Huda Beauty Sapphire Obsessions Palette Review

Ironically, this palette is called Sapphire Obsessions and let me tell you, I am obsessed.

Huda Beauty has been knocking around since 2013 and this is the first product I've picked up from her line. I'm always seeing her palettes on Instagram being used by some of my favourite influencers, but with the bigger ones priced around the £50 mark, I thought that trying out a smaller and more affordable one first would be best.

The Sapphire Obsessions palette consists of just 9 shades, 5 duo-chrome shimmers and 4 creamy matte shadows. I was a little shocked when this palette arrived and I saw just how small it is, especially considering its RRP is £25. It's very small, just a little larger than the size of my palm. If you wanted a bigger palette with good quality shadows, I would recommend opting for a Morphe palette rather than one of these. Saying that, the shadows in this are definitely of a high quality, and the price of course reflects this. The palette also has a good sized mirror in the top, making it perfect for on the go and travelling.

Morphe 35B review | look & swatches

If you've been around here for a long time you'll know that I used to have a slightly unhealthy obsession with buying makeup. Pretty much 25% of my student loan definitely went on unnecessary makeup purchases, but it was my biggest passion at the time. For quite a while makeup was on the backburner and I really enjoyed creating fashion content, but now makeup has won it's way back to 1st place. With the fashion/beauty battle going on in my heart (wow that sounded dramatic), I hadn't made any new eyeshadow palette purchases in quite some time, until the Morphe 35B palette caught my eye with its bold and bright colours.

If you're here, chances are you were thinking of buying this palette and wanted to see what someone else thought of it and what the pigmentation is really like. Well, short answer is that it is a great palette with pretty good pigmentation, but as with all palettes there are some colours which are lacking a little. Stay tuned for all the swatches!

Mini Kiko Haul

These are the first products I have bought from Kiko, despite all the hype surrounding their collections, and I am honestly kicking myself for not trying their stuff sooner! I went into the Brighton store a few weeks ago and they had a sale on, so a lot of the stuff was half price. Luckily I managed to tear myself away with only a small bag and four items, round of applause please?  

Immediately I was drawn to the huge array of eyeshadows, in particular the Water Eyeshadows, which are beautifully embossed and debossed into a water pattern. These shadows can be used wet and dry which is a massive bonus as I like to use most of my shadows wet to create a more intense colour. The shade I picked up was 205 'Chocolate', which is a gorgeous deep, warm brown, which can be used to create a brown smokey eye, or even a more natural look if just applied in the crease.   Sorry I couldn't resist using this before I photographed it *smack on the wrist*! But the wear on these shadows is really good, however I do find that they give a small amount of fall down during application, but this can easily be cleaned up, and with such high pigmentation it was expected.

Onto the lipliners and I went a bit mad and picked up three. They were reduced to around £1.90 which I thought was an absolute bargain, and I am totally getting into just wearing lip liner and no lipstick, so these were good investments. I've been all over nude lips at the moment so was immediately drawn to 700, a brown toned nude, which is my perfect "your lips but better" colour. I have been pairing it with my MAC Taupe Lipstick, and the combination is beautiful. Perhaps the most daring pick was 715, which is a very pale lavender colour, and something that is definitely not my everyday colour. However, that is what drew me to it. It is definitely something I will have to work with to make sure I don't make myself look ill, but there's something about it I really like. My final selection was 710, which is the perfect Autumn/Winter lip shade. It is a very gothic dark purple with a hint of red. It's one hundred percent more my lip colour than 715, and I have already got a great deal of use out of it. The lasting power of this one in particular is amazing, and it won the battle of eating and drinking. Saying this, the staying power of all three liners is insane, and the application was very soft for such cheap liners.

From L-R: 710, 700, 715, 205 dry, 205 wet

What products do you recommend from Kiko?

