ZOEVA Rose Golden Eyeshadow Palette Swatches and Review

As a fan of ZOEVA brushes, I admit I haven't been all that curious to try out their makeup. Until the Rose Golden palette that is.

This is a 10-shade palette filled with mostly warm metal tones from copper, peach, rose, soft wine, and 3 very functional matte shades which are nicely chosen to provide a little bit of definition and contrast where you maybe don't want shimmer. Namely the socket line, brow bone, and lash line.

The pigmentation of most of the shades are buttery smooth and very soft, but the surprising thing is you don't get a ton of fall-out. These are not exceedingly powdery, which many affordable shadow lines that also give good payoff (e.g. Wet n Wild) tend to be. These shadows are formulated quite similarly to higher-end shadows - true to color, and neither too unpigmented, nor overly soft and intense. You get medium payoff, good blendability, and the option to build up intensity if you need.

Most manufacturers - cheap or expensive - tend to get the metallics right. But I was especially impressed by the mattes in the Rose Golden palette. I will say that a couple of the darker shades here are less pigmented than the others, but that might be a good thing for beginners who are afraid to load on too much dark color too quickly.

Luster, the medium beige matte shade is great as a brow bone shade and even just to clean up around the edges of your eye look as a final touch before mascara. 

Reflective Elegance is a soft warm peach-pink champagne with incredible pigmentation. 

Copper is King is to me THE shade that draws the eye in this palette. It's a true copper with wine undertones, and looks like it would be extremely red and intense, but actually goes on soft. 

Shining Bright is a mauvey metallic brown that is beautiful all over the lids. 

Rusty Petals is a chocolate-y deep bronze which is not as pigmented as I'd expected. This has more of a tendency than the other metallic shades to go on slightly patchy.

Foil is a coppery brown which sometimes look a little rosy in the pan, but goes on more bronze and warm. 

Just a Rose is a quintessential duochrome rose gold with a rosy undertone and coppery-gold highlights. 

Golden Rule is straight-up gold - I love this color; it has enough neutral beige tones in it to not look overly yellow and harsh on the skin. 

Harmony is a taupe matte shade which is great as a transition color in the socket. It's a bit on the cool side, but that only brings out the warm metallic shades more. Dark haired girls can also use this in their brows. 

Wonder Full is a dark matte cocoa, and as with the metallic dark brown in the palette, this is also slightly patchy and not as easy to control and blend compared to the other shades. It still works fine - it's just not as easy to work with as Luster or Harmony.

The quality is fair to great but definitely not consistent across the different colors, and with some of these shades, you do need to spend some time packing on the color for intensity. If you are expecting a super-vibrant molten metal look with this palette, you might be disappointed. I've seen some very intense and vibrant looks done with this palette online, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say you can't get that effect using just this palette - without a primer or cream shadow to grab and intensify the pigments, or foiling the shades with some water.

Applying it on clean lids with standard dry brushes will give you this sort of intensity below. (I'm wearing brown pencil along the lashes as well. The dark shades will not give you this intensity on their own.)

VERDICT:

This is an affordable, good quality palette I actually recommend for beginners or those who want a nice daily palette with beautiful warm tones. It's also a palette girls with blue or grey eyes can use to maximize contrast with their eyes, although honestly speaking, I'm not a big fan of restricting your eye looks by eye color. (You are more than your eye color - your hair, skin, lip and cheek shades, outfit also affect how shades look on you.)

So this is good for anyone unless you want maximum color intensity and payoff from the get-go. I find these comparable to maybe MAC or Too Faced shadows in general. Smoother and less powdery than Wet n Wild, less pigmented than Urban Decay and Make Up For Ever.

I do feel this is a palette lacks 1-2 pale shades for paler girls to use as highlight colors. If you are MAC NC25 and paler, none of the shades will really be pale enough to act as highlights. Not even the soft yellow-gold shade will be bright or light enough to add a strong pop on paler skins. Just something to be aware of. If you want a single palette with a whole spectrum of light to dark tones and don't want to have to add in paler ivory or champagne shades from elsewhere, this might not be for you.

I purchased my ZOEVA Rose Golden palette from Sephora.sg for SG$32.99.

Bobbi Brown Shimmering Sands Palette Swatches, Review, and Demos (Day/Smoky Looks)

Bobbi Brown's launched their Summer collection, which includes the limited edition Shimmering Sands palette which a lot of people were very interested in when I posted images of it on Instagram. This palette is actually smaller than it might seem in pictures. My palette is a press sample, so the weight of each pan isn't printed on the bottom, but they are much smaller than a typical circular shadow so my guess is they're about 0.7g each or so, as compared to the typical 1.5g.

The good news is this is a very portable palette if you want something quite subtle and good quality, but not overloaded with too many full-size shades that you can't finish.

As you can see from the swatches above and below, there are a mix of textures, from sparkly to metallic, to satin, and matte. That said, there is only 1 truly matte shade and 2 satins that look mostly matte but contain tiny sparkles in them. A usual for Bobbi Brown shadows, I personally find the shimmers/metallics to be the smoothest and easiest to work with. The matte and satins are smooth but extremely subtle.

All the shades are pretty smooth, and pigmentation level is sheer to medium intensity. If you like Urban Decay and Make Up For Ever type intensity, you might find these quite subtle. But if you're more accustomed to MAC and Bobbi Brown shadows, then most of these are pretty good.

Both of the dark browns on the bottom right of the palette are actually those sparkly translucent creamy shadows that work better patted on over other shades. They also work alright on their own as a wash over the entire lid, but they won't work well as definer shades without eyeliner or a dark cream base, as they are too translucent and not nearly dark enough to shade and define.

Compared to the Spring Hot Nudes palette from earlier this year, I actually prefer Hot Nudes. I feel I get a bit more variety; cool, warm, matte, shimmer. While the shades in the Shimmering Sands palette are beautiful, there isn't a huge variety. You will find a single transition shade, and none of the colors are really deep enough or matte enough to make great liner/definer shades along the lash line.

But it's still versatile enough as a daily palette, and can give you some options for transitioning between day and night.

Below are 2 quick tutorials to demonstrate the possibilities to you. Do take note that the Smoky Look was done with a brown liner smudged lightly onto lids as a base. The metallic brown in the palette is nice but not as intense as this without a base.

DAY LOOK

 SMOKY LOOK

Majolica Majorca Humming Book I (Swatches, Review, 2 Easy Looks and how to dupe the product!)

I think Majolica Majorca has fabulously silky and pigmented eyeshadows. But I'm not a fan of palettes where there are a mixture of cream and powder products. Creams have different shelf lives from powders and the lip cream is most likely going to go bad before the other stuff. Also, when powder gets into cream and vice versa, everything gets ruined. 

BUT, when I saw this charming little "song book" in their latest limited edition collection and tested the 3 shadows (1 cream base and 2 shadows) alone and over one another, I concluded it was so brilliant I had to pick one up.

 

Concept:

The collection is centered around a dreamy, lyrical flower garden, and the combination of shades gives you exactly that sort of look. Now you CAN possibly use each of the colors alone, but I personally wouldn't do that. 

Alone, the 2 pale shadows can look a little washed out and not flattering if you don't have a very defined and deep socket. The cream base on its own, does not set and will shift, smear, and crease. The genius is in the combination when the pale duochrome shadows hit that dark blackened plum. You get the most beautiful soft-focus pearl finish.

The petal-pink lip gloss I couldn't care less about. It looks nice in the pan but applies streaky, lacks pigmentation, isn't flattering on its own, and all in all, you're better off getting Revlon Lip Butter in Strawberry Shortcake.