Makeup Revolution Deadly Desire and Into the Night Palettes

 I check Ulta's app every day to see what the new releases are and I saw that Makeup Revolution released two new palettes for Halloween, the Deadly Desire palette (warm toned neutrals) and the Into the Night palette (cool toned grays and purples). I immediately bought them for the packaging. They're $15 each, so they're affordable compared to a lot of other palettes and they each come with 18 eyeshadows. That's potentially a good deal, if they perform well. I'm not the biggest fan of Makeup Revolution/I Heart Revolution/any of their 500 other brands. I've tried makeup from them before that was absolutely horrendous. But I did think the Ghost Stories palette from I Heart Revolution was decent, so I figured maybe these two would be, as well.

Right off the bat (no pun intended) as soon as I opened the Into the Night palette, it tipped over because the mirror is so heavy. It's not a big deal, but it's still a slight inconvenience, so it's worth noting. I think I'll start with the Deadly Desires palette.

This palette contains 9 mattes and 9 shimmers, although Sin and Greed are more like toppers, with Sin being the more glittery of the two. This palette definitely has more range than the Into the Night palette, there's more variation and depth between colors. You're going to get a pretty orange/red look with most of these shades, but Woods is there if you want something that's more of a true neutral and there's a good variety of shimmers to work with. 

Performance-wise, it's nice enough. I've only used it once so far (the day I went to Sleepy Hollow), but it blended easily and stayed on well, considering I had it on for 16 hours (I also used an eye primer from Milani when I used this palette and the Into the Night palette). The mattes were a little patchy, but they're workable. The only shade I had a problem with was Sin. Even as a topper, it just didn't do much. (This is why I don't bother with swatch photos. When I swatched it on my arm, it looked beautiful. On my eyes, it looked like nothing.) I have a Moondust eyeshadow from Urban Decay in Space Cowboy that I use almost every day and I was hoping Sin would look like that when applied, so I was disappointed. 

I love the packaging of the Deadly Desires palette and I wish the shades inside reflected it more. I would have expected more pink tones instead of the warm-orange tones they included. Of the two palettes in this post, if I were going to recommend one, this would be it. To take that a little further though, would I recommend it in general, based on anything other than the packaging? Eh. For $15, it's a decent palette. But there are better palettes out there for that price.

Next is the Into the Night palette. I love the packaging for this one, too. I'll give the brand that, they're good with their designs. This palette contains 6 mattes and 12 shimmers, but Vamp is really more of a glitter. I can tell you right now, if you have a deeper skintone than I do (I'm so pale, I'm practically translucent), this palette is not going to work for you. The colors barely even show up on me.

Ghost Stories on the left, Into the Night on the right.

I thought I would like this color story more because it leans more purple than the Ghost Stories palette, but all the shimmers kind of end up looking the same. It reminds me of the 90's when people would wear those hideous, frosted, pale pink lipglosses. Remember that? It's not cute.

As for how it performs...No. Just no. Unless you want this specifically for the packaging, save your money. This is one of the worst eyeshadow palettes I have ever owned and I can honestly say I'll never use it again. I tried to build the mattes up, but there's nothing to them. They barely show up. And on top of that, they're extremely chalky. And the shimmers are hard, they're not soft and creamy. Forget picking them up with a brush, they barely showed up when I used my finger to apply them. There's hardly any pigment. They all end up looking like that awful light pink/purple frost I mentioned.

Again, I want to stress...Unless you really want to buy these palettes for the packaging, save your money. Deadly Desires is okay, but there are better palettes out there at an affordable price point. And Into the Night is just terrible and it's not going to work for anyone anyway, so definitely don't bother with that one. The only good thing about it is the packaging.

Hipdot Ouija Palette and I Heart Revolution Ghost Stories Palette

 

Disclaimer: This isn't an actual review of the palettes with swatches and completed looks. I just wanted to post about them because this is a horror blog and if anyone is looking for horror themed makeup, this is it. I'll start with the Ouija palette.

The Ouija palette includes 15 shades: 6 mattes, 2 pressed glitters and 7 shimmers and retails for $26.

