Sleek Divine Eyeshadow Palettes: A very long and boring review and swatch post

If you haven't heard the buzz about these, you probably don't live in the UK. Sleek is a UK based drugstore brand that (originally) caters for darker skinned ladies. Their 'iDivine Mineral Based Eyeshadows Palettes' come with twelve pressed eyeshadow palettes each and cost a few pence less than £5, and each eyeshadow is about the size of a 20p coin. I will admit, I have no idea what mineral-based means. Are they mineral or not? Personally, I don't care if something is mineral or not, I care if it is pretty or not.

There are four Palettes permanently in the collection, and these are Storm, The Original and Sunset, all of which I own, and Acid, which I don't. I think Chaos may be permanent too, but I can't usually find it in Superdrug. They usually have a limited one, currenty this is the Bohemian palette, (which comes in a white case as opposed to the matte black) which I will be buying soon. Maybe I'll pop along and get it today :D Other discontinued ones are Safari and Curious. As I mentioned, they're available at Superdrug, sleekmakeup.com and some hair and beauty stores.

All the below pics are without flash, and all the swatches are on bare skin, though I always wear them over Urban Decay Primer Potion. I just did a couple of swipes with each shadow, as I didn't want to pack them on and make them seem more amazing than they are. Hence, the pics do not do justice.

The Original:



L-R, Top-Bottom, you have: Matte Black, shimmery purple. shimmery navy, shimmery blue, shimmery aqua, shimmery khaki-ish green, shimmery light gold, shimmery pink, shimmery pink-bronze, shimmery copper, shimmery bronze, and shimmery olive.





Pretty! I really think that this palette has something for everyone. The blues and green are so beautiful in this palette, particularly the bright blue. If you're normally a natural kind of girl, and want to try a bit of colour without going too crazy and spending a lot of money on something a bit more adventurous, this is a perfect palette for you.

As you can probably tell, apart from the black, all the colours in this palette are shimmery. Most of them have a lovely smooth texture, but the light gold has a very odd, slightly chunky sort of texture. This is a shame because that means this palette doesn't have a great highlight colour. Its not horrendous though, and its certainly workable. Its just that I'm lazy - I normally apply my highlight colours last, and can't be bothered working at a shadow when I've done the majority of my face already.


Storm:


L-R, Top-Bottom you've got shimmery light brown, shimmery vanilla, matte latte sort of colour, shimmery gold, shimmery bronzey peach colour, shimmery plum-bronze, dark shimmery brown, shimmery gun-metal blue, shimmery dark blue-green, shimmery dark navy, matte dark brown and matte black.





As you can see, this is the more neutral palette that Sleek produce. If you can't wear crazy colours because of work or school, this is a great palette. I've made some lovely darker looks with this, however - the three blue shades together look amazing - so don't write it off as boring. I nearly didn't buy it because of this, and I'm so glad I did.

When I first got this palette, I thought the darkest blue and the peachy colour were the same as the dark blue and the pale pink from The Original. They're not! They are a little similar, but I think this is actually a good thing. If you have a couple of these palettes, you have more choice, more colours that go together, more colours to use to blend, etc.

I don't have a problem with the texture of any of these, and the second colour in the top row makes a lovely highlight. You can see from the lower row of swatches though, that they're quite soft, and with the darker colours you can get a lot of fall out. I don't really care, you might. They're not glittery, and if I do get fallout, it wipes off quickly with a baby wipe and doesn't leave any shimmer behind. The matte colours, particularly the light one, are a little hard to work with, though the quality of the black is great. As with all of these palettes, its nice and pigmented and blends well over/under the other colours.

Sunset:



L-R, Top-Bottom, matte black, shimmery red, shimmery reddish-orange shade, shimmery orange, shimmery gold, shimmery bright blue, shimmery plum, another shimmery reddish-prange, shimmery copper, shimmery lgiht bronze, shimmery light brown, shimmery lgiht pink.





OMFGILOVETHISPALETTE. Not for the faint of heart, huh? These pictures do not do the colours justice. The red and orange are so, so, so beautiful. WOWZA. I mean, the red is freaking amazeballs, and when I hit pan on it I am literally going to weep.


Two of the colours in here are reeeeeeeeally similar though, the colour on the right and the colour underneath the red only have a subtle difference. This doesn't bother me particularly, though I wish they'd scrapped one for another higlight colour. The pink is nice if you wear the red, but if you've got a lot of the orange or blue on, I think a light gold woud have been nicer.

Again, I thought there were some duplicate colours in this palette. The top right hand colour in the Storm Palette and the bottom left hand of Sunset are VERY similar indeed, but they're not the same colours. The Storm is darker. I also thought the blue from Original was the same as the blue in Sunset, but the one from sunset is much brighter. This might piss some people off, and yeah, perhaps I would like some more original shades. But you get twelve in a palette, so a couple of almost-dupes is a small price to pay.

The chunky texture crops up again in the Sunset palette:



See what I mean? The texture of the two colours on the right are kind of wierd. Again, its not the worst, but it always seems to be the lighter colours. Its just these two colours though, and luckily they seem to be the ones I use least!

Why I don't own Acid:

Acid, as the name suggests, has acid-bright colours.




Pretty huh? Unfortunatley, there are a lot of mattes in this palette. And the mattes are the bright, acid colours. And the mattes SUCK. They're really hard to work with. if I had a white, creamy base (which I will soon!) maybe they'll be good. But I don't want to spend the money on it yet. There is a silver and some lovely blues which are shimmery, so I do want this palette. I just don't want to get it yet. I also bought a while ago (and threw away) the Chaos palette, which I picked up by mistake.



(Pics are from www.sleekmakeup.com.) This was also mostly mattes. I don't know if they were less pigmented, or if it was the fact mattes in general are a bit crap and I was even worse at make-up then than I am now. The white and yellow made me really sad. Still, with a better base maybe...

A Look!

Phew. Are you still with me? This post is taking me about a decade!






Thats a little look with the red shades from the Sunset palette. (Note to self: clean fallout before taking photos.) It looks prettier on, but I suck at taking pictures. If you want to see more Sleek looks, go on YouTube. Or if YOU have sleek looks, leave a comment with a link, I wanna see!

And finally...

Pros:

-Price: Less than a fiver. AMAZING.
-Pigmentation is AMAZING.
-The range of colours in each palette is great, so you can get a lot of looks with each one.
-Lots of complimentary colours across the palettes
-Each palette comes with matte black, which is super-useful
-The palettes are nice and slim, so they fit in a make-up bag eaily, and look and feel more high-end than they are.
-We get to have them, and America gets to pay horrible shipping charges if they want to have them >:D Tee hee.
-They come with a nice, big mirror. I normally do my make-up using these mirrors, even when I'm not using these shadows.

Cons:

-Eyeshadows are very soft. None of mine have broken, but they do make the mirror a bit messy, which can be a pain in the arse.
-Some of the eyeshadows have an odd, chunky texture
-The mattes are a bit crap.
-Majority of palettes are mostly shimmery colours.
-Often there is no good highlight colour
-Applicator that comes with it is useless. I hate sponge applicators, and these soak up a lot of the product.
-Some colours are very similar indeed


Would I repurchase?

Hell yes! They are amazing value. If you're a make-up beginner and feeling a bit lost, go and buy these, now. Go on. Off you pop. Actually, just go and get them anyway.

Love and Kisses,

Robyn xxx


P.S. I suppose I should say I bought these with my own money, bla bla bla, but really. I have seven followers. Who the hell is sending me free stuff?

P.P.S For those of you that follow me, thankyou! I wasn't expecting to get any followers for a looooong time, so it means a lot :)