Beauty Bay Colour Theory Launch

Last month, online beauty superstore Beauty Bay launched their first own branded products. All following the same layout and concept, the three Colour Theory palettes contained a whopping 42 eyeshadows. I purchased mine when they released, but it has taken me this long to summon up the enthusiasm to write about it.

As was to probably be expected, these palettes are produced in China. This is not always a bad thing - Morphe have become a household name (in the beauty community, anyway) by selling gigantic eyeshadow palettes rammed full of more colours than you could possibly need at over inflated prices and consumers just can't get enough of their new releases. Anastasia Beverly Hills also manufacture their palettes in China.

These palettes are a bargain, in that they have 42 decent sized shadows for £24.99 (don't forget that Beauty Bay do student discount too, so there's an extra 10% off there) and free shipping as it's over the £15 mark. Unlike the BPerfect Carnival palette, I think that this is a pretty reasonable price point.

The palettes are all laid out in the same manner. Each row is for a different stage in your eye makeup (base, transition, crease etc) with the columns making seven different eye looks. Of course you can follow the steps, or you can mix and match to make your own unique look. The possibilities really are endless. Or they would be if there weren't 376 shades of brown in each palette.

There are three different palettes in this range - Origin, a really pretty warm toned palette in pink packaging, Evolve, a very neutral palette with the odd pop of colour in yellow packaging, and Identity, which is described as "bright and bold shades". Well, there are some bright and bold shades, but it's mostly neutrals.

Origin caught my eye first. With it coming up to autumn, warm tones will be everywhere and I do love a pink eyeshadow! I decided against it as it looked too similar to the Lime Crime Venus XL palette which I have and I use fairly often. I decided to go for the "bright and bold option" and chose Identity.

The palettes launched at 12pm on September 13th. I managed to pick one up without any issue. I wasn't online the moment they launched, but I got mine about an hour later. I think they did sell out of all three palettes that day though.

This is what arrived - the palette came in a black palette with a very pretty blue holographic inner. The palette was in a blue holographic box, and came with some stickers and possibly a beauty bay discount code (I sold this as soon as I was done taking pictures for this blog so I really can't remember what else was with it) and some other postcards and stuff. These were all inside a pretty but completely unnecessary plastic bag.

They definitely get points for the stickers, I have such a thing for makeup companies who send me stickers, I love it!

Here's the inside of the palette - each column is numbered, and the rows are labelled for an easy step by step application. I decided to go for row 5 as I liked the red shades, but I fell at the first hurdle as the base shade was about 387 shades darker than my skin tone. No bother, I wiped it off and thought I'd crack on but substitute the base shade from column 1 instead. Fine, decent enough but not exactly up to Sugarpill standards (I use white eyeshadow every single day and I compare any white shadows to Tako from Sugarpill as it's my absolute favourite).

The transition and crease shades applied nicely, although when it came to the liner shade I struggled to get anything particularly visible against the other shades. I ended up blending the red liner shade on my lid and then the whole thing just went downhill from there. All of the colours just blended into one red mass, and even when I tried adding in some pink and purple to create a bit of dimension, I was just left with red everywhere. The shimmer shade that I used on my inner corner and browbone was less than impressive too. It's probably ok if you wet  your brush before applying, but having to use a wet brush for eyeshadow is SUCH a pet hate of mine that I won't use eyeshadows if I need to do this. This was the result.

You can see that there's no issues with pigmentation, it's a nice shade of red and red shadows are notoriously difficult to formulate, but when I have to blend seventeen thousand different colours on to my eyes and end up with the same colour I started with after two shades then I'm not gonna be happy.

I hate these palettes. But then, I hate Morphe palettes, so I think that the Beauty Bay Colour Theory palettes will go down well with the teenage market, especially given how affordable they are. I'd say they're good for beginners, but if they all blend into the same colour then I'll have to take that back. Maybe the other two are better than this, but I really have no intention of finding out.

The mirror is pretty good though.

Worth The Hype? BPerfect Stacey Marie Carnival Palette

I'll be honest, when this palette first found its way onto my Facebook news feed, I had never heard of BPerfect or Stacey Marie. I'll be honest, even after doing some research I can't actually fathom how this palette is being sold for £40, but we'll go into price later on.

