Essence's Bright Box

Recently, the Essence display at Kruidvat has been updated to a more advanced version and it is huge now - in belgian terms. To go along with the new display, there's also some new products available that I couldn't get my hands on before, one of those being the How To Make Bright Eyes make-up box. There's also a nude version, but I picked this one up because I wanted something new to experiment with.

The box comes with 6 different eyeshadows, five shimmery (light up, team bright, vanilla eyes, natural beauty and the irrisistible) and one matte (eyes bright open) eyeshadow. I've tried essence's eyeshadows before and it has always been kind of hit and miss, so it's always an exciting adventure trying them out. My life is extremely eventful, isn't it?

light up - eyes bright open - team bright - vanilla eyes - natural beauty - the irrisistible

As you can see in the picture above, the shimmery shades aren't very pigmented. Granted, they are natural shades, but I really had to build them up to get them to the amount of pigmentation in this picture. The matte orange has the best pigmentation of them all, but has to be carefully built up when you want it to be even.My number one tip when it comes to these eyeshadows, is to use an eyeshadow primer and maybe a white (or just light coloured) cream base to apply them on. I think you can work with these colours, but if you're looking for a versatile palette/box, you may want to skip this. The only colour I really liked and probably will use when I'm in a playful mood, is the orange matte one, but I won't carry this box around with me while travelling around.

They also provide so called 'styling cards' with a daytime and nighttime appropriate look. The step-by-step guide is very well made and I think it's a clear description of what you can do. This addition to the box makes it very easy for beginners to get to know the palette better and to know what can be used for which purposes. But ofcourse these aren't strict guidelines and I think a palette like this screams for experimentation. Don't put the orange shade in your crease only, slap it on you eyelids, lower lashline and wherever you want as well! 

Having said this all, this palette has a slightly higher price tag than it's sisters, the all about palettes which I actually like better. So if you want to play around with some bright colours, I recommend you trying out the all about sunrise or all about paradise palettes from essence, though I personally only tried the all about nude version, but I thinker it's a lot more pigmented, workable and compact than this one.