Lorac is a high end brand that I have tried very little from. I did review their Shine Bright Cheek Palette and Shine Bright Alter Ego Lipstick Set last year. Both of those were holiday releases along with the palette I’m reviewing today. The Shine Bright Eyeshadow Palette was released for holiday 2018 but they brought it back for 2019; limited edition is rarely ever truly limited edition, my friends. This palette is $49.00 BUT it’s currently on sale for $23.52 on the Lorac website. I purchased it directly from Lorac because we all know I rarely pay full price for anything.

This palette contains eleven mattes and nine metallics for a grand total of twenty shades. The packaging is a sturdy cardboard with a magnetic closure and a mirror. This palette also contains a brush that is actually really good quality. I’ve tested every shade and I have a lot of thoughts so let’s get into the pros and cons first.

Pros:

• Lorac’s matte formula is SUPERB. I had an issue with just one of the mattes but I’ll discuss it more in the cons section. This formula is very pigmented but it blends so easily that I never had an issue with the color getting out of control. It’s also one of the creamiest and most opaque matte formulas I’ve tried. The shadows are powdery but I didn’t experience much fall out as long as I tapped off my brush. Also, if I understand Lorac’s website correctly, you can use these mattes wet as liner.
• I think this is a beautiful color story for the holidays but of course, these colors can be used year round.
• The metallics are stunning but they take A LOT of work, will discuss this more in the cons section.
• This is going to be an ideal palette for someone that is interested in trying colorful eye makeup but doesn’t want to dive into a full on rainbow palette. The majority of this palette is neutral and even the colorful shades are more jewel toned and muted.
• All of the shades are so opaque and pigmented that I believe most skin tones could use and enjoy this palette. Of course, I don’t have a deeper skin tone so I’m having to base this off of my assumptions.
• This palette leans more neutral and cool toned which I personally love.

Cons:

• This metallic formula had it IN for me from day one. I’m testing a few other palettes from Lorac and the good thing is their formula is consistent across all of their palettes, however, that means I have the same issues with all of their palettes. Issue one, this formula burns my eyeballs. It doesn’t burn my eyelids or the skin around my eyes but my actual eyeballs. If any particles happened to get in my eye, it would burn like crazy. The irritation did dissipate pretty quickly but I’m sensitive to something in this formula. I checked the ingredients and they contain extracts of lemon peel, cucumber, parsley, etc so I assume that I’m sensitive to one of the natural ingredients. Issue two, these shadows look nowhere near as intense on the eyes as they do in swatches. I tried using my finger, a wet brush and a dry brush but I just couldn’t get them to be as intense as I wanted. Issue three, quite a few of the metallics were patchy and took a lot of building up. If I used a wet brush, patchiness wasn’t an issue but they would cake up and look awful. I’ve had this same problem with Morphe eyeshadows. Issue four, the metallic shades do not play well together. I love to mix my eyeshadows and create my own duochrome shades but that’s impossible with this formula. They either become a muddy mess OR they’re so opaque that they cancel out whatever shade they’re on top of.
• There are no truly deep shades in this palette so deepening up a look can be difficult. The two deepest shades are Slate Blue and Mahogany. There needs to be something deeper than Mahogany for the more neutral looks because it just isn’t that deep. There also needs to be a deep gray or black to deepen the cooler toned looks because Slate Blue just doesn’t work with all of the shades.
• There are two cream shades, Ecru and Crepe. Ecru is more warm toned while Crepe is more cool toned but you can’t see a difference in them on the eyes. They should have removed one of these shades in favor of a deepening shade.
• The shade Smoked Plum was the only one of the mattes that was slightly patchy but I was able to make it work.

Swatches & Shade Descriptions:

As mentioned above, these shades all lean more neutral or cool toned. If they happen to be warm toned, I’ll mention that but if I don’t, just assume that they are neutral/cool toned. These eyeshadows do have names but they do not have shade descriptions so I will describe them to the best of my ability. I’ll be going from left to right, top row to bottom row. I’m going to put a star (*) by the shades I loved the most.

Row One:

• Ecru– matte warm toned cream
• Haze– matte gray with a lavender undertone*
• Lt. Brown– matte mid-toned brown
• Crepe– matte cream
• Dusty Mauve– matte pinky mauve*

Row Two:

• Vanilla– metallic white
• Smoked Plum– matte gray with a hint of purple
• Mahogany– matte reddish brown
• Primrose– matte pink*
• Slate Blue– matte blue with a purple undertone*

Row Three:

• Nectar– matte peach
• Azure– matte blue*
• Splendor– metallic bronze*
• Fizz– metallic deep champagne*
• Cosmic– metallic royal purple

Row Four:

• Gold Rush– metallic gold
• Atlantis– metallic azure with a turquoise shift
• Spruce– metallic forest green*
• Royalty– metallic burgundy with a pink shift*
• Icicle– metallic silver

Eyeshadow Looks:

I primarily used this palette alone to create six looks. For one of the looks, I used a highlighter in my inner corner; Moon Glow from Milani. When explaining the looks, I will go in the order of the swatches on my wrist; left to right and top to bottom. You can click on the pictures to see them better. Since these eyeshadows do have names, I won’t be describing where they are in the palette or what they look like. I do always use a primer, the essence Colour Intensifying Primer.

