Elf Studio 18 piece Geometric eye shadow review and swatches

I recently won a giveaway from an awesome blog run by a super sweet girl, Randi. She does a variety of posts on makeup and beauty related items and she's big into coupons so she can always spot a great deal, you should check out here blog here. Anyway, she ran a giveaway on her blog, and I was lucky enough to have won. One of my prizes was the Elf (eyes lips face) 18 piece Geometric eye shadow palette. I was anxious to receive it and give it a try.

The palette comes with 18 different eyes shadows, set in a geometric shape, which is visually interesting. There's a section of browns, a section of blues, and a section of smokey greys and blacks. The set also comes with a double sided sponge applicator.

The first problem that I have with this palette is that the shadows are shaped in a way that makes it very difficult to get a brush or an applicator in. It's hard enough getting a flat eye shadow brush in to pick up product. A fluffy crease brush? Forget about it!

I could forgive this is the eye shadows were incredibly pigmented or easy to blend, but they are neither. When I did manage to get these swatched (no small feat, again owing to the small size and shape of the eye shadow pans) they were a bit chalky, and not very pigmented overall. A lot of the shades also appeared very very similar on the skin. Most of the blue shades, for example, were all extremely similar and a few of them appeared identical! The dark smokey shades were a little better, but still not fantastic pigmentation. I swatches the shadows, below, without any primer or base. I am sure that with an eye shadow base, these would appear a bit more vivid, but still nothing to write home about. There's a couple of standout shades, but nothing that makes up for the overall lacking of the rest of the shades.

Overall, I would say that you could definitely skip this palette. It might be fun to give to a younger girl who is first starting out with makeup, but that's about it. I think there are a lot of other, similarly priced palettes out there from the drugstore that blow this palette out of the water. This palette can be purchased from eyeslipsface.com for 5 dollars. You can get better eye shadows from elf for that price, or even better, wet n wild eyeshadows are in the same price range and outperform these easily! I was disappointed with this palette overall, but glad I got the chance to try it out so I could review it for you! Special thanks to Randi, if you're reading this, for sending this to me, and for your awesome blog! Be sure to check her out everyone!! Thanks for stopping by my blog! I hope you found this helpful. Be sure to be in touch!!