The palette includes a mini size Full Exposure mascara and also a dual-ended eyeshadow brush. This retails for $49 at Ulta Beauty. I love that they have not only split the palette into mattes and shimmers, but they also split them into cools and warms.
The Brush
I enjoy the fluffy or "matte" side of the brush, as it is labeled; it's a great blender brush, but the other side I find to be too flimsy to pack on color, but too stiff to blend well either, and I don't find much of a difference between the two different sides of the the "shimmer" end of the brush, which has one side in black bristles and the other side in white, I assume one should be synthetic and the other natural hairs, but I honestly don't see or feel a difference.
The Mascara
This is a traditional bristle brush mascara, which is actually rather large in size. I tend to stray away from these types of mascara brushes because I always end up making a mess of my mascara when the brush is too big. I don't know if it's because I have smaller, hooded eyes, or if I'm just bad with mascara. :-p I also just wanted to mention that it has a strong mascara scent to it, if you know what I mean.
This mascara is not clumpy whatsoever, it does lengthen and separate very well, but I don't find it to be particularly volumizing. It's alright, but I know there are plenty of drugstore price-range mascaras that are just as good, if not better.
Swatches are without any primer, on dry skin.
The Shimmers
These are pretty dry and not as pigmented as I'd like. The middle shade #4 is the creamiest of the shimmers, it has less glitter than the others and more of a satin-y finish. I feel like it's a totally different formula than the others. These are not just subtly shimmery, they are straight up glittery. And in most of the colors, the actual base color isn't very pigmented, they come off somewhat sheer. They are also fallout crazy and have TONS of glitter fallout. They appear decent when placed on a COLORED sticky base, but alone or even simply on top of primer, forget it, they don't have great pigmentation at all. Even used wet, these shadows don't really get significantly better.
The Mattes
These are creamy, buttery and very nice. A totally different texture than the shimmers, I must say. They do blend well, but even still, the mattes have fallout.
Overall, I would not recommend this palette. I received mine free as gratis from my job at Ulta, but I would absolutely have returned it if I paid for it. $49 for this thing? I just can't believe it. Yes, the mattes are pretty nice, but the shimmers are just horrible! I really honestly don't see how Smashbox figured this was good quality. The shimmers are worse quality, in my opinion, than a lot of drugstore shadows.
I know this was a pretty negative review, I'm just trying to be honest with you guys. If you don't have a problem with working really hard with your shadows and babying them to come off half-way decent and cleaning up tons of fallout and glitter mess, then go for it, maybe you can make it work. As for me, I would tell you to skip this one. I'd recommend the Lorac Pro Palette instead - the shimmers are buttery and beautiful and the mattes are nice too, at least I don't have fallout issues with them.
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Alaina
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