Beauty Product Reviews
Love this!
I picked this lovely palette up on hautelook a few weeks ago and I’ve been so excited to try it. I got also got a Thebalm blush, bronzer and lipstick as well but I’ll review those separately. This is my first experience with this brand and while I’ve heard amazing thing about the blushes I hadn’t seen many reviews on the eyeshadows. I was very happy with this, and while I paid a discounted price by purchasing it on hautelook, I do think this would be worth the full retail value of 36 dollars and would make a great alternative to the Naked Palette if you don’t have the 50 dollars to shell out on Urban Decay.
The first thing I will say about this brand is the packaging is awesome. Everything comes in really cute kitschy boxes and the palette itself is slim but sturdy. The lid is magnetic so I feel like you could travel with this easily. So definitely an A+ on packaging. This palette also came with a brush but I’m not a huge fan of it. The bristles aren’t very soft and I probably wouldn’t reach for it ever.
The shadows themselves are very nice quality. They aren’t quite as buttery as Urban Decay shadows but they had minimum fall out and the colors were decently pigmented. You get a mix of matte and shimmer shades which is great and I appreciate that even though this is a nude palette they included a good selection of darker shades. I’ve actually been using this mostly for darker smokey looks than a neutral eye. Not because the lighter shades aren’t pretty but I just really love the dark colors this comes with.
Serious is actually a pretty pigmented black but it wasn’t swatching that well on my arm. I’ve mostly been using it to line my eyes and you can get a very dark concentrated line with this shade. My favorite colors from the top row are Serious, Sexy and Selfish. Sassy which is the white shade is a pigmented shimmer white and works well in the tear duct.
My favorite colors from these are Sleek which is a dark chocolate brown and Sultry which is a great matte mid-tone brown. If you own the Wet n Wild Vanity palette Sultry is very similar to the medium brown shade in that palette. I also really like Snobby which is a yellow gold that looks great in the inner corner of the eye.
Things To Know About This Palette:
1. This is a great cheaper alternative to the Naked Palette
2. You’ll get a nice mix of matte and shimmery shades, the only one that seems to have glitter is silly but it has little fall out.
3. This has enough variety of light, midtone and dark shades that you could use this as an all in one palette on a trip
4. My favorite way to wear this palette so far is wearing sultry all over the lid and using a mix of sleek and serious to smoke out my upper and lower lashes
5. The packaging for this palette is super cute, sturdy and fun to display
If you need an invite to hautelook you can click here
Let me know if you’ve used this palette and your favorite way to wear these shades!
Not My favorite from Urban Decay!
So I was at ULTA a few weeks ago and on a whim decided to buy this palatte. I had never read any reviews on it and it wasn’t on my WANT list but I saw it and grabbed it and hoped I would love it as much as my Urban Decay AMMO shadow box. The cost was $ 36.00. I listed the colors in the palatte and my opinion of them below:
YDK – Love, a very nice blendable bronzy neutral
Flipside – Love, a great pop of turquoise
Grifter – Like, a pretty lilac
URI – No color pay off, too glittery, should be white but looks like nothing by the time you blend it
Twice Baked- Love, a rich chocolate brown
Midnight Cowboy Rides Again- Too glittery, but swatches a neutral pinky beige
Flash- Like, bright purple
Oil Slick- Like, glittery black
Kiddie Pool- Too glittery, sky blue but very hard to blend because of the glitter
Half Baked- Love, a rich coppery orangey color
The swatches start with YDK and go in order across the top, ending with half baked on the bottom
I know the packaging is supposed to be eco-friendly but I don’t like it. The lid flops all over the place so its not good for traveling.
My favorite colors to use are YDK and Half-Baked for a neutral look and if I want to add a pop to the look I’ll take flip-side and use it as a liner under my bottom lashes.
Oil Slick is also in my AMMO palette and I feel like it has better pigmentation in that one.
While I do like some of the shades that came with this I don’t feel like this was a very good buy. I rarely reach for it and have had a better experience with other sets by UD. Save your money and buy the AMMO or NAKED palette instead :)
Great Cheap Neutral Palette
The Wet n Wild Vanity Palette cost me $4.99 at CVS and is my absolute favorite collection of neutral eyeshadows. The set comes with three highly pigmented matte shades as well three frosted colors.
