The idea of having a product that I can customize my shade of powder, blush, bronzer, contour, eyeshadow, etc. all in one palette appeals to the wannabe minimalist in me. I call myself a wannabe because I enjoy having a large beauty collection while simultaneously being overwhelmed by the amount I possess. This is why I love the concept of face palettes, but it’s very uncommon for me to find one where the majority of the makeup in it suits my preferences and needs. I’m curious to see if I will continue to like this palette after prolonged use and continuously mixing shades, but so far I am impressed! There’s pretty much no kickup and if I get a lighter imprint on a deep shade, or vice versa, I can sweep it away with a brush and it’s good as new! Perhaps this is possible because I combine shades by tapping into each color I want; I don’t swirl in one and then swirl my brush into the other.
A palette like this can seem intimidating, and I was initially unsure if I would buy it for that reason. Some aspects were as tricky as I expected and some parts were easier than I thought, almost intuitive. For instance, using Beautopsy for blush is pretty straightforward. Boy, Wonder, Love, and Kills are four easy options for that. Overall, while I wouldn’t go as far as to say beginners wouldn’t like this, I think it would be most enjoyed and utilized by those with an intermediate skill level and above.
Brightening andSetting Powder
For setting under my eyes, I use the leftmost sides of Tan and Feel and rightmost side of Paint with my usual Real Techniques Setting Brush to create a pale yellow-brown. I was shocked when I realized it actually had a blurring effect and made my under-eyes look smoother! Certain concealers of mine don’t play well with powders, but so far the blurring has been a consistent feature to setting under my eyes with the light shades in the palette! The photo below shows what it did to my Tarte Shape Tape and Pat Mcgrath combo (which was not originally set with powder at all). The lines under my eyes are still there, but less pronounced.
If I want to brighten my under eyes, and not just match my skin tone, I can use pretty much any of the four lightest shades without them looking stark because they blend with the concealer. Additionally, there isn’t much difference between them when applied to my skin. On a lighter skin tone, they are distinct enough, but on me they’re all essentially white with the tiniest differences in tone. That being said, they somehow don’t look ashy on me like other pale shades tend to do, but I still try to use the combinations I think make the most sense based on their color descriptions: Lines as a pure white, Tan as a soft tan, Wet as a beige shade, and Paint as a pale yellow.
While I could probably set my whole face with a mixture of Feel and Paint, I wouldn’t want to use a small brush for that task, and I have dry skin anyway, so I don’t always set my full face. Also, I can technically use this palette to brighten the high points of my face, but I love my shimmery highlighters and I would never be satisfied with using these matte powders to highlight anywhere other than the eye area. So, in a traveling situation, I would probably bring along a separate setting powder, plus my Kaja Play Bento Sculpting Trio for the subtle shimmer highlighter and to have extra variety. The Kaja Bento in Mochamallow was previously the only all-in-one face product I had where I loved and could use every color in it. Beautopsy now joins the ranks of the best suited face palettes in my collection.
Brow Powder and Eyeliner
I’ve spoken before about how any dark eyeshadow can be used as eyeliner and for filling in the brows, so it didn’t surprise me how well Fatum worked for that purpose. I used the darkest part of Fatum as the liner. If I want to wear just a liner and no eyeshadow, this isn’t black enough for my preference. However, when I’m trying to deepen up eyeshadow looks, Fatum is dark enough for that, and quite lovely. Hindash mentioned that you can use Fix+ to transform any of these powders into liners, but I haven’t tried that. I like to use dark shades, but not black, to fill in my brows. The middle where Intra + Fatum meet is a shade that works for defining the eye, but was too warm of a brown for my liking. So, I switched to using the center of Fatum where it still has a little of the chocolate brown shade but is also dark enough to use in my brows. I messed up a little spot in the front and didn’t notice it in person, but of course the camera picked it up. I was a bit impatient, which is why my brow isn’t perfect, but it also brings up the point that brow pencils are so much faster for me. I know I wouldn’t use this again in my brows, purely for the time factor, but I’m glad I have the option.
For those who prefer a cool-toned dark brown or soft black for their brows, Fatum mixed with Real could probably do the trick. Real + Feel might look nice on blondes and maybe Feel and Love or Feel and Intra for those with red hair, but don’t quote me on that!
Blushes
For blush, my favorite shades to use on their own are Wonder, which gives me a light but bright pink flush, and Love, which is a reddish-orange. Kills is a bit too deep for my preference to use alone, but I could always use it if I mix it with something lighter. Boy is a wearable peachy-pink for those with a lighter skin tone than mine. It shows on my skin, but I don’t think it’s as flattering on me as Wonder. If I want to give myself a peachy or coral look, I think of creating a different kind of orange with a little pink. So, I dip my brush mainly into Paint and Love with one extra tap of Wonder and buff it into my cheeks. If I want it a little less bright, I add some of the brown from Feel. I try not to mix more than two colors together because it tends not to look as nice on the skin, but this particular combo of 3-4 still works for me. I’ve enjoyed using my Sonia G Cheek Pro and Wayne Goss The Artist Brush – Large to apply blush, as they aren’t too big for these pan sizes.
The head sizes of my brushes compared to the size of the pans. It’s not a coincidence that my smallest face brushes were all made in Japan.
There are so many combination possibilities! I experimented with some on my arm to give more examples. I put them on my bare arm, but the blend would look much nicer on the face with primer and foundation under them.
Contour and Bronzer
To contour my nose, I can use Feel on its own, but I prefer the look of Feel and Real together to create a proper shadow. I can use pretty much any small brush, but I’ve been liking the Scott Barnes Eye Winger #63 because the unique shape automatically creates a symmetrical line if I contour between the bridge of my nose and my brows. Most of the time I skip contouring my nose, but when I do, I like to keep it as subtle as possible and just add shadow where I need it. For instance, sometimes all I do is add contour powder on either side of the bridge of my nose, just in the middle where there’s no definition. In order to do that though, I definitely cannot use a warm/red toned contour powder, which is often what is available on the dark-deep end of contour shades. I need something cool yet not too dark, which has always been a challenge for me to find.
To contour the rest of my face, I tap my brush into the center where Feel and Real meet. I can use something with a flat top like the Chikuhodo Z-3, but I also prefer a brush with a tapered tip like the Wayne Goss Air Brush, Wayne Goss Artist Large, and Chikuhodo KZ-05. For bronzer, I use the leftmost sides of Intra and Feel. Sometimes I use just Intra. I’ve tried different brushes, but the Chikuhodo FO-2 is my favorite to bronze with this palette. Since I only use the leftmost sides of the powders for bronzing, I dip the right half of my brush into the powders (without getting anything on the left side), I can apply with that half of the brush and blend out with the half that didn’t get any product on it. It was a little funny to me when I discovered that the Beautopsy palette wasn’t created with bronzer as much in mind, since Hindash likes to use cream products for that purpose, yet I was able to find a bronzer combination that worked so well for me!
I’ve tested this palette over matte and dewy foundations. When I use them on matte foundations or bare skin, the blend of these powders on the face looks so good! On dewy products, it’s almost as if these don’t want to stick to the skin. It takes longer to blend and the end results looks okay, but not nearly as nice as it looks over a matte one.
Eyeshadows
I believe Beautopsy is foremost a palette for the eyes, and ironically, this is the one aspect that having only mattes as options isn’t entirely satisfactory to me. It has been quite a few years since I’ve created all matte eyeshadow looks on a regular basis. When doing an all matte look, there is no room to hide, nothing to cover up any mistakes or distract from poor blending the way shimmers can. It is a craft that looks so simple but requires immense skill to perfect. Plus, I just love putting a shimmer on my lids, so if I was on a trip, I would have to bring at least a small magnetic palette of shimmer eyeshadow singles with me. As much as I admire sultry smoky eyes, I mainly prefer to do colorful eyeshadow looks, or at least to have a neutral crease with a bright color on my lids. This is another reason I would want a supplemental palette. This also doesn’t give intense payoff right away, and this makes perfect sense for Hindash. As a makeup artist, he would want a product that builds up and blends well. When I say that this doesn’t fully line up to how I like to do my eye makeup, it’s not me saying the palette is bad. It’s just obviously suited for those with a different eyeshadow style than mine. In addition, the buildable nature that I don’t like as eyeshadows is what makes them so fantastic as face powders. Plus, the slow build issue I get is only when I try to use a regular eyeshadow primer underneath. If I use a complexion product as a base, I have no qualms with how long it takes, but more on that in a moment. Regarding the texture of the shadows, these remind me a bit of Viseart. However, Viseart shadows give a little more pigment per brush stroke, but the Beautopsy powders feel a little silkier. Zea Mays is the second ingredient in the Beautopsy palette, and it does have that cornstarch feeling to the touch, which could account for the added silkiness over Viseart’s shadows.
Preferences aside, my biggest challenge was finding the right base for these powders as eyeshadows. I absolutely hated using the Gerard Cosmetics Clean Canvas. I had to keep making alterations because it wasn’t blending the way I wanted and it took so incredibly long to get it in a state that I thought was presentable. I had to start over again several times. I didn’t have much luck with my tried and true MAC Paint Pot either because it was as though the shadows didn’t want to build on the eye and at one point I switched to my finger to try and pack it on. Usually I only have to do that with shimmers. I got better results when using the Urban Decay primer potion, but surprisingly the best results I’ve had were when I used concealers and foundations as bases! I discovered this first when I used the Tarte Shape Tape and then again when I used the Pat Mcgrath concealer, although that one creased badly when I left it unset for too long. I’ve been using the MAC Foundation Stick as an eyeshadow primer, so I wasn’t as surprised to see that the shadows blended well over it. However, out of all the bases I tried, the best results I’ve had were with the Dermablend Flawless Creator Foundation Drops. Those drops are basically a foundation and concealer hybrid. So, if you have this palette and you’re struggling to use these over eye primers, I recommend using a complexion product as primer instead. This discovery changed my opinion of these as eyeshadows for the better and I’ve enjoyed using them so much more!
One issue I still haven’t resolved is that the shades in the top half of the palette disappear off my eye by the 5-6 hour point. It happened regardless of the base I used. The bottom half of greys, black, browns, and reds lasted 9-10 hours before I ended the wear test. Perhaps this is caused by a difference in how the lighter shades are formulated/the amount of pigment in them. That’s my best guess, although the shadows have the same ingredient list, excluding Love, which is listed separately.
I usually go into details about how I create a look and which shades I used in the eyeshadow portion of my reviews, but I mixed so many things that I lost track.
Looks 1 and 2 are both over the Gerard Cosmetics Clean Canvas.
This look is over the Pat Mcgrath Concealer. It was my attempt to recreate what I was trying to do in Look #1. The shimmer in the bottom half of the photo is Sun Scorched from Terra Moons Cosmetics.
The peach-pink-orange-red ombre look is over the MAC Foundation Stick. The look below it is over a MAC Paint Pot.
The grey look is over the Urban Decay primer potion. The shimmer on the lid in the bottom half of the photo is Helix Nebula from Terra Moons Cosmetics.
I used the Dermablend Flawless Creator Foundation Drops as the base. This shimmer on the lid is called Kamakura #10 from the Viseart Coy palette that I bought as a single shade. This green look was photographed many hours after I first applied it.
I have used eyeshadows as blushes and blushes as eyeshadows in the past. This palette is the first time I’ve ever preferred the secondary usage over the intended one. I was so surprised at how seamlessly these powders worked together as face products. These were not my first choice for eyeshadows until I found the right base, and now I very much like them too. They are of great quality and I foresee myself continuing to use the last 6 shades as the framework for my shimmer lid shadows.
Overall, the formula of these powders are truly special to be able to be as versatile as they are. In Hindash’s launch video, he said it took a couple of years to create this gradient palette. I tend to roll my eyes whenever influencers say that, but in this case I believe him. I can clearly see the labor of love that went into the Beautopsy Palette. I also say this from the perspective of someone who admittedly didn’t know who Hindash was until the release of this palette. I did a little research for the purpose of this review. I respect Hindash’s artistry and the way he and/or his team has been supporting smaller and larger creators equally, even liking my photo of his palette on Instagram. There still isn’t a parasocial relationship there, so I can say from a fully unbiased perspective that this is a great product and I do recommend it. It’s become for me more than just a cool and innovative release. For the past 6 weeks I’ve had it, I’ve used it for at least one purpose every single time I’ve put on my makeup, whether it was to add depth to an eyeshadow look, do a quick nose contour, to set a cream blush, etc. I store most of my makeup in drawers, but I’ve been keeping it in my train case which holds products I use the most often or am trying to pan, because I want the easy access. Whether the cost is worth it though depends on how often one would utilize something like this for the eyes, face, or both. There are several times I’ve owned something of fantastic quality, but for whatever reason it remained unused. So, that is something that has to be factored into the decision to purchase. I’m glad it worked out for me.
Does this palette interest you? Let me know what you think!
As a lover of mythology, and of course makeup, I’ve been drawn to this company from the moment I heard about it. When the Swedish brand first established themselves, they stated, “Oden’s Eye is inspired by ancient Nordic mythology, and our products and collections will also be built around this theme.” Their initial collections were very light and whimsical with eyeshadow palettes that reflected a too-light color story for my taste. I was so happy to see the release of the Norn’s Collection in their most beautiful palette artwork to date and color stories that have a better range of light, medium, and deep tones. I decided this was the time to place my first order. And second. And third. Then they released Mystery Boxes. I intended for this post to come out in March, but each new order required that I push this back to do further testing, reviewing, and rewriting. Now, it’s finally complete!
Before I get to the few products I bought out of the Norn’s Collection, I will start with their older products in my possession.
Oden’s Eye Blushes
Alva Flower Blushers in Sweet Tulip, Water Lily, and Little Jasmine
Oden’s Eye currently has three shimmer shades in the Alva Flower Blusher series. Most of the visible glitter specks is on that top layer and they disappears after a few uses. What remains is more of a satin finish with a natural looking sheen. However, the more I try to build up the color, the more radiant and reflective it becomes from the actual shimmer building up on my cheek. So for me, it’s best to stop at a medium amount of blush as building to the maximum payoff results in it looking lighter than before! For example, the shimmer in Sweet Tulip is a bit silvery and looks icier when I’ve packed it on.
I purchased Sweet Tulip first because it’s the deepest blush out of the original six and I wasn’t certain if that shade would even be dark enough to show on my cheeks. Sweet Peach is the darkest of the mattes, but I couldn’t tell if it was more on the mauve or cool toned side. If a shade is a little too light for me, I can sometimes pull it off if it’s mauve, but the cooler it is the less I like it. It was hard to tell the difference between the shades on their website versus Instagram.
Have I mentioned I have a very bad habit of doing 1-3 am shopping? The majority of my excessive spending happens during that time while I think I’m still capable of making rational spending decisions. Then, after I fall back asleep and wake up later, I realize that it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. This is how I ended up making a third order and then a fourth when they released Easter mystery boxes with free shipping. I purchased the 25 Euro box and was still able to use a discount code on top of that, but more on the mystery boxes later.