BPerfect are an Irish brand, established by Brendan Macdowell in 2013. Over the past five years they seem to have grown rapidly in Ireland (perhaps why I have never come across them), and their products are stocked in shops around the country, and some stores in the UK too. The brand seems to focus mostly on tanning products (another reason they may have passed me by, I look like a paracetamol with pink hair), but they do stock some cosmetics too.

The Stacey Marie Carnival palette is the most expensive product that BPerfect stock. This is probably down to the higher number of shadows in the palette, and also I assume a commission will be paid to Stacey Marie. That being said, they also stock another palette which appears to be a collaboration with a makeup artist and that retails for £24.99. The Carnival is £39.99 plus £3.50 shipping. This product is available in some shops, so you can save the shipping cost if you can find it in stock near you, and it is also available on Beauty Bay who do student discount and free shipping if you spend over £15.

I do like this palette, actually. I think its so refreshing to see a palette which focuses on bright shades, rather than shoving one or two in there for the "pop effect". This palette has 24 eyeshadows in a range of matte, duochrome and metallic finishes and two highlighters, one which would suit light to medium skin tones and one for medium to deeper skin. I am never really a fan of palettes that have highlighters for a range of skin tones as I just don't get use out of the darker ones. I have seen a lot of girls on social media buy this palette for their makeup kit though. I personally don't use Chinese produced shadows in my kit, but I guess that's where the different highlighter shades might be useful.

The packaging is nothing special. It's a black cardboard component that came wrapped in clear film. There is no outer box or slipcase, and for £40 I'd personally like to see a little more attention to detail on the packaging, but then I am a total packaging junkie!

These shadows mostly swatch nicely. I did struggle with the purples and one or two others, but purple shadows are notoriously difficult to formulate so I'm not going to be too critical of that. They do, for the most part, perform well on the eye with a good quality brush although I did experience some patchiness and blending issues with a couple of shades - mainly Naked, Basic and Wasted. I didn't notice any staining to my eyes, but the brighter shadows (particularly the greens) stained my white bristled brushes really badly which I found to be quite disappointing.

As I've said previously, my main gripe with this palette is the price point. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely understand that smaller businesses can't afford to buy in the quantities that the likes of Morphe and BH Cosmetics do, but I just don't think that this palette is worth £40. If it was £25, or possibly even £30 I'd be telling everyone to snap it up. That said, this palette has been received extremely well on social media, with makeup enthusiasts and artists alike raving about it. So take my opinion as you wish, but I'd probably wait for a sale or try and find one with light usage on a makeup selling group or app instead.

Review - Lunar Beauty Life's a Drag

These days, you're no kind of social media influencer or beauty guru unless you're selling something to your loyal followers. And Manny Gutierrez, AKA MannyMUA is no exception! Hot on the heels of his friend Laura Lee, and ex friend Jeffree Star, Manny has now put his name to his own makeup brand.

Lunar Beauty launched its first product in June, the 14 shade eyeshadow palette, Life's a Drag. The palette has 12 matte shades and 2 foiled finish shadows. Life's a Drag is available from www.lunarbeauty.com for $45 and Beauty Bay for £37.

The first half of the palette has a black, white and some neutral shades, while the second half contains some stunning brights. Two neutral foiled shadows separate the sections.

Inspired by drag queens, the palette casing has an image of Manny's eyes with heavy drag makeup (applied by the very talented Lipstick Nick), and the shade names are all inspired by drag culture which I think brings a really fun aspect to the palette, whilst also taking advantage of the fact that drag is super popular right now. I definitely don't think that this is a palette that's aimed towards drag artists, but rather tapping into the current marketability of drag. The palette, in my opinion, is too bulky for a travelling performer to carry around, and I think the pan sizes are just too small for a drag artist to be using on a daily basis.

The packaging of this palette is absolutely beautiful. It feels very heavy and it's larger than I had expected it to be. The palette itself has a holographic overlay with embossed rose gold details, and it comes in a rose gold box with glitter effect writing. This palette also has a mirror - albeit a small one - and a double ended brush.

I, personally, could have done without the brush - I never use brushes that come with palettes, I find that the fluffy end tends to be too stiff and the flat side too wide (and this brush is no exception), but I do appreciate the attention to detail here, it is a pretty little brush. The mirror is far too small for such a large palette, I think that in this case there has been more attention to packaging details than practicality, but again, this is not really an issue for someone like me who doesn't use the mirrors on a palette. I did give the brush a quick try, but after approximately 3 seconds of trying to blend with the "fluffy" side, I threw it down and went back to my Illamasqua blending brush.

