Sunday, September 17, 2017

Weekend Looks: Sephora Pro Editorial vs. NYX Brights


So, last week, after I wrote about the NYX Fire palette, I continued to be intrigued by the dialogue surrounding the price increase of the NYX In Your Element palettes. As I mentioned in that post, the Fire palette was the first experience I had with NYX shadows, and I was really impressed. And I said that if the quality of those palettes was the same as other NYX palettes, then I, too, would be really disappointed with the price increase. So I made a conscious decision to buy a NYX palette that had caught my eye but that I had previously chosen not to buy because I had similar colors in my collection. While I don't like to bring new makeup into my collection on a regular basis, there have been a couple of times where I felt a little uninformed as a blogger due to having limited or no experience with a product. And this was one of those times. 

So I thought it could be interesting to try to create the same look with two separate palettes, one being from NYX and one being something I already know I love. And that's what I did this weekend. 

Look 1: NYX Brights 





9 on the inner lid, 6 on the outer lid, 4 in the crease (supplemented by Colourpop Cannonball and Makeup Geek Cocoa Bear), and 16 blended above the crease (supplemented by the yellow shade in the NYX Fire palette). Marc Jacobs highliner in Whirl(pool) on the waterline. 

Look 2: Sephora Pro Editorial 





Chris and Helend P on the inner lid, Electric Violet on the outer lid, Tangerine blended into the crease (supplemented by Makeup Geek Cocoa Bear), and the yellow shade from NYX Fire blended above the crease. Marc Jacobs highliner in Whirl(pool) on the waterline. 


Overall, I am impressed that the two looks came out as similar as they did. But, if it's not obvious by the look descriptions above, I struggled with the NYX Brights palette. I had to pack on the color and apply several layers. And even then, I still had to go in with other shadows to get the look I was after. The orange shade in the crease, especially, just was not very pigmented. When I finally caved and applied Colourpop Cannonball, it felt like such a treat to use a shadow that had pigment and was easy to work with. And I feel like my overall feelings can be summed up by the fact that I went in with the yellow shade in the the Brights palette and ended up needing to use the yellow shade in the Fire palette to get it to show up. 

The Sephora Pro Editorial palette by comparison was so nice to work with. I've written about this palette before, and while I have mixed feelings (because the glitter shades are awful), I really love the colorful mattes. I had to supplement this look with Makeup Geek Coca Bear and the yellow shade from the NYX Fire palette because there were no comparable shades in the Pro Editorial. 

In terms of comparing these two palettes, I personally strongly prefer the Sephora Pro Editorial. With that said, the NYX palette can still make pretty looks, but in my experience, it just takes a little more product and time/effort. However, I think the NYX Brights palette has a better overall color scheme than the Sephora palette. I would have much preferred if the glitter shades in the Sephora palette especially were taken out in favor or some shades of yellow and lighter blues. 

But, the main purpose of this experiment for me was to compare the performance of these NYX shadows with the ones in the Fire palette. With tax, I think I paid around $20 for the NYX Brights palette, and the Fire palette was $30. In my experience and in my opinion, the quality of the Fire palette is far, far superior to that of the Brights palette. The packaging of the Fire palette is also considerably better than the Brights palette. And for the upgrades, I would happily pay an extra $10. In fact, I don't think the Brights palette should cost $20. I had pretty high expectations going into using the Brights palette because of the performance of the Fire palette, and I was disappointed. Again, that doesn't mean that the Brights palette is unusable, but it was not a palette that impressed me. And I will be giving it to a friend, especially since I have and really enjoy the Sephora palette. 

Separately, I would just like to praise the Marc Jacobs highliner in Whirl(pool) as this was by far my favorite part of both of these looks. I've previously used up a few Marc Jacobs eyeliners, but I was put off of using them after I used a sample-sized one that came in a holiday kit. I'm now convinced that the formula must be different on the sample sizes because Whirl(pool) reminded me of how much I used to love these eyeliners. It didn't budge on me all day, which is a complete anomaly. Also, the color. I love the color. I'm hoping to get brave enough to wear this to work because I just want to wear this all the time now. I cannot remember the last time I loved an eyeliner this much. 

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