I love these blushes so much! In the Sweet Tulip photo on the left, I do have the tiniest amount of highlighter on my cheekbone, but I could have almost skipped it because I love the gentle glowy sheen that the shimmer in this blush provides. It’s long lasting, pigmented, and the tone is quite flattering! The blending is so quick that I can finish applying color to both cheeks in under a minute! I see the potential for this to be in my top favorite blush formulas. The Little Jasmine shade shocked me that it still showed on my skin tone despite how much brown there is to that shade. It’s my second favorite of the four, and maybe even tied with Sweet Tulip. Little Jasmine is the warmest one I bought and the shimmer shows more golden when built up. Water Lily is darker, yet it took a ridiculous amount of building up to make it visible on my skin. I don’t think it is an issue of the color match or hard pan. I can see the powder getting picked up on the different brushes I’ve tried. I believe there’s just less pigment in the formula of this specific shade. The blushes are good for 36 months after opening, but my Water Lily package was the only one with an actual expiration date printed on it (November 21st 2022). Because I have 18 months instead of 36, I wonder if the Water Lily shade is already performing differently. Regardless of the reason, I appreciate that there’s an actual date on that one so I know not to keep it around as long as the others.
Alva Fruit Blusher in Sweet Peach
There are three matte blushes in the Alva Fruit Blusher line but I purchased only one of them. The Sweet Peach shade looks much more mauve than peach on me. I was pleased to see it show up, but it looks a little ashy. I think this shade is a bit too light for my skin tone. This is the darkest of the Fruit Blushes, so the other two shades in the matte formula would not work for me either. I can at least say the matte formula is nice and if the brand releases dark colors, I would be interested in trying them.
Small Mystery Box
Oden’s Eye released a small (25 euro) and large (55 euro) mystery box in celebration of Easter and the company’s anniversary. Affiliate/Influencer codes worked on the deal, so I was able to get my small box for 22.50 euros with free shipping. The Norn’s collection was excluded, but nearly everything else was a possibility. I anticipated I would get a palette, lip product, and brush. I only hoped the shades would work for me and that I would not get a product I already own, so I was happy that all expectations were met. The brush that came with my order will be discussed in the brush section.
Solmåne Highlighter Palette
Ljus (light in Swedish) is a pale gold and has the smooth shimmer formula I like, but it’s too icy looking on me. Stjärna (star) is a beautiful iridescent shade that looks white in the pan but is blue with a tinge of purple. These two would make beautiful inner corner eyeshadow highlight shades. Sol (sun) and Måne (moon) remind me of the Kaleidos Space Age Highlighters, but with sparser glitter particles, which is not a feature I like in highlighters. I could use them as eyeshadow toppers, but I don’t know if this palette will survive an end of the year declutter. I’m still happy I received it because my curiosity about the formula would have led me to buy it eventually anyway.
Alva Matte Lip Stain in Ripe Papaya
The first thing I noticed about this lip stain was the strong but pleasant fruit candy smell. Then I realized the formula was not the typical watery texture of a stain that I was used to. The consistency is more similar to a liquid lipstick. I can get nearly opaque results with one layer, but I need a little more to cover the dark patches on my lips. One time I made the mistake of applying too many coats, which turned the smell from nice and fruity to an unpleasant cherry cough syrup smell. On the bright side, I discovered it layers up well. It’s definitely matte and makes my lips look and feel uncomfortably dry. I cannot wear this by itself, but it looks amazing under a thick shiny gloss. In matte form, it’s transfer-proof but comes off with an oil based remover or just some oil. If it’s under a gloss, it will last on the lips if left alone, but it’s easy to transfer at that point. Considering how much I loved the color but needed a more hydrating formula, I wonder if I would prefer Oden Eye’s Cream Lip Stain formula. One day, I will find out!
Oden’s Eye Brushes
Double-Ended Highlighter Brush
This brush is made of synthetic bristles. The fluffier end is very floppy and loosely packed, but it makes a fairly nice blush brush. The stiffer and tighter packed end is slightly angled. I can use it on its widest side to brush the highlighter in small sections of my cheekbone. With this one, the bristles can rub harshly when I do that. A smooth and soft application occurs when I turn the brush to the side and use one long sweep with the tips of the bristles to spread highlighter across my cheekbones. I don’t foresee myself continuing to use the stiff side, but I will probably use the soft side for blush every now and then.
Eyeshadow Blending Brush
This brush was a surprise addition to one of my earlier orders. I’m not sure if there was a deal going on at the time, if it was a mistake or intentionally gifted for free, but I appreciate having it all the same. The bristles are synthetic and balance softness with medium-packed tightness so that I can get a decent blend with this brush in a light to medium application. The bristles are too long to get a really intense blend. It also becomes looser packed with continued use.
Norn’s Series
Norn’s Eyeshadow Palette
This palette’s eyeshadows are a wild mixture of different textures, finishes, and levels of opacity. Swatching each shade was like unraveling a mystery; I got quite a few surprises! I instinctively switched between using my brushes of various shapes and fibers and density versus my fingers, when to use a glitter glue, when to spray it, etc. to create the looks I wanted. Although it was fun and not too time consuming to discover the ins and outs of this palette, this is technically not beginner-friendly. The very fact of having a palette with so many different textures lends to the challenge. I think it would be easy for anyone to create a pretty look because the mattes are pigmented while still being super blendable and the shimmers make an impact (by mainstream standards) without extra effort. In that sense it’s beginner-friendly, but maximizing the full potential of this palette takes intermediate level and above. There were certainly times I had to restart an eye look or do swatches on my arm to test how some of the shades paired with each other, since the effects were sometimes unexpected.
There are four mattes in this palette. Dazed is a cool grey. I was impressed with the level of pigmentation and how a shade like this didn’t look patchy or ashy on me. I think it’s because there is a little green to the tone of that shade which goes well on my warm yellow-toned skin. Mist is a cool light purple. This is another shade that would usually appear a little ashy or patchy on me, but I have zero issues with this one! Pragmatism is a medium brown that deepens up the more it is applied. I prefer to use it in the crease to create depth there, but it’s not quite enough for my tastes to deepen the outer corner. Outsider is a gorgeous peacock blue or ocean blue or medium blue leaning teal. I’m not sure what the best name for this shade is, but I don’t think the description from Oden’s Eye as a, “retro green” is that much better. Sometimes mattes swatch beautifully, but don’t perform as well on the eyes. I’m happy to report that these mattes do both!
Pink Chameleon is a multichrome! The brand only describes this as having a pink, yellow, and green shift, but I swear it also looks a bit more orange or red or peachy depending on the light and angle. On my finger, this multichrome had clear and obvious shifts. On my eye, this color looked very different depending on which shades I put it next to or on top of. For instance, sometimes it would only pull peachy-pink or yellow-gold, or yellow-pink. In rare occasions I could see pink-green. The green element being the least visible on my skin and especially on camera. I had to do a lot of experimenting with Pink Chameleon to figure out which combos would give me the effect I wanted.
There’s another shade called Green Chameleon in this palette. The website has this listed as an, “Olive green chameleon eyeshadow, multichrome shift,” without describing what what the other colors are. Honestly, I don’t see any shift. The texture of Pink Chameleon is that slick recognizable multichrome texture like Clionadh’s Jewelled formula, Devinah’s Aurorae Flares, the shade called Fake from the Juvia’s Place Wahala 2 palette, etc. Green Chameleon feels like the other four diamond shimmers in the bottom row of the Norn’s palette. The two best ways I’ve been able to detect multichromes is to swatch them on the palm of my hand and rotate my hand around, or to apply them to my fingers and hold them vertically and raise my fingers up and down so that it moves closer then further from the light. All I can see is it going from an olive green to a slightly lighter olive green or a greenish yellow. Its not a difference anyone will notice if you put this on your eyes. It’s still a pretty shade, but I don’t count it as a multichrome or duochrome.
There are two easily recognizable satin shades in this palette, or as Oden’s eye says, “metallic eyeshadows that look like satin.” Metallic shades are different from my perspective, so I’ll just refer to them as satins. One is Realism, a gorgeous medium-dark brown. Realism has visible copper reflects, but I prefer to have more of a contrast in my eyeshadow looks. I don’t mind doing a neutral eye from time to time, but if I’m going neutral I want a bit more sparkle. So, what I love to do is combine this shade with pretty much any of the more sparkly shades in this palette. There are so many options to choose from that are so pretty. The outcomes are different enough that I wanted to demonstrate several of them.
The other satin is a “red velvet” shade called Passion. Although pretty, I don’t think this particular tone of red goes that well with any of the other colorful shades. Even though reds and purples or reds and oranges are usually a match made in heaven, I find that this shade clashes with anything other than the neutrals or surprisingly the Pink Chameleon shadow.
Amber Palace looks marbled in the pan and I’m happy to report that it’s not an over-spray and the pattern doesn’t disappear once you’ve used it a few times. This “sparkling diamond shimmer shadow” is a mixture of gold and silver that runs throughout the entire pan. I consider this a topper shadow because the amber orange-brown base matches my skin tone so much that I just see the sparkle. It doesn’t look like there’s a base at all until I swatch it on my palm.
There are five other diamond shimmers listed in this palette. In fact, all the sparkly-glittery shadows in this palette are referred to as diamond shimmers. The first is Optimism, which looks similar in swatches to Amber Palace except the base color is purple. It’s another shade I consider a topper because the base is so sheer. I prefer to use this shade with cooler toned looks and Amber Palace for warmer ones. Next is Hallucination, a blue-green shade that’s like a medium toned turquoise with pink and purple shimmer. The texture of this shade is wetter than the others and doesn’t feel as well bound to the sparkles as the others. It feels like it was intended to be a shimmer version of a cream to powder formula. It leaves a residue behind on the finger, the way cream products do, and takes a bit of smoothing to give it less of a chunky appearance. The color is beautiful but I’m not a fan of this particular formula. It reminds me of the texture my homemade eyeshadows feel like when I use slightly too much liquid binder. Self is a stunning purple with teal, silver, and perhaps green sparkles. It’s very much my kind of eyeshadow shade. Glamour is an orange and gold shadow that reminds me of the pressed glitter shade I wanted from the Juvia’s Place Nubian Glow palette (but depotted and thew away). I’m so glad to have this version as a regular non-pressed-glitter shadow! The eyeshadow palettes from Oden’s Eye’s previous collections had some pressed glitters in them but there are none in the Norn’s Collection. Lasly, Charming is like a blue-purple duochrome with teal, purple, and pink shimmer.
Then there are two other textures that stand out. Obsessed, the “violet with pink and purple diamond shimmers,” feels is like a cream to powder shadow. It feels wetter than the two satin shades in this palette, but not as full on creamy as the cream shadow shades Natasha Denona has in the Metropolis palette. Obsessed takes several dips with a brush to get an opaque layer on the eye. It’s slightly easier with a finger, but the product sticks a bit more to the finger than the eye, so it tugs on my skin more than I’d like. Colourful Black felt like Obsessed in the beginning, but after a week it felt a lot more dry, like a typical shimmer eyeshadow. This goes on the skin very easily with a brush, so there’s no need to use a finger to apply it. It’s very pigmented straight out of the gate, but it can be blended to appear in a lighter and sheerer layer. According to Oden’s Eye, this shade, “…contains all colors of shimmers. Different usage will create different effects.” It makes for an excellent deepening shade, liner, and base. Although I can see the sparkles in the pan, the effect is satin-like with more sheen than a matte but without seeing the glitter particles. Usually all I require for black shadows is for them to be dark enough and blendable. This is one of the few times I can say I actually like the shade for its color and not just about its depth.
In Look #8 I forgot to mention that Colourful Black was also applied all over the lid before Charming was added on top. This is what caused the stronger blue tone to the shade.
URD Mini Eyeshadow Palette
This palette is gorgeous but all the minis, in my opinion, are overpriced compared to the larger palette prices. You get 6 shades for $21 versus 16 for $36. $3.50 per shadow compared to $2.25 per shadow. For that reason, I had to decide between the Urd palette and Skuld palette. As much as my eyes were drawn to the colorful nature of the all shimmer Skuld palette, I knew I could get a complete look with Urd and that green was irresistible!
This has the same great shadow quality as the Norn’s palette and it was so easy to create a look. I used the same shades for both of the eyes, but the change in technique and color placement made them look surprisingly more different than I expected! The Luxury shade on the lid is gorgeous! It’s mostly green with yellow gold reflects of diamond shimmer. Luxury has a black base which I noticed darkened the crease shade on the eye that I used the MAC Foundation Stick as a primer (look #2). In Look #1, I used a MAC Paint Pot and this did not happen. I also used the Nyx Glitter Primer on both lids.
Memory is definitely a bright “light gray-green matte” but just as it was the case with the shade Dazed, it’s somehow not too stark for me. That green tinge works! Oden’s Eye describes Nostalgia as a “matte grey olive green,” and those grey tones come out on the eye to create more of a khaki green tone. I wish it was a little less grey, but it goes well with the other shades in the palette.
Gloden Year & Time are the split pan shadows. I believe ‘gloden’ was a printing error because the website description says, “Golden year: Silver metallic color, the golden year is just a silver memory in the past” and “Time: Colorful shift of multiple colors against a semi-transparent base.” Golden Year is much smoother and the shimmer particles are much closer together than the shade Time. Time is a chunky flaky topper formula that I can clearly see as gold toned in person, but my camera only picks up a silvery hue.
Lastly, Past is a dark coffee brown matte. It’s a perfect addition to add a bit of smokiness to the look. This color story was well thought out and even though I think $15 would have been a fairer price (more than the $2.25 but less than $3.50 per shadow), I’m happy I bought this.
Norn’s Silk Scarf in Pink and Purple
There were pink, purple, and blue versions of this scarf available and Oden’s Eye was adding one for free to any Norn’s Collection order above 50 euros. At the time I bought them, they were on sale for 50% off.
I just purchased these because of the design. The print is so pretty to me and I wanted another item that had it, even though I have zero use for scarves and I never wear them.
Also, I could have sworn there was nothing written about the scarf being “artificial silk” until I made my last order because I remember being surprised at the low cost and wondered why silk would be used by a cruelty-free brand, but perhaps I just missed it.
Additional Information
All of the powder products have a slight powdery talc-like smell. In 2014, I owned a Coastal Scents palette that smelled incredibly chalky. Nothing I’ve purchased since then has ever been that bad, but I try to keep track of that kind of thing and share that information with others.
When ordering from the website, the default prices are listed in euros, but they have a tab at the top where you can change the currency. Although Oden’s Eye is based in Sweden, their products are made and shipped from China. My favorite independently owned brands to support are the ones who make their own formulas like Lethal Cosmetics, Terra Moons, Devinah, Clionadh, (or on the larger side Ofra and Colourpop), etc. For some reason, I was under the impression that these were created-in house, so I was a little disappointed. However, I know this is the norm. Juvia’s Place and Kaleidos palettes are made in China. Even indie brands whose products are formulated in the US don’t necessarily make them themselves. A separate cosmetics lab is usually responsible. With this thought in mind, it bothers me a little less. It’s also pretty neat that some products in their line are still handmade, like the Amber Palace shade within the Norn’s palette and the Norn’s Mesmerizer Highlighters. Oden’s Eye posted a fascinating video showing the Highlighter process on Instagram that can be viewed here.
