Models Own Supernatural Palette, Ten Pan Eyeshadow Palette - Cruelty Free Makeup

Just after Christmas I was in the Buchanan Galleries killing some time when I stumbled upon (quite literally, I'm not exactly a graceful human being) the Models Own stand.  You know the ones shaped like a spilling bottle of nail polish?  Well they had a huge sale on, and as I've only ever tried their nail polish, I thought I'd take advantage of it. I picked up a set of brushes, a set of liners and this palette.

So I'm going to talk about this like I didn't get it on special offer as it currently isn't reduced so that's what will apply to if you're considering buying this palette now, Currently on the Models Own website this palette retails for £14.99 and you get 7 grams of product across ten pans of eyeshadow (0.7 grams per pan, or £2.14 per gram of eyeshadow ), which isn't a huge amount of product. To give a comparison the Sleek Eyeshadow Palettes, which I feel are the closest comparable products quality wise, on average contain 14.4g of product across 12 pans and retail for £8.99 (1.1 grams per pan, or £0.62 per gram of eyeshadow). So not what I would really call value for money.

So the palette is made of white plastic, with the palettes name either stuck or painted on the front. The holographic lettering is actually really pretty, however the rest of the palette just feels cheap and kind of nasty. This might be personal thing, I just don't like makeup that comes in white packaging. It gets dirty easily and the rounded out corners make my think of kiddie makeup. It kind of fits with Models Own aesthetic though, with their rainbow glitter nail polish and neon lip tars.  

Top row: Paranormal, Mystery, Celestial, Spiritual and Mythical

So inside the palette the pans look really small, if they were pushed up another pan at least could have been fitted in each row. Oh, and it also came with a brush (which I though I had binned but it turns out it was just in the dirty brush jar when I photographed this). 

Bottom Row: Mystic, Eternal, Phantom, Curse and Phenomenon

So you get three matte shades, mythical, mystic and phantom, and they're all pretty disappointing to be honest. They're finely milled, but there's not much colour pay off and they apply patchy.  

Finger and brush swatches of  Paranormal, Celestial and Eternal

The other seven are metallic and finger swatch amazingly, however if you use sweeping motions with a brush (as seen above) they lose that beautiful metallic sheen and high colour content. For best results I recommend using a good quality sticky primer (cough*Too Faced Glitter Insurance*cough) and either use your finger or a flat brush to pat them on. 

Overall thoughts, this palettes a little disappointing. The mattes aren't great and you don't get a lot of product in the metallic shades however they are pretty. 

Would I recommend it?  

Probably not. For just over half the price, you could have Sleek palette with more shades, more product and more variety. 

I'm probably going to play Pan the Palette with this later on in the year, as I only used each metallic shade a couple of times and I can already see dips forming in them. 

xoxo Scruffy

Other eyeshadow reviews

Technic Colour Max Palettes

Sleek Onto the Horizon Palette

Urban Decay Naked Ultimate Basics Palette

Natural Collection Single Pan Eyeshadows

Sleek Onto The Horizon Ltd Edition Palette Review with Arm Swatches - Cruelty Free Drugstore Makeup

Earlier this year Sleek released some limited edition palettes: Onto the Horizon, Nordic Skies and Goodnight Sweetheart. All of them are still available and over the past month I've somehow acquired all three. I've spent a bit of time forming an opinion on them and now I plan on reviewing them all whilst they're still available on Sleek website.

The first one I got was On The Horizon palette, and I believe it was a Superdrug exclusive in the UK. Sleek have a habit of splitting collections down the middle in the UK and making half of it Boots and half Superdrug. They've done it more recently with the Rockstars Collection and you can find my review of the Hidden Gems palette from that here.

This is also one of the products I thought I'd lost all the photos for when my laptop died. Luckily I managed to find some on my backup hard drive, and I've chosen to use them as I've already binned the box and can't re-photograph it.

They all have gorgeous outer packaging that is themed around the colour selection. On the Horizon is a mix of forest greens,burnt oranges and brown tones. I've been wearing a lot of nudes recently but on Saturday I cracked into Lightyear from the Moondust palette I bought on Black Friday and I'm in love with greens again.

So the actual palette is just standard Sleek packaging. It comes with the usual sponge applicator and sheet with the names printed on it. I now have a stack of these in my palette drawer just from Sleek and Makeup Revolution, and I have no idea which one goes with what palette.

Here's a better photo of the shades themselves, you get 9 shimmery metallic shades and 3 mattes. The shimmer shades are where Sleek always excel so its a really good breakdown.

So here's the top row of the palette, as you can see the first shade and last three are gorgeous but two and three (Sugar Maple and Beech) didn't swatch very well.  It's a shame because Sugar Maple is such a pretty rose gold colour and looks really nice when its blended.  Beech on the other hand is just mehh.. and blends away to nothing.

Here's the bottom row. Again not all of them swatched very well. The first shade, Chestnut is a really beautiful brown with a blue/purple sheen. Willow (third from the right) swatched really intensely but isn't as vivid and vibrant when blended out and the two shades to the right of it Dew Drop and Pine Cone are really nice shimmer shades that just need building a little. The only shade in this palette that I would say is bad is Fawn (the yellow shade third from the left). It's far chunkier than any other Sleek eyeshadow I've ever seen and just skips and highlights skin texture. 

The one thing I really like about the outside of this palette is that it has the name of the palette stamped on the front on clear lettering. My biggest criticism of these palettes has always been that I can't tell them apart from the front and need to flip them all over or open them to see which is which. I like that they all come in a hard plastic shell and have a large mirror, it helps make all their products feel like they're extra good value for money.

