Showing posts with label eyeshadow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyeshadow. Show all posts

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Review: LORAC Pro Palette

Today I have for you a review of a much-raved about eyeshadow palette among the online beauty world. It is the LORAC Pro Palette.

Here it is!

When this palette was released it caused a great stir among beauty lovers for the simple fact that it is a neutral eyeshadow palette containing half matte and half shimmer eyeshadows.

The reason this was such a big deal is because this is not often done when releasing eyeshadow palettes...the reason? Because shimmery colours are a lot prettier than matte ones and therefore a lot more tempting for buyers!

Comes with a baby eye primer.
Packaged in a rubberised heavy duty cardboard.

However, as most beauty lovers know, matte eyeshadows are essential for giving your eyeshadow look dimension and can be very flattering on the eyes, especially on older eyes.

In my opinion this palette has the perfect array of colours for a neutral eyeshadow palette. You've got your base colours, highlight colours, all over lid colours, crease colours, defining colours, a couple of fun colours thrown in, colours for the perfect smokey eye and of course the always needed matte black shadow. Altogether there are 16 shades with each shade containing 0.55 grams. It also comes with a mini Behind the Scenes Eye Primer, which I don't find to be anything special, just your average eye primer.

Isn't it pretty!

The texture of these shadows are buttery smooth and feel amazing to swatch. Due to their softness they can result in fall out, if you are not careful when placing the colour onto your eye. I would recommend tapping off any excess that's on your brush before you apply which should combat any fall out.

So exactly what colours do you get? Here's a rundown;

Shades on the left hand side.

White - pure white matte shade, perfect for an inner corner highlight, a base or brow bone highlight.
Nude - a shimmery pale pink colour, perfect for brightening the eyes.
Cream - matte cream shade, this shade can be a bit patchy but good to use as an all over base colour.
Champagne - a very pretty shimmery champagne colour with tiny white sparkles - lovely as a highlight or lid colour.
Taupe - a mid toned matte brown, not really a taupe but the perfect blending colour.
Gold - a very bright rich gold colour that leans towards an orange toned gold, this is an amazing lid colour.
Lt Pink - a matte light true baby pink, this is great for brightening the inner corner.
Lt Bronze - a gorgeous light bronze, looks very pretty swept over the lid.

Shades on the right hand side.

Mauve - a matte purple toned brown, this is one of my favourite colours as it's perfect for adding dimension and blending out the crease.
Pewter - your typical taupe colour (think MAC's satin taupe).
Sable - a rich warm toned matte chocolate brown.
Garnet - a gorgeous rusty colour, my favourite of them all! (This would be amazing on blue eyes!)
Espresso - a dark chocolate brown colour, perfect for the outer corner and to use under the eyes.
Deep Purple - a super dark vibrant purple colour with tiny, almost unnoticeable, specs of red glitters.
Black - a great matte black that everyone needs to deepen a look or to use as liner.
Slate - that perfect blueish grey colour to create a dark smokey eye.

Top matte colours in order (no flash)

Top matte colours in order (flash)

Bottom shimmery colours in order (no flash)

Bottom shimmery colours in order (flash)

The only downside to this palette for me is that some of the shades are a bit too soft and can create fall out, as you can see from this picture after I had swatched the shades. The packaging can also get pretty dirty, however, this isn't a big turnoff for me as most makeup does this.

Getting a little messy from all that swatching!

I highly recommend investing in this palette if you are new to eyeshadow or if you are simply a neutral eyeshadow lover. The combination of so many matte and shimmer colours in a range of neutral shades makes it the perfect palette, not to mention the ease at which the shadows apply to the eye along with their great blend-ability and pigmentation. The slim line packaging and large mirror also make it a great travel companion.

Packaging compared to Naked 1 & 2, a lot slimmer but roughly same size.

If you are a fan of the Urban Decay Naked palettes you will definitely love this palette too. I have both and can honestly say that I love them all equally.

The LORAC Pro Palette can be purchased from Sephora for $42USD, for those of us in Australia I bought mine from a highly reputable Ebay seller that can be found here for about $70AUD (all up).

Do any of you own this palette? What do you think of it, worth the hype?

Hannah xox

Sunday, April 17, 2011

BYS Review: Eyeshadows

Australia is known for it's high cost of cosmetics even supposedly cheap "drugstore" brands such as Maybelline or Revlon are still considerably more expensive in Oz than say the USA or UK.


BYS is an Australian cosmetics brand sold in stores such as Gloss Cosmetics, Ice Accessories, The Reject Shop, K-mart etc. The brand has a large array of different products at very reasonable prices, most being under $10 - which is quite unheard of in Oz! 

This post will be one of a few that I will be writing on BYS products. I have quite a large collection of their products and tried to write a post overviewing the brand but it just got wayyy to long so I have decided to split it up into categories. This post is about their eyeshadows :)

BYS eyeshadows can be purchased in pan form, which can be placed in empty palettes that they also sell or in small palettes that are already put together. The pans are $2 each and are the same size as MAC shadows. The empty palettes come in 4 pan ($4.95) or 8 pan ($7.95) form, however if you remove the inner cavity you can fit 10 eyeshadows in the 8 pan palette. The already established palettes come in a variety of different sizes and colour combinations. They range in price from $4.95 to $7.95. 

8 pan palette
8 pan palette with cavity removed
Eyeshadow palette in #3 Olive Daze
Eyeshadow palette in #5 Black Steel
Now we have all the admin out of the way let me tell you what I think about these shadows.

The Good:

  • VERY pigmented
  • Super soft and velvety texture (even more than MAC shadows)
  • Blend beutifully
  • The price!! $2 for one shadow is a lot better than $33 for one MAC shadow.

The Bad:
  • Can be chalky
  • Fallout can occur so you need to be careful or do eye-makeup first.
  • The eyeshadows are numbered and not named (personally I prefer names as they are easier to recall which you own and which you don't when buying but its not that big a deal)

All in all I think these are great shadows, especially for the cheap cheap price!

Here are some swatches I have of my BYS eyeshadows;

L to R: 125, 124, 818, 300, 812, 803, #missing for this one, 405, 815, 817.
Swatches from Olive Daze palette (in order from top to bottom).
Swatches from Black Steel palette (in order from top to bottom).


BYS eyeshadows can be purchased in-store from Gloss Cosmetics, Ice Accessories, The Reject Shop and K-mart. Or online at Fashion Addict