I’m not sure what the shipping fees are for other countries, but I paid six euros (a bit over $7 USD) the first two times I ordered. They do offer free shipping over 50 euros. My initial order shipped within 24 hours but took exactly 3 weeks to arrive. Oden’s Eye emailed that my package would be delayed due to Chinese Lunar New Year and then there was a delay at customs. They ship through DHL and transfer to USPS and state that 7-14 business days is typical. My second order took 17 days (14 business days). The transition between DHL to USPS is where it was held up quite a bit. The third order only took 8 days of the 8-12 business days if you choose the upgraded USPS first class option for eight euros. Two extra euros for the package to arrive 2 weeks before regular mail is quite a good deal. The Mystery Box took 13 days.
I appreciate that for a small brand, they still make an effort to try and feature a variety of skin tones in their promotional photos and their Instagram. Of course I wish there were more swatches on deeper skin and in a variety of lighting settings, as well as clear pictures of what the products look like on the face, but they put in more effort than some other brands I’ve seen. The Fancy Face has received PR from them, so I recommend viewing her channel for extra swatches with her take on this collection. At the time I started working on this post, she was the only WOC on Youtube with a review of Oden’s Eye beyond reviewing a single palette, and her video was made after I had already placed all three orders. In fact, at the time I started my first draft of this post, she just had this video available with sneak peeks of the review to come. I wish I had this video as a resource before placing my order, but I’m still happy with the items I chose. Sometimes I get lucky and my guesses work out. Tina is close to my skin tone, but a little lighter than me. There’s one other youtube channel I found by someone a little darker than me with several more Oden’s eye products, which can be found here. For anyone wanting to see swatches on a tan skin tone can click here, and for pale to medium skin tones there are a plethora of options to choose from on Youtube like from Amy Loves Makeup, Morgan Turner, and Angelica Nyqvist.
Lastly, about the palettes, the eyeshadow pans are smaller than the standard 26mm. There is slightly more than 1 gram of product per pan, which is what I always like to see. I do wish the pans were slightly larger because most of these shades apply better with a finger and I have limited space to rub and pick up the shadow on the pads of my fingers.
That’s all for today! I hope this was helpful if you were considering placing an order with Oden’s Eye. If you do, don’t forget to use an affiliate code for an additional 10% off! FANCYFACE, MORGANTURNER, AMYLOVES, and ANGESCHKA are a few of them.
Unlike some of the other Indie brands I’ve discussed before, I didn’t feel like I had enough to say about JD Glow or Terra Moons for standalone posts, so I combined them both here today.
Terra Moons Cosmetics
The majority of my Terra Moons mattes are from the Neon Mattes Collection, in which I have 9 of the 14. Neverland is a discontinued traditional neon green shade from the original formula. It isn’t as smooth as the ones available now, but I’m happy I was able to get the last one. It’s very exciting to see these unique tones of neons though. These shadows are thin and powdery, so most of these will not look opaque without being carefully packed on. Shades like Land on the Stars, Jupiter and I, and 4th Dimension are glowy neons. You can see this in TerraMoons’ Instagram post before the launch.
The rest in my collection I’d consider more of vibrant shades on my skin tone. I treat them similarly to the Vivid Pigments from Coloured Raine, so I either have them in the crease or as inner corner accent shades. As these TerraMoons neon mattes are actually the only neon shades I own, I only have experience with these and cannot rank or compare them to others on the market. I can say that I’m happy with these and I don’t feel the need to try any from other brands. They aren’t beginner friendly. I feel as though I’m still learning how best to use them. They aren’t a necessity for me, as I don’t do super artistic editorial looks, so they’re just a fun cool addition to my collection to occasionally use. Also, Lunar or Later is a pastel matte and not part of the neons. It was sent to me by mistake instead of Lunar Haze in my order. Terra Moons’ customer service is great and sent me Lunar Haze right away without any issues and they let me keep Lunar or Later.
This next section of swatches are a mix of a shimmer, duochromes, and a multichrome. I was unable to find Candy Apple, Sweet Like Honey, Take Me To Terra, and Sagittarius on the website. I bought those in the same order with Neverland (June 2020), so, perhaps these have been discontinued as well. Crushed Velvet is described as, a “wine brown duochrome,” but the dark pink shimmer doesn’t stand out very much and the base color is a bit muted, so I view this as more of a satin eyeshadow. Bailar is one of their newer shades. It was introduced in the El Barrio palette, but it’s also available for sale individually. It’s a beautiful duochrome coral and gold and that combo always attracts me. Martian is a greenish toned gold shade, the kind of shade I also often buy, but after playing with my Natasha Denona mini gold palette more lately, Martian isn’t as much of a standout shade as I thought. On the other hand, Hot Spiced Cider is a much more interesting version of Martian as it has a stronger green tone that makes it more duochromatic. It’s not the most unique shade on the market, as I’m certain I have shades like this in my collection, but the formula is great. I recommend this if you don’t own a shade similar to it. Mint Frosting has an interesting tone of green with gold shimmer that looks warm in the swatch, but has some blue tones to it that can be seen better when applied onto my eyes. X-ray is a blue and purple topper shade. The texture is a bit flaky, so I had a little trouble getting it to stick in my inner corners, especially since I had to really press it to make that white powder blend into my skin the way many iridescent shades do. Grapetini is a pretty purple. It’s not as exciting compared to the others but I wanted it anyway and the formula is nice.
UFO is always on Pre-Order. It’s described as having, “a bright purple base that shifts red, gold and peach.” I just see purple and pink. This shade isn’t very shifty to me, but it is definitely beautiful and I like the level of shine it has. Moon Tide is also a Pre-Order shade with, “an indigo violet base that shifts light blue, lavender and pink with hints of silver.” This one definitely shows all of that. It’s my favorite shadow from Terra Moons. When it comes to duochromes and multichromes, it’s not a secret that I favor Devinah and Clionadh, but Moon Tide is one of those shades that if you want to make a purchase from Terra Moons, I highly recommend trying this one. Clionadh released a new Vibrant mulitchrome called Regal that I believe might be similar to Moon Tide, but I haven’t purchased that shade to see for myself. UFO and Moon Tide are both part of the Cosmic Chameleons collection, which are multichromes with colored bases, not black bases like the Extreme Multichrome line.
Alter Ego is one of the extreme multichromes. It’s mainly purple with a blue, magenta, orange, and gold shift. It reminds me of Rosette from Clionadh, though not as sparkly of a finish. In the photo below, Alter Ego is on the left and Rosette is on the right.
Considering the number of shades I’ve seen disappear from the website in the last twelve months since I placed my first order, I definitely recommend that anyone who wants some Terra Moons shadows should try to get them while they’re available! I was able to get most products on sale and use an influencer promo code to get them at a discounted price. Waiting is a gamble, but sometimes it pays off. For example, the neons being discontinued in order to come back in a reformulated version. I will say though that shipping is pretty expensive considering it’s only a few dollars cheaper than some of the international shipping fees I’ve paid to get shadows from other countries. It does bug me a bit, considering I live less than two hours away from where Terra Moons ships their shadows, but it’s a nice consolation to be able to support a Florida business.
JD GlowCosmetics
The JD Glow shadows are stunning and I would have been way more excited if I hadn’t been expecting their Galaxy shadows to be like the Clionadh Stained Glass shadows that so many people compare them to. The shades are described as having, “duochrome and triochrome effects,” but they’re more along the lines of intensely sparkly shimmer and duochrome shadows. Because I expected JDGlow’s multichromes to be with all the other shadows on their site, I thought the Galaxy shadows must be the multichromes I saw on Instagram. I later discovered that what I really wanted was under the “Special Edition” section.
Their website is basic, yet not user friendly. I hope this is something they work on soon. This is why I was unable to get the See Weed shade I’d been wanting from them for so long. I also wish they restocked more often, as I’m reluctant to place orders knowing that some of the things I want aren’t available (and would therefore require a second order) while the shipping is not free.
Limelight is from the Metallion line, Martini is a Shimmer, and the remaining four are Galaxy shadows, though Starluster was no longer on the website when I last checked. Despite them being beautiful, and the Makeup Goblin inside me wanting more, I can’t say that there is currently anything else from JD Glow’s offerings that I don’t already have in a similar quality or with a better shift. Especially as most of the shadows I wanted aren’t available anymore. For anyone who doesn’t have shades like theirs, it’s worth trying, even if it’s to compare between all the amazing Indie brands out there.
Today, I’ll be reviewing the Club Nebula palette and showing the reformulated Mars Melter Highlighter.
The reason I’ll just be showing, but not reviewing, the highlighter is because mine was shattered. My usual method of repressing shimmer products is to use a little 91% isopropyl alcohol. While I don’t believe the integrity of the two eyeshadows from the palette were effected, I believe not dry-pressing the highlighter might have compromised the performance. The highlighters in this line are glittery, but they lay on the skin in a way that is right on the edge of my comfort zone. When I do a finger swatch, the highlight looks exactly the way I expect, but when I use a brush to apply this to my cheekbones, the way it picks up the product causes the shimmer particles to be too spread out and uneven. It looks like a glittery mess. Wet-pressing also caused it to shrink so flat. I imagine this highlighter wasn’t meant to be condensed/compressed in such a way. Because I think it would have performed better in its regular state, I feel I can’t properly review it. I could perhaps still find use for it as an eyeshadow topper, but I will not be using this as a highlighter.
If it was just the two shadows in the palette that were broken, I would have left it alone, since the breakage was contained within the pans and I could salvage those. However, the highlighter being broken as well bugged me considering the $10 shipping fee (increased from their previous $8 charge) and the 25 days it took to arrive after it departed Shanghai. For anyone wondering about Kaleidos’ customer service, I received a reply within 24 hours. I was offered a reshipment or to receive a partial or full refund depending on which item(s) I decided not to replace. I hadn’t heard the best things about their customer service, so I was happy that my experience with them was actually pleasant and was resolved quickly. Although I wanted a pristine palette, I felt too guilty at the idea of getting a whole extra palette knowing there were people who still couldn’t get their hands on Club Nebula, even after the restock. After my wet-press mistake, I could have benefited from a new Mars Melter highlighter, but considering my usual view on glittery highlighters anyway, I thought it best to just opt out of the replacements for both.
The packaging was so elaborate and beautiful that I wanted to show how it came to me (the box was wrapped in an air pillow/cushion/pad/pouch roll for extra protection). I usually want smaller packaging for storage reasons, but for something this beautiful I would love to have it displayed after I complete my declutter series and hopefully have spare surface area.
The special custom shipper that is included with the order of this palette comes in the large and small size. I believe mine is the large, the one intended for the set with a deck of cards. The padding for the Space Age Highlighter (plus divider layer of foam and extra tissue paper) caused the highlighter to sit too high for the box and the lid had to be forced down and secured with tape in order to close. The magnets alone weren’t strong enough to keep the lid closed with the excess padding inside.
I think it was an accidental oversight on the part of whoever packed my order, as I suspect the added pressure to force the box to close (forcefully enough to cause the dents in the front corners of the box) is what caused the breakage. Anyway, just a heads up to anyone ordering this palette with an additional item! Let’s proceed to the review!
Kaleidos Club Nebula Palette x Angelica Nyqvist
The swatches above were taken indoors with no flash on bare skin.
I’m very impressed with the quality of the packaging and the designs. It is stunning! I’m incredibly pleased with the smoothness and richness of the matte shades and how deep they go. After being disappointed by the Lunar Lavender mattes and questioning if Kaleidos’ quality was taking a dip, I was relieved to see the mattes in Club Nebula are fantastic. Because I love duochromes and multichromes, buying this palette should have been a no-brainer, but for some reason I wasn’t 100% sold on the color story. Honestly, I purchased this to avoid FOMO (fear of missing out). It was made very clear that this palette was limited edition. I preferred to have it and not use it, rather than skip it and regret it later. I am subscribed to Angelica and I’ve grown to really like and respect her. Of course I felt the tug and impulse to support her collab, but I don’t believe that factored into the FOMO because I know I already support her in other ways by watching her vids, allowing the ads on her videos to play in full, shopping through some of her affiliated links and codes, etc. One thing Angelica said in her launch video did play a factor in my decision to buy the palette. She said to give this color story a try and step outside our comfort zones. I felt that trying to dupe a palette like this wouldn’t be the same. I wanted to see for myself if I could be inspired by something that wasn’t entirely my style. Plus, I figured this many multichromes and duochromes in a palette for $45 was a steal! While I’m thrilled to have Nova and Nebula, and I think Firefly is quite pretty in certain angles, I was a bit let down by the other three.
The swatches above were taken outdoors with no flash on bare skin.
I appreciate the dark mattes, but pale shimmers tend to go unused in my collection. You’re My Only Hope is described as a lavender with a pale blue shift. The purple is so ridiculously hard to see on my skin tone regardless of indoor and outdoor lighting. I had a similar issue with the Lightyear shade from The Futurism III: Astro-Pink palette. Celestial is another one that I absolutely could not see any shift in while inside, no matter if I was under warm or cool light nor the angle in which I held my arm. So, I was surprised to see this one is considered a multichrome, “a radiant hot pink multichrome with decadent fuchsia and golden shifts.” The only way I could see a shift was while I was outside. If I want to wear a shade like this, but with a stronger shift, I’d rather reach for Blaze from Clionadh Cosmetics. Astro is another disappointing multichrome in the sense that the shift between royal blue, teal, and violet are too close in tone and it’s almost a lighter version of Neptune from the Futurism 3: Astro-Pink palette. The upside to this color is that it’s at least very pretty. I can still use it like a statement shimmer even without the shift. I can see the lighter and darker blue particles in the pan but that shift to violet does not show on my lids unless I’m outside.
Firefly has a beautiful mint green and fuchsia duochromatic sheen that is visible in person but harder to capture on camera. I’m at least happy that it’s noticeable at the right angles, unlike the previous three shades I mentioned. Nova is gorgeous! I would have expected this to be the multichrome because of how well it shows up, but this is, “a glistening amethyst blue sparkling duochrome topper with a warm violet shift.” Nebula is my favorite color in the palette, as “a rose-gold red sparkling duochrome with a molten copper shift.” It’s very unique to my collection. The closest shade I have to it is Clionadh’s Torch if Nebula had a darker red tone to it. Surprisingly, I actually prefer Nebula. In one of the looks posted below, you can see that in some lighting Nebula can look nearly as light as Samus. Speaking of Samus, that peachy orange is gorgeous! I have a hard time liking the way it looks when paired with other shades, so I actually prefer to just use this color solo blown out on my eye with some mascara and/or liner and leave it like that.