I knew as soon as I saw this palette that I would buy it (it says drag and I'm a marketers dream), but I did have my reservations about the shadow quality. I think the idea of a palette with a good range of neutrals, brights and shimmers AND a black and a white shadow is ideal, I really don't know why there aren't more on the market like this. It's SO versatile! I always use a white shadow to set my eye primer, so I always give extra points to a palette with a matte white, although I didn't really get on with the white in this palette. It's just not pigmented enough for my liking and even with building up it doesn't reach full opacity. This is the only shade I had any trouble with at all though.! The black is also a great basic addition to any palette and this one is very black. Manny said in his reveal video that it's a buildable black shadow, but I have found it to be pretty black straight off, which I do appreciate. There's a nice selection of browns and all the bright shades you need! The foils in this palette, although only two of them, and both neutral, are super reflective and shimmery, and the shade Beat makes a beautiful face highlight!

The shadows in this palette are nicely pigmented, and the ones that aren't one swipe opacity are easily built up (with the exception of Cake Face, the white shade). These shadows are very dusty, and although I experienced quite a lot of kick back in the pans after gently dipping my brush in, I didn't notice any fallout while applying to my eyes at all, and the shades blended nicely together using a good brush.

Swatches as always are applied over a base of Urban Decay Primer Potion using a Wayne Goss 18 brush for matte shades and Illamasqua flat shader brush for metallics/shimmers. The second picture is the pans after swatching, this palette has the potential to get very messy very quickly!

I used the palette to try and recreate the eye look on the front of the box, and although I am no Lipstick Nick, I was pleased with the results and how nice the shadows were to work with. And yes, I put on the biggest eyelashes I could find - this is a drag inspired palette after all!

I also used the shade Beat as highlighter on my cheeks and cupids bow, although it's only visible on my cupids bow in this picture. I really like it as a highlighter, and I rarely use warm tones on my cheeks.

This palette is made in the USA, although it does state on the box that the ingredients are "domestic and/or imported" so make of that what you will.

Some of the shades in this palette are advertised as "pressed pigments" which is not a concern if you are in the UK, but if you wanted to know which shades aren't considered to be "eye safe" by the FDA, the shades are Pageant Queen (purple), Kai Kai (pink), Trade (burgundy) and Snatched (red). I have covered the topic of pressed pigments and FDA approval in a previous review on Jeffree Star's Blood Sugar palette if you'd like more information on that though!

In summary, I absolutely love this palette! The white is just not good enough considering it's a drag inspired palette (sorry Manny but no self respecting drag queen is gonna be using this, it's not a patch on Tako from Sugarpill), but the rest of the shades completely make up for that. The white is fine if you use it to set your eye base (which I always do), just not great for building up - in the images above I used Jeffree Star Cosmetics' Drug Lord as a base for the white shadow to make it stand out. 

If you are stuck in a neutral rut and would like to experiment with colourful eyeshadows then I think this is ideal. It would be great for adding a pop of colour to the lower lashline or inner corner of a neutral look, and then once you break out of that comfort zone you might even grow up to be a real drag queen!

Review - PLouise palette

Following on from my anti-haul blog, I'm reviewing the palette that was number one on my list when I first started writing it, the first palette release from PLouise - a brand owned by Manchester based makeup artist, Paige Louise.

Paige has worked as a makeup artist for several years and now runs her own academy, where she and her team run physical and online courses at various price ranges. If you have an Instagram account and an interest in makeup, then you are sure to have come across her or her work at some point.

This palette launched in January and I could not have been less interested. I am not a fan of this brand in any way, shape or form. I dislike their signature look and the public persona of the brand owner. I'm not going to bang on about why I can't stand the brand, because I want to review this palette fairly and not turn this into a rant about the brand. I will say though, that I wanted to hate this palette!

I had heard so many good things about the quality of this palette, and while I was telling myself that the fans of this brand will not say a bad word about it, even if it sucked ass, I also started having serious makeup FOMO! What's a girl to do in this situation?

I'll tell you what - buy a second hand palette! That way I get to try it, pay less than retail for it and since it's already been purchased, I am not giving my money directly to the brand or increasing their sales. Well, that's what I told myself, anyway.

