I was really excited when the promo pictures for these came out. I like mattes. I like brights. I like darks. Triple crown, right?



Sort of. I like mattes, brights, and darks, but I'm not too keen on Sleek mattes. Historically, they've been incredibly hit and miss for me - even the standard black colour that's included with pretty much every palette ever varies in pigmentation from palette to palette (for example, the one included with my Acid palette is pretty pathetic, but the one in my Circus palette is blacker than your average collapsed megastar). The Bohemian palette is full of mattes with fantastic colour payoff, whereas the Chaos palette, an all matte one, won't give you payoff even if you take a chainsaw to it. This inconsistency is present in almost every palette I own by them, and countless reviews on this here blog of mine attest to that. So I was quite cautious when I decided to invest in these.




As you can see, they look absolutely stunning in the pan.


I'm enjoying the colour choices for the Dark palette. Most of the colours are thoroughly useable, and I have a thing for dark blue/teal/green eyeshadows of which there are plenty here.





Again, I appreciate the colour choices for the Brights palette, though I feel a red wouldn't have gone amiss somewhere here, and the pinks are slightly too similar for my liking. Still, a good effort.



The Darks colours are fine when swatched - less fallout than other Sleek shades I own (I'm handing that to the removal of the waffle thatched pattern from the Sleek eyeshadows, now they resemble the MUA ones) and on the whole, good pigmentation. A couple of shades disappointed me, the white and the grey, but as I wouldn't get a lot of use out of those anyway I'm not going to cry over it.



With flash:



The pigmentation of the greens and the lightish brown are especially good, and this transfers to an ease of use on the eyes, as well. Good job!

Unfortunately, it all comes apart here for the Brights palette. Booooo.


Why do I have one stupidly bright green and a collection of substandard other colours? All the lighter shades are pants, the yellow is about as visible as air, the purple is piss poor and the light blue resembles flour. Judging you, Sleek. Tempted to get a refund...the only colours worth using are the green, the turquoise colour, the orange and the slightly brighter pink. Waste of £7.

Conclusion: Darks = good and bang on trend. Brights = buy some chalk instead, it's x10 more effective.

I got this free with the purchase of other items in the range, and wouldn't pay for it out of my own pocket to be honest. While the shimmers are pigmented, the mattes are by and large awful and the colour selection seems almost as rushed and mismatched as this post, lol.



Happy last few hours of February the 29th!

While I know the vast majority of the human race beauty blogging world seem to consider 'Heaven and Earth' as the standout palette from the MUA Pro range, I personally think this little beauty more than gives it a run for its' money. Perhaps it's the oversaturation talking (after the first TOWIB everyone seemed to have got one for free, subsequently blogged about it stating it's awesome, and I did get more than sick of hearing about it) and I know that obviously with something as personal as a palette, personal preferences as to eyeshadow combinations come into play, but I still think, as objectively as I can do (not very, fyi), that this is a damn good investment too, if not more so than the Heaven and Earth palette.



MUA have really played to their strengths here - although I feel that's something that can be said for the majority of the Pro line, perhaps excluding their Pretty Pastels palette - in that they've collated a good mix of neutral, smoky, and highlight colours (with the odd bright or two to add interest) using their signature shimmer formula. I think MUA shimmer eyeshadow colours really are a love or hate thing - you're either like myself, and adore the fact that they're so pigmented yet cheap, as well as being easy to apply and layer, or you belong to the 'hate' camp, who dislikes their somewhat unique 'oily' texture (I suspect mineral oil is involved in their formulation, somewhere) and finds them difficult to blend and prone to creasing.  If you were a fan of the core line eyeshadows, you'll like these - the formula is very similar, but the oil content seems to be slightly toned down (a good thing.)




All are shimmer finishes, with a few of the darker shades having some added glitter. The colours are actually far more complex than my camera is giving them credit for - with every shift of the light, even the neutrals change in inensity and tone slightly - so I tried to capture two of the main colour phases in the swatches. Not entirely convinced that I did a great job...



I think I have the dark purple colour in this palette as a single eyeshadow (Shade 13, I believe) but I'm not complaining that I now have a backup. I use it often enough that soon I'll be able to see the pan, anyway. Even hardcore MUA collectors will have a hard time duplicating every shadow in this palette using the shadows in the core line, so I feel they've provided enough variety in the shade selection to keep most of us happy. Thoughts on their pro line of palettes?

OK, these are amazing.









I have four out of the six in the range here for you today...'Show Stopper' 'Glammed Up' 'Starstruck' and 'Smokin'.

'Starstruck' and 'Show Stopper'

'Glammed Up' and 'Smokin'

'Show Stopper' reminds me of a sort of beach theme - a yellow gold, warm brown-pink with a copper hint, silvery seafoam blue and a a dark, ocean blue just scream, 'Beach!' at me. Very summery. As the name suggests, these are all highly shimmery with a metallic finish. Fans of MUA's £1 core line eyeshadows will find the same texture in these as in the regular line - highly pigmented and creamy to apply, these won't disappoint.







'Starstruck' is rather versatile in my opinion - the rose gold shade can be used as a shimmery blush (I've tried this applied to the cheeks with a finger and then attacked with a blush brush, and it blends out rather nicely) and the neutral caramel makes a nice body/tear duct highlight for me. The dark brown at the end would look good as a crease shade on those with lighter skin, but I've worn this all over the lid and it's great for daytime where I don't want to scare everyone with bright pink eyelids. I don't know why the pink and the caramel shade have appeared so light in my photo, as in real life they are darker. *shrug*







'Glammed Up' is the only quad I've got here that contains glitter rather than shimmer, which is why I wouldn't use the pink as a blush, but they'd make cute eye highlight colours. The first shade is more peach than the yellow gold of the 'Starstruck' quad but they're still close in that you wouldn't need both. Out of all of the quads, this is the one I'll be reaching for least simply because the only colour I'd regularly wear would be the last one. It's this gorgeous gunmetal with silver sparkles. I'm imagining the looks I'm going to create with it already...that's another thing I was meaning to ask. More EOTD's, yes/no? My technique is pretty poor and I can't photograph my eyes for toffee...anyone got any tips?







