Just a week ago I was complaining about not finding decent quality cheap eyeshadows, this week I am back with a post about some great UK drugstore finds: SLEEK MAKEUP.
Sleek Makeup from UK is definitely not anything new, I have heard raves all over the blogosphere about their Divine palettes and have been itching to try them since they first came out in 2008. However, I never got around to it because they don't ship to Singapore and shipping to US is too expensive when I was there (whooping USD13.50 which was more than the price of the actual palette). Last week, when my friend Min Ah told me about a 30% off all items on luxola.com, I never thought I would find Sleek makeup items there, imagine my excitement! I made use of the discount and got 2 Sleek eyeshadow palettes and a face contour palette, for below SGD40.
(Just a little side note about shopping on luxola.com, I really enjoyed it! First they stock a whole ton of high end luxurious makeup/skincare items, hence I guess the name Luxola. From the brands there, I would recommend Becca cosmetics, the Face Atelier foundation, Sarah Hipp lip scrub, all of which I have heard great things about and would one day love to try. Second. the website is very user friendly and clean, I love the fact that they allow you to check out using PayPal. Third, for Singapore orders, they have free 3rd delivery in person, so you don't have to worry about the postman dropping and breaking your items. If you love online shopping, I would suggest you head over there and take a look.)
On to the Sleek palettes,
I got the Divine Mineral Based Eyeshadow Palette in The Original, as well as i-Divine ultra mattesV2 DARKS palette. Each of these palette cost SGD20 on luxola and contains 12 x 1.1g mineral based eyeshadow, which works out to around SGD1.70 per shadow, making them a huge steal if good quality.
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| Size comparision between MAC's 1.5g shadow and Sleek's 1.1g ones |
Logo on the front.
The shadows themselves
The Original Palette contains 11 metallic, shimmery shadows and 1 lone matte black eyeshadow, which according to Sleek's site is for us to use as eyeliner. Initial thoughts are that the colors look gorgeous in the pan, and would make a great travel palette because it contains both neutral and bright colors for versatility. Upon swatching, I find the the shadows are soft, quite buttery and pigmented, all of my swatches made above were done with a single swatch. They also apply true to their color in the pan which is exciting. My personal favorites are colors number 12 an olive green and number 5 a teal blue color. The Matte black is a little lacking in quality because it applies chalky and isn't very pigmented. Also, the dark brown 11 also has chunky glitters that are prone to fallouts, but all in all I think for the SGD20 that the palette is retailing at, it is a huge steal!
The MatteV2 Darks palette is a slightly newer palette that was released last year if I am not wrong. Since matte shadows are all the rage now, I decided to give it a try. (They have a MatteV1 palette which contains bright colors, but I am more conservative when it comes to shadow colors, so I gave that a pass).
Again, these swatches were single swatches. I feel that most of the colors are pigmented and swatched relatively smoothly (click for bigger view). Even the lighter colors like Dune and Pillowtalk applied gorgeously. Unfortunately, Flesh a yellow orange color is the exact same shade as my skintone and did not apply upon swatching no matter how I tried. Besides Flesh, I was also disappointed with Thunder, even though soft, it's not pigmented enough, it will probably take at least 3-4 applications to get the color to show up like the color in the pan. Fern and Orbit somehow swatched similar on my skin, Orbit looked more green than teal, as for Fern, even though it's a very gorgeous deep green color, the texture was chalky and had fallouts. However, despite that, I still think that for the 20 dollars you are paying, this palette is worth a try if you are searching for good matte shades.
All in all, I am happy with my purchase, I would definitely repurchase Sleek palettes again sale or not. So if you guys are looking for more eyeshadow colors to play around with, or if the haze is keeping you indoors, head over to luxola.com and take a look.
Have fun!
xoxo,
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