New e.l.f. Beauty Book [Bright Eye Edition]

I've only ever tried e.l.f.'s concealer [which I like] and their amazing brushes [which I love], but I've always been a bit skeptical about the rest of their stuff.


However, their previous kits seem to be popular, and I read a few posts about these new e.l.f. Beauty Books and for $5 it couldn't hurt to try one.

The Beauty books come with 12 shadows, an eye liner and a sponge applicator. 

 

On the inside flap, they also have instructions on how to apply the shadows and different techniques to achieve different looks.

 

 For some reason, the bottom left corner shadow would not photograph well. It was a kind of light yellowish color. I tried taking multiple pictures but it kept looking white.

That was the closest I could manage.

Appearance wise, I really liked it. The shadows also looked vibrant but also wearable which I think is something a lot of bright shadows lack. These looked like something I could actually wear in real life without looking like I was trying to hard. 

Sadly, I was quickly disappointed when I saw what the color payoff was like.

All pictures were taken in natural light and the swatches are without primer.  The shadows don't have names so I'll use their positions as a reference.

The only one that was pigmented in this set was the first one on the right. In the palette, this is the bottom right corner shadow [dark brown]

The green shadow next to it, actually came out looking gray, but that might have more to do with my own skin color and not the shadow. As for the other two, I had to swatch them over and over to achieve any kind of color. 

In this set, I actually really loved the two middle colors. They were very shimmery and pigmented.  On the palette these are the two middle ones in the middle row. The other two colors were the same as the one in the previous set, I had a hard time getting them to show up at all. 

These shadows were my least favorite. The first shadow from the left was much too shimmery, even for me. It looked too white and frosty. 

The huge disappointment, however, was the shadow all the way to the right. In the palette, it's the top right corner one and it looks like a deep, very rich purple/royal blue, but it was a mess. It barely showed up at all and the color turned into a weird too bright blue, not at all what I expected.  

The other two colors are nothing special, just varying shades of purple.

The eyeliner is just a standard black eyeliner. It's not smudge or waterproof. 

ps. Please ignore my super dry hands, I was washing my vacuum cleaner right before I did these swatches. I didn't even know vacuum cleaners could be washed before today, but I digress...

After rubbing it for five seconds.

Overall, the Beauty Book left a lot to be desired. I only really liked two of the shadows, which makes it totally not worth it since there are 12 of them. Although it was only $5, I expected a bit more considering the raves e.l.f. usually gets. 

Maybe they would have been better if I used a primer, but I don't think an eyeshadow should rely on a primer to get it to show up at all, only to intensify it. If it's not good to start with, it's not worth it to me. I think there are better brands of drugstore makeup that cost about the same and give you a better color payoff.