So, the palette came and it was in good condition. The packaging bored the life out of me, but I get what they're going for - sleek and professional looking, a bit like Mac or Illamasqua's packaging style. It's a black cardboard palette with rose gold writing and a slipcase to match. I couldn't be less inspired by the way this is presented. But, I must tell myself that not everyone thinks that they're a unicorn trapped in a human body, not everything must be covered in glitter and some people actually like sensible things.

The inside of the palette isn't much more inspiring I have to say. Yet another sea of warm tones, I honestly think I'm going to poke my eyeballs out with a blending brush if I see one more palette with these colours, I am so done with this trend!
However, this is what is trending right now, of course it makes sense to bring a warm toned palette to market for your first release.

There are ten matte shades and two shimmers. I do like a palette to have more mattes than shimmers, and this comes with a matte white which always makes me very happy as I set my eyeshadow primer with white every time I do my makeup (yes, I know that's not how she teaches you to do your makeup but I am not interested in that, thanks). And I do love a good red eyeshadow. But is this red good? Red shadows are notoriously difficult to formulate, to the point that not many brands even bother to release them. Sugarpill Love Plus and Illamasqua Daemon are both excellent reds and I was curious as to whether the fangirls were right and this really was on par, quality wise with those.

I applied these shadows directly to my eyes before I swatched them, and I'm glad I did. This palette swatches terribly. I swatched this the same way I do everything - over primer, using an Illamasqua flat brush for the shimmer shades and a Wayne Goss flat brush for the mattes, building up the colour to my desired opacity. As you can tell, some shadows were quite patchy, and they took an awful lot of building up. I didn't have any problems at all on the eyes though, I actually found that they applied and blended very nicely.

These shadows are quite finely milled and very tightly packed, they do feel slightly dry to the touch (although I didn''t find that this affected the use) and there is little kickback in the pan. I experienced no fallout when applying this to my eyes.

I used the shades that appealed to me in this palette - Plouise, Sunkissed, Burnt, Queen, Charm, Martini and Slay. They blended really well and the red shade, Queen really was very pigmented and the colour payoff was excellent. I do think this shade is almost as good as Sugarpill or Illamasqua.
I would have liked to have had a little more colour intensity from all of the shades, however the shadows oxidised on my eyelids quite quickly after taking this picture and gave me the sunset eye I was looking for!

All in all, while I do think that this palette performs well, the colour selection has been done to death and I would never touch the browns in this, so essentially  it's been just a very expensive red eyeshadow for me. I have already sold this on because I will never use it again, but if the brand ever released a palette of bright colours then I'd definitely try that out too. For now, though, I am going to stick with my beloved Sugarpill shadow which cost me £8 and didn't come with a load of boring colours I'll never use.

Anti Haul

If you venture outside of the more popular beauty gurus on  YouTube (and I'm sure most of us do), then you will more than likely be familiar with the concept of anti hauls.  For those of  you who have no idea what an anti haul is, it originated from Kimberly Clark, a drag queen, activist and anti consumerist. It's basically a list of products that you don't want to buy, for whatever reasons. Kimberly did her first anti haul back in November 2015 and they have really taken off on YouTube, with lots of content creators making these videos on a regular basis, so I thought I'd give one a try! I'll  link Kimberly/Chris's YouTube and Instagram at the end of this blog if you want to give some of the videos a watch, although I believe Kimberly is taking a hiatus at the moment as Chris is currently on tour.

So, cracking on, the first item I am not going to buy is the Anastasia Beverly Hills Soft Glam palette. On first glance, this palette is so pretty! The pink shimmer and the pops of orange are so beautiful, they would make a really pretty summery look and I do enjoy ABH eyeshadows.

Image: anastasiabeverlyhills.com

However, after a closer look, this palette is very neutral and there are a lot of brown shades which I will absolutely never use. There are also a couple of shades that are repeated from the Modern Renaissance palette which I already own, and they are shades that I don't particularly reach for.
I have seen it mentioned often about how great this would be for bridal work and to keep in a professional kit, but I completely disagree! Yes, the shadows are beautiful, they are pigmented and blend like a dream, but they are also small and very loosely pressed which means you go through them very quickly (I see Modern Renaissance used often on project pans because they are easy to finish). The packaging is also not kit friendly. At all. The velvet type finish on the component is lovely but it gets filthy almost immediately. It picks up dirt and fluff constantly, and because of the material it's impossible to clean. I took Modern Renaissance out of my kit for this reason, I don't feel professional showing  up to someone's home with minging products!