I mentioned how well the mattes blend, but I am particularly impressed with the four lightest ones because those type of shades are notoriously difficult to show on my skin tone. None of the mattes were patchy. They gave me zero issues when used over the MAC NC45 Foundation Stick as an eye primer, Gerard Cosmetics Clean Canvas, MAC Paint Pot, and Nyx Proof It primer. Naaru in particular is the kind of shade that never looks good on me because there usually isn’t enough pigment and it looks like an ashy gray instead. This shade actually looks on me the way it does in the pan, and for once it looks nice! I also like to blend the edges of darker shadows with Naaru. Gravity is easily the best performing matte lime/chartreuse eyeshadow I own! I have nothing negative to say about Queen of Blades, Void, Cylon, Rockhopper, and Red Giant. They’re top notch! For the shimmers, I apply them wet or on top of Nyx Glitter Primer because as beautiful as they are, they need a little help to really pop on my eyes. I always want more pigmentation than topper shades provide, so those two methods help me achieve more of the look I want. It also helps to lay down a shadow underneath the topper shade first.
I mentioned in my Lethal Cosmetics Velvet Dusk palette review that I only recommend getting the palette if you like the colors as is and aren’t getting them for the multichrome aspect since they’re more like shiftless shimmers or duochromes at best. The shifts were weak in those. I’m going to say the same thing for the Club Nebula palette. Firefly, You’re My Only Hope, Astro, and Celestial have weaker shifts than even the Velvet Dusk shades. They may as well be regular shimmers, though the amount of sparkle in them still puts them above some mainstream brands’ shimmers. Nova and Nebula are true duochromes though. So, if someone doesn’t mind having topper shades or weak shifting shadows or if the duochrome and multichrome aspect isn’t a factor at all, I would easily recommend purchasing this palette. Angelica mentioned there may still be one final restock coming in the future, but beyond one probably depends on how high the demand is. *After my post today I saw in a pinned comment on Angie’s latest video that the restock is in May. **As of April 1st it was announced that the restock was moved up to April 14th.
As much as I wasn’t enthralled by the color story initially (despite being a lover of greens, purples, and oranges), the more I’ve used this palette, the happier I’ve become with my decision to buy it. As one can see from the amount of example looks I showed, I kept reaching for this palette and wanted to try different styles and shadow combos. I’m up to fourteen by now (though not all made the cut for this post)! I love when I can look at a palette and feel inspired to play.
I’d like to begin this post by noting the Georgia Blush, Del Mar Highlighter, and 24Hr Eyeliner were gifted to me by Persona Cosmetics for the purpose of customer satisfaction and not for blog/reviewing purposes. I will go more into detail on that in the Terracotta Blush section.
Prior to January 5th, I only had the eyeshadow palettes. The Identity Two palette specifically had become the closest thing I had to an everyday palette. I loved it so much that I bought the older one, the original Identity Palette afterwards to see how they compared. Ulta briefly listed it for half price and I figured if it had the same formula as the Identity Two, I did not want to miss out, even though the color story isn’t my usual go-to.
Persona Identity Palette
I’m not sure if the formula was changed or updated when Persona updated the packaging of this palette from cardboard to plastic, but I do find these shadows to be a tiny bit on the drier side. The shadows still perform nicely despite being slightly less pigmented (excluding Fearless). I was also surprised to see how grey Maverick looked on me considering how brown it looks in the pan. The overall color story is a little more cool-toned than I expected, but I like having some of these shades anyway. Ironically, I still have to mix Humble and Charming together to highlight under my brows (to avoid looking ashy) like I do with Kind and Loyal. Goddess is a brighter alternative I wanted alongside Resilient. Goal Digger is the more traditional gold shade I wanted alongside Unique. Audacious is the kind of shade I love to have in the crease, so I’m very happy to have that one. It leans more orange than than the shade Passionate which leans more pink. One of the things I really wanted from the Identity Two palette, after using the pink leaning white shade called Honest, was a white leaning gold. When I saw Sassy, I was hopeful this might be it, but it’s more of a silver shade. If Persona ever makes an Identity Three, I hope that pale gold will be in there, though I can still use Goal Digger for the purpose I envisioned.
Persona Identity Two Palette
I raved in-depth about this palette in my 2020 Eyeshadow Tag. If I had to declare a favorite premade eyeshadow palette from 2020, it would definitely be this one. It was one of my favorite palettes to pair with my beloved Clionadh Cosmetics multichromes. Everything I mentioned about the formula of this being creamy, pigmented, blendable, being worth the full retail price, something I can take traveling (which I have by now) and being versatile enough to create simple or complex looks and go neutral or colorful holds true. What I forgot to mention is that Limitless makes an excellent powder eyeliner.
I have additional looks with the Identity Two Palette in the 2020 Eyeshadow Tag post.
Now that I’ve compared both, I can say that the Identity Palette is great, but the Identity Two is the version that suits my preferences specifically: creamier, slightly more colorful, more pigmented, and warmer. If an Identity Three palette is ever released, I will probably purchase it on launch day. The palette would most likely still be neutral, as the owner and brand’s overall aesthetic favors everyday/natural glam.
Persona Superblush in Terracotta
Terracotta is the newest addition to the Super Blush range. As I went completely bananas for blushes last year, I naturally had my eye on them for a very long time. It was difficult to find anyone with a deep complexion wearing Georgia or Carmel via Instagram, Youtube, Persona’s website, or Ulta’s site. There was only one woman I could find, who was darker than me, and I could hardly see the colors on her cheek so I thought perhaps these shades just weren’t meant for me. When Terracotta was released, I had an even harder time trying to figure out if this shade would work for me or not, especially as even the color in the pan looks vastly different depending on the lighting. I watched one of Sona’s videos (owner of Persona) and it looked pretty light on her, but she mentioned that this blush gets much deeper the more it is layered. The website also listed Terracotta specifically as being suitable for medium to dark skin tones. My foundation shade among inclusive ranges like Make Up For Ever, Nars, Fenty, etc tends to be in the beginnings of the dark category and often called medium-dark, sometimes even the tail end of the tan category. So, I figured this should give a subtle color to my cheeks at the very least. Considering how often MAC’s paler shades surprisingly worked for me, I decided to give it a try and purchased the Georgia and Terracotta duo (with the intent to give Georgia to a friend for Christmas).
Unfortunately, Terracotta doesn’t work on me. At the time, I felt duped by the ‘suitable for dark skin tones’ label considering the shade isn’t just faint, it disappears entirely. It’s too close to my skin tone. I have four heavy layers of blush in the photo above, though it looks like nothing. I tried to leave a comment on their website to warn other shoppers about the description inaccuracy, but my comment was never made public. So, I wanted to at least warn those who followed me on Instagram about it. I had no idea Persona Cosmetics would see my post (or I expected it would be ignored by them if they did come across it). Their response was beyond anything I expected. Not only did they change the description from “medium to dark” to “medium to tanned skin tones,” which was the best case scenario outcome I could have hoped for, they also refunded the amount I paid specifically for Terracotta, sent me Georgia (since I had already given mine to my friend) because they were confident that shade could work for me, and sent the eyeliner and highlighter as extra surprises. It became very clear to me that customer feedback is important to them and they didn’t glaze over the situation like plenty of other brands would. It restored my confidence in the brand. It was especially poignant considering a short week later, Hourglass tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes with their release of the Ambient Lighting Palette Volume II, promoting it with a photo where the model and palette looked edited to appear deeper. The shades in the trio palette were repromoted ones (two of which I have) and that darkest shade which is considered a bronzer is what I literally use as a highlighter. The response from Hourglass was to simply remove the photo from Instagram and ignore the problem entirely. The different responses between these two companies are night and day, and I have even more respect for Persona Cosmetics when the situations are compared. This is the reason I felt it was important to share this story. If I’ve had a customer service issue in the past that was rectified, I would normally delete my original post since it was resolved. This time I kept my post on Instagram and am talking about it here because I think it’s really important to show the growth and integrity that was shown to me by Persona’s response, and also to present this as an example for how brands should handle things.
The last point I wanted to make is that I’ve tried to use Terracotta many times on my cheeks (and it actually makes a decent under eye setting powder). There was one time that I had it on and a slight tinge of color actually showed on my cheek by the end of the night. I don’t remember what foundation I was using at the time, but it led me to believe that if this shade is applied on foundation that oxidizes or will allow my natural oils to come through, it could potentially show on my skin. I have since tried to recreate that same scenario and have been unable to get the color to show visibly enough on camera (hence the hours later photo in the gallery above). So, I still stand with the fact that this won’t work on someone with my same skin tone. In the best case scenario situation it’s barely a whisper of color.
Persona Superblush in Georgia
Persona was correct. This shade does work for me! Honestly, I was pretty shocked considering my friend who I gave my original one to said it’s perfect for her and she is much lighter than me (though still in the caramel family). It gives a very light flush of pink as if I’ve been out in the cold. If I really layer it on, it’s the type of shade that I think of when anime characters blush, which is super cute!
Persona Del Mar Cali Glow Highlighter
As seen in the Georgia section, the Del Mar Highlighter is perfect for me! It’s close enough to my skin tone to blend in very well, it can be as subtle or as shimmery as I want, and there are no chunky glitter particles! Although I am wearing the Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter under my foundation on the high points of my cheek, this highlighter looks just as great without it. I need to use it a bit longer to see how often I reach for it, but it could potentially knock Nabla’s Skin Glazing in Amnesia from the top spot on my list of favorite highlighters!
Persona 24HR Waterproof Eyeliner in Black
I’m going through this pencil very quickly as I feel like I lose a lot of product when I try to get the tip sharp enough with my Nars sharpener, which I need to sharpen every 1-2 uses. This formula is very creamy and easily glides across the skin. That softness does make it difficult to sharpen as I previously tried to use it with the sharpener that came with my MILK Makeup Gel Eyeliner, but that did nothing but instantly break off the tip. I like that when this dries it becomes smudge-proof and when I use it at an angle I can make lines in varying thicknesses. I can make a very precise thin line across my lid, but creating a sharp tail has proven immensely difficult due to that blunt tip. So, I just draw a line as well as I can and then use concealer to clean up the outer corner. The fact that this stays so well in the waterline makes this pencil worth it to me and I’m curious to see how long this pencil will last at the rate I currently use it. For the precision issue, I usually have to use a brush with my MILK eyeliner pencil, so the fact that this is nearly as black and budge-proof as that, while still being easy to remove with Bioderma (and the creaminess makes it easier to spread with a brush), makes the potential for me continuing to like and use this very high. I’m glad I have it, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend it in this current form. If Persona comes out with a retractable/twist up version, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
That’s everything! I will continue to keep my eye on new products from this brand as I am more excited about them than ever. They recently launched lipliners and colored balms, but I’m on a lip product no buy. I’ll keep my eye out for the next new release from them!
In my last Juvia’s Place review, I mentioned that I wasn’t getting anything new lately because of the pressed glitters that Juvia’s Place kept putting in nearly all of their palettes from part of 2019 through 2020. However, there was a big sale during the holidays and I folded.
Nubian Glow Gift Set
This collection consists of the Nubian Glow Palette, the Mango Lip Balm, and Guava Lip Balm. They were all packaged in their own boxes within this set.
Shade 5 is a pressed glitter, so I did not use that in any looks.
I think the shades in this palette are beautiful but I find that the quality of all the lighter mattes in all these palettes I’m reviewing today are not what I’m used to from Juvia’s Place. Although they swatch nicely, they seem thinner and I can see my skin through the shades. It takes a lot to build them up. In the second look above, you can see the section in the crease where I had to use the nearly white ABH primer to keep the shade appearing somewhat bright. What looks to be the darker mustard-orange shade above it is actually still the yellow matte shade just over MAC Paint Pot. It started off looking like the yellow below it but darkened within minutes. The orange shade on the lower lash line is also over the ABH primer because it wasn’t showing as bright as it looked in the pan. I’m used to Juvia’s Place shadows being very pigmented regardless of the kind of shade it is, so I’m a bit disappointed. The shimmer shades look nice, but I had to wet them or use glitter primer to make them stand out. I prefer shadows that make an impact without having to do that. The kind that wetting only intensifies further, not the ones that won’t shine without it. Although I can still make the mattes work, I’d rather not use them again. Without the mattes, which I feel is needed for me to make a complete look, I know I won’t reach for this again unless I depot the palette. I will keep shades 1, 3, and 6. At the reduced price, it still makes the palette worth it in terms of cost, but I really didn’t need anymore golds in my collection. I wanted this for the full color story.
I really wanted to try the lip balms after Angelica Nyqvist’s video describing them as the most realistic smelling mango and guava scented lip balms she’s ever tried. The mango one really does smell nice. I’m not certain if I’m sold on the guava, but at least the smell is pleasant. I like how hydrating these made my lips feel. I applied a lot and within a few hours it actually made my lips prune a bit (the way fingers get pruned when submerged in water too long). The wrinkling effect wasn’t so bad as to look unappealing, but I would probably only wear this at home and as a quick lip prep step before applying a different lip product on top afterwards. The consistency feels like a lightweight version of petroleum jelly, which makes sense since the first ingredient listed for this product is polybutene (a petroleum derivative). Hydrogenated polybutene is the third ingredient as well.
Nubian Royal Palette
Considering how the Nubian Glow went for me, I am surprised to say I didn’t have as much trouble using this palette. It’s a bit funny considering purples are among the hardest shades to formulate. The mattes are still on the thin side, but they remained true to color without needing the ABH primer. I intend to depot this palette as well and keep everything except shade 6 because that’s the pressed glitter. If you like pressed glitters, you might want this palette because shade 6 is the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, but I’m not going to put my eyes at risk. They’ve gotten irritated too many times from “safe” products, so I’d rather not use things that aren’t considered safe in both the US and EU.
The Mauves Palette
And we’re back to the formula issues. Shade 1 isn’t just lighter than Shade 3; it’s less pigmented too. Shade 4 was a struggle to even swatch because it did not want to go on my finger or on a brush. It’s as if it immediately hard-panned. Shades 2 and 3 show up, but I find that none of the mattes in this palette wanted to be layered over each other. Once the color was deposited onto the lid, any additional shade was a struggle to get to stick. 5 and 6 are beautiful and I’m fine with having to spray them to make an impact. I’ll be keeping shades 5, 6, and possibly 3.
Sweet Pinks Palette
What I find most interesting about these shades is that the mattes have a corresponding shimmer that pairs very well together. Shades 3 and 4 match very well. 1 and 6 have similar pink-coral vibes. 2 and 5 are a bit more on the fuchsia pink-purple side. I haven’t seen matching pairings like these in the other palettes. While I still have the issue of these mattes not showing as well without a lighter base (as can be seen in the crease of the first look versus the second look in the photo below), it’s not as problematic compared to the difficulty level I had with the Nubian Glow or Mauves palettes. Also, while I am happy with the whole corresponding shadow idea, 3 and 5 look so similar on the eye, especially when next to each other in the top look on the lid below. When there are as few as 6 shades, I prefer to not have any duplicates. That being said, when I depot this, I’m planning to keep all 6 shadows.
Wahala II Palette
Besides Gobe, I didn’t swatch any other pressed glitter from the Wahala II palette. Unlike the glitters from Nubian Glow and Nubian Royal, which are pressed tightly together in a sandy texture that isn’t too sticky, these glitters have a stickier base that was so incredibly difficult to remove the majority of the glitter specks off my arm. There was no way I was going to deal with that three more times with Goals, 419, and Kolo (which I touched to be sure they were pressed glitters and removing a tiny amount off my finger still proved difficult).
