Review: NYX Box of Shadows

It's no mystery to know that I've been putting off writing this blog post for a couple of weeks now, all for one reason, firstly because I was dreading swatching 112 eye shadows, yeah you heard me right, 112 eye shadows!  And secondly, because then I had to edit all those pictures... that's quite an undertaking, but today I felt up to the heady challenge!  So, here goes nothing! (as usual, my thoughts will be at the bottom)  :)

Love that these are cruelty free - hats off to you NYX :)

The Swatches

Starting from the top row of the palette and working down in order.  Swatched shades are left to right, first four shades on the top row, second four shades on the bottom row for all pics.

Top Row

2nd Row

3rd Row

4th Row

5th Row

6th Row

7th Row

8th Row

9th Row

10th Row

11th Row

12th Row

13th Row

14th Row

My Thoughts

Well that was an epic marathon of photo's!!!!  *takes a deep breath*  Right, lets talk about these little babies of highly pigmented (for the most part) colour shall we!

I think the best way for me to break these down isn't so much by colour, but be texture.  For me, the matte shades were the weaker part of this palette - and I think that shows in the pictures, they're the ones I struggled to swatch.  Now, on the top layer (so the browns and neutrals) those matte's were actually pretty good, they may not have swatched amazingly on my hand, but on the lid they look great, and last surprisingly well without creasing - I mean, I'm really impressed with those.

When it comes to the mattes of the brighter colours, I wasn't quite as impressed, and quite a few of them had gone shiny on top which makes it difficult to pick up product (I hate it when this happens).

Now the glittery shadows.  As you'd expect, increased fallout with these, but don't let that put you off, there's some stellar shades in the collection, my absolute favourite being from row 6, 3rd shade in from the left - it's a beautiful neutral glittery shade which has been my staple shadow of choice for all of January.  I also love that with some shades they've mixed it up by adding a bright glitter in, like the black shade on row 6 (2nd shade in from the left) with red glitter in it.  Be prepared though, you won't get much of that glitter to stick to your lid but it looks pretty all the same.

The rest of the shades are lightly shimmery, or satin finish which is what I naturally lean towards unless I'm wearing a dark lip (in which case I go for matte eyes).  Other than a couple of shades that weren't as pigmented as others, pretty much every shade in this palette is of really high quality. Now, I haven't tried all the shades, I don't think I could get away with wearing yellow eye shadow as a non-punk 30-something, but you never know (thinking Halloween etc), it's always good to have a variety of decent shades on hand.

For me, the purples are beautiful, the blues (omg some phenomenal shades here) and most of the neutrals.  This palette has a beautiful and diverse mix of finishes and colours, all with decent pan sizes and brilliant quality.  There's a shade and finish for everything, brow-bones  inner corners of the eye, liner, light, dark, colours, matte, sparkly, satin, you name it, it's in there.

As for where you can get it, that's where it's more difficult, I had this for Christmas, but I do know that my friend bought it from TKMaxx for £15 - so if you're lucky you might find it there.  On the NYX UK website you can buy that exact palette here, they do have a range of other sizeable palettes you might want to check out too if this is tempting you!  Here's their link.

What's your favourite NYX product?  I'm dying to try some of their lip glosses :)

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