Essence All About Bronze Eyeshadow Palette

Essence updated their entire collection again pretty recently. One of the most exciting things they did, in my opinion, is revamp their eyeshadow palettes. They used to be pretty popular already, so I’m curious to find out whether they did a good thing revamping them or not. I decided to buy the All About Bronze version since that one looked the most appealing to me and today I’ll be reviewing it. If you’re interested, keep on reading!

The palette comes in a pretty basic packaging. It’s pretty much the same as the packagings of their old palettes, but slightly bigger because the new palettes contain 8 eyeshadows instead of 6. Over all I’m not a huge fan of the packaging, but I don’t hate it. I like that you can see the shadows through the lid and I like that it’s not super huge, but it just doesn’t have that “wow-factor” to it.

There are a total of 5 different palettes available from this range. The All About.. Bronze, Vintage, Roses, Nudes and Greys. They all have the same packaging and the same amount of shadows. I like that there are so many different versions available. This way there has to be something for everyone.

The All About Bronze palette comes with 8 shimmery and bronzy colors.  I personally really like shimmery eyeshadows, but I don’t like the fact that this palettes consists of shimmery shadows only. I know there are no rules to makeup, but a rule I do use myself is: never create a  look with shimmery shadows only. I just don’t like the look of that. Even though I like it to look shimmery, I do need at least one matte medium brown for in the crease and one matte highlighter. Sadly those aren’t in this palette.

Despite that I do like the colors that are in the palette. I like that it doesn’t come with just one type of brown, but with a warm and cool toned option. I also like that there are quite a few colors in here that I would use as an eyelid shade. Most palettes contain only one or two eyelid proof shades which really limits your options. Luckily Essence didn’t do that.

The main reason why I never use Essence eyeshadows is because they just don’t blend in a nice way. Well, let me rephrase that. They blend a little too nicely. They lose so much of their intensity while blending that at the end you can’t really tell you used a few different colors of eyeshadow. I was scared that would happen again with this palette and it did.

I do have to say that because they do this you can’t use them or you can’t create a proper look with it. You can in fact, but if you want to do so you just need to put in so much more effort than you would have to if you use for example Urban Decay or Smashbox eyeshadows. This might make me sound really lazy, but in the morning (read 7 AM) I just don’t feel like applying my crease color 4 times in order to get it to look good.

When it comes to the pigmentation I am not disappointed at all. I was so impressed when I swatched these for the first time, it’s insane. I really didn’t expect such an affordable eyeshadow palette to be this pigmented. Even the highlighter has a great amount of pigmentation. I truly think that, pigmentation wise, this is one of the best budget proof eyeshadows out there.

Even though the shadows look so pigmented and intense on the swatch, they don’t go on the eyes like that. When you apply them without using a cream shadow underneath you’ll have to work hard to get to the point where they look as pigmented on the eyes as they do on the swatch.

So over all I’m not that impressed by this palette. I have to mention that I wasn’t a too big fan of the old version either, and this wasn’t too much better in my opinion. Of course the pigmentation looked good, but it’s just not a palette I would gravitate towards. It’s a little too shimmery for me, I don’t like that you have to reapply the colors a few times in order to get them to the point where I think it looks good and I don’t like that without a cream shadow underneath they are just not intense at all.

However, if you’re on a budget, if you just don’t like or don’t want to spend a lot of money on makeup or eyeshadow I do think it’s a pretty good palette. But it you’re used to more expensive eyeshadows, just leave this palette where it is, you’re not going to love it.

The Essence All About Bronze Eyeshadow Palette is available at the drugstore for €3,99.

That was it for today. I hope that even though this wan’t a too positive review you still enjoyed reading it and let me know if you do like these Essence eyeshadow palettes!