NYX Smokey palette

I'm a big fan of NYX, I was even their blogger of the month for March this year.  So when I saw they were releasing some new palettes, naturally I was quite excited.  I have a massive palette of theirs and love the eyeshadows, the quality is usually great, the packaging quality and they're cruelty free - all good things in my book.

The lovely people over at Cocktail Cosmetics kindly sent this to me to review, so I'm afraid I can't take credit for parting with my hard earned cash for it, but as usual, here's my honest review of it :)

 ** Swatched without primer **

** Swatched with primer **

I'm going to talk about my first impressions before I get into the full review.  The packaging is typical of NYX, high quality and cute.  The colour combination is great, there's 2 black shades (one is glittery) a deep berry shade, a medium brown, a dark blue and a white.  Once I'd photographed it before using it, I took out the sponge applicator and started swatching away on my hand.  This is where I became disappointed, the product barely showed up.  

So the next day I did my makeup in the usual way, primed my lids and got out this palette, and again it applies very sheer.  I had to repeatedly go back and get more and more product to build it up. Eventually I actually had a really pretty smokey eye, just not the dramatic smokey eye I was going for.  I mainly used the medium brown all over the lid, the deep berry on the outer V and in the crease, and then darkened with the glittery black on the outer corners.

What I did discover is that primer made a big difference, at least when swatching - the first swatch I did, I didn't use primer, and that's when they were very sheer, the 2nd time I swatched them with primer and they looked pretty amazing.  These are good eyeshadows to use wet, and that's probably how I'd recommend them being used, unless you're going for a softer smokey eye but with a variation of colour, if that's the case then this will be a great palette for you.  Personally, I prefer massive pigmentation - but on a positive note, when they are more sheer it's harder to make mistakes :)

In all honesty, I was disappointed with this palette, it's not of the quality I've come to love and expect of NYX.  As you can see from the photo of my eyes, it looked a bit patchy after a lot of blending and as much as it looked quite pretty, it's just not up to their normal standard.  It really kills me to say that as I'm such a fan of their products, but this one just wasn't for me.  If you like a more delicate look then this would be a great palette for you :)

It retails for £8.00* which you can pick up at Cocktail Cosmetics.

This months Bigest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Karen from Liverpool Lashes

 

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