Welcome to HoloGrave Cosmetics®, Home of Our Funeral Proof® Gel Eyeliners.  This tutorial will cover how to revive dried out eyeliners if they are not past their expiration date, when that expiration date is, why gel eyeliners have a shorter shelf life, and how you can get the most out of them. Over the years, working in the beauty industry, I have worked with almost every gel eyeliner out there and spent the entirety of my late teen years frantically trying to revive my ABH brow pomades to make it workable before going to my cosmetology school and work. I know the struggle. Please note that this blog post is not paid for by any other brand and any brands mentioned here aside from HoloGrave Cosmetics® are not affiliated in any way with our brand. The products of other brands mentioned here are to help those who have other brands and to show parallels in how gel eyeliners work, but should not be considered official advice for those brands.  What is Inside a potted Gel Eyeliner? Let's start with what a "gel eyeliner" is and why they have a shorter shelf life. One of the first, if not very first ingredients you will see in almost all gel eyeliners is Isododecane. This ingredient evaporates off very fast and leaves you with a budge-proof finish on your eyeliners. The rest of the ingredients like synthetic waxes, Dimethicone, Trimethylsiloxysilicate, ect are going to be your more oily and silicone ingredients that will make the product very waterproof. This is also why those who have more oily lids, may find these types of liners are not best suited for them as they repel water, but will happily invite more oils to the mix.  With Isododecane being usually that first ingredient, it means that the formula has a very high concentration of that ingredient- more than any other ingredients in it. This ingredient is very important if you're wanting your product to properly dry down, but because it is so volatile and dries the formula up so fast, that means your product in the pot is going to be subject to the same rules. This is why protecting your potted liner is the most important step here.  How to Protect Your Eyeliner in the First Place. The easiest way to avoid having a dried out gel eyeliner is going to be taking care of it in the first place. Now, there are many recommendations out there for how to do this. I will share all of them, but they are not all necessary to use in combination.  The easiest thing to do is keep the tools the brand provided you with. I am very guilty of this. I open a product, I toss out all of the inside seals and little product covers, and move on with my life, only to find out that the gel or pomade or jelly eyeshadow I bought is crumbling 3 months in. The brand will almost always provide you with a seal inside that I always recommend keeping. Here at HoloGrave, you will find a foil seal in each and every Funeral Proof® Gel Eyeliner that we carry. I always recommend that this is kept and this is a way to make sure you don't have to go out of your way with other steps to keep it fresh. I plaster this info in the production description, we have added it to the tab of the box on the circular glass jars, and on our coffin jars, I have even printed "Keep Me" all over the foil seal. We will soon begin to roll this out on the seals for the glass jars too. As inconvenient as it may seem, it is so important to keeping these liners usable for as long as possible. In the next section, we will go over how long is too long and when these expire, but first- Here's a list of recommendations other people give and these may work if you have thrown out the given seals a brand has given you or just as added layers of protection. Some are more wild than others, so lets break them down. Storing the product upside down. This is a good one! I think this is an easy one to remember and doesn't require much work. I'm not too sure on the science, but I think it's about keeping the top hydrated from the ingredients in the bottom sort of trickling down into it and less air exposure from the lid. Remove a bit of the product from the jar, immediately reclose, and place the product on the back of your hand. This is also great. How many times have you done your eyeliner, realize its taken a half an hour too long or even worse- came home from work to find that you left it open the whole day? Keeping the container shut when not using it is always a great idea.  Storing in cool, dry places.  This is also a good idea. I would say maybe too dry of an area, it could really suck the life out of it too. I would say a good temperate location. Your makeup drawer should be fine.  Keeping the product in an airtight bag. This seems like a pain- if you are VERY adamant on keeping it fresh, this will work, but it's not the prettiest thing and can easily by avoided by keeping an internal seal and may be overkill altogether, given the expiration date on products like these. Using clingwrap to replace the seal. You can definitely do this! Again, likely pretty unsightly and a lot more work. I think if you've lost or tossed the seal, those earlier storage tips will help you out better to where you shouldn't need to do this, but you could.  