Flaunt Beauty Sultry Palette

Hello Beauties!

I went into The Icing (a mall accessories store, for those of you who aren't familiar with it) a couple of weeks ago to check out their nail polish selection, and lo and behold, they were carrying a brand new line of cosmetics! Now, I normally don't trust the cosmetics made for these accessories stores like Claire's and The Icing, since they generally seem marketed toward the pre-teen crowd, but these caught my eye; the packaging featured cute pinup girls, and the colors ranged from bold to sophisticated, eschewing the traditional Icing fare of pastels, brights, and glitter for smokey eye sets and red lips. It turns out the line is manufactured specifically for The Icing, and they even have their own website featuring some of the sexy pinups they use on their products: http://www.flaunt-beauty.com/. Check it out if you're curious; they even have a "which pinup girl are you?" quiz. I got Brigitte, if you're curious ;)

 The product I picked up was "My Sultry Palette", a set with two eyeshadows (weighing in at a combined .11 ounces) in shimmering bronze brown and dark blue/violet, two lip glosses in a bronze shimmered red and plum (weighing in at a combined .06 ounces), and a dusty pink blush (.12 ounces). It comes with a little brush; one end has a foam tip applicator, the other has hairs (which make it helpful for applying the glosses if you don't have a better lip brush handy). For all of the swatches and on my face, I used the accompanying brush-side of the applicator for the glosses, and my fingers for dry swatches of the eyeshadows, my own brush for wet swatches. The Palette itself is one of these sturdy glossy cardboard affairs; not the sturdiest or fanciest, but these are standard even in brands you'd find in Sephora (Stila and Too Faced also use these, for instance), and in my mind are preferable to really cheap plastic that will crack and break if you ever drop it or open it up too quickly. It also has a nice sized, functional mirror in the lid; it's solid enough that it doesn't end up giving a fun-house effect. The palette sells for $12.

As for the products, the blush wasn't particularly pigmented, but showed up on my very pale skin. The eyeshadows were impressive; they may not have been as pigmented as notoriously good formulas such as Urban Decay's, but they worked very well, as you'll see in the swatches, especially when they were used wet. They were soft and smooth, but there was some fallout. As for the glosses, they were incredibly pigmented, going on as dark as lipstick. I usually think all glosses in palettes like this look the same on the lips, but these were a pleasant surprise.

I took loads of pictures, sorry if this was overkill! I'm still working on finding a happy medium between picture overload, and not showing enough to give an accurate representation of the product, the packaging, and the way it looks on the skin in different lights and forms of application.

Here's the packaging:

And the back; you can see that these are shrink-wrapped when you buy them, so there's no chance of anyone  getting into it in the store! The wrap just goes around the back and the product, though, so you can lift the lid and see the colors through the packaging.

And here's the palette itself...

Sultry Palette

 And here's a closeup of the colors themselves...

And the inadequate applicator.

Now, for swatches!

Hypnose, dry and wet, no flash. 

Smolder, dry and wet, no flash

Smolder, dry and wet, flash. Notice some of the fallout in the lower right hand corner. 

Hypnose, dry and wet, with flash. 

Lip glosses in Bewitched on top, Spicy on bottom; no flash. 

Here's the blush in Warm Rose without flash; I put it on pretty heavily here.

And here are photos of the makeup on the face; I used Hypnose dry on the lid and wet on the lashline, and Smolder dry in the crease, and I am wearing Warm Rose as blush in all of the pictures. In this first set, I have on the lip gloss in Bewitched, which looks like a dark berry in the pan, but applies more like a pink-berry on the lip.

Eyeshadows in Smolder and Hypnose, with flash!

Lip gloss in Bewitched with flash! 

Full face, with flash: 

Full face, no flash!

Lip gloss in Bewitched, no flash. 

Eyes, no flash. 

And here's the same eye and face makeup, but with Spicy on my lips. 

No flash!

Flash!

Spicy, no flash

Spicy, flash. 

Rating: 7 out of 10

Overall, I was very pleased with this product! At $12 for a blush, two eyeshadows, and two lip glosses, it's a great deal, despite the fallout with the eyeshadows, and a vague tackiness with the lip glosses. The quality is comparable to products at twice the cost, and the packaging is really adorable; what's more, this line has a bunch of different palettes with different combinations of products at varying price points. If you're interested in what you've seen here, check the brand out! With lots of colors and combinations of shadows, blushes, and glosses, you're sure to find something that strikes a chord.