Estee Lauder Pure Colour Stay-On Shadow Paint in Steel Review, Swatches and Photos

I picked up one of the new Estée Lauder Pure Colour Stay-on Shadow Paints recently. These were a new product launched in January 2013 in nine shades. They retail for $28 CDN each.

Here's what the Estée Lauder website has to say about the Stay-on Shadow Paints:

Go from smoky to wildly intense with non-stop shadows lit with shimmer. Pure pigments in a creamy shadow. Light-emitting dimensional pearls create shimmer to high-metallic finishes. Finger paint it onto lids. Glides on quickly, wears infinitely-all day.

TRUE VISION™ COLOR 

• Maximized colour impact
• Magnified vibrancy, clarity and dimension
• Amplified brilliance

FORMULA FACTS
• 12-hour wear
• Crease-free
• Won't fade
• Dermatologist-tested
• Ophthalmologist-tested

I picked up the Stay-on Shadow Paint called Steel, which on the Estée Lauder website looks purple-blue. It most definitely is not purple-blue, it's looks like they've simply labelled it incorrectly. Neon Fuchsia's photo looks the closest to Steel in actuality (and definitely not a "neon fuchsia"). 

Steel is a silver-taupe with a slight yellow-green tinge and sparkle (yellow, gold and red stand out the most). I can't resist a shimmery silver eyeshadow....

Look at this shade! It. is. stunning. 

The texture is interesting. I haven't come across anything similar in my beauty travels. It's sort of a thick liquid, pigment suspended in a sort of thin gel. It's not really cream-like, as you'd expect from a cream eyeshadow.  

It's meant to be applied with your fingers, like a finger paint. You'll want to use your pinkie as it's the smallest finger and so, the easiest to apply with. 

Here it is swatched on the back of my hand, lightly.

And here, more heavily.

I tried applying it to my eyes with a flat eyeshadow brush. This is a good option if you don't want to contaminate your product by dipping your fingers into it. You can apply it to your eye with a brush and then blend with your finger.

However, in the photos below, I used my brush to apply and to blend. On the left, I've applied Steel more heavily and on the right, softly. (The bits of hair on my face are from getting my hair cut earlier that day).

It applied very sheerly, and dries fairly quickly, so you'll want to work fast if you want to build up the pigment. 

As you can see in the below photo, of the heavier application, it got a bit blobby either from the brush application or because the bottom layer dried before I applied the other layers. 

Here it is with the sheer application. You can still see my skin through the product and it's a much lighter silver colour. 

Here is Steel applied with my fingers.

It's kind of in between the light and heavy applications done using a brush. There is a bit of a bare-ish spot on my lid that I just could not get any shadow paint to stay on and I layered it. I'm not sure what happened there. Steel isn't as easy to work with as I'd originally thought, I guess. It takes some effort. 

I was seriously impressed with the lack of creasing in both the light and heavy applications. It dried and it stayed put. For hours. 

You certainly don't need much product to get a good effect. One pot of Steel will last me a long time as it's not a colour I'll wear every day. It's very shimmery. Some of the other shadow paint colours would be wearable every day, such as Pink Zinc, Halo and Chained. 

At $28 CDN, these are pricier than the comparable-in-quality MAC Paint Pots ($22 CDN). But they do wear very, very well. I've only tried them with an eye primer (Urban Decay) so I don't know how these would fare without (my eyelids are oily). If you're in love with any of the colours (such as the Extreme Emerald - the colour of 2013!), and don't mind paying a little more, I recommend. Otherwise, MAC Paint Pots come in more colours if you're looking for a longwearing cream eyeshadow.

Grade: B