Essence Cosmetics - All About Candies & All About Nude Eyeshadows (Review & Swatches)

Continuing on with my Essence haul, I'll share with you the All About Candies Eyeshadow palette, which is a collection of soft pastels, creamy to the touch and featuring a rainbow assortment of shades.

 I also picked up the All About Nude Eyeshadow palette which is a nice dupe for the Wet N Wild Melrose at Night palette that was a very coveted Fall 2014 Limited Edition product (you can see my post about that collection here).

Essence All About Candies Eyeshadows

Essence All About Candies Eyeshadows - Swatches (no primer)

The All About Candies Eyeshadow Palette swatches very beautifully, except the peach, pink and purple shade seem to swatch exactly the same. I'm most impressed with the yellow, blue and green shades, which are very unique and really do wear well over primer for 6-8 hours without fading. These palettes are only $4.99 so I wasn't expecting anything amazing out of the shadows, but I was very pleasantly surprised! I wouldn't recommend this palette if you're looking for 6 unique pastels, but you will receive 4 different identifiable shades, in my opinion. 

Essence All About Nude Eyeshadows

Essence All About Nude Eyeshadows - Swatches (no primer)

The All About Nude Eyeshadow Palette was extremely impressive, out of the whole bunch I only found one dud, and that is the 2nd shade in the top row - this color is poorly pigmented (probably due to its matte nature) and basically just won't show up on my skin at all. The shimmers are all very distinct colors, I especially love the dupe for MAC's Sketch which is the final swatch and the rightmost shadow in the bottom row of the palette. This palette can give you either a romantic look or a vampy look, depending on which colors you apply and the level of intensity you apply them with.  I highly recommend this palette.

Overall, I think these palettes are very good quality, in terms of their value for the price. They are soft and buttery and easy to apply on the eye, as well as having good lasting power (especially if you use them over a primer). I think your happiness with these palettes is probably going to be related to the color selection - you will definitely enjoy these palettes if you wear the one you choose!

Wet 'n Wild Fall 2014 ColorIcon Eyeshadow Palette Collection

The new Wet 'n Wild Coloricon eyeshadow palettes have arrived for the Fall 2014 collection, I was able to find these at Walgreens in the LA area this week. I picked up 3 of the 4 palettes released (Melrose at Night, Smoke and Melrose, Angels in Aubergine), I was not drawn to High Waisted Jeans because I'm not a big fan of blue eyeshadow, I don't find that it's the most flattering on my amber/brown eyes and fair skin tone.

Originally, I was skeptical about the performance of these quints because I have heard rather poor reviews of the permanent collection of quint eyeshadow palettes from Wet 'n Wild's new formulation, but I am so happy to announce that these shadows seem to be the old formulation!!! I hope you get a chance to pick these up if you're a fan of the old, phased-out, color icon shadow palettes. All of the shades are buttery smooth, ultra-pigmented, and have little fall-out.

These quints also feature a variety of glitter, metallic, mostly matte and satin eyeshadows, with Melrose at Night and Smoke and Melrose featuring many dupes of the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette.

Melrose at Night is a perfect daytime look palette if you're looking for a no muss, no fuss, palette. It's great for work or night time, you can always add more of the definer shade in the outer-V of your eye for increased dramatic effect. The Crease shade is my least favorite because it was probably the least pigmented shade out of all of the palettes, but still a better-than-average shadow.

The Smoke and Melrose palette is my absolute favorite, the Browbone shade is as perfect crease transition shade for me and I absolutely adore it (it is a dupe for Nooner from the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette). Smoke and Melrose is a darker, more warm-leaning palette than Melrose at Night, with the crease shade being much more metallic than the rest.

Angels in Aubergine features a wonderfully pigmented Base color, a nice pop of color in the browbone shade and a great way to create a few variations of the smokey eye palette with aubergine (maroon-purple) undertones. This was my least favorite of the palettes, only because I am less of a fan of smokey eye looks than other variations - that isn't to say you couldn't create a rather usual look with just the Browbone, Base and Definer shades. The crease color seems to have the most chunky glitter of all the shades in this range.