Lastly 'Smokin' is basically your portable smoky eye. Highlight, crease shade and lid shade all in one. MUA's famous matte black is included in this, but the standout shade for me is the third one along from the left. It's a silver with a hint of blue...reminds me of one of the shades in the ever famous Sleek 'Graphite' palette. If MUA did this one in gold, I'd buy it too and then make the two have sultry metallic babies. If I had one gripe, it'd be that the names are a tad cheesy...next time, get us beauty bloggers to name them :P I still demand my 'Arctic' themed palette.

When I first saw these, I thought 'Bobbi Brown Shimmer Bricks' instantly, but these are clearly meant to be used as eyeshadows rather than...whatever the Shimmer Bricks are for (I've never been clear on the purpose of those, aside from looking pretty). I wondered how the brush would be able to get in between each shade (as they're not clearly divided) but there's ample space for even a large brush, so that's not a concern. The new sturdy packaging means I can comfortably chuck this into my bag and not worry about it exploding all over my mobile phone...all in all, these are pretty decent. Ten out of ten for MUA.

I was totally pscyhed when I saw these MUA palettes and was lucky to recieve two to review. The first one I'm going to show you is called 'Pretty Pastels'. I find it's a really sort of 'spring' feeling
palette for me - pretty much every spring time is all about pastel colours. I don't mind wearing pastels on the nails, but it's a bit of a new concept for my face...plus I don't really wear pastel shades as they usually just fade to white on me. I was hoping that these'd be different but...nope, sadly. Although I do quite like the light brown colour as a sort of brow highlight.







BEHOLD. MY EYE. MULTIPLE TIMES.

 

Wahey, it's like I'm staring at you a billion times. Feel free to be creeped out.

Unfortunately, doing this EOTD was a bit of a pain in the arse, in all honesty. I think the amount of kaolin clay used in them made them chalky and hard to work with, and even worse wet (in large quantitites. They were good using a small amount as eyeliner). I'd apply some of the pink shade, go back to do the blue and find a lot of the pink had run out. Reapply and it all fell out over the blue shade. This took way longer than it should have.






These all contain a little shimmer/micro glitter in them, which I found made them a bit tricky to remove as the glitter clung for dear life around my skin, even when swatching. Where I think I'll be using these is as liner for a pretty pastel (ignore the pun. I genuinely didn't plan it. Promise) pop of colour for looks and stuff. Wet a brush, dip into the colour and line away. Who knows, maybe next spring I'll be rocking these as liners...probably not as actual eyeshadows, however.

Anyone picked up this particular palette?

And that statement is about to become a lie in three, two, one...

Well. Technically it's not even a press release, I just pinched some pictures off their Facebook and am posting because I am pretty excited about this launch! It's a lot of new stuff, all in one go, and I have some money so it's basically GOGOGO.

Long time followers will know that I am slightly in love with budget brand MUA, but I'll quickly recap for my lovely newer people too:

MUA are Superdrug's own brand. It stands for 'Make Up Academy' and basically, everything is a quid. Pretty fantastic, right?
Click the 'MUA' tag on this post to find examples of me praising them endlessly, but for a quick round up, I adore the eyeshadows, love the nail polishes, love the eyeshadow dusts but would like some more colours, 'eh' on the liquid eyeliner save the metallic ones and am yet to try the rest of the range. They've been around for about a year or so - soon after I started blogging, I remember being excited about their launch.

Recently, there have been mutterings of a Pro line (where the most expensive product is £4 - still pretty damn decent!) and we're finally making some headway because there are *images*. Ooh, exciting.

Teasing you with an old one, first - eyeliner pencils. These aren't in the new launch, but these are relatively new and I still haven't tried them, yet. Bagsie the white and the orange!


Foundation primer. This'll be £4, apparantly.


Crackle Nail Polish! I think this will probably be the cheapest on the market, depending how much BeautyUK are going to sell theirs for, and I'm loving the huge range of colours. I think this could be the 'ace' of the new releases, the crackle trend isn't showing signs of dying out as of yet.


Apparantly, there was a Superdrug event earlier this month (I hadn't seen details or coverage of it on a SINGLE blog, so had no idea they even did one, lol) and while I was randomly searching, I came across these photos of MUA's new products. This blogger takes great photographs, just saying.



That brown palette looks like an amazing nude. I. am. there. I also see some glitter shadows? Talk about something for everybody...I'm up for buying every single palette, even at the max price of £4. This is providing the pigmentation is good. I'll be really upset if it lets them down!



Eyeshadow trios. I'm not so enamoured with these, to be honest - not very much a fan of the baked formula, and the colours are so so, but I'll swatch them and make my mind up then.




I'm not entirely sure what the other items on the table are, but I'm speculating mascara, new lipstick or concealer shades, new blushers, bronzers...eyeshadow quads? Either way, loving the sleek and sturdier looking new packaging.


Can't wait for this to launch (1st of June, everyone! That's like, next week) and will sprint to Superdrug to check it out. Providing my local one gets it. If it doesn't, I may have to kick a small, furry animal.