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.