Stila Week: Striking in South Beach Palette

This is the third and final Stila Beach Palette that I will review. Striking in South Beach was definitely the hardest of the three to photography. Both of the 'blue' eyeshadows on the left hand side (Wave and Cabana) seemed determined to evade a fair representation. Wave is lavender although it photographs as blue in the pan and Cabana is a smoky indigo. The depth of colour is accurate but both have more of a purple undertone than is represented in my pictures.

The silvery Ocean Drive and the shimmery black Nightlife look just as they appear in the pan. Although strangely, when swatched, Ocean Drive appears quite blue so that there is a graduation of colour moving from Ocean Drive to Wave to Cabana. All of the eyeshadows have some shimmer, with Ocean Drive being the most shimmery of the four colours.

As with the Living the Life in Laguna palette, I found the eyeshadows a little tricky to work with. The colour pay-off isn't great and I struggled to get an even application. Packing it on resulted in fallout so this is definitely one to apply before foundation. Again, the application guide recommended applying some of the colours wet and no doubt this would make for a better result. I'm going to be forced to wet my brush at some point aren't I?

Although the application was uneven, I really liked the smoky indigo effect. I wasn't really sure how the blusher and bronzer shades would work with the eyeshadows. I'm still not convinced of Sobe as a bronzer (it pulls rather orange on my skin) but the Art Deco pink is prettier and less bold than I had imagined.

As with the other palettes, there is some variation in the quality of the eyeshadows and blushers but I want to point out once again that these palettes cost a rather bargainous £10 each. That's £3 less than a single Stila powder eyeshadow. So although they might not be perfect across the board, they are a great way to experiment with colour.

The Stila Beach palettes are available from Escentual.com and Beautybay.com, as well as several other online retailers.



Disclosure: PR Sample