Image: uk.morphe.com

Next on the list is the Morphe x Bretman Rock Babe in Paradise highlighter palette. Oh boy, where to start with this one?
Firstly, the price is unreal. £29 for a Morphe palette is ridiculous in my opinion. Their products just do not warrant such a high price tag in my experience of the brand, customers are basically paying extra in order to give "beauty gurus" a pay cheque at this point. If you really want this then I don't think it will be long before the likes of Lick and Lash, Delanci etc release this.
Secondly, why do you want this? There are 6 shades in this palette of varying depths of colour. If you are pale, you won't be able to highlight with the deeper colours, and if you have a deep skin tone the light shades are going to look ashy on the skin. To use in your kit? No, Morphe is not a brand I'd want to see in a professional working artist's kit. Yes, you could possibly use the other shades as eyeshadows, but look at  your eyeshadow collection, do you already have shimmers that look like the shades in this palette? I have fallen into the trap of telling myself I'll use a palette like this as eyeshadow, and guess what? Never happened. I bought the Jeffree Star 24K palette, telling myself I'd use the pink one as a blush and the others as eyeshadows. I've worn one shade to death but the others remain untouched. I'm not a fan of face palettes that cover multiple skin tones unless it's going in my kit.

Image: urbandecay.co.uk

The Urban Decay Naked Petite Heat palette is up next! Cute? Yes. Shades that are super popular right now? Absolutely! But I didn't get the original Naked Heat palette, and this one appeals to me even less. The shades in this palette are slightly different to the original Heat, but not different enough that  you would necessarily need both palettes. There are six shades here, varying from a bone shade to a deeper reddish brown. All very basic colours that you probably already own in some form or another. Warm toned palettes are so popular right now, and although this is a good little palette for travelling, I am sick of seeing them now. If you haven't bought yourself a warm toned eyeshadow palette by now, you probably aren't going to. Sorry Urban Decay!

Image: allure.com

This one is hard for me to write, but I will not be buying the Kat Von D 10 year anniversary collection. It looks absolutely BEAUTIFUL, and you can see a lot of work has gone into the designs for the packaging and case for this collection but aside from the fact that I'd probably have to sell a kidney to buy it (a huge annoyance of mine is how Kat Von D Beauty don't tend to announce prices very far in advance), I don't know if this will be on sale at Debenhams yet (and I don't want to imagine the customs on this collection) and I wouldn't use a lot of it. The collection has a Tattoo Liner, two liquid lipsticks, a lipstick, a brush collection, eyeshadow palette, Metal Crush highlighter and makeup case. I'm not a huge fan of the Tattoo Liner, I really dislike the brushes from this brand and didn't enjoy the Metal Crush highlighting palette. Having seen the eyeshadow palette too, it appears pretty at first glance, but it's really nothing that special or anything that I don't already have somewhere in my collection. It would essentially be a very expensive makeup case and lipsticks for me!

Image: salutemag.com

Next up are the Fenty Beauty Body Lava and Fairy Bomb. I've not got round to trying anything from Fenty yet, and I have to admit it Rihanna, you almost got me with this glitter pom pom! The Fairy Bomb is a huge fluffy pom pom filled with glitter which you are supposed to pat over your body for some sparkle. Super cute idea, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. I think that this would take up a huge amount of space though, I'd probably never use it and it is pretty much a big teabag full of glitter for £34, so I will pass. Unless it goes on sale.
The Body Lava comes in at an even higher price of £46. It does come in a beautiful glass bottle, and you get a huge amount of product here, but are you really going to go through 90ml of glittery body oil in the two and a half days of summer we get in this country? No. I have also seen and read lots of reviews stating that as this is a body oil, it doesn't completely dry down and can stay quite tacky to the touch, which would drive me absolutely crackers! You can make your own version of this for next to nothing too - just pop some shimmery pigment into a body oil that you already have and apply it wherever you fancy.

Lime Crime have recently announced that they are releasing a fourth Venus palette. This is perhaps not surprising given the success of the recently launched Venus XL palette, and the previous Venus palettes which were very well received and some may argue that the original Venus palette kicked off the whole warm toned eye trend.Venus 2 was also quite a forward thinking palette at the time, and they both have colours that would work really well together if you owned them both. Venus 3 has me stumped. I don't understand why they've gone for a palette full of pink and purple shades - most of them shimmers. There is nothing versatile or groundbreaking about this palette, and while the colours certainly are pretty, you are absolutely going to need to incorporate another palette if you want to get more than a couple of looks from this. I do think that the Venus palettes have excellent quality shadows, but this is just a hard pass from me. If you want to try out the Lime Crime eyeshadow formula, then I'd definitely recommend picking up the Venus XL if you can!

