At first sight it's easy to fall in love with this quad of highly metallic creams. The pigmentation & shiny is beautiful & the super soft texture is not at all irritating. The shades are wonderfully wintery & scream NYE party. With names like Enrapture, Surge, Electrum and Phenomena (from top left) its hard not to harbour some lust. This is sadly where my love affair ends.
Oh my word! This palette is awful. A friend gave it to me & said "make it work, I really want to love it but everything I try fails". Never one to shy away from a make up related challenge I snatched it from her with gusto, resolute that I'd report back with some stunning results.
Now, I usually like Illamasqua, the colour & shade ranges are exceptional & the goth in me loves the styling but in my opinion the palette (£34) is an epic fail.
I should confess I'm quite picky about cream shadows due to the creasing issues I've experienced but from a fairly high end product with such a good reputation I had higher hopes.
Firstly I tried Surge as a shadow smudged with fingers over eyes prepped with foundation. Creases appeared within 10 minutes but were easily corrected with fingertips. After about a hour it looked horrific with the only colour remaining being crease lines. Then I tried Phenomena over Mac's Soft Ochre paint pot. This faired no better.
Determined to find a use for this seemingly gorgeous palette, I tried applying a thin layer over Urban Decay Primer Potion then patting a Mac Pigment in Old Gold over the top to set it. I fixed this with Urban Decay De-Slick spray. Loved the super dense shine & thought I may have cracked it. However, after a hour of sitting & doing very little, the creases were not only very evident but impossible to correct.
Following some research (& a little sale purchase, whoops!) on the Illamasqua website I tried using the Liquid Metals in different ways. They failed as eyeliner, as disappeared quickly & applying them over a powder shadow was tricky as they either caked or rubbed the shadow off. As a highlight on the cheekbones they looked amazing but faded fast (2hours of sitting in a cool room!). On the collarbone they faired a little better but I was scared of transfer onto not only my clothes but the clothes of anybody I dared to hug.
Finally I tried them as lip glosses. For photographs this would be fab but after about 3 mouthfuls of wine you're left with a sticky glass and naked lips.
I really do want to like this palette. The colours are stunning & very metallic but sadly I cannot find a use for it that lasts & doesn't require mega efforts to achieve.
I'd love to know how others use it, if only so I can admit defeat & go back to playing with products that work!
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