Yab, Too Much, Lit, and Wasted had the same pigmentation deficiencies I noticed from the other 6 pan palettes. Oya looks dark plum in the pan, but on the lids it’s almost black! I wish it was actually the dark plum shade I expected. Other than those, I really enjoyed the other shadows! I was so happy to have two multichromes (Fake and Money) and surprised to also see three duochromes (Amebo, Dope, and Bold). Even the regular shimmers are more in line with the Juvia’s Place quality I had gotten used to and they didn’t need a spray or glitter glue to make an impression.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes brands change their eyeshadow formulas. That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing, as it may better suit the preferences of other people. For instance, I tend to like Natasha Denona’s more recent eyeshadow formulas (post-Lila). On the other hand, I loved Kaleidos’s formulas until Lunar Lavender. I had an easier time using these Juvia’s Place shadows than Lunar Lavender, but I still prefer the formula of their older palettes. Considering the pressed glitter issue and my issue with the lighter mattes in particular, I think I’ll have a little break from Juvia’s Place eyeshadows (or at least the quads and 6-pans).
I forgot to include my Natasha Denona cheek products in my initial photo, but this post will cover everything I own from the brand!
Bloom Blush and Glow Palette
I use the Glow Cream Base as a subtle wet looking highlighter. I also mix it with the dark red Cream Blush to create a medium pink shade, since I don’t like the tone of the blush on its own. Because of the texture and how quickly it sets/stops being as blendable on the skin, I apply a layer of the Cream Base first to my cheek, then I add one tap of the blush on top and swirl it around with my finger until the adequate amount is laid down. I wipe the excess blush off my finger before continuing to blend until I’m satisfied with the look. I’ve tried the Glow Extreme several times but the sparkle level is too glittery for my taste. On the flip side, the Duo Glow is stunning! I imagine this could be a blush on some people but it is a stunning duochromatic highlighter. Being able to utilize so much of a face palette is uncommon for me, so I’m very happy I bought this. Also, I’ve had this for ten months and the creams haven’t dried out. This palette is meant to last 18 months, so that’s also a pleasant surprise!
Blush Duo
I bought this from a Boxycharm subscriber. The main blush shade is called Golden Coral and is described as a, “champagne peach shimmer and warm pink with slight champagne sheen.” This is not to be confused with the Duo Glow shade in the Bloom palette which is a combination of a, “vibrant coral with golden champagne.” The TouTou shade is meant to blend out the edges. On my skin tone, it’s too stark and just makes the edges look ashy. When I look forward, Golden Coral is a bit too bubblegum pink, and when I turn my face to the light it looks like I applied highlighter all over my cheek instead of a glowy blush. I think if I had a different shade, I would still not be a fan of the way it looks on my skin or its satin texture. MAC and Nabla are the two brands I trust to make a shimmer blush I will like. I haven’t had quite as much luck with shimmer blushes from other brands.
I think I will be decluttering this one from my collection since I doubt I will use it again. It looks pretty in the photo, but in person there’s just something about this color that I don’t care for. Despite the warmth from the gold shimmer, the base color of the blush itself is too cool toned for my liking.
The Mini Lila Palette
I purchased this palette when it was on sale and being discontinued about two and a half years ago. I haven’t noticed any changes in the quality because these shades were always very pigmented, but not the easiest to blend. Although Poison Berry (the dark red-toned purple) and Raisin (warm reddish-brown purple) are pretty colors, they look nearly interchangeable on the eye and I have plenty of shades like them. I wanted this palette for the Blue Dahlia shade, which was more unique in my collection when I originally bought it, but I have many duochrome blue-purples in my collection now, such as Nocturnal from Clionadh and Fierce from Sydney Grace. Linen is pretty, but I typically only use that kind of shade to highlight the inner corner of the eye and under the brow arch. Flint is only good for highlighting under my brow (though it barely shows) and blending out the edges of Poison Berry and Raisin.
I’ve tried to use this many times and to love it, but I think it’s best if I declutter it to allow other palettes I’m more excited by to get my attention.
My Revised Lila Palette
The Lila palette is an older one from Natasha Denona’s brand, but I purchased mine from Beautylish in November 2019. Some of these shades from the original palette are so beautiful, but I felt it wasn’t purple enough, which is why I rearranged this palette using six additional purples from the 28 Purple-Blue palette: Calypso Blue, Nina’s Orchid, Aubergine, Electric Violet, Smoky Plum, and Maroon. I am much happier with the results! The colors are mainly midtones and darker shades, so I don’t have anything to give a true pop of brightness in this one, but I tend to just use whatever highlighter I have for inner corner and brow arch highlights anyway.
As a purple lover, if I didn’t have the ability to add more purples to this palette, I honestly think I would have been more disappointed with this purchase and felt it wasn’t worth buying, even though I got it during one Beautylish’s infrequent sales. I still don’t use this palette as much as I should, but it’s aesthetically pleasing to me and I get joy from knowing it’s there in my collection.
The Mini Gold Palette
I purchased this shortly after it was released, which is rare for me to buy anything at full price. However, the color story was calling to me so strongly that I didn’t have the self control to wait for a sale. Lodge hardly shows on my eyes, but I love all the other shades! Dark Sepia is a much needed deepening up shade, even though I typically reserve that task for mattes. I found that it looks great in the outer corner but I can also use it in the crease with Bia on top to give that grungy olive green depth that I need if I want it to look like more than just a soft wash of green. I originally didn’t like the flaky texture of D’OR, but now that I’ve worked with many different glittery shadows for the past year, my experience makes using this shade much easier now. I thought the green would be my favorite shade, but D’or really elevates the eye looks I create with this palette. Antheia is a beautiful duochrome olive-brown with gold and green shimmer. That shadow’s tone doesn’t pop as much on my eyelid as I think it would on someone else, but it’s still pretty and I prefer how it looks as an inner corner highlight.
If I ranked my Natasha Denona palettes in their non-revised forms, this would be tied with the Bronze palette for second place. It’s also a favorite palette in my eyeshadow collection overall.
My Revised Gold Palette
This is another palette that is older, but I purchased it late in 2019. Although I liked the blue shades, I wanted to have all my blues in the 28 Purple-Blue Palette instead. I kept 8 of the original shades and added 4 from Lila (Magnolia, Layla, Helio, Cyclone) and 3 from the Purple-Blue (Rosewood, Golden Rose, and Oxide). This palette holds one of the most amazing nearly-glowing greenish gold shades called Lime Chrome. It’s possibly my favorite eyeshadow color from Natasha Denona! It’s hard to justify the price when I got this palette for a few specific shades, but I can at least attest to the shimmer quality being amazing! The mattes weren’t very well suited for me.
When it comes to doing eye looks, my version of the Gold palette is better for simpler eye looks if used alone or as a companion palette. If I wore Brass one day and Oro the next, I doubt anyone would notice I was wearing a more yellow-toned gold shade that day. Or if I wore Brass one day and Alchemist the next, I don’t think anyone would wonder if the eyeshadow suddenly became less glittery than the previous day. So, really, the differences in gold shades is for the wearer’s knowledge and benefit. Although I don’t mind repetitive golds, there were quite a few light shades that were going to look pretty much the same on my eyes, so that’s why I removed most of those.
For the eye looks, I added Python, Sparks, and Aria back, although I had to use the very pale Anastasia Beverly Hills primer in order for Aria to show at all on my eyes. The last two eye looks were created using the pink shades in my revised palette, which were not part of the original Gold palette, but I included them in this section anyway.
My Revised 28 Purple-Blue Palette
This is the oldest ND palette in my collection, as I received it from my 2018 Lucky Bag. These have under performed for a while now, but I am not ready to put them on the shelf of retired makeup products kept purely for collector purposes. Although this palette has been rearranged, the majority of the shadows are still here. I mainly removed the purple shades to spruce up the Lila palette. This one currently holds all the colors I like the least or would seldom use in my ND collection, which are mainly cool tone shades. Some of the yellows and golds are beautiful, but I wanted to minimize the amount of similarly toned shadows in the other palettes, which is how those ended up here. 19 are from the original palette, 2 are from Lila (Juneau and Per Se), and 7 are from Gold (Cava, Sandstone, Sparks,Aria, Teak, Aurora, Python).
The Metropolis Palette
I love the greens and blues, plus I enjoy enjoy orange shades, so this palette has a lot to offer me. On a lighter skin tone, the subtle nuances and differences in texture and undertone is enough to keep this palette from being repetitive, but I acknowledge a lot of these colors look similar on me. My favorite shimmer from Metropolis is Orium, a duochromatic “coral with light greenish reflects,” which goes well with everything in this palette. That being said, I still haven’t used Metropolis as much as I wanted. I know the shades are arranged in a way that can be complimentary if used in adjacent quads or by rows and columns, but I am unused to these color combinations, so I tend to not know what to do and I reach for something else instead. I was happy to discover that the pans in Metropolis are the same size as the medium 15-pan $65 palettes, so I decided to swap some of my least use shades and replace them with Suntan, Magma, High Degree, Alloy, Gloaming, and Bliss from the Bronze palette. Then I organized them in a way that makes it easier for me to visualize how to pair the colors together on my eyes!
Metropolis launched in September 2019, but I’ve only had this palette for 13 months. I can happily say that the cream shadows have not dried out, although Symbol did feel less creamy than Enigma from the very start. They’re all still blendable and such a pleasure to use. This palette is labelled to be good for 2 years after opening, which is fantastic.
I already reviewed this palette, mini Lila, and mini Gold in my 2020 Eyeshadow Tag post, which included eyeshadow looks, so I wanted to expand on that by creating new looks using different shades for this one.
This is my favorite Natasha Denona palette and a favorite in my collection overall!
The Bronze Palette
This is the newest addition to my collection. I kept telling myself I didn’t need this and that the color story is repetitive, but I caved and bought it. When I looked at this next to Metropolis and saw all the neutral browns and oranges, I was reminded even more how much I didn’t need this palette. It’s so pretty though! Bliss is an amazing dark pink shadow with gold and green sparkle. Deep Dive has the cream to powder formula that’s present in the Metropolis palette which works well to smoke out any look or add a unique twist to any shadow that’s patted on top of it. Gloaming is a stunning, “burnt umber with a light bronze reflect.” Magma is the perfect crease shade for all these bronze and orange tones. The shadow quality is fantastic. They are all pigmented, even if most of the lighter mattes are the same depth as my natural lid shade and they just blend into my skin and become hard to see. The other shadows more than make up for it. Even Rhodium, my least favorite shade because it doesn’t have enough sparkle to stand out on my eye, looks amazing when paired with the more sparkly shades in this palette. What helps differentiate this palette from Metropolis is the fact that the similar orange shades lean more on the pink and brown side of bronze. The oranges in Metropolis lean more yellow and gold. Although I removed the most fun six shades and put them in Metropolis, I’m happy to say that what I have leftover in my revised Bronze palette still looks pretty and I can see myself reaching for it to use True Copper, True Bronze, Sundown, Deep Dive, and possibly even Rhodium again.
I left Bronze as a workable and still cohesive palette, unlike my revised 28 pan Blue-Purple one filled with shades I wouldn’t miss. Although I wanted to put Deep Dive in my Metropolis palette, I needed to keep it here as my main deepening up shade.
COMPARISONS
When it comes to specific categories like inner corner shades, browns, golds, bronzes, and blues, Natasha Denona’s shades are without question very similar. At the same time, I thought a lot of shades were more similar than they ended up being. For example, in my mind I thought Bia and Lethal were similar because they’re both light greens. However, Bia is on the grassy pastel side and Lethal is a more grungy yellow-green. I also thought about the fact that Golden Rose is a duochrome pink shadow with gold shimmer, and the same can be said of Bliss. In swatching them, I realized Bliss is more of a coral than a true pink. So, Natasha Denona’s use of different undertones and levels of glitter really helps shades that would ordinarily be similar look quite different when swatched.
That’s everything! I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time, so I’m happy it’s complete now. Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog!
In order to get more use out of my Viseart shadows, I depotted them from their smaller palettes, then placed them in one custom magnetic palette, and lastly sold the remaining shades I didn’t want in my collection. Muse Beauty Pro sells some shades individually, so I ordered a few of those as well during various sales.
Most of these do not have names, but I labeled some of those according to their positions in the palettes.
The shadows from my Viseart Dark Mattes palette are exactly five years old. I can see the changes in texture, even though they still perform nearly the same way. The oranges and reds were always the best shades in the palette. The blues and the olive shade were always the patchiest in swatches. I honestly only kept the blues because the shades are pricey and many years too old to sell. Since I still love the oranges and purples, but I feel like I need to toss them, I have considered purchasing the Viseart Dark Edit Eyeshadow Palette which has those shades as minis (minus the blue), plus a few additional pretty shimmers. The only reason I haven’t yet is because I won’t allow myself to purchase anymore Viseart shadows unless I prove to myself I’m going to use the ones I currently have even more.
The Pastis shade had to be built up many times. I have a hard time getting that shade to stay vibrant and visible on my eyes. Clover and Forrest don’t look the best in swatches, but they perform better on the eyes. I mentioned the Dark Mattes shades are old, but all my other Viseart shadows were purchased in 2019.
I was a little annoyed when I purchased Bougainvillea as a single shadow and found out how similar it looked to the Lavender shade I already had. The only difference between the two is that Bougainvillea is slightly brighter. It has a more vibrant purple pigment in it.
I didn’t purchase any of Viseart’s new palettes in 2020 because they always mixed light neutral shades I never wear with a few pops of interesting colors I want. The Étendu Violette Palette has some stunning purples, but out of the four shades I want, one looks like Bonbon and one looks like Lavender in certain photos. So, the Viseart no-buy continues.
That’s everything I have for now. Have a fantastic day!
I’ve never been one to fawn over brands. There are some companies whose products I really like, and I speak about them highly, but when it comes to Clionadh Cosmetics I fully acknowledge I am a Stan.
I respect the company so much because of their amazing customer service, social media presence, and support of customers, creators, and even other indie brands. The biggest reason is of course their phenomenal eyeshadows. Their standard eyeshadow collections are fantastic (and underrated) but their Stained Glass Collection is several tiers above the rest. Other brands can make multichromes and do a decent job, but no one has been able to replicate Clionadh’s “mirror” finish in their Jewelled multichrome formula. Leigh and Maggie have created truly extraordinary eyeshadows.
THE ORDERING PROCESS / DELAYS
When I first heard about Clionadh, they were already popular. It was just a two-person team handmaking everything. The processing time was 20 business days and it was not uncommon having to wait 1-2 months for an order to arrive from Canada where they are based. However, they had a huge boom on January 21st, 2020 with their belated Black Friday sale. They had a new workspace and hired a few employees, but the demand was so massive that things were selling out within minutes. In order to give everyone a fair shot, they turned the Stained Glass collection into a pre-order collection and on February 4th they made preorders available and honored the sale price for the first two days. This is the reason why what once took a few months turned into a 2-5 month wait. In one of their updates they explained, “In total, we received more orders from this single restock than we did the entirety of 2019.”
