Pages

Monday 21 April 2014

Physician's Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Shadow & Liner in Classic Nude Collection - Review and Swatches


Normally, I like most, but not all, of Physician's Formula products. A little while ago one of my favourite beauty bloggers reviewed all of the Physician's Formula eye shadow palettes, mainly, the Shimmer Strips collection. She said the Classic Nude was one of the best ones. Now this particular blogger likes her drug store makeup a lot. I do not so much as many of you know. I should have taken her recommendation with a grain of salt (as I usually do). This palette is atrocious! I am not going to mince words.

Before I get the to ok, the bad and the ugly, let's talk price. I have seen this palette for as much as $18 Canadian when it is full price in some drug stores. You get 9 colours. Your money would be better spent buying just one MAC eye shadow which is around $18. Physician's Formula has nerve charging $18 for this. It's honestly worth maybe $4. I am glad to say I paid about $10 as I got it on sale.


One thing I "like" about this palette is it's size. You could easily throw this palette into a small cosmetics bag and chuck it in your purse. It has a magnetic cover which, let's face it,  can easily be dislodged in some travel circumstances. Although the packaging is cheap, it's cute with the fishnet stockings cover. There is a one-sided angled sponge tip applicator that comes with it. Come to think of it, that applicator may work better with these shadows than the MAC and Sigma brushes I have been using with this. Food for thought. I will try that, and if it works any better, I will update this blog post. I am not holding my breath though.



There are no names for these shadows and it is just as well. Many of them are practically identical in colour to at least one other "strip" in the palette. You can use these wet or dry. I tried dry. What a nightmare! You can't get hardly any colour payoff if you use them dry. You swipe and you swipe...total waste of time. If you do succeed in getting any on, the colour fades, or rather absorbs, directly into your eyelid after a short period of time. This is occurs even if you are wearing an eye shadow primer and an eye shadow base! The colours are crumbly and go on streaky whether you use them wet or dry. They feel soft to the touch though. The formula is just plain awful though.

If you use them wet, they do apply better but they still go on streaky. At least you get some to go on and you see some pigmentation. In the spirit of fairness, the two dark brown colours, when used wet, do work well as eye liners and they stay put for a decent period of time, unlike the other shades. I know these are "shimmer strips" but a matte shade would have been nice here. All of the colours blend together too easily and morph into one shade. The best thing I can recommend if you do acquire this palette is to use the dark brown colours as liner and maybe when wet, you can use some of the lighter shades as a light brow highlight or inner corner highlight. Here are the swatches when used dry (they swatch better on my arm than they apply to the eye):

 
 
 

Okay, so now for the swatches when they are wet:

 
Not a huge difference, but a slight improvement.
 
Packaging: 8/10  
Pigmentation: 3/10 (darker colours are better)
Easy to Work With: 1/10
Longevity: 1/10
Colour Stays True: 2/10
Texture: 6/10
Price: 2/10 (for what you get)
Ingredients: 8/10
Travel Worthy: 8/10
Attractiveness of Product: 2/10
Would I buy this again? NO WAY 
Overall Rating: 2.5/10

No comments:

Post a Comment