I was really excited to see two horror themed eyeshadow palettes because I feel like they're pretty rare. I've seen indie brands do some pretty cool releases, but they're usually sold out. I had heard of Hipdot before, but this is the first item I've ever purchased from them.

People were freaking out about the Ouija palette, like just looking at it the wrong way would summon a spirit. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, there's no planchette, the palette is safe.

I'm not a huge fan of the colors in this palette. I'm boring, my favorite eyeshadow palette of all time is the Natasha Denona Gold Palette. Neutrals are my thing. I mostly ordered this because I was like, "Cool, horror themed makeup." The swatches on the website did look nice, but I don't really trust brand swatches and swatches really aren't a good indication of how a product will apply to the eyes anyway. Does it blend easily? How pigmented is it when applied with a brush? You're not going to find out from arm swatches.

The shade I was most attracted to in this palette is Are U There?, but...That green really doesn't work well with the other colors in the palette. I couldn't create a cohesive look with it, I had to also use the Natasha Denona Metropolis palette. And then I felt the green was too dark for work, so I used Brass from the Gold palette as a topper. I didn't think the green was even that unique at first, so I decided to swatch it next to some other green eyeshadows I own. (I know I said no swatches because swatches aren't indicative of how makeup actually applies, but this is to show the difference in color, so it matters.)

These shades are Are U There? from the Hipdot Ouija Palette, The Only from the Marc Jacobs Extravagance! Palette, Vivid Scattered Light Glitter Eyeshadow from Hourglass, I'm Outta Here from the Too Faced Shake Your Palm Palms Palette and Brass from the Natasha Denona Gold Palette.

The closest match is Vivid from Hourglass. It's actually almost an exact dupe (in tone) if I layer it. The main difference between them is that Vivid has a more reflective, sparkly finish. The others pull more gold than green, so it actually is a pretty unique shade (to my collection, at least).

I wanted to give the Ouija palette a fair shot, so I figured I had two options. I could create a look using Starlight, Planchette, Seance and Board or Paranormal, Medium and Goodbye. I went with the first option as it seemed more work-friendly. It was okay. The shimmers feel dry, but they apply fine. The mattes kind of blend away to nothing, so you have to work with them a bit more. It's not bad, it's not great, it's just an average palette. I don't think it's bad for the price. I've paid more for worse quality eyeshadows (ahem, Too Faced).

The Ghost Stories palette includes 18 shades: 8 mattes and 10 shimmers and retails for $15.

I've used a couple things from Makeup Revolution/I Heart Revolution before and I wasn't crazy about them. I ordered this palette from Ulta because I loved the packaging and the ghosts embedded into some of the eyeshadows. The color story isn't my favorite, it's very cool toned (even though the description on Ulta claimed it's neutral). Sometimes cool toned eyeshadow makes me look like a corpse and it's not cute. But I figured for $15, I could test it out and see what happens.

I had an eyeshadow palette from either Makeup Revolution or I Heart Revolution a few years ago, it was one of their chocolate palettes. The only reason I bought it was because I was going to California for E3 and I didn't want to bring something more expensive in case it broke or I forgot it there. I ended up really not liking it because the quality was awful and I don't actually know what happened to it. I didn't bring it to California and I didn't keep it, so I guess I must have given it away to someone. That was a really long way to say, "If you look at Ulta's website, you'll see that most of the I Heart Revolution palettes have low ratings." I wasn't expecting much from this palette.

I used Ritual, Paranormal, Other-Worldly, Appear and Apparition together. It was really easy to create a cohesive look using this palette. The mattes blended well and layered nicely. The shimmers were okay, I think maybe using a glitter glue would help them stand out more. I wore it for almost 12 hours and there was no fading or creasing (I used Milani's eye primer). It performed way better than I thought it would and for $15, I'd say it's definitely worth picking up if you like these kinds of shades.

Final thoughts...I think the Ghost Stories palette performs better than the Ouija palette, but I prefer the colors in the Ouija palette over the ones in the Ghost Stories palette. I honestly don't think I'll use either very much though. Again, cool tones aren't my favorite and the Ouija palette is almost always going to require me to use another palette with it and I'm too lazy to be bothered with that, I like using one palette. If those things don't bother you though, I do think they're both cute for Halloween and you probably won't be disappointed with either of them.