Swatches: Blush - Highlight - Contour - Brow - Base - Colour - Define - Line
Another sale bargain for you all today - this palette is now reduced down to ££22.50 on the Illamasqua site!
Anyway, I bought this before Christmas (when it wasn't on sale, grumpy face!) and i was massively massively excited about it, mainly because I'd been meaning to try the Aura highlighter and the Hollow contour for absolutely ages, so saw my chance to snap up both of those products in a palette with a few other bits... I can never resist a palette.
I don't know if my expectations were too high or what but I feel just a bit disappointed by this. Let me say that I believe there arena bad products out there, just products that suit some peoples' needs better than others (let's face it, if our needs were all the same we just wouldn't have the same array of products to get excited about and would never try anything new as the same things would just be produced over and over again!) but I'll go through by individual product and give my thoughts, since that seems the fairest.
The aura highlighter was one of the bits I was most excited about, and it's ok. I've come to the conclusion I'm not a massive fan of cream products and this is a pretty wet cream product - bye which I mean it melts and moves as soon as you touch it. I feel as though it sort of disappears on my cheeks but sinks in to pores and when used down my nose when I had a little bit of dry skin it really emphasised the dry skin. In comparison to my Chanel powder highlighter or even the Mary Lou Maniser which I reviewed here it just doesn't really cut it. I don't need a highlighter that seems to make my skin look worse than it is, and that I would use only on my cheeks, brow bone and cupids bow and then have to use an alternative elsewhere. I also don't generally feel that the cream products ever live up to powder in terms of longevity, which wouldn't be a problem if it was a case of popping it in my bag and topping up through the day but the thought of carrying the platte plus the highlighter I'd be using elsewhere? Not that appealing really!
The blush is a powder blush in the shade Tremble - it's totally fine, I like a powder blush better and the longevity is there with it. It looks a lot less pink on the face than it does in the pan, which isn't really a good or bad thing, just a comment on it and I have no real complaints. Having said that I also wouldn't have rushed to buy it as an individual blush as I don't think it's anything particularly special.
I do actually quite like the contour shade - Hollow and the longevity on the contour seems much better than the highlighter. It's also much more natural looking when buffed into the skin properly than the swatch would imply. The only complaint I have about the contour is the size of it, it's the same size as the eyeshadow and brow products, so fairly difficult to get the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush or the Illamasqua Highlighter Brush in to properly. The contour should have, in my opinion, been the same size as the blush and highlighter.
The brow cake in Thunder is fine. It's a little dark for my ideal tastes, but when you're putting a palette together you have to go with the shade that suits most people and I totally get that1 I can get away with it so it's not a total waste, though to be honest I do prefer a pencil so I'm not sure how much use I'll get from this. Colour aside though the formula is good and the longevity is there, its easy to apply with my Louise Young 31 sable brow brush. For travelling if I was taking this palette I'd be more than happy to use this to cut down on packing multiple products, so I definitely don't hate it, but it doesn't make or break the palette overall.
As for the eyeshadows, the base and colour shadows are a bit redundant, they're both pretty much lost on my pale skin (#palegirlproblems) but they work well enough to even out skin tone etc.
I actually really, really like the define shade - a nice reddy brown, though I have quite a few shades like this now because I like it so much (I still love this Smashbox palette if you're looking for some great eyeshadows with the reddy toned browns in there). It's a nicely build able one - I have it on quite lightly in the pictures but you could definitely keep building with this one.
Lastly we come to the black shadow, which they suggest you use as liner. Again it's quite build able and in the pictures I applied it with the angled brush from the Real Techniques Nic's Picks set and smoked it up a little bit. My issue isn't with this as an individual thing, but in terms of the palette I think a dark brown might have toned in a little better with the other shadows - I feel like the black looks very stark against the rest of the eye.
Overall? I realise this review sounds negative but I don't hate the palette, I just think there are better choices out there and for the sake of the Hollow pigment I could have bought it individually for the price. I didn't pay £45.00 as I bought the palette when ASOS had a 30% discount code running, but I'd be absolutely gutted if I had paid the £45. Now that you can get it for £22.50, if you want to try hollow or aura, which were two products I'd been meaning to for ages, it's still a great way to give them both a go and cheaper than buying both the products individually, but I certainly wouldn't say this one is a must have.