Image: @mallybeauty Instagram

I'm going to finish up with something that I'm unlikely to buy (I daren't say for definite until we get more information though!) and that is the very recently announced Mally x RuPaul collection.
Ok, now I love drag, it's had an impact on me aesthetically, politically and socially. I'ts a big part of my life and of who I am. I applaud Ru for bringing drag into the mainstream and helping it to be much more socially acceptable and seen as less of a "freak show" than it used to be. That said, not only have I never tried any Mally products, I'm really not a huge fan of Ru. So unless this collection has the best packaging and shades I've ever seen, I reckon this is gonna be a bit of a "Sashay away" for me!


Kimberly Clark YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/kimclarkqueen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlyclarkofficial/  https://www.instagram.com/chrisgiarmo/

Review - Too Faced Life's a Festival Palette

Ok, Ok I know what you're thinking, "not another unicorn themed makeup range, we are so SICK of this!" Well, let me tell you that I most certainly am NOT sick of unicorns and this palette was screaming out to me amongst all the other nonsense in this latest launch from Too Faced.

Running with the theme of their famous "Unicorn Tears" lipstick, the brand has dedicated an entire range to unicorns and the Unicorn Tears colour. Alongside the palette, Too Faced launched powder and cream highlighters, lipsticks, lip toppers, a bronzer, highlighting brush and some weird spray that I don't quite understand.  Now, as much as I love unicorns, I hate rainbow highlighters, never wear cream highlighter, don't like bronzer and the lipstick shades didn't appeal to me at all. I still have no idea what the spray is meant to do. Make your face shiny or something, I dunno. It's weird.

I ordered the palette from Debenhams, although it is also available on Cult Beauty (I'm too impatient to wait for the shipping from Cult though, and I like to get my Beauty points from Debenhams). The palette retails for £35 and contains 14 shades - 13 eyeshadows and one dual use eyeshadow/highlighter. This palette only contains two matte shades, so that's worth keeping in mind if you like to use a single palette for a full eye look.

The packaging on this palette is everything an overgrown six year old like myself could want - rainbows, glitter, a unicorn and holo! It's in the shape of a rainbow, which I find extremely adorable and the glitter accents just complete the tackiness of the whole thing.

When you open the palette, the inner of the component is completely holographic (yes, ACTUAL holo for all you Holosexuals out there) and the shade names are printed underneath the shadows, which I always prefer as opposed to having them on the back of the palette.

Like a lot of Too Faced palettes, this is scented. The official scent is Fruity Pebbles, but being an English person I have no idea what they are supposed to smell like. The scent is not as overpowering as that of the chocolate or peach palettes from Too Faced. It's very subtle and I would say if anything, it smells similar to the Sugarpill Liquid Poison lipsticks, which I believe are supposed to be orange creamsicle scented.

There is a lovely mixture of duochrome and shimmer shadows in this palette, all have whimsical names and are very soft but playful colours. The boldest colour in the palette is probably "Artist Pass" which is quite reminiscent of Mac's Blue Brown. The highlighter in the palette,, Unicorn Tears, is the star of the show for me. It's a stunning white/pinky lavender duochrome colour and looks very pretty on the face or eyes. It is fairly glitter heavy, although nothing like the Kat Von D Metal Crush highlighters, but if you like a subtle sheen then this is definitely not the highlighter for you.

If you don't like a bold or colourful eye look, then you will probably need a supplemental palette/shadows to work with this one and just use the duochromes and shimmers as accents. I do not do neutral or subtle, however, and will be happy to use this on it's own since there is a matte pink shade that can live in my crease!

If you're not over the unicorn trend and are looking for a palette that isn't just another sea of warm tones, then this one is absolutely great. If you prefer to play it safe then I'd maybe give this one a miss and pick up one of their Chocolate Bar or Peach palettes instead.

Review - Jeffree Star Blood Sugar Palette and Love Sick Liquid Lipsticks

Ah, Jeffree Star. The guy who divides opinion up and down the internet, but most people outside the YouTube/beauty/MySpace communities have never actually heard of.

