POST REWIND: Big Beautiful Eyes

This post is part of my Post Rewind series. This review was first posted on my wordpress blog in January. You can see all of my posts on http://essjay23x.wordpress.com if you are interested. I hope that you enjoy this review. I know that this is yet another review of a Benefit product. As you know I have only recently took a real active interest in make up. Until then, I stuck with what I knew or what I was told about. Benefit is one of the few higher end brands with a counter near my home. I also guess that the gimmicky and fun nature of their marketing made them a little less intimidating so when I couldn't find something in Boots or Superdrug then Benefit was my go-to brand. Obviously I'm now extending my reportoire of brands (MAC!) and products but at this early stage, I can only review these new brands to a point because we are still getting to know each other;-). So for today, it is back to Benefit and Big Beautiful Eyes which was on my wish list for a long time. There are three shadows in the palette, all of them colours that I (as make up naive as I was)already had something very similar in my make up collection (Gift sets, Argos gifts, Rimmel, Maybelline etc). So for months, I hurried past the Benefit counter and then one day, the promise of Big Beautiful Eyes was too much and I brought the palette. I thought it would change my eyes forever. It didn't matter that I already had almost the same colours just in a different brand. Benefits were the ones that were going to give me big, beautiful eyes! The palette is currently retailing on the Benefit website for £21.50. Twenty pounds plus may seem quite expensive for a box that fits easily in to your bag. However, it is Benefit so the box is beautiful and I think, you will find that they have managed to get quite a lot of product in to this little palette. You also get two mini make up brushes to apply the eye make up and a lesson plus a mirror to see how you are doing. I have lost the lesson but I do remember that the instructions and diagram(s) were very easy to follow. They showed you which shadow should go where and for what effect. I think it showed you how to achieve two different looks. One more everyday and then one, with a bit more contour/liner when you want your make up to be more obvious. I have heard presenters on the shopping channel say that this palette contains all the eye make up you need for every occasion. I've got to say the looks are gorgeous but I don't think, somebody like myself with no particular make up skills could get a look to compete with a full on black smoky eye using this palette alone. In a way, the colours are too nice. The lesson is very useful and as I said, explained well. It seemed to go in first time and it has not bothered me that I have lost the lesson now. You probably could use this kit for the first time without the lesson but I wouldn't, it only takes a couple of minutes to read, and so many brands just expect you to pay a high price for the product and work the rest out for yourself, so it is nice to see what Benefit suggest.   You can see a swatch of the make up products above. We start with boing the concealer then the light pink shadow and then the lid colour a medium brown and then the heavy chocolaty brown contour.  I tried to swatch them all over the boing as this is how they should go on your eye lid. The shadows are in neutral colours which I expect could be duped by products within most make up brands. However, these seem to blend and do what you want them to do very easily. They also seem quite soft and at home, on my skin. There is no irritation or fallout. I have used this palette several times and I'm pretty rough with it. I expect that I have sat on it, thrown it in to the drawer and trodden on it. Yet unusually for a palette, all of the shadows are still sitting in their correct slots and not falling out all over each other which is very handy as the liner shadow is a very heavy brown. The shadows seem to work well with the Boing concealer (my concealer is a little mucky but I don't think it is directly from the shadows in this palette maybe my mucky fingers or brushes!) which I use as a base for the shadows to stick to. I think Benefit suggest that you can use it around your eye area for dark circles etc but the Boing in my palette is 02 and I prefer to use my 01 Erase Paste for this. I'm not sure if Benefit offer some Big Beautiful Eye palettes with different concealer shades or not. The packaging is gorgeous, brown and. . . cardboard! So for a palette which you might use going from A to B, this may not always be that pratical. I always keep my cardboard palette in the cardboard sleeve. I expect a lot of people just throw the sleeve away but I'm glad I didn't. My actual palette is in the same condition that it was when I purchased it. The sleeve is battered but still manages to protect the palette inside. As I have said, I have used my palette quite a lot. About a third of the time, I try to use it as suggested for big, beautiful eyes. I think the look is lovely and the eyes certainly look wide awake and alert when I apply it as suggested. I do not normally use the brushes provided but some of my own eye brushes. I think I do still have the brushes somewhere though (and Benefit labelled what they're for on them) and they would be useful if I was going away and wanted to take the palette with me which I may well want to because as well as the Big Beautiful Eyes look, there are other ways you can use these shadows. Sometimes I have used a shade alone on the lid. I have also layered the shades over each other on my lid for a really nice soft brown colour (almost plummy) as the (bad;-)) picture below illustrates. On occasions, I have used the pink to highlight above my cheekbone and used the two browns to fill my brows in and although a little dark for me, blended in to my foundation even the concealer could be useful. I would recommend anybody to buy this palette. You can do a lot with it and if you're starting a collection. Buy this palette because you are going to want these colours anyway and these are really good quality and great value for you! You will learn about make up and get some great looks but just remember it is still your eyes that you are applying the make up to and make up can only change you so much. A lot of the Benefit titles are so aspirational and deep down as silly as it seems, I guess I was a little disappointed that it was still my eyes! I've got this bad habit of expecting miracles. . ! If you got this far, thanks for reading yet another Benefit review. Don't forget I love comments and it would make my day if people continued to subscribe.  X