Review: Sleek Palettes

I've been meaning to do this review forever. I've had these palettes for quite awhile, but I hadn't had the proper chance to play with them and share my thoughts. Today I woke up feeling awful, so after letting my boss know I wouldn't be in and sleeping for a total of 15 (!) hours, I decided to actually get something accomplished, other than lounging around the house and watching tv in my PJs.

Sleek palettes have been taking the blogging world by storm. For the price £5.00 or around $10 USD they are inexpensive palettes with an array of color choices. After a few infamous bloggers and you-tubers sang their praises, everyone has been trying to get their hands on them.

I ordered my 3 Sleek palettes from glamr.co.uk/shop and they arrived quickly and wrapped well. For the 3 including shipping to the US, the cost was only about $33, each palette is £5.00 and then shipping is an additional £5.00. Obviously, if you were to order it would depend entirely on the current exchange rate.

 

The palettes come in fairly flimsy plastic boxes, but the actual packaging is quite sturdy. I was honestly a bit surprised at the size of them. Each is a little black compact, with Sleek somewhat etched into the top (it may be a sticker but it doesn't come off easily). 

The back of each palette indicates which one it is, along with the ingredient list, size and the website for the brand. Each individual shadow is 1.1gram and there are 12 in each so we're looking at about 13 grams of product which is quite generous for the price.

Here is the original palette compared to a MAC 4pan. As you can see, the individual pans in each of the palettes is quite small, but definitely big enough to properly pick up color.

 

Here they are all lined up. Aren't they pretty? From the left we have Chaos (all matte), Original and Safari. The Original and Safari palettes have mostly pearl shades and a few odd matte colors.

I'm not going to swatch all three palettes as there are plenty of swatches out there, however, I am going to swatch a few of the shades so you can get an idea of the color payoff and how the shades perform. First, here are a few swatches of the Safari palette.

These are the first 3 in the top row. As you can tell from the top palette pictures, these shadows are quite crumbly, and that's really my only complaint about them. They are quite pigmented and soft and are easily picked up with a brush or the included sponge-tip applicator, but you can't apply too much pressure on the shades or else they will crumble. I'm fairly surprised that the palettes made their way across the ocean with no causalities. The black in this palette is one of the matte shades and I believe there is a black matte shade in nearly every palette that Sleek makes, maybe provided as a liner?

 

  

Next are the top 3 shades in the Chaos (matte) palette. As you can see, these are also fairly pigmented, though they don't have quite as much payoff as the pearl shades. And they don't have that great sheen that the pearl shades have, but they are quite nice especially if you shy away from frosty colors. Now, I don't know about you, but I never used bright pink on my lids (the 1st color), so I did some experimenting. What I found out? This color makes a beautiful lip and cheek color!

I took a bit of clear gloss and put a little on my hand and then picked up some of the pink color from the Chaos palette with a clean lip brush.

Then I mixed it up, adding a bit more of the pink color as necessary till I got the depth of color that I wanted.

 

And then I applied that to my lips with a lip brush.

Not too bad! I kind of like it. Please excuse my skin. I'm not wearing any foundation and I didn't prep my lips with some balm first.

I also think the eyeshadow would look great as a blush, so I sheered it out a bit on my hand...

 

So all in all, I do really like these palettes. My only complaint is that the shadows are a bit powdery but that only lends itself to being a bit creative and seeking out new ways to use colors you wouldn't ordinarily use. I went ahead and ordered a few of the other palettes available recently and I should get them soon, but of course like everyone, I am dying for the Graphite palette which was limited edition. Wish I would have discovered these sooner when it was still widely available (and not a rip off on Ebay!).

Ingredients (from Original): Mica, Talc, Kaolin, Magnesium, Stearate, Dimethicone, Paraffinum Liquid, Ethylhexyl, Palmitate, Propylparaben, Methylparaben