It's not always easy to find an unbiased review on his products due to his controversial past (and present, let's face it). You tend to either get the Jeffree stans who think he can do no wrong in life or business, or you get the people who think he's the worst kind of human to ever exist and therefore think everything he touches is dreadful.

So, as someone who collects and enjoys his makeup, but has no interest in being mates with the bloke, I'm gonna try and give this a go and be as unbiased as I can. There are things I like about these products, and there are things I don't like. I will state that I am not a fan of his Lip Ammunitions, so I didn't purchase those to review and I have absolutely zero interest in having "merch" from any kind of beauty influencer, so I gave the accessories a miss too. What I did purchase was the Blood Sugar palette and the 4 liquid lipsticks. I have collected the liquid lipsticks since the very first launch back in 2014, but I am more than willing to say if and when I find one to be crap (hello summer 2016 collection, I'm talking about you) as the different colours do not perform the same.

The Launch

So, if you are up to date with the gossip in the beauty community, you'll know that this palette launched on February 10th and sold out in 3 minutes. Yep, his first sell out in quite a while (I've not seen his products move this quickly since the launch of his Skin Frosts back in 2016), 100,000 units in 180 seconds. Even the pre orders for the next restock of palettes is sold out currently.

I managed to purchase my products with no problems at all. Added my items to the cart and checked out. I was placed in a queue at checkout but I waited no longer than 30 seconds. By the time I'd made my purchase and had a quick look through Facebook and Twitter, I was seeing people saying that they couldn't order the palette. This was a super fast sell out.

My main problem with Jeffree Star Cosmetics is their customer service. I very much prefer to buy from Beautylish if and when I can, because their customer service is second to none, and my parcels arrive from the USA in around 3 days. Despite paying extra for faster shipping on this order, it took 4 days for them to ship the package from their warehouse, and then a further 9 days for it to get here. I didn't experience any difference by paying the extra shipping costs and I think 4 days to ship out a parcel is ridiculous. Yes, all you Jeffree stans can sit there and bang on about how he's a small business and doesn't have the staff to move out 100,000 palettes, but this is a guy who haemorrages cash on nonsense like designer boomerangs and neon pink self driving cars, you can't tell me he doesnt have the financial means to employ a few more warehouse staff. However, it arrived packaged nicely with plenty of bubble wrap and despite my worries (I have seen a lot of people receive broken palettes) everything was in great condition, and no damage at all, so I was very pleased and incredibly relieved about that!

Blood Sugar Palette

Yep, another warm toned palette. Exactly what ALL of our eyeballs need right now, huh? If I'm honest, I was over the warm toned trend before it even began, I love cool tones and I love colour. I was drawn to this by the pops of colour - that bright pink and red were calling my name! I actually also really loved the look of the cool toned greige type colour in between the pink and purple shades. Actually, despite not being a fan of the warm toned red trend, there are very few colours I would never use in this palette. I don't think I will ever use the shades on the top and bottom right hand sides, or the brown shade, Ouch (I hate that shade name btw), but the others are all colours I will enjoy creating looks with.

The palette comes in what Jeffree describes as a "doctors case". Its very deep and I have to say, the packaging is probably the best I've seen in a very long time. The component is made from cardboard, with a faux leather outer and closes with silver clasps - a completely unneccessary but nonetheless incredibly clever and aesthetically pleasing touch. The palette comes in a cardboard sleeve, which has all of the ingredients etc on.

The shade names are, to put it politely, a little odd. In his reveal video, Jeffree claims that as the palette is based on a doctors case and it's named Blood Sugar, he has chosen lots of medical and dentistry themed names for the shades. I don't particularly associate dentists with diabetes, but I'm gonna let that one slide and go straight to wondering why "tongue pop" and "fresh meat" have been thrown in there. No thanks.

Swatches

I'll add my brush swatch pictures next. I did as I always do - primer, then build up the shadow to my desired opacity (or as opaque as I can get it). I do this because when you use a shadow on the eyes, you won't just swipe your brush over your eyes and think "Oh that's a patchy mess, I'll call it a day and finish now", you build up the colour until it looks good. I will say that after finger swatching these shadows, I can see why he didn't do live swatches on his reveal video - they swatch horribly with fingers, but most of the shades do build up nicely with a brush. Some take a little more work than others, but the pigment is there for most of the colours.