This process became a lesson in patience for me. For the January 21st restock, I checked out 14 minutes after the launch and received my order on February 18th. For the February 4th Pre-Order launch (planned to ship in April), I was better prepared and checked out two minutes after the launch. However, I combined that order with my later February 25th order. So, my package arrived on July 8th. My March 4th order was also part of the April pre-orders and arrived on August 4th.
The COVID-19 pandemic with social distancing restrictions caused a far greater delay than anyone could have anticipated. This is the reason Clionadh didn’t catch up with everything until November 30th. That included closing their store for a month in order to complete the pending orders, build up inventory to reopen, move to an even larger space, hire additional help, order two custom pressing machines, and transfer their website to a different e-commerce platform. They have since reopened and from December 18th – December 31st, their biggest restock/sale yet has been underway. My intention was to post this before the sale, but my final order did not arrive in time for that to be possible.
Regarding the current sale, they plan to ship the standard orders after the holidays (January 2021) for the current inventory they have in stock. All orders containing a pre-order item will begin shipping in late February. This is a reasonable amount of time considering how long it takes to create new shadows, so it appears they won’t be as backed up in 2021 as they were this year.
This post has been many months in the making. I kept debating whether or not to post considering I still had so many pending orders. Ultimately, I decided to work on this a little at a time, as my orders came in, so I could finally make a giant 2020 Clionadh Collection post all in one!
PRICING
One of my initial deterrents from the brand was the cost of a single eyeshadow. Prior to watching Lauren Mae Beauty’s video, which is when I decided to finally try out the brand during their next sale, I only knew of Clionadh from photos on Instagram. I thought those pictures had been photoshopped or enhanced in some way because I didn’t think eyeshadows could ever look like that in real life. The irony is that they look even more stunning in person! At the time, I didn’t want to spend $25 on a shadow when I’d already been a little disappointed by the $15 multichromes I purchased from Sydney Grace. What I didn’t take into consideration is that the prices listed were in CAD, which is higher than USD. It’s only the most expensive shades, the Jewelled multichromes, which are 25 CAD at full price and $19 USD. Their website now has a conversion changer, which makes things easier to calculate.
Terra Moons Extreme Multichromes are $17, Sydney Grace Pressed Multichromes are $15, and JD Glow Multichromes are $16. Devinah Cosmetics shadows in the Butterfly Kaleidoscope Collection are $10, but the shifts are a lot weaker than the multichromes from the other brands. Devinah now has Aurorae Flares for $16 which are comparable to Clionadh’s Jewelled multichromes. They are the closest in quality that I have seen, though Clionadh’s are still just a touch better in my opinion due to that mirror shine. However, they are nearly identical enough that I would suggest if you live in the US and don’t already have the equivalent Clionadh shades to the Aurorae Flare shadows, you’d be saving $3 per shadow going with the Devinah options.
Clionadh’s prices for multichromes within the Stained Glass collection range from $8-19 USD. The duochromes from their other collections, which still have strong shifts depending on the shades, range from $5-6 USD. Devinah’s Duochromes are $8 with regular shadows as low as $5. Terra Moons’ are $6-13. Lethal Cosmetics Duochromes are $6.50-7. Give Me Glow’s regular shimmers are $7. JDGlow’s regular shimmers are $7.50. So, Clionadh’s eyeshadows are on par or better price-wise than other indie brands. Other brands have more sales though and some are at deeper discounts, so it just depends.
The cost of shipping to the US is around $11 (15 CAD) but it is tracked and insured. My last Terra Moons order cost me $7.29 insured shipping (free if you spend $65). Considering Clionadh is based in another country whereas Terra Moons is based in Tampa about one hour from where I live, I think it’s a pretty good deal. In addition, Clionadh knows that it would be so disappointing to wait months and have anything arrive broken, so they pack them the most securely of any brand. It takes me quite a while to unpack the shadows from all the bubble wrap!
THE STAINED GLASS COLLECTION
I will be categorizing by formula and showcasing eye swatches. Arm swatches and other comparisons will be towards the end of the post. For eye swatches, I used Nyx Glitter Primer on shimmers and MAC Paint Pot for mattes. For arm swatches, I used Nyx Glitter Primer on the Stained Glass Collection and Urban Decay Primer Potion on the standard collection.
Series 1 Iridescent Multichromes
These appear white in the pan but have color shifts and a transparent base. They are recommended to be used as lid topper shades and highlighters for the eyes and face.
Umbra has “colour shifting reflects that go from blue-indigo-violet-pink.” This is the only one I have in this formula because although this kind of eyeshadow still works for me and is beautiful, it takes a bit of rubbing to make the white part of the powder disappear. It gets messy when I have to rub the shade rather than gently patting it onto my glitter-glue-primed eyes which I use to avoid fallout.
Series 2 Iridescent Multichromes
With Series 2, Clionadh says, “We don’t recommend using these on their own as a shadow because their formula is so thin and slippery, thus it doesn’t have the same adhesion a regular shadow would need on its own. But they certainly are perfect for the inner corner or brow bone.”
Of course, I still put them all over the lid for demonstration purposes. You can see a few sparse areas despite me building up these shades because they aren’t meant to be opaque. I currently have two shades and I was able to buy one more during the sale, which I will review in a future post.
Lux has “colour shifting reflects that go from yellow-lime-turquoise-violet with a slightly more glittery finish.” This shade is so reflective and beautiful that I literally gasped when I first swatched it. My camera doesn’t come close to doing it justice!
UV has “colour shifting reflects that go from violet-peach.” I can’t really see the peach on my skin tone but the shade of purple is beautiful and I’m happy with how it looks. It practically glows!
Overall, Series 1 feels a little more powdery and Series 2 does appear to have a more invisible base. With Series 2, I don’t have the same issue of needing to rub it in for the color to show. The regular application process is enough.
Deep Iridescent Multichromes
The Deep Iridescent Multichromes have a tan base which makes them easier for customers with medium to deep skin tones to wear without a white cast. They still look gorgeous on every skin tone though. I have 2 of 5 shades but I ordered two more during the restock. Clionadh mentioned plans to add new shades to the Stained Glass collection. I’m hoping they will expand the shades in the Deep Iridescent multichrome range, especially if they create a purple to top the ones I have from the Iridescent Series 1 and 2. A girl can dream!
These shadows go on easily and definitely don’t leave a cast. They look glittery but are super smooth in texture. Of all the iridescent formulas, this is my favorite!
Verte is an “emerald-turquoise-purple-pink shifter with a medium, cool tan base.” This is another shade that made me audibly gasp. It’s one of my favorite shades from Clionadh’s entire collection and just my eyeshadows in general. It completely exceeded my expectations. I have quite a few green to purple shifting shades, but these tones are unlike anything else I’ve seen before!
Vermillion has a “light, warm tan base that shifts pink-orange-gold-lime.” It’s not easy for me to be impressed by pink shades but this one is very pretty. It’s a smoother and shiftier version of Devinah’s Tocana.
Iridescent Glitter Multichromes
The Glitter-Type Iridescent Multichromes aren’t pressed glitters. They have larger particles than most of the other shadows though, so I highly recommend using a glitter primer/glitter glue. Clionadh recommends this as well, along with, “applying them with your finger or a shader brush sprayed with a setting spray. Don’t swipe.”
Gilding “has a translucent base that reflects bright gold-silver-green-turquoise.” The eyeshadows in this line are so incredibly beautiful, but because I prefer smaller sized glitter specks, this is the only one I intend to have in this formula. Also, I love how intense this is, but I wish the silver wasn’t there. On my complexion, the silver looks like unblended white powder in comparison to all the gold.
Glitter Multichromes
The Glitter Multichromes are once again not pressed glitters or plastic-based glitters. Clionadh says, “These have varying levels of opacity in the base colour and varying sizes of glitter particles. They are safe to use on the eyes.”
I have 19 out of the 23 currently in the collection. The missing shades are Corrosion, Ornamental, Kaleidoscope, and Engrave. From pictures alone, those four don’t look the most unique or shifty to me, so I decided not to buy them just for the sake of wanting to complete the set.
Abrasion “has a semi-sheer burgundy base with large glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet.” The color it looks in the pan is so similar to a multitude of duochromes I’ve seen before, even from mainstream brands, but when it’s actually swatched and put on the eyes, you can see how multi-dimensional it is. It’s so much more special than I thought!
Grisaille “has a semi-pigmented terracotta base with medium glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet-pink.” This shade looked similar to Abrasion in the pan, but the base color changes the look on the eyes. Abrasion has a stronger turquoise shift whereas the sparkle in this appears more minty green, even though it isn’t described that way on the website. Pavonine from Devinah Cosmetics is a bit similar to this shade.
Opulent has “a warm purple-brown base (almost rose gold) with medium glitter particles that shift orange-gold-green-turquoise.” Certain shades don’t shift the way it is described, and I thought it might be due to my darkly pigmented eyelids, but I couldn’t see the other colors on my finger either. When I wear this one, it shifts from dark rose gold to a lighter and brighter gold, but that’s about all I can see. Perhaps the others show in different lighting. As it stands, the tone still makes it unique when seen in person.
Enamel “has a semi-sheer lavender base with small glitter particles that shift blue-violet-pink.” This shade is gorgeous! I absolutely love the color, but I’ve discovered that thinking a color is beautiful doesn’t mean I’ll love how it looks on me. For my comfort zone, this one is a little too pastel-bright to be used all over the lid. However, when this is patted on top of other eyeshadows in strategic places, I absolutely love how it looks! If Clionadh makes a shade in 2021 that has a deeper purple base (similar to Stencil) with a blue-violet-lavender shift I would be all over it!
Chandelier has “a sheer pale mustard yellow base with small glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet-pink.” This shade surprised me. I typically don’t like shadows this light, but the shifts make this so wearable and flattering. It’s such a unique take on what could have been a typical goldish green, especially with how it looks so intensely turquoise at night. This is one of my favorites to wear alone or combined with other eye looks to give it extra oomph.
Glazed “Has a sheer lilac base with large glitter particles that shift pink-orange-gold.” I’ve learned that lighter purples are not my favorite and this pulls very white-gold/baby pink on me, which I also don’t like. Combine this with the larger glitter particles, and therefore added mess risk factor, and it becomes clear that this shade isn’t for me. Objectively speaking, it’s a pretty color though. On my eyelid, in this photo, it looks more strongly pink. At night, when the lighting shifts, the lilac is a bit more apparent and looks like the color on my finger.
Sunbeam “has a sheer pink base with small/medium glitter particles that shift pale gold-lime-turquoise.” I have a few pink shadows with gold shimmer in my collection that I think are actually quite pretty: Pinkleberry from Coloured Raine, Meadowhawk and Golden Rose from Sydney Grace, and Empress from Devinah. This shade is more like Devinah’s Pixy Stix Xploder where it looks pink on my finger and in swatches, but on my dark eyelids, it looks incredibly light in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I have an easier time seeing the gold lime and turquoise at night when the lighting is different.
Ciel “has a semi-pigmented sky blue base with large glitter particles that shift gold-green-blue.” Ciel and Ripple aren’t typically the kind of blues that I like, but I thought if anyone could make me like this kind of color it would be Clionadh. Although it isn’t my favorite, I still use it from time to time. In the daytime, the lighter sky blue is more visible whereas, at night, it looks closer to the pan color.
Ripple has “a sheer aqua-green base with large glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet.” This shade looks similar to Ciel overall, but the shifts are different. It’s not easy for me to detect that shift in person or in photos though. I’ve noticed that quite a lot of the lighter shades look deeper at night, but with this one there wasn’t much of a difference. At sharp angles, I can see the violet, but it’s still just not easy for me to see.
Carving “has a sheer, grungy, light brown base with medium/large glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet-pink.” I still haven’t decided if I like this shade or not. I’ve only worn it twice, so perhaps I’ll have a stronger opinion once I’ve worn it more. The pinkish turquoise gives it an interesting twist and I don’t recall having anything quite like it in my collection, though it gives me similar vibes to Grisaille and Abrasion.
Stencil “has a semi-pigmented deep blue base with medium glitter particles that shift violet-pink-orange-gold.” I have purple-pink eyeshadows but nothing with this exact tone. Wow! It is so beautiful. If you’re a purple lover, this is an absolute must-have!
Tracery “has a semi-pigmented purple base with large glitter particles that shift indigo-pink-orange.” The purple and pink in this shade are close in tone, so the shift isn’t as apparent in person or on camera. I can see the variances between the indigo and pink, but I’ve yet to see orange.
Spotlight “has a semi-sheer hot pink base with medium/large glitter particles that shift blue-indigo-pink.” I didn’t buy this shade based on the color in the pan. It was entirely based on how it looked in swatches where the hot pink takes on more of a purple tone. It still isn’t as purple as I had expected it to turn but, it’s an interesting shade. It’s not my favorite but I don’t hate it.
Translucency “has a sheer baby pink base with small glitter particles that shift blue-indigo-violet-pink, and tiny gold sparkles.” The way it looks in the daytime isn’t my kind of color, but how it looks at night is beautiful to me. It’s the kind of shade I prefer to use as a topper and not as a one-and-done eyeshadow.
Emboss “has a semi-pigmented salmon base with small/medium glitter particles that shift lime-turquoise-blue.” On my eyelids, this looks a bit similar to how Carving and Sunbeam looked in regular daylight lighting. At night, I have an easier time seeing the lime and turquoise. I think I prefer Carving over Emboss, but I like Emboss more than Sunbeam.
Blaze has “a sheer orange base with medium glitter particles that shift peach-gold-lime.” Blaze reminds me of Vermillion but with a less noticeable shift due to the peach, gold, and lime being all light tones and therefore harder to see without as much contrast in color. This is close to Devinah’s Tocana shade.
Torch has “a pigmented copper base with medium glitter particles that shift red-orange-gold.” This is very pretty but very hard to see a shift with indoor lighting. While outdoors, it was very easy to see orange and gold. This shade is like a toned-down version of Kiln.
Glazier’s Mark “has a sheer orange base with medium glitter particles that shift indigo-violet-pink-orange.” My brain keeps saying I’ve seen shadows like this before, but everything I’ve tried to compare this to isn’t similar enough. On Temptalia’s blog, Enigma from Lethal Cosmetics and Magenta Dreams from Sydney Grace are some cited dupes that I also thought about based on the color in the pan. The way they look on my eyelids is where the biggest differences between them are seen and why I don’t think I have a close enough dupe. I think the choice to use an orange base, yet maintaining the magenta look, is what makes it a bit more unique.
Foiling “has a pigmented warm gold base with medium/large glitter particles that shift orange-gold-lime.” This doesn’t show a shift easily. While outdoors, I can see the orange and gold, but still not the lime. I’m happy to have this because the glitter intensity and level of warmth in this gold shadow still make it stand out in my collection.
Hybrid Multichromes
The Hybrid Multichromes are supposed to be the middle ground between the Jewelled and Glitter Multichromes as they “behave more like the small/medium particle glitters, but with the tones of the Jewelled Multichromes.” They can be applied sheer for a wash of color or packed on for full opacity.
