Hey all! So today I'm going to be reviewing one of my favorite products and that is my E.L.F Natural Palette. As you may remember, this was purchased from Walgreens for $4.99 at the beginning of December and has been a favorite of mine ever since. The palette is a collection of 12 warmer natural eye shades - some shimmer, some matte. This set comes in a cardboard casing with elastic strings at the edges to hold it shut. It included a double ended eyeshadow applicator, E.L.F brightening eye pencil in Coffee, and a mirror.
This palette is actual the reason I fell in love with the natural eye look. For the past few years I've been an all or nothing kind of girl, meaning, if I'm not wearing some dramatic look with bright eye colors, I'm probably just wearing eyeliner without any shadow on. But since I kept watching so many videos featuring the Naked palette, I decided I could try something a little different. And I'm so glad I did. Now that I'm back to being a red head, warm brown tones really bring out my green eyes.
So first off, I'll address two of the most important aspects of an eyeshadow palette - color selection and pigmentation. This consists of three lighter shadows of highlighting - two are a shimmery champagne color with different undertones, and one is a matte off-white. There are also six medium colors that are perfect for a base lid color - most are shimmery brown tones, one shimmery mauve color, a gold color and a few matte browns/beige. The three darker contour colors are two shimmer and one matte. Now, I don't have the Naked palette but I have seen enough reviews to be able to say that these are not as pigmented or plush as the shadows in that palette. There are some colors that are bolder than others. For instance, the matte colors are as pigmented as the shimmer shadows and some of the lighter colors don't show up well at all. However, the darker colors and most of the shimmers show up wonderfully on the eye lid.
I have included swatches of the colors except for #1 because it was pretty much invisible on my skin. These swatches really don't do some of the colors justice. They do show up a lot better on the eyelids and they blend very well. I have used this palette almost every day since I got it and I do consider it a staple item in my collection now. I don't use primer and these shadows last me all day, but of course that all depends on individual skin chemistry as some people how more oily lids than others. I will be including swatches of each of the colors in this post as well as a photo of the look I wore the first day I used the palette. It's me in the Santa Clause hat, I'm sure you all have seen this photo already. HahaJust as a quick note, I was not a fan of the brightening eyeliner. It's not very pigmented and I preferred my own brown eyeliner instead. Also, the directions on the inside cover of the palette gave me some tips for looks that I hadn't thought about before, for instance, eyelining the outline eyes again after applying shadow to increase intensity. So would I recommend this palette? To those who don't want to spend $50 on an Urban Decay palette, yes I would recommend this as it has a great selection of colors and they are quite quality for the price. But to those of you that already have some version of the Naked palette, you probably won't need this but feel free to try it out anyway! (: I personally love it and don't go anywhere without it. It's literally in my purse as we speak.