You can see that some of the swatches look quite messy, especially on the second image. This is because I cleaned up (or tried to) an awful lot of fallout from swatching. Fallout and kickup isn't something that bothers me at all really. Usually it means that a shadow has plenty of pigment, and I always do my eyeshadow before I do my base makeup so cleaning up isn't an issue for me. I definitely wanted to mention it though as I know a lot of people were raging about the amount of fallout from the shades in the ABH Subculture palette last year. I do think these shades are more densely packed than Subculture, but the fallout is definitely noticeable.

Is It Eye Safe?!

You may have heard that some shades in this palette are not considered "eye safe". Is this true? Well, the answer to this is that it depends where you live. If you live in the USA then there are shades in this palette that are not deemed to be eye safe, but if you live in the UK then crack on! 

The reason for this, is that certain ingredients that are known to stain the skin are not considered to be "eye safe" or to be used in the immediate eye area by the FDA. The UK has no such rules, we clearly don't care whether we have stained faces or not! So, if you use these shades then please don't worry about your face melting or your eyeballs falling out, all that'll happen is a bit of staining. I used the brightest colours in the palette for this eye look (over primer) and I have minimal staining after approximately 7 hours of wear. 

All in all, I don't think this is a terrible palette. Do I think it's that great that it should've shifted 100,000 units in 3 minutes? Probably not. Will I use it again? Yes, absolutely. Do I think it's worth the $52 price tag? Probably. A lot of the cost will go towards the cost of the packaging, this is much more impressive than the crappy cardboard components his previous palettes came in, BUT knowing that this is now a permanent item, if you're not absolutely desperate to get your hands on this then I'd say wait for one of the Jeffree Star Cosmetics sales and pick it up for a discount instead.

The Love Sick collection also featured 4 liquid lipsticks, 3 Lip Ammunitions and an assortment of "merch" including makeup bags, mirrors and some clothes (I think). I collect the Velour Liquid Lipsticks so I ordered two with the palette (Restraints and Self Control) and then I picked up the other two when they launched on Beauty Bay a few days later. The lipsticks come in the same component as always, but with the limited edition red chrome lids. I do wish he'd wrap in with the limited edition stuff, but I also understand it's a clever business move - make things seem unobtainable so that we want them more (it works like a dream on me, let me tell you).

Three of the four shades are nothing special. We have seen similar colours from him in the past (and in the case of Problematic, the very recent past) - Self Control is somewhere in the middle of Virginity and Blow Pony, Romeo is much like a more neon version of Rose Matter and Problematic just looks like hes chucked the leftovers from the Christmas shades Santa Baby and Berries on Ice in a red top tube. Restraints is completely unique to his collection, however. A metallic finish gunmetal shade, it's unlike anything he has previously released and I think that is fantastic. I fell in love with Jeffree Star Cosmetics because of the exciting shade range - rememeber how we all lost our shit over the blue collection? Or 714? That's what I expect from this brand, and it's been disappointing to see him churning out so many nude and red shades if I'm perfectly honest. I hope this latest release is a sign that he is moving back to his roots, experimenting with colours and having the most unique shade range on the market.

I actually really like all of these shades. Self Control is a very wearable, cool toned lilac. I find that Virginity is far too light for me, and Blow Pony is quite extreme for every day wear, but this shade sits nicely in the middle of the two and I would wear this as an every day lip colour.

Problematic, as I said, is very similar to the berry tones in the Christmas collection, however I much prefer the formula of this to either of the other two. It's a very bold shade, but unlike his previous berry shades, this one applies nicely and isn't patchy or streaky at all. It stained my lips slightly after around 7 hours of wear.

Romeo is a very bright, almost but not quite neon, shade of pink. I love pinks, and I'm a big fan of his shade Rose Matter. This is kind of like Rose Matter on a night out, much more bright and in your face, but also quite wearable if you want to try something a little brighter than a regular nude shade.

Restraints is a very sheer formula. Like most metallic liquid lipsticks, it does take some building up. I found that I needed two coats and had to press the wand onto my lips a little to finish off the application, but it dried down nicely and the extra coat didn't cause any discomfort or irritability to my lips like some brands do when I try and build the colours up.

I love these lipsticks. I have had lots of hits with his liquid lipsticks and plenty of misses too, but these 4 shades are all really nice to apply and wear and very much reminiscent of the "old school" Jeffree lipsticks that applied super opaque in one swipe and lasted forever on the lips, I'm very much hoping that this standard of formula stays!