I LOVED this look so much. My favorite looks that I created with this palette were the simple ones because these shadows just work better when there aren’t too many of them in one look.

1. I set my primer with Crepe.
2. I blended Dusty Mauve all into my crease and over most of my lid.
3. I applied Vanilla over half of my lid, in my inner corner and on my brow bone.
4. I lined my lower lash line with Smoked Plum.

I also loved this look and had no issues creating it.

1. I set my primer with Ecru.
2. I blended Nectar into my crease and slightly above it.
3. I deepened my crease with Lt. Brown and applied it on the outermost part of my lid.
4. I applied Fizz over my lid.
5. I lined my lower lash line with Mahogany.
6. I applied Vanilla in my inner corner and on my brow bone.

I don’t hate this look but this is where the metallic shades really started to annoy me. I used Cosmic (purple) on the inner and outer parts of my lid and then tapped Atlantis (blue) over my whole lid. I wanted to have a mix of blue and purple but Atlantis just completely covered Cosmic so you really can’t see the purple.

1. I set my primer with Crepe.
2. I blended Haze in an arch above my natural crease, near my brow bone, so that the deeper shades would be easier to blend and to help create a gradient of color.
3. I blended Azure into my crease and up into Haze.
4. I deepened my crease with Slate Blue.
5. I applied Cosmic on the inner and outermost parts of my lid, leaving the center open.
6. I applied Atlantis over my entire lid.
7. I applied Icicle in my inner corner and on my brow bone.
8. I lined my lower lash line with Slate Blue and smudged Atlantis underneath it.

This look is fine but I don’t love it. I would have preferred to deepen it more but I wanted to stick to just this palette and this palette doesn’t have anything deeper than Mahogany.

1. I set my primer with Ecru.
2. I blended Nectar in an arch above my natural crease, near my brow bone, so that the deeper shades would be easier to blend and to help create a gradient of color.
3. I blended Lt. Brown into my crease.
4. I deepened my crease and lined my lower lash line with Mahogany.
5. I applied Splendor all over my lid.
6. I smudged Royalty underneath Mahogany on my lower lash line.
7. I applied Vanilla in my inner corner and on my brow bone.

I absolutely hated the way this look turned out because of the metallics. Atlantis (blue) and Icicle (silver) would not blend together and Icicle caked up/broke apart in the lines on the innermost part of my lid. Icicle was also terribly patchy.

1. I set my primer with Crepe.
2. I blended Primrose in an arch above my natural crease, near my brow bone, so that the deeper shades would be easier to blend and to help create a gradient of color.
3. I blended Haze into my crease.
4. I deepened my crease with Smoked Plum.
5. I applied Icicle on the inner and outermost parts of my lid, leaving the center open.
6. I applied Atlantis in the center of my lid.
7.  I lined my lower lash line with Azure.
8. I smudged Gold Rush underneath Azure.
9. I applied Vanilla in my inner corner and on my brow bone.

I wouldn’t say this is my all time favorite look but I don’t hate it. Gold Rush was patchy and took forever to build up into an even layer. For this look, I used my Milani highlighter in Moon Glow in my inner corner.

1. I set my primer with Ecru.
2. I blended Nectar in an arch above my natural crease, near my brow bone, so that the deeper shades would be easier to blend and to help create a gradient of color.
3. I blended Lt. Brown into my crease.
4. I deepened my crease and lined my lower lash line with Mahogany.
5. I applied Spruce on the outermost part of my lid.
6. I applied Gold Rush over the rest of my lid.

Brushes Used:

• Detail Crease Brush
• Tapered Blending Brush
• Flat Eyeshadow Brush
• Small Angled Brush
• Smudge Brush
• Eye Crease Brush
• Blending Brush, I used this brush to blend out the edges.

If you are curious about any of the other products on my face, you can find these looks in my recent posts on Instagram.

Final Thoughts

Is this palette worth the $49.00 splurge? NO. Please do not ever pay full price for this palette. The mattes are great but you can find better metallics/shimmers from literally any other brand. I’m not mad about the $25.00 I paid for this palette and I’m glad that I own it but after testing this palette for the past month, I’m ready to move on to something new. I did buy one of Lorac’s new mini holiday palettes, Effortless Glamour, and I’ll have a review up for it next week. I was going to combine it here since both are holiday releases but the review would have been way too long. Anyways, I would love to know what you think about Lorac’s formula or this palette. Thanks for reading and have a great day!