MUA Twelfth Night Palette

MUA have done it again with another amazing palette. I am always so surprised when I try out these £4 palettes, because for the price you can't really have high hopes, but they are always so incredible, and the Twelfth Night palette is no exception.

Each shadow is buttery in texture and extremely blendable on the eyelids. Not only this but there is not one shadow in the palette with a bad colour payoff. With a mix of cool and warm tones, and neutrals and colours this is a super versatile palette. 

I only have a few negative things to say about this palette, the first is that I found after a while the shadows did crease on my lids, but that was without a primer. The second problem I had was that there was a slight amount of fall down when I applied the shadows, but this is always expected with shimmery colours. All of this was forgotten however when I turned the palette over and saw the cute names. Does anyone else get annoyed when makeup is given boring names?

1. Ice 2. Myth 3. Frost 4. Oudh 5. Coal 6. Fir 

7. Hush 8. All Spice 9. Ivy 10. Plum 11. Enchant 12. Star Shine

All Spice is a very similar shadow to MAC Club in the way that it has more of a brown/red tone when it is applied to the lid, but when it catches the light it definitely looks green. It looks lovely with Ivy blended on the inner half of the lid (as shown below). The other shadow which I have absolutely loved using is Oudh which is a very shimmery warm gold, which looks perfect on its own across the lid. 

Do you like the MUA Palettes?

MUA Undressed Palette

 Yesterday I finally got my hands on the MUA Undressed palette which has been sold out for so long in all my local Superdrugs'. I was so excited to take it home and try them out because I haven't seen how they come out on my skin tone. 

The packaging of the palette is pretty much what you can expect from a cheap brand like MUA, it's not amazing but it does hold all the shadows nicely and I think it is quite a nice design. The hinges don't look like they'll hold for very long as they don't feel too sturdy but at £4 what more can you expect.

I love how there is a range of matte and sparkly colours as I find that sparkly colours look slightly OTT and really dress up an outfit, so if you're simply going out shopping, you're going to look a little silly - in my opinion. This palette therefore can be used during the day for a natural look and at night. It really reminds me of the Sleek palettes and its been said before that this is like a dupe of the Naked palette by Urban Decay - but a quarter of the price.

excuse the fact the palette is looking dirty, I did swatches with it before taking this picture.

 At this point I had really high hopes for this palette so I decided to swatch each colour on my arm. Some of them I was impressed with, others...not so much. I found that shade 3 did not even come out the palette, it was like there was a thin layer of plastic covering it but there wasn't , so I had to scratch into the surface to even get a small bit of colour onto my arm. All the other colours were absolutely stunning though! A couple were slightly too similar to my skin tone so I probably wont use them unless I just want to even out my eyelids, but the range of colours is just fantastic. I did find that the sparkly colours were far more pigmented than the matte ones, however this may just be due to my skin tone. I like how there are two smokey colours at the end of the palette which means you can create a perfect smokey eye for a night out if you have slightly darker skin where a brown smokey eye just wouldn't look as nice. 

The colours from left to right are Shade 1, Shade 2, Shade 3 etc etc you get the picture haha!

The applicator that was included in the palette is a little flimsy but it does the job. I would recommend getting another applicator however, if you do not have one already. I find that the ELF ones are amazing and they're literally £1 or something ridiculously cheap like that. It is quite handy though how there is an applicator included, as this means you can use the palette on the go without having to carry an extra brush which will only get dirty in your bag! 

Overall I am very pleased with this palette because at £4 I really wasn't expecting much, and I usually find that with natural palettes the colours don't really suit my skin tone because they are too light and are more suited to fairer skin. However there was a huge range and some of the colours were very pigmented which again I wasn't expecting. I do recommend this palette because it's just such good value for money. If you have darker skin like me, then the sparkly colours will come out so much nicer than the matte ones because for some reason these aren't so pigmented but oh well! I'm still so glad I made this purchase. I give this palette a 9/10 purely because it's so cheap, the packaging is okay and the range of colours is amazing!

♥