Since MUA sprung up a couple of years ago with their pocket money range of affordable and good quality makeup available both in Superdrug stores and online, there’s been a handful of other companies jumping on the budget beauty bandwagon.
You can keep your rush of spending £40 on a blusher and I’ll keep the thrill I get when I find myself a beauty bargain or a dupe. I love a good peruse of the beauty aisles of discount stores such as Home Bargains and