Maybelline’s ‘The Blushed Nudes' Palette || First Impressions & Swatches

It’s ironic actually, just recently I was working on a new spring-summer makeup look; romantic, a fine balance between mattes and sparkles - Korean inspired obviously - and using a lot of blush and gold colours. As I was doing so, I remember picking up my 4th eye shadow palette needed for the look and thinking: “How great would it be if there was one palette with all the colours I wanted in it..."

Cue Maybelline.

I kid you not when I say I literally have every colour in this palette already, but I just didn’t have them together! I don’t know how Maybelline heard my prayer but this palette has definitely been the answer.

Having warm gold undertones myself, normally I steer clear of pink shades in my makeup, not on my lips, not on my cheeks and not on my eyes. This is because pink is a cool colour and clashes with my skin. On the odd occasion that I would use a pink, it would usually be very light and I would have to layer some sort of gold shimmer or shadow on top to make it ‘work’ better with my skin, but I honestly feel like this particular palette was engineered with making pink and golds more accessible for all skin colours, no matter your undertones.

There’s a good range of colours varying from very pink to very gold, from cool to warm and from light to dark. I also like how they laid out the palette in a way that makes it easier for you to pick colours that work well together, they actually give you 13 different colour combinations off the bat, and then of course, you can still make your own on top of that.

Not to mention the pigmentation of the colours is definitely more than what you’d expect from a drugstore brand - I have higher end palettes that wouldn’t even compare. I tried this palette out with my innisfree eye primer and even though the bright sun, the colours didn't melt away and were still pigmented until the end of the day, so they definitely do last too.

Unfortunately my camera didn't do these swatches justice, they're a lot more pigmented in real life!

If I had to say there was one downside to this palette, its that I wish they changed the first colour and one of the matte pinks (#4 & #5 in the top row) and that's because the white shade is poorly pigmented, I don't think it'd be good even on lighter skin, and the two matte pinks are very similar so there's no need to have both. Some may argue that the palette could also use a little more mattes but personally I think this is a great balance considering the colours used.

* = my personal favourites

All in all, this is a palette with a price tag way below its worth in my opinion. I’m definitely going to be getting a lot of use out of it and I'd highly recommend it to anyone considering buying it already; you won’t be disappointed!