Cover Girl Exact Eyelights Eye Brightening Shadow Palette For Blue Eyes Review

I have been curious about the Cover Girl Eye Brightening Shadow Palettes ever since they were first advertised. I believe this was the first of its kind to catch my attention and I finally picked one up to try it a few weeks ago.

I admit that when it comes to enhancing the eyes I am very much a traditionalist, and I'm also on the conservative side when it comes to the colour I use on the eyes. I tend to stick to the colour wheel as it is a no-brainer that contrasting colours make each other pop. For this reason I've always stuck with warm red-browns (my favourite eyeshadow BY FAR for making my eyes pop is MAC's Satin Taupe), rusty oranges and deep blues and teals to enhance my baby blues. This palette would not be what I picked up normally with its bright, frosty blue, green and soft peach colour palette but I was interested in how these shades might make my eyes pop (rather than my suspicion that they'd compete).

Instructions on back of exterior packaging.

 

Instructions on back of palette

This palette offers fairly detailed instructions on how to apply the colours, on both the exterior packaging (in colour!) and on the back of the palette itself. It also comes with a small-sized brush for application as well as the standard (and pretty useless) sponge tip applicator.

Swatched

As you can see, the blue and green shades swatched fairly intensely while it took some effort to get the peachy shade to show up on my hand as more than shimmer. The lightest (highlight) shade shows up as a slightly warm off-white vanilla colour.

I followed the instructions on the packaging and used both the brush and sponge-tip applicator, though I admit I used some of my own brushes to better control the colours and blend a bit more.

I had trouble getting any intensity from these shadows. It seemed to be all about the shimmer and frostiness and while there's nothing wrong with that, why do I need four shades of such low pigmentation? There's just not much ability to build and deepen the shades at all. That being siad, I liked the shades themselves (particularly the blue smudged along my lashline) and will use them again, just not in this look.

As for how well they made my eye colour pop, I didn't see that they did much to emphasize or enhance the colour. If anything, I think the shimmer and colour compete with my eye colour.

 

What do you think? Has anyone tried the Eye Brightening Palette and loved it?

C.

Cover Girl Smoky Shadow Blasts Looks and Review

I saw these in the drugstore and thought they looked interesting so I picked up two to bring home and try out. Drew Barrymore looked gorgeous in the imagery and I admit that she sucked me in. 

Drew wearing CoverGirl Smoky Shadow Blast in Silver Sky

The two shades I bought are Purple Plume and Silver Sky (pictured below).

The CoverGirl Smoky Shadow Blasts are double-ended cream shadow sticks designed to be used without brushes or applicators. The Step One end has a rounded tip and is meant to be worn on your lid, while the Step Two end has a slightly tapered tip for applying to your lashline and in your crease.

Close-ups of the two ends.
Step One is a rose shade and Step Two is a warm brown.

Before swatching or applying, my concern was about the tapered Step Two end. With use, the tapered point will get worn down and since it's meant to be used for more precise, thin application, using it will increasingly result in smudgier and smudgier looks.

I admit that my first instinct was to use brushes to apply this product, but I opted to stick with the instructions on the package and the CoverGirl website for this review.

Purple Plume swatched

As you can see by the swatches, these cream eyeshadows aren't very pigmented and have a metallic sparkle to them. In my experience, smoky eyes work best when you start light and build your colour, blending as you go, layering sparkly shades (if you use it) over more matte shades. So I was skeptical about how well these would work in producing a satisfying smoky eye.

Here's Purple Plume applied.

Purple Plume applied as per instructions

As you can see, it's very, very soft in terms of pigmentation. I did not wear an eyeshadow primer or apply any product, such as a translucent powder on top for staying powder. Within 5-10 minutes the product had begun to travel into my crease (you can even see it beginning in the right photo). 

I also found the colours too similar in intensity to really differentiate enough. I had to work to get any intensity at all, in fact and layered quite heavily to get the effect you see above. The instructions tell you to use your finger to blend the product out. It was actually quite difficult to see the Step One colour on my lids while I was applying it and the Step Two colour only provided a reasonable darkness and dimension to my crease. I could not seem to get it to show up very much, perhaps because of the amount of Step One I applied.

I itched to apply powder eyeshadow on top, for longevity and for pigment but didn't for the sake of this review.

Silver Sky was moderately better in terms of the look but the same in terms of staying power and application.

Close-ups of the two ends.

Step One is a medium silver and Step Two is a silvery plum shade.

Silver Sky swatched.

Again, the colours don't differ much in terms of intensity and are quite metallic.

Silver Sky applied:

I did much prefer the effect of Silver Sky over Purple Plume because I do like a silvery eye, but again, this is far from a smoky eye for me. As you can see the Step Two colour doesn't have any effect in adding dimension to my crease or emphasizing my lashline. It blends almost completely into the Step One colour on my lid.

Overall, I would not recommend these. They definitely need an eyelid primer underneath and a powder to help them set on top (which would likely minimize their sparkle). The colours aren't bad, but then they're more about the shimmer than pigmentation. I might wear Silver Sky again but definitely under another eyeshadow since it creases so quickly on my oily lids. 

C.