Because these are intended to be similar to my two favorite formulas in the Stained Glass collection, I had high expectations. I thought the shifts would be even stronger than the Glitter formula or essentially Jewelled shades without the black base. Shard, Embroidery, and Rose Line have lived up to that assumption but Medieval and Tapestry need particular lighting and a wet base to stand out like the others. It’s confusing because sometimes I wear those two and I’m amazed by their beauty but other times (again, due to lighting) they look dull and not as shifty.
I like that this collection has smaller particles and the fact that they still have visible shifts. I have five of the eight shades in this formula and while I’m constantly tempted to complete the collection, I keep thinking about my mixed feelings over Medieval and Tapestry, so it holds me back.
Medieval “has a warm brown base with medium glitter particles that shift indigo-violet-red-orange.” While Glitter Glue isn’t a necessity, I feel that it takes a tacky wet base to have a better shot at seeing all the color-shifting nuances in this shade. I like Abrasion more than Medieval, and that one is less expensive. This is still pretty. I just expected more from it.
Embroidery “has a grey base with small/medium glitter particles that shift lime-blue-purple. The shift is very clear to see on my finger. On my eyes, it’s just a hint, but it’s such a beautiful color that I don’t mind. You can see just a tinge of blue on the outer corner of my eye in the lid picture.
Shard “has a brown base with small/medium glitter particles that shift turquoise-indigo-violet-red.” Look how gorgeous it is on my finger! In some lighting this reminds me of Abrasion and in some lighting, it reminds me of Grisaille. This makes it different and interesting enough that I would probably still buy it if I knew at the time of purchase what I know now.
Tapestry “has a grey base with small glitter particles that shift blue-indigo-violet.” Like Medieval, I only like how this looks when applied wet and on a sticky base. It’s a pretty shadow, especially if you like blues with a tinge of purple, as opposed to purples with a tinge of blue. I am admittedly the latter.
Rose Line “has a brown base with medium glitter particles that shift rose-orange-yellow.” The rose and orange tones are very easy to see. I haven’t been able to see the yellow on my finger, but it’s faintly visible in the outer corner of my eye. Even with just the rose and orange, I’m happy with how it looks.
Jewelled Multichromes
These are the crown jewels of Clionadh’s collections and of the Stained Glass formula. They state, “The Jewelled Multichromes are finely milled, ultra rich pigments. They have a black base and intense colour shifting reflects. They’re packed with a high pigment concentration, so the end result is a saturated, vibrantly shifting shadow.” This is the bar which all other multichromes are compared to for me. They have yet to be surpassed and I have nicknamed them the Rolls Royces of eyeshadows!
I have 9 out of 20. Aside from buying some for my sister, I may get 1 or 2 more in the future. The oranges and yellows are where I have gaps in my Clionadh collection.
Gothic “shifts violet-pink-red-orange-gold.” This shade reminds me of an oil slick. It’s a beautiful warm purple and the shifts are very apparent in person. This isn’t a unique shade among multichromes, but from my research, this seems to be the best version of this color combo that anyone can buy.
Smoulder “shifts magenta-orange-gold-lime.” The magenta dominates this shade. I found it interesting that I could see the lime and orange on my eye, but I couldn’t capture the lime shade on my finger. The magenta, orange, and gold are very easy to see. It reminds me of Pat Mcgrath’s Sextraterrestrial shade, but replacing the magenta with pink. I’ve heard Forge is a closer dupe to Sextraterrestrial, which is why I didn’t buy Forge. Devinah’s Australis shade is very close to this.
Kiln “shifts red-orange-gold.” Green and purple have always been my favorite eyeshadow colors, so you can imagine my surprise that this shade became my most used shadow from the Jewelled formula. It reminds me of sunsets; which yellow, orange, and red tend to be one of my go-to color combos. This also reminds me of Autumn and beautiful changing leaf colors. The leaves stay green in Florida, so I’ve always been a little fascinated by that process in other parts of the world.
Weld “shifts grungy rose pink-antique gold-lime-teal-navy.” I bought this shadow specifically as a more neutral-leaning shade. I thought it would be cool to have that antique gold, which would look like a brown and blend in with my skin, which could also shift in different lighting to show an intense lime. When I wore this, I could see a little pink mixing in with the antique gold in the center of my lid, which again gave me Sextraterrestrial vibes, but it wasn’t strong enough for me to capture in the pictures.
Patina “shifts gold-lime-emerald-turquoise.” There is no doubt that this green is striking. In fact, it’s a little intimidating. I still have yet to use Patina to its full potential because I’ve been drawn to the other greens in this collection. I would say that simple eye looks are better with intensely shifting multichromes because nothing should detract from the beauty of each shade on its own. However, I want to reserve Patina as the surprise pop to a look; to elevate a look that might be otherwise boring.
Oculus “shifts turquoise-blue-violet-pink-red-orange-gold.” I can see why this is one of the most popular shades in the Stained Glass collection. It’s one of the most shifty shades of all of them and I could easily see all the colors described on the website!
Crown Glass “shifts teal-indigo-pink-red-orange-gold.” This shade and Oculus are very similar in their shifts, but I just could not decide between them. I chose Crown Glass first, but since I wasn’t totally satisfied and kept thinking about Oculus I decided to get that one as well. I thought this would be my favorite of the two because it leans more purple, however, with Oculus I still get purple and I think I favor the turquoise in that one over the teal in Crown Glass. I recommend getting at least one of the two because they are such standout shades in the collection.
Rosette “shifts indigo-violet-red-orange-gold.” I almost skipped out on getting this shade because I thought I had too many purples and didn’t want to get another one too similar to the others, but this is my favorite purple-dominating shade of them all! It’s what I wanted from the shade Spire, but with more shifts and leaning more purple than blue. I love it!
Spire “shifts royal blue-violet-red-orange.” This is actually the first Jewelled multichrome I purchased from Clionadh. Although the purple and blue are so close as to make the shift harder to see, I could still see the potential this collection had. I figured if I was pleased with this less obvious shifting shade, I would definitely love the others. This is great for dark dramatic looks, which I don’t do often, but it’s nice to have it available to me.
Pastel Multichromes
These “have a soft, sheer, grungy, grey base with bright, metallic coloured reflects.” They are a less intense version of the Jewelled multichromes. I like intense eyeshadows, so I honestly just bought one of the four in order to try out the formula in person to see what it was like for myself.
Turret has a “neutral grey base that shifts lilac-pink-orange-gold.” If I hadn’t read the description, I would have never known this was a multichrome. When I study the shade very hard, I can see a bit of a pink hue in the lilac, but the lilac color dominates. Despite this not being a favorite of mine, it still made me curious about the other pastel shades. However, I don’t see myself buying them when I know they aren’t intended to make a statement.
Vibrant Multichromes
Clionadh describes these best: “They behave more like the small/medium particle Glitter Multichromes. They have intense colour shifting reflects and colourful, saturated bases.“
These are extremely sparkly and glittery, even more than the glitter multichromes, despite these having just as small of glitter particles as them.
I have half of the collection, but I think that’s where I will stop. If I get another vibrant multichrome in the future, it would be Majesty.
Bloodline “has a burgundy-berry base that shifts gold-green-turquoise-blue-purple.” This is definitely my most used shade of the Vibrant multichromes, and among the top most used of the Stained Glass collection. In February’s preorder sale, this was the second shade to sell out. It’s definitely one of the favorites. The berry tones don’t show on me as much as I expected, but I still love this shade so much. When I’m looking to add a little more red/warmth, I pat a little bit of Kiln on top and it gives me exactly what I am looking for!
I have an example of this from a photo I uploaded to Instagram as seen above. Perhaps in the future I will make another blog post or a series of photos on Instagram showing new shades that can be created when combining two Stained Glass shadows together.
Royalty “has a grape purple base that shifts pink-gold-green-turquoise-blue-purple.” I wish the way it looked on my finger was how it looked on my eyelids. It’s more of a cool purple-blue than the vivid purple I had hoped for. However, this is a beloved shade and it was the first to sell out during the initial round of preorders. I may be able to create the shade I envisioned by patting one of the Stained Glass purples or blues on top, like Crown Glass. During the current sale that started December 18th, Clionadh released a very similar shade to this called Regal which has a blue base.
Crown Jewel “has a bright blue base that shifts gold-turquoise-blue.” It’s gorgeous and serves as another example of an eyeshadow shade I don’t wear but bought anyway purely because I couldn’t resist that stunning blue hue!
Heirloom “has a teal green base that shifts gold-green-turquoise.” Green and gold is a classic combo, but the base color is what gives this shade a unique twist. It’s such a fascinating shade that I don’t utilize enough.
CLIONADH’S OTHER EYESHADOW COLLECTIONS
Before we get into the shades from the different collections, I wanted to mention the Koala Charity eyeshadows that Clionadh said, “100% of the proceeds will be donated. This time to Wires Wildlife Rescue & Wildlife Victoria Emergency Funds, which benefit the wildlife affected by the Australian bushfires.” They kept their word, and although these shadows are no longer available, Clionadh plans to have another charity to support in 2021.
What I also needed to say about the standard eyeshadows is that the mattes are incredibly fragile! One arrived partially broken and one arrived with cracks, two broke when I accidentally dropped my palette (those are on me), but the last one literally shattered apart when I was placing the shadow into my magnetic palette. The draw of the magnet on the pan was so strong it slipped from my fingers a touch too high and that did it. So, please use the absolute most caution when handling the mattes. Clionadh mentioned at one point debating whether or not to continue imprinting their logo into some of the shadows for fear it would make some of them more fragile and they ultimately decided to just skip imprinting the delicate ones. The nice thing about the mattes is they do press back easily and perfectly using the dry pressing method. The quality of them is really nice. Just use care. If your shadows break in transit, they will replace them for you, but I haven’t gone through that process myself. Considering how busy they are and the shipping cost, I didn’t want to give them the trouble, especially now that I know how to fix them to look brand new.
Lastly, Clionadh updated their Witchcraft vs Alchemy Bundle (the duochrome collection) to include all the shades in the range. The largest one used to be missing a few shades and some shadows in the collection weren’t part of the main bundle or the “Additional Shadows Bundle.” Now you can get all 26 in one bundle. I also saw an option to create your own custom bundle of 6, but it was taken down before the sale.
Prophecy – from Team Witchcraft. This is the pinkish gold type of shade I always want, but when some brands make this kind of color, it looks more white than pink on my lids. This one is the same as the pan color, which makes me very happy.
Panacea – from Team Alchemy. It’s a vibrant beautiful “grape purple with pink reflect” that I recommend to any purple shadow lover.
Wildfire – from the Woodlands collection. This is a very sparkly shade that gets most of the intensity from the gold glitter, though I was hoping more of that deep fiery orange base would look stronger on my eyelid. When my next order arrives, I could try putting Burnt Sienna on top to see if it will give me the intensity level I envisioned.
Crystalline – from Team Witchcraft. I normally wouldn’t be interested in this light of a purple shade, but the duochrome aspect made it so much more intriguing of an eyeshadow. The reflect color is lime green but on my lids, I thought it looked aqua.
Beehive – from the Woodlands collection. This is one of the prettiest yellow-orange shades in my collection.
Poison Ivy – also from the Woodlands collection. This color reminds me of the mossy green shade called Habitat from Lethal Cosmetics.
Hex – from the Dreamweaver collection and Team Witchcraft. It’s a beautiful, “mid-toned purple base with a gold reflect.” Hex is lighter and cooler toned than I expected based on swatch photos I saw around social media. It’s not my favorite on me, but the color in the pan is true to what you get on the eyelid.
Calx – from Team Alchemy. Based on swatches, I thought the blue would be at least a deep mid-tone, but the description as a cornflower blue is accurate. Although the reflect is pink, the glitter color over the blue makes it look a little more on the purple side, which I like.
Rune – from the Harvest Moon Shadows and Team Alchemy. It is described as, “a grungy base with a gold-green reflect. This shade pulls more moss green on the eye.” It is so beautiful! I love green-gold, olive-gold, and antique gold type of shades, so this is perfect for me.
Bon-Bon – from the Dreamweaver Collection. This is a stunning color that’s as vibrant on the lids as it is in the pan! Clionadh describes this shade as, “a rich berry metallic with a cool purple reflect,” which surprised me because the base color is so intense that I didn’t notice the reflect on the eyes. The shimmer is so fine that the particles are undetectable, but it’s visible when the light hits it.
Charmed – also from the Dreamweaver Collection. I bought this shade during a time when I was really into using peachy pink and blushy medium pink shades in my crease for my pink and purple eye looks. Although my obsession with that combo has nearly passed, I still use this shade quite a bit.
Wildberry – from the Woodlands Collection. I tend to pair with this Charmed to slightly deepen up the outer corner when I don’t want to go for full smoky look. It looks like a mauve-purple in the pan but it shows up dark pink on the eye.
Sky Lights – from the 66.5° N Collection. This is “a shimmery shadow with a royal purple base and purple, blue and pink sparkle.” This was part of my first Clionadh order and it’s one of my favorites from the brand. The multicolored sparkle in person is even prettier than my picture shows.
Nocturnal – from Team Witchcraft. This “indigo base with a blue reflect” was also part of my first order. I love bluish-purple eyeshadows but the tones of this seem special. I love vibrant blues and there is nothing subtle about this one!
Forest Heart – from the Woodlands Collection. It’s described as a metallic teal-green and I always thought it had a bit of a blue tinge, but it just looks like a medium-deep green on my eyelids. Sky Lights, Nocturnal, and Forest Heart remain my top three favorites out of the standard eyeshadows. It’s very easy to overlook the “regular” shadows when you have the Stained Glass collection available, so if it wasn’t for these three shades blowing me away, I wouldn’t have continued purchasing from the standard eyeshadow collections.
Ursa – from the 66.5° N Collection. This is a “blackened-blue shadow with a blue reflect and gold sparkle.” It’s not as dark on my lids as it looks in the pan, which makes me happy. I like the tone of it on me. The sparkles get a bit lost though and although I can see that lighter blue reflect, it didn’t wow me like some of the other shades. However, Clionadh set a huge bar for themselves and though I wasn’t as impressed, it’s still a beautiful shade.
Bramble – from the Woodlands Collection. This is a light yellow-green shade. For some reason, on my camera it comes off looking way more yellow than green. I can confirm that in person it does look more green, but still with a strong yellow tone to it. This is one of the few shadows I wouldn’t miss if it was removed from my collection (based on the color, not performance).
Koala – from the Koala Trio. It’s a charcoal grayish black color, which is typically a shade I don’t like, but my goodness this is amazing! It would be great if Clionadh brought this shade back to be sold individually and not have to be tied to the charity aspect. This is such a perfect shade for creating a smoky eye that isn’t too intense and dramatic, though I’m into that kind of look as well. This pairs so nicely with all the other Clionadh shadows, and for a few weeks straight I used this shade exclusively to deepen up all my eyeshadow looks when using other brands’ eyeshadows too!
