Crayola: Don't Use Our Colored Pencils as Makeup

"The dog ate my eyeliner" was apparently enough for YouTube's Rclbeauty101 to bust open a box of colored art pencils and improvise—in a video that's currently sitting at 1.6 million views—and she's not the only one. DIYers are posting online beauty tutorials subbing in colored pencils (softened in warm water first) for eyeliner, UPI reports, while Metro adds that others are melting brilliantly hued crayons to create homemade lipstick. But one company you might think would love the publicity is instead issuing a warning. Crayola has put out a statement on its website saying its products "are not designed, tested, or approved for this purpose" and that customers shouldn't be smearing them all over their faces in the name of beauty.

Rclbeauty101 points out Crayola makes prominent on its packaging that its products are "nontoxic." "Companies literally make it so that little kids can eat it and be fine," she notes in her video; she even calls a Crayola customer service rep to make sure it's safe for a colored pencil "to touch your skin." In its statement, however, Crayola stresses, "Although our products are nontoxic, we do not recommend using them to make lipstick, eyeliner, or other make-up and strongly discourage their use in this manner." But even Crayola's warning may not scare the masses—which isn't entirely novel, according to at least one DIYer on Twitter, as noted by KMSP: "Nothing new here, I was doing it in the early 80's when my parents wouldn't let me have makeup." (This trend may be an especially bad idea if you wear contacts.)