I’m posting at a slightly earlier time than usual because in one hour, Sydney Grace’s annual week-long Christmas in July event will begin! Everything in this haul was purchased last Black Friday, but that was because I skipped last year’s Christmas in July sale. The discounts look even better this year, so I wanted to show some of the unreviewed products from the brand that I haven’t featured yet in case anyone is interested in seeing them. My initial Sydney Grace review with a ton of eyeshadows can be found here, as well as the Temptalia collab here.

This event is typically the one time of year I make a purchase. I checked that everything in this post is still available, with the exception of the Sweet Indulgence Palette that launched during the previous sale and was on clearance by the time Black Friday rolled around. This year’s launches will be the Love’s Journey palette, Heaven on Earth palette, and Raspberry Kiss palette. If I decide to shop the sale, it will most likely be Day 2 where all palettes (including Love’s Journey, but I don’t think Heaven on Earth or Raspberry Kiss), cream shadows, and more are 40% off.

Tropicolor by The Fancy Face Eye Shadow Palette

Tina is one of my favorite YouTubers, so I wanted to support her collab like I did when she worked with Oden’s Eye, but this palette is very blue heavy and I’m still in a weird like/dislike relationship with blue eyeshadow. For this reason, even though I’ve had the palette since November 2022, I didn’t start using it until June 2023. Whenever I opened it up, my eyes were instantly directed to those blues and I’d get the urge to use a different palette instead. Since I knew the Christmas in July sale was coming up though, I decided to just push through and start playing. I initially felt like I had no idea how to use these colors together, besides monochrome color schemes, but every time after that was easy! My favorite shades in this palette are surprisingly the warm neutrals and unsurprisingly Doctor Bird and Lignum Vitae.

This palette has all the features I love about Sydney Grace eyeshadows. The mattes are pigmented and apply opaquely while still being very blendable. The satins are smooth and opaque as well. The binding in the shimmers are such that they adhere to the lid without getting a bunch of fallout specks everywhere. They don’t require me to wet my brush. They are pigmented with medium shimmer reflectivity, and opaque. They apply smoothly to the lid without leaning on a bunch of slip ingredients (the “cones”) to make it easy to spread. I love the tactile feeling of dimethicone in products, but the higher the percentage of it and the other -cones, the easier they are to crease on me. These eyeshadows work well on me with all my typical primers: Gerard Cosmetics Clean Canvas, Coloured Raine Paint Base, MAC Paint Pot, and Urban Decay Primer Potion. However, I have to be careful not to have an excess of the Paint Pot on my lids or else the shadows will move out of the crease. Too much wetness from an eye base will mess with the longevity.

Some other things to know is that Doctor Bird is a bit flaky, but not enough to cause shimmer fallout on the eyes once it’s finished being smoothed onto the lid. I still don’t need to apply this shade damp. The reason the texture is like this is because it’s a chromatic shadow and Sydney Grace’s pressed multichrome formula is the flakiest of the brands I’ve tried. So, it makes sense that this shade would have a bit of that texture. Waterfalls is chunkier than the others, but again, it’s just a tactile thing and doesn’t effect performance.

Cocoa Beans is a deep rich brown that is more on the buildable side than the other mattes, specifically for being able to control the depth it provides. I’m actually quite impressed!

In my swatches, it’s admittedly hard to see the tone difference between Waterfalls and Rainforest, so I included the photo below.

Besides the blues, the only other aspect of the palette that isn’t my preference is Cane Fields being such a blue leaning green. I love yellow leaning, straightforward greens, and even bluish greens if they’re deep enough. However, I understand that because of all the blues in the palette it makes sense to want to have greens that’ll merge the cool shades with the warmer ones.

If you’re like me and love most of the color story, but are a little put off by the arrangement, remember that these pans are removable. I rearranged mine by booting the blues to the bottom row and now I feel a lot more excited when I open the palette! I could also just put these in my giant palette with my other depotted Sydney Grace eyeshadow singles or switch out some of the shades for other Sydney Grace singles, but rearranging them was enough of a change for me. Now, I’m able to see the beauty of it.
I put the shade names on label stickers on the bottom of the pans, so I can always put them back in their proper places.

Sweet Indulgence 9 Pan Palette

This palette released around the same time as Colourpop’s Ticket to Dreamland. I decided that between the two, I’d rather have Sydney Grace’s formula, so I was glad I eventually got my hands on this since that palette was discontinued by Colourpop as well.

I have to be in a very particular mood to want to wear pinks, and these in here are pretty! Gumdrop is quite the attention grabber, but definitely not a unique shade, and Sherbet is objectively a beautiful tone, but I don’t want to use it with any of the shades in this palette. I like Sweet Cakes, but I don’t need a second deepening shade with Sweet Tooth in there, so I replaced those shades with Deliverer (purple), Lost Princess (red-orange), and Turtledoves (champagne). Now, it has a candy and creamsicle vibe going on!

Even though this palette is discontinued, there are tons of single shadows still available from Sydney Grace that are similar enough to create a dupe version.

Individual Eyeshadows in Be the Sunshine, Herky Bird, and Rustic

I didn’t intend to purchase coordinating eyeshadow singles. At the time, I just wanted eyeshadows that weren’t repeats in my collection and could feed more of my green obsession. It was a happy accident! I love these shadows together and they perform exactly as I’d expect from this brand. There’s nothing else really to say other than Rustic is a satin/shimmer and the other two are pressed pigment shimmers. So, I’m able to use Rustic almost like a matte and it doesn’t crease on me.

Cream Shadows in Sunset Glow and Deep Love

I previously only used Sydney Grace’s multichrome cream shadow. Once the texture got worse, over time, I really didn’t like it. So, I didn’t dive further into the line. However, for the multichromes specifically, they changed the tube size a few years ago and increased the shelf life. Since I’ve heard nothing but great things about the cream shadows overall, I decided to give them another try.

How I use them is to pour some out onto the back of my hand and take a flat concealer brush to spread them onto my lids with more precision than, say, my fingers. If I’m using both colors, I try to let the first dry before adding the second. I also try not to blink too much if using one as an all-over-lid shade so that it doesn’t get bald spots or patches while drying. If it does lose opacity in a spot, the brand recommends rubbing them. I have found it easy to just add a little back on to the spot in question. These layer nicely and I don’t get any cracking of the eyeshadow and mine don’t add extra texture. They blend well into each other and still look great on top of powder eyeshadow. I can even add powder shadows back on top without it looking strange.

In addition to lid shades, these work nicely as liners. These are fairly lightweight, even more than the Melt Gel Liners. They’re not waterproof, but they hold on very well and don’t fade on me. The shine dulls down a little towards the end of the day, but they have quite a long wear time. If I didn’t love the ease of using powder shadows so much, I would absolutely purchase additional colors from Sydney Grace. So, I recommend them to cream eyeshadow lovers.

That’s everything for today! I hope it has been helpful!

-Lili ❤