Gum Tree – from the Koala Trio. I definitely don’t have another eyeshadow like this in my collection. It’s like a gunmetal or antique pewter with a bronze-red reflect. It is so beautiful and such a shame it’s discontinued.
Eucalyptus – the last shade from the Koala Trio. It looks just white on my eyelid, but when applied sheer, like a topper, it’s an iridescent shade with red, gold, and a little bit of green reflect. It’s a fun and unique color that amps up any eye look when patted on top.
Fog – from Team Witchcraft. I’ve mentioned before that light colors aren’t my favorite, but this blue has enough warmth from the sparkle that I think it looks so pretty! It’s described as, “a dusty, teal base that shifts golden-peach.” It instantly reminded me of the shade Narrow Path from Sydney Grace. They have the same base color but that gold glitter makes me like Fog more than Narrow Path.
Crucible – from Team Alchemy. It’s a deep purple with a subtle “purple shift and gold sparkle.” Sky Lights is my perfect purple, so it’s harder for me to get excited about this shade by comparison. That being said, Crucible is so beautiful that it still deserves appreciation. It’s a great color to use for a purple smoky eye.
Honeycrisp – from the Harvest Moon Collection. Something about this shade was so alluring to me, particularly around the time I bought it. I was still going through my phase of searching for a golden pink. Honeycrisp is described as, “a coral pink satin with a pearly reflect.” Sydney Grace has a lot of shades along this same vein like Meadowhawk and Golden Strawberry. Even Salamander looks similar, like a slightly more orange toned version, especially in the photo above where I combined Salamander with Eucalyptus. This doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a gorgeous shade and despite having similar colors, I’m still glad I have it.
Salamander – from Team Witchcraft. This is described as, “a coral base with a gold reflect,” which accounts for the similarities between this shade and Honeycrisp. It’s like a fiery golden tangerine. I really like it.
Gecko’s Tail – from Team Alchemy. This shade has an “apple green base with gold reflect.” It’s a lighter tone than a typical Granny Smith Apple shade. I think I would have liked it more if it was a touch deeper, but it’s a fun color.
Clairvoyance – from Team Witchcraft. I didn’t expect to like this color, but I couldn’t resist buying it anyway. It’s “a turquoise base with a light green reflect.” It reminds me of Blitz Aquamarine from Pat Mcgrath, but the green reflect is a different twist.
Amulet – from Team Witchcraft. This is a “a bright fuchsia that shifts blue.” This is a very popular type of duochrome shade. The base color is similar to Bon-Bon but Bon Bon is much deeper.
Merlot – This is a metallic plum shade from the Ultra Metals Collection. It looked a little grey in some of the swatches I saw online, so I was much happier with the actual color. It looks very rich in person. It also looks like a regular shimmer or satin shade when applied dry. With a wet brush, this shade looks much more metallic and pretty. This is currently the only shade I have from the Ultra Metals because I was using this shade as a tester before I considered buying more.
Honeycomb – from the Woodlands Collection. As, “a warm beige metallic with gold sparkle,” I bought this shade to use specifically as an intense inner corner highlight.
Dahlia – from the Woodlands Collection. It’s “a light peach-gold duochrome” that I thought would look a little more different on me than Honeycomb. Between the two, I think I like this shade slightly better for all over the lid because of the pinkish shift. As an inner corner shade, I would prefer a more neutral color like Honeycomb.
Hunter – from the Woodlands Collection. Hunter is described as a metallic mulberry. The base color is a dark purple but the lighter shimmer prevents it from being a traditional dark purple. It’s like a silvery purple mauve.
Permafrost – from the 66.5° N Collection. It resembles Hunter on the eye, when looking straightforward, because of the grey tone. However, this shade has a noticeable pink shift in person that gives it a grey pinkish purple look.
Tree Line – from the 66.5° N Collection. This “sage green metallic” shade looks a bit more blue-tinged on my eyes, though I was expecting a brownish-green. I still like it.
Alpine – from the 66.5° N Collection. This is, “a rich, blue-toned metallic green,” as opposed to the teal-green shade in Forest Heart. This shade is a lot brighter. It’s like a deeper toned version of The Shallows from Sydney Grace.
Necromancer – from Team Alchemy. It has a “blackened-blue base with a teal reflect and silver sparkle” that looks similar to Ursa in the pan, but the teal reflect makes it look brighter and more vibrant than Ursa.
STAINED GLASS SWATCHES
On Instagram, I have videos of the Stained Glass swatches in this post. You just need to scroll sideways to see more.
STANDARD COLLECTION SWATCHES
EYESHADOW SHADE COMPARISONS
The hardest parts about comparing multichromes are that the shades in the pans don’t necessarily correlate to how they will look on the eyes, especially depending on the lighting. Sometimes they look similar based on one shift at one angle, or in the dark, or in bright light, or in the pan, or the types of colors that they shift to. Sometimes it’s only the base color that is similar.
I tested out many more comparisons that didn’t make it into this post for the reasons above. Some of the dissimilar ones I kept in order to demonstrate how similar pan shades can differ from the swatch.
The duochromes were easier to find comparisons with other brands, but the level of glitter/sparkle in Clionadh’s shadows tend to be so intense that they ended up not looking the same, despite having similar base colors.
TOP RECOMMENDED SHADES AND EXTRA EYE LOOKS
If I had to pick my personal favorite shades they would be Lux, Verte, Abrasion, Stencil, Enamel, Chandelier, Embroidery, Shard, Kiln, either Crown Glass or Oculus, Rosette, Bloodline, Sky Lights, Nocturnal, and Forest Heart.
When it comes to this brand, there really aren’t duds in terms of quality. It’s just a matter of personal preference like colors and particle sizes. I’ve been able to create some gorgeous looks even using shades that aren’t my favorites.
Just one shimmer shade or multichrome patted on top of an existing look can really change the outcome.
My camera always picks up the green hue in Weld even though, in person, the whole lid looks like the antique pink in the center. That’s what gave me the idea to use a different shadow to tone down the green in the photo below.
That’s everything! I know this was another incredibly long post, but I wanted to be thorough.
I’m a big fan of Lethal Cosmetics for their quality products, fantastic customer service, fast worldwide shipping, and the importance they place on diversity and inclusion. My initial interest in the brand was for their eyeshadows. At the time of writing this, I own 72 out of their 90 individual shades released so far, and I reviewed most of them earlier this year.
Even though I’m trying to limit the number of face products I buy, I couldn’t resist ordering from Lethal on launch day. I purchased the Solstice palette, another highlighter, blush, bronzer, and the Lethal Cosmetics x Jolina Mennen eyeshadow palette. The same morning I began working on this post, the brand announced their new Velvet Dusk Collection and details about a Black Friday sale, so I delayed posting until those items arrived as well.
Face Powders
The Solstice Palette
This is one of the four premade palettes on Lethal’s website. It was created for those with dark tan/olive to deep skin tones. Lethal Cosmetics has six individual highlighters that have been available long before the bronzers and blushes, but the highlighters in the premade palettes are exclusive to those palettes. The exclusive shade from Solstice is called Gravity and it has a strong yellow base. The blush included is called Echinopsis and the bronzer is Caldera.
Although Lethal doesn’t have designated contour powders, within the bronzer line are three shades with cool undertones that I consider contouring-bronzers. I picked up one of them called Zenith.
Until Zenith, I had no real contour powder that I liked enough to wear regularly. The best one I have is actually a Colourpop eyeshadow called Cloud Nine. Because Caldera is warmer and I prefer to use bronzer around my forehead, while Zenith is cool-toned and I prefer that for cheek and jaw contouring, I have found uses for both powders in my collection. I actually replaced the Gravity highlighter with Zenith in my trio palette when I was on a brief trip for my birthday. The palette is magnetic with holes in the back and the pans are not glued in, so that makes it easy to mix and match face products.
Terrestrial is the newest addition to my face powders that I purchased with the launch of the Velvet Dusk Collection. I wanted to see if I could get a cool-toned contouring bronzer that was closer to my skin tone for times I might be in a rush and don’t want to have to be careful about how much I apply. Between Terrestrial and Zenith, I think Terrestrial is better for me.
I’m experimenting with daylight bulbs so the newest photo additions look different in terms of my skin tone for this reason. I’m trying to find a balance between being bright enough versus washing colors out.
I like these powders, but I should note that these are not beginner-friendly in the sense that using the wrong brushes can make these harder and more time consuming to blend. I found this to be the case for the bronzers and blushes, but not the highlighters. Also, when it comes to bronzers, I still prefer the Kosas Sun Show Moisturizing Bronzer and the Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush matte bronzers because of how they look on the skin and how they blend regardless of the tool. It should be noted that those two bronzers are 2-4 times more expensive than the ones from Lethal.
The texture and consistency of Lethal’s powder products remind me of MAC’s Satin blush formula but they are definitely matte and they perform like MAC’s brighter blush shades, such as Loudspeaker and Frankly Scarlet. What I mean by this is that wherever you first apply with the most pressure is where the powder mostly sticks. They’re still blendable, but using too small of a brush can concentrate the product in too small of an area that is time-consuming to smooth out. If the initial placement covers the entire area you want, it makes the blending process easy. This is why I recommend using a fluffy brush with these powders in order to disperse the product lightly and evenly.
Calyx was more orange than I expected. Echinopsis is more of a berry color, and darker, but it can be worn in a sheer layer as demonstrated in the photo above (a heavier application is in the Terrestrial section). Between the two, I think Echinopsis looks better on me.
As I mentioned before, Gravity has a strong yellow base, so I prefer to wear it only on days when my blush is on the more neutral, natural, and sheer side. This way, the highlighter doesn’t have to compete for attention, so to speak. If I use less, Gravity doesn’t look as strikingly yellow, but it’s still very apparent in person.
Gamma is an “elegant bronze with warm gold highlights.” It is everything I want in a highlighter! It can be subtle and look more shiny than glittery, but it can also be built up more intensely. I think it’s a better shade match for me as well.
Both highlighters are over Echinopsis and Terrestrial.
Gamma, Echinopsis, and Terrestrial is my new favorite trio palette pairing! I have a magnetic palette with depotted face products that I’ve taken on trips before, but this is the first time I’ve ever had a highlighter, blush, and bronzer/contour from the same brand that actually works for me and is kept in an aesthetically pleasing palette that looks like it was premade! Although I could pack a trio of Nabla Skin Glazing Products, I find carrying one palette to be easier with less chance of an accident than a stack of 3 compacts.
Eye Palettes
Lethal Cosmetics x Jolina Palette
I love the fact that these shimmer shades make beautiful new colors when mixed together. For example, Fck Me Eyes and (A)mar create a pretty turquoise blue. Loyalty is a red-based purple but when combined with (A)mar is makes a nice deep cool purple. For a white shade, Scandal is not stark on my skin tone and I can actually use it in the crease. This is probably the only white shade in my entire eyeshadow collection that I like! The only color in the palette I dislike is Cold Brew, and that’s because it’s the same color as my hyperpigmentation. When I use it, it looks to me like I missed a spot or that the eyeshadow faded, but it’s just the color of the shadow.
Overall, I find the quality of this palette to be consistent with Lethal’s single eyeshadows. With the exception of a few shades, there are close enough similarities to other Lethal singles that I don’t think this palette is a necessity for anyone with a large enough collection of their shadows. If your collection is on the smaller side, this is a great way to get a variety of neutrals with vibrant pops of color at a more affordable price. The pans in this palette are smaller than the individual shades, but I have still yet to hit pan on any eyeshadow in my collection, even with mini palettes.
Velvet Dusk Eyeshadow Palette
These pans are also available for purchase individually, which is why I counted them as part of Lethal’s 90 current shadows. What made the Velvet Dusk collection especially exciting is that for the first time, Lethal introduced two “triochrome” eyeshadows.
Lethal has had duochromes for a while, such as Aerial, Stargaze, and Mainframe. Apart from certain shades like Enigma and Lucid, I don’t consider a lot of them to be true duochromes because they don’t make as much of an impact as the duochromes from other brands. I’m also more impressed when a duochrome is one base color that either shifts to another shade or the glitter color very different, as opposed to a base color with plain gold or silver shimmer particles.
Keeping this in mind prevented me from expecting much from the triochromes, so they weren’t the selling point for me for this palette. I just loved the overall color story. It’s rare that I like even half of the shades in a palette. With this one, I was drawn to 10 of the 12!
As for the triochromes Revolve and Covet, they do have a shift but they aren’t easy to see. With Clionadh, you can see a change on the fingertips, the pan, the eyelid, and/or arm swatch. Revolve is a shade I can slightly see on the finger in very specific angles but Covet is extremely difficult. I cannot see a change on either of them in arm swatches. I can faintly see a shift on the lid while wearing Revolve if I’m in the proper light. However, the only time I could capture anything from Covet was on my palm. I included a photo below, but to see a 3-second video clip you can click here. I was unable to figure out how to change the video dimensions to be smaller and embed it to a reasonable height and width on this page.
There’s something that seems a little different about the formula of the Velvet Dusk shades (and even the ones from the Afterdark palette), but I can’t put my finger on what it is or how to explain it. They’re still pigmented like the others and long-wearing. Corrosion and Deceit took a bit of work to blend. Deceit specifically is a bit patchy but the sparse areas can be patched up if extra shadow is added on top and not manipulated too much. All of the shadows in this palette stuck to my arm fine in swatches, but these absolutely need a primer in order to stick properly to my eyes. There isn’t anything wrong with needing a primer, but my other Lethal shadows from the older collections still look great without it.
I’ve found that the mattes work better over MAC Paint Pot and the shimmers work better on the Urban Decay primer potion or a non-dry base, even though Lethal recommends a dry base for all of them.
This palette is another great mix of pops of color with neutrals, just with a grungy twist. It isn’t perfect, but I would still recommend this to anyone who likes the color story. I don’t recommend this to someone specifically wanting it for the duochromes and multichromes. For those kind of shadows with more impact, I suggest Clionadh, Devinah, and Terra Moons. Even JD Glow’s Galaxy Shadows have more sparkle and shine.
Additional Single Shadows
Besides the new Velvet Dusk Palette eyeshadows, I added Synth, Ephemeral, and Frequency to my collection. I kept updating my previous Lethal Cosmetics post with either arm swatches or eye swatches each time I got a new order. It looked a bit messy, so for the sake of consistency, I redid all 72 eye swatches here! I felt it was important to show how they look on my eyelids because what I expect from the pans isn’t always what I get on my lids.
I also redid all the arm swatches because I wanted to have similar shades from lightest to darkest next to each other for comparison purposes.
The only shadows I don’t have yet, plus the remaining face powders I’m curious about are in the photo below.
Light colors of eyeshadow are my least favorite, and I don’t need so many medium-toned browns, so that is why these haven’t made it to my collection. Due to the cost of shipping, I don’t intend on making another purchase just for two more face powders, so those won’t be reviewed unless another new release catches my eye from them in 2021. I’m also planning a low-buy for 2021, so perhaps I will skip them entirely.
That’s everything! Thank you for reading! If there are any swatch comparisons you’d like to see from Lethal or any of the products in my posts, just let me know!
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