes it near impossible to get the brush really into the roots of your lashes without it flopping every which way. The bendy tip did have good intentions, to make it easy to reach all of your lashes, but it did just the opposite for me.
• The formula was just "OK" for me, I didn't hate it and I didn't love it. It was supposed to be light and mousse-like for super light volume. I didn't see that, the texture was strange and it looked decent on my lashes but not great.
• I would not re-purchase this.

2. L'Oreal Double Extend

• I've never had good luck with the two step prime and coat mascaras so I should have expected to not like this too much. I find that the primer tubes (the white side), which is supposed to create "tubes" around your lashes to make them thicker when you put on the actual mascara, just made my lashes clump more. I couldn't find a good method to apply this so I stopped using it.
• My lashes were clumpy and sticky feeling with this mascara, I will not be purchasing this again, either.

3. Maybelline Volum' Express The Falsies

• I wanted to love this mascara. Everyone else loved this mascara. The ads looked so great. I hated this mascara.
• I bought this right when it came out and I LOVED the way it looked when I first tried it. After a few hours, though, I found that my lashes were sticky and stuck together. It made my eyes itch (perhaps I was allergic to it) and every time I blinked I felt like my eyes were going to stick together. The formula never really "dried" on my lashes.
• The brush is great, all things considered, it's a good size and shape and it reaches all of the lashes. It isn't great, however, for the bottom lashes as it is easily smudged and the brush is sort of large to fit down on the fine, short lower lashes.

Mascaras are a funny thing, what I love in one mascara, another person may hate and vise versa. If your mascara preferences are simliar to mine, though, these are options that may work for you too! My current mascara routine is a coat of L'Oreal Million lashes followed by two coats of L'Oreal Voluminous Original. L'Oreal has really been hitting the nail on the head for me lately in terms of mascara.