Thursday, March 18, 2010

Sleek Bohemian iDivine Palette Swatches and Review!

Sleek has just launched the latest addition to their wildly popular i-Divine Palettes series, the Bohemian Palette, which is apparently Limited Edition. I wasn't one of those lucky bloggers who got the Bohemian Palette in advance for free, so I had to rush down to my Superdrug to check these out, and endure the ignomy of swatching in-store and having the salesgirls look at me all funny. You guys better appreciate the effort! :P

Anyway, these palettes are snazzy, and Sleek seems to be trying to build up the buzz around them. They really don't have to, though - these palettes have a cult following, and for good reason too. Although they're not without faults, they're one of the best UK drugstore eyeshadow palettes I've seen and swatched ever, and excellent value-for-money given the price.

This time round, perhaps in keeping with Spring/Summer trends, Sleek has opted for a white palette, in a paper box (not like the previous plastic box of other palettes). Here's what the box looks like:

Sleek Bohemian Palette

And here's the actual case of the eyeshadows. Isn't it sleek-looking (haha, pun):

Sleek Bohemian Palette

This is what the eyeshadows look like. Pretty, aren't they? They really look like little jewels with waffle-print! Mmmm, waffles...

Sleek Bohemian Palette

And of course, here are swatches!

Sleek Bohemian Palette Swatches

This palette contains an olive green with frosty shimmer, which I really like, a very bronzy brown with shimmer, a matte deep maroon red, a bright canary yellow - you know, bright primary yellow, a sheer-ish pale beige, a matte black, a matte mid-tone tan beige, a frosty deep maroon red, a matte yellow-green that's a more neon version of grass green, a dark bluple (you know, a cross between a blue and a purple) that's a mix of indigo and violet, a bright matte midtone purple, and a matte mid-tone cool brown, with just a hint of grey and taupe.

I think this roundup of shadows is pretty, but perhaps not the best palette out there. Personally I prefer the Original, Storm or Graphite (yet another LE, and annoyingly, one that was gone before I could swatch it) palettes, but this isn't bad. I appreciate the good mix of colours, spanning from warm to cool, and covering most colour bases, but if you're going to use this palette successfully you'd probably have to know something about pairing colours, since this palette has both warm and cool shades, so it's not a slap-on-any-two-colours-and-it'll-still-coordinate type of palette. But I do like the diverse span of shades, and some of them are really pretty - in particular, I love the olive green in the first row, and of course I love the matte taupey-brown in the last row...but you know I love taupes. I also love the fact that there are two beiges, a pale one and a tan one, so either of those would work as eyeshadow base colours for most skintones too. I think this palete has almost everything - highlight colours, lid colours, base colours, and accent/crease colours.

Quality-wise, I can't comment about lasting power, fading or creasing since I haven't worn it, but during swatching I noticed that like other Sleek palettes, the texture of the eyeshadows was pretty soft, but the shimmer shades were noticably much softer than the mattes. Some of the matte shades were a little hard. And although I swatch heavily for all the shades, you can still tell that in general the shimmers are more pigmented than the mattes, as is the case with other Sleek palettes too. Overall I'd say the quality is identical to other palettes - if you liked the previous Sleek ones, you'll like this. If you didn't, then don't bother trying it out - they haven't changed the formula on these. I personally think they're not bad though, and good for the price.