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 - 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!