How Long is Too Long to Keep a Potted Gel Eyeliner? Would you eat food that is a year past its expiration date? Probably not, but a lot of people view things differently when it comes to makeup. We've all clung onto eyeshadow palettes for years and a lot of us have the mentality of "its expired when I say it is". Potted Gel Eyeliners do not usually conform to this mindset and there are use after opening dates on all makeup products. The part that a lot of people hate to hear is that a gel potted eyeliner has a 6 month shelf life after it is opened. I am no stranger to getting emails 3 years later, asking why it's dried out and how to fix it and I have to tell people that they have to let it go. Powders can't really dry out, foundations can't really dry out, setting sprays can't really dry out- I get it, so we think it's okay to keep using them, but as a brand, I cannot go against our legal recommendations for these types of products. Your mascaras will dry out, your eyeliners will dry out, and though it takes longer- your lipsticks will dry out. Eyeliners, mascaras, and lipsticks are ones to especially listen closer to on expirations. Every day, you're adding bacteria from your skin, your brushes, and from anything else that comes into contact with them and then placing that product directly into areas where you have mucous membranes. If you speak to estheticians or other cosmetologists, you'll find we were actually all trained on advising and throwing eyeliners and mascaras out every 3 months.  So all this to say, your potted gel eyeliner should make it to 6 months- if you kept the foil seal? I have ones from 4 years ago that I still use for strictly mixing content that are perfectly as buttery as when I opened them, but that is not to say you should continue using them that long. And- if it's been about 6-12 months and especially a year or more, it's definitely time to toss it.  Is everyone going to listen to this? Absolutely not. Will people believe me that 6 months is the timeframe? I can hope, but I know you'll need some proof.  Below are popular brands that have potted gel eyeliners/brow pomades with similar formulas and show a 6 month after opening date.  KVD Super Pomade Vegan Eyeliner, Shadow, + Brow Pigment Anastasia Beverly Hills DIPBROW Waterproof, Smudge Proof Brow Pomade e.l.f. Cosmetics Lock on Liner & Brow Cream L.A. Girl Smudge-Proof Gel Eyeliner Now I won't pretend there aren't some exclusions to this rule and outliers. Some I even found do not disclose a use after opening date- which I honestly was a little shocked by, but after digging on the internet and in some brand's customer service inboxes, found them to be 6 months as well.  One exclusion I found was Trixie Cosmetics Hotline Gel Liner which I bought at launch and it dried up within about 4 months- sadly I only used it once in that time, but it is fairly normal. I'm curious if they may change this period after opening.  How to Revive Your Dried Out Gel Eyeliners/Brow Pomades? Now that we know why these dry out, how to prevent them from drying out, and when to toss them- what if you just left it out on your vanity or didn't close the lid tightly or anything else happened to cause it to dry out sooner than it's expiration date? You can add products to these to revive them- but you do need to be careful about what you are adding. We've already discussed these are oil based and waterproof, so your contact solution or setting spray is not the answer. I've gotten countless people confusing our gel waterproof eyeliners with our water activated eyeliners and you will have a gummy mess and ruined formula on your hands, even if it works out okay a time or two, you are introducing water to a waterproof and waterless formula that was not formulated to have water in it.  All liners and pomades I've shared here are Isododecane/Cyclopentasiloxane/Trimethylsilioxysilicate/Dimethicone based and will work well with other pure-oil eye safe products, Duraline, or our SnakeOil Mixing Medium. There may be other similar rehydrating products like these, but you really want to be on the lookout to make sure Isododecane and Dimethicone is present to know they will mix in well.  So how do you do it? You can take your chosen option from above and drop a small amount directly inside your liner, just one drop will do and mix it around on the top layer. We're not talking a spatula and mixing the liner up like cookie dough- just with your brush and disrupting and softening the surface. This is very similar to how you would activate a water-activated liner, but it's working like oil-activated here.  Test it a few times on the back of your hand to make sure it's not too greasy and sheer, if it is, mix more, if its not wet enough, you can add another drop and continue mixing. Once the product is at the desired consistency, you can apply it how you normally would.  If you still have the foil seal or whatever was given to you with other brands or feel that the liner will stay hydrated, you can decide to now add in a few drops and let it sit overnight and slowly rehydrate the formula or treat this as now a liner that you need to activate each time. If it no longer has a good seal, adding it each time will likely be the best choice as it may continuously keep drying out without an effective seal. Feel free to give it a try to see.  Our most up to date process to see a visual on this can be found here