I've also been using this palette for a week straight now and I do love the shadows but I was limited by the colour selection and had to mix it in the Naked Ultimate Basics palette as the week wore on. I liked mixing the shiny green and brown colours together but found I didn't use the orange even though I thought I would. I also didn't find a use for the lovely navy blue and feel sad I couldn't be more creative in the mornings. 

XOXO Scruffy

Other Sleek reviews

Matte Me Liquid Lipsticks

i-Lust Hidden Gems Palette

Smoke and Mirrors Gift-set

Enquiry? Message me ascruffyduck@gmail.com

(Just a wee note. I live in Scotland and we're currently in Winter. Right now we're getting less than eight hours daylight a day and I spend that in work, so sorry about the badly lit photos).

Sleek i-Lust Hidden Gems Palette - First impressions and swatches

(Firstly let me apologise for the quality of the photos. My laptop is broken so I'm going between phone and small tablet, it's not fun but you gotta do what you gotta do.)

I didn't go into Superdrug today planning on buying make-up, all I wanted was some facial wipes and maybe a white eyeliner (which I didn't end up buying). However the facial wipes are opposite the make-up, go figure on that one, and when I saw this I had to have it. It's so pretty.

After doing a bit if research online, I found out this palette was only released today, and is part of the limited edition Rockstars collection by Sleek. I was a bit surprised about it only just being released as the display was almost completely wiped of stock. I know their eyeshadow palettes are great quality and the liquid lipsticks are good (full review of them here), but I didn't think they had a big enough following to pick a display clean in a couple of hours. 

So full details. The palette is £7.49 and you get six 1g eyeshadows. The palette is long and skinny, rather than the short rectangle design Sleek usually use. The pans are also larger and square rather than the small round ones in the i-Divine palettes. Although these square ones look bigger they are actually smaller, their regular palettes retail for £8.99 and contain twelve 1.1g pans. 

Sorry about the bad lighting in this photo.

So here's a shot of the inside of the palette. Its cute but nothing special. None of the cute geometric design from the front makes its way inside which is a shame, but the I prefer square to round pans and the colour selection looks good.

Colours L-R. Emerald City, Amethyst Sky, Amber City, Sapphire Blues, Ruby Tuesday, Diamond Dust

How do they swatch? Very well. Sleek's eyeshadows are some of my favourites and I find their sparkly metallic ones far better than the mattes so I expected them to be good.  So pretty. The silver and gold shades are a bit chunky and flakes but still blendable and have a very high colour pay off.

Here's a more close-up image of the swatches. I did another single fingers worth of eyeshadow over Emerald City, Amethyst Sky and Sapphire Blues to make the colour more intense. Emerald City is an almost duo-chrome green and brown shade.  Amethyst Sky is a metallic purple, but it has a lot of very fine multicoloured glitter in it that doesn't really show in the photos. Ruby Tuesday is my favourite though. I love a metallic red, as I might have told you, multiple times now.

Diamond Dust vs Urban Decays Frenzy

Diamond Dust on the left and Frenzy from the Electric palette on the right.

L-R, Diamond Dust brush swatch, Diamond Dust finger swatch, Frenzy finger swatch

This was more a test I did to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. The Urban Decay Electric palette has an amazing silver in it, so I thought I'd compare them. 

Diamond Dust is a bit more chunky and has a darker, more gunmetal undertone and Frenzy is a very fine and smooth pigment with a very white silver colour. If you're looking for a crazy silver colour both are great. 

Overall final thoughts...

This palette is great quality and value. Its not something that you can build complete eye looks out of, but if you have a great collection of nudes and crease colours and just need something for a pop of colour, then this is your palette. 

XOXO Scruffy

Enquiry? Message me ascruffyduck@gmail.com 

Other Sleek reviews...

Sleek Matte Me Lipstick Reviews

Sleek Smoke & Mirrors Gift Set

First Impressions - Technic Colour Max Baked Eyeshadow Palette

I love a bargain, and theres a couple of brands I've been curious about for a while. Technic is one of them and after doing some research, it looked as though the parent company Badgequo do not test on animals.

They're webiste is a little confusing, however I went to a couple of cruelty free blogs I trust, and they said they were fine, so I've basically bought these on faith. I'm comfortable with that, however if you need something more concrete please don't make word for it.

There are four palettes in the range. I picked up two of them, the blue and silver one and the red and copper one. There is also a pink and purple and red and blue one. Neither of those ones grabbed my attention and I actually found the red and blue one a bit weird. They were £2.99 each and these two are so pretty.

The packaging is a nice and sturdy plastic with black and silver detailing. I like that its not a solid colour and you can see what you're reaching for as well. I can count the number of times of times I've reached for the wrong thing in the morning and ended up with some highly questionable looks. You get 2 grams of each colour, which is quite a lot of product. They do have a smell, its not strong or overpowering, its familiar though but I can't place it.

Now on to some swatchy swatches...

Blue Palette.

And Red Palette.

See what I mean when I say they are so pretty. They are a tiny bit powdery, so once I'd swatched them their was some loose pigment round the edges. However at less the 40 pence a shadow I'm not going cry over a tiny bit of fall out. 

Due to my work schedule, I've not been wearing a lot of makeup (specifically eyeshadows and winged liner) cause lets be honest, I would rather have the extra ten minutes in bed. First occasion I get though, I will give these a proper test run on my peepers and report back.

Have you tried any Technic makeup? If so what did you think?

xo Scruffy

PS. Check out my new sunnies (And please ignore my skin, hair, double chin and lack of make-up. I've been starting work at 7am and sleep is more important than concealer right now). Picked these up recently and I'm in love. Can't wait to get away on my holidays so I have an excuse to wear them.