When I’m going for a fast neutral eye I take the middle shade on that matte side and use that in my crease and I’m all set! If I have a few more minutes I’ll use the lightest matte color all over and the middle beige shade in my crease. The lightest color on the shimmer side is a great highlight and inner corner shade. This past weekend I used the darkest matte shade on my outer V area and then lined both my top and bottom lashes with it to make my lash line more pronounced. It gave a great subtle smokey eye look.
I probably use this palette 3 times a week and would recommend it to anyone looking for a great neutral eye set of shadows. I reach for this over my NYX nude on nude palette all the time and its a fraction of the cost.
This is a gorgeous set!
Just a quick review on another value set I purchased recently. This one is from Lorac and I mainly purchased it to try out the mini lip glosses that it came with. I’ve been hit or miss with Lorac eye shadows but the ones that came with this set are amazing! The baked Lorac eyeshadows that I tried were super chalky and the ones that I had in a palette broke right away. However, this set came with little shadow pots and I can’t say enough good things about them.
First, the lace clutch this came with is so pretty. I love anything with black lace and nude color so I instantly liked this. This doesn’t feel low quality at all and I could see myself using this as an actual clutch for a night out. Packaging gets an A+
Next, the lip glosses!!! I’m obsessed! The colors this came with are Vintage, which is a true nude shade, Trend setter which is a peachy pink with a slightly shimmery look but no actual glitter, and last Muse which is a great nudey pink. These are available to purchase in full-size outside of the set and I have to buy them. The smell of these are amazing. It’s like a cinnamon marshmallow? Haha I don’t know it’s hard to describe, but if you’ve used the Lorac Tantalizer Bronzing lotion it is the exact same smell. These are very creamy and do have some opaqueness to them. While they are thick enough to be pigmented they don’t feel sticky. I need to buy Vintage and Muse, they are so pretty and perfect colors on me. I’ve been wearing these alone and over lipsticks and they work great either way.
These eyeshadows are great everyday shades. The texture is very creamy and they blend like butter. If you aren’t very good with eyeshadows these would be very easy for you to use. While these colors are not available outside of this set I believe these are the same formula and packaging as Lorac’s normal single eyeshadows. Boudouir is actually a more taupey plum than in this swatch and it makes a perfect crease color. Negligee is a champage cream color and makes a great highlight because it isn’t overly shimmery but I also have been wearing this all over my lid or in my inner eye. They are just great, easy to use shades.
The blush is a great classic peachy pink called Rendezvous. It works really well with the other items in this collection and just gives my cheeks a nice natural flush. It’s not matte but the shimmer in it is still wearable everyday.
Overall I think everything in this set is great quality and it’s a great neutral collection to have. You can wear everything and look super natural but you can also use boudoir to smoke out your eye and easily transition to an evening look. I think this is an excellent group of items to keep in your purse for fast touch-ups at work and to take you from a day to night look. I’m really pleased I didn’t miss out on this ( I got it during a sale on hautelook) so if you see it for sale online or at a store grab it!
While I initially thought these colors would be to hard to wear in an everyday daytime look I was pleasantly surprised when I finally started experimenting with it. The colors are bright and decently pigmented but they don’t look outrageous on the eye. The dark blue/navy shade looks gorgeous when used to line the upper and lower lashes and makes a gorgeous look all by itself. As I got more courageous though I added the mint green all over the lid (but not going above the crease) and then darkened the outer v with the turquoise blue. Add the cream color as a higlight and you have a wearable daytime eye. Initially I thought this palette needed a brown shade to anchor it but once I started using it I stopped worrying about having a neutral to play with.
The package states that these shades should last 16 hours. Without a primer I got a good 10 hours of wear from these, but I did have some considerable creasing with the lighter shades after a few hours. However, if you use the navy shade as a liner it will last all day.
When I used a primer these didn’t crease at all and lasted until I took my makeup off. The cream shade had the best texture out of the 4 colors but all applied easily and blended without any problems. The brighter colors go on a bit sheer at first but are easy to build up. These do have a bit of shimmer to them but nothing overly glittery. I also had minimum fall out.
Things To Know:
1. These colors look intimidating at first but are actually easy to wear. Don’t pass this quad up just because you are afraid of color!
2. There are no matte shades in the quad but the glitter isn’t overly noticeable on the eye
3. I find I got the best wear out of these when I used a primer
4. The navy makes a gorgeous liner! I wear this around the upper and lower lash line and then apply a bronze eye pencil to my waterline. It’s gorgeous!
I really loved this palette and the formula of this Colorstay quad. I’m definitely going to be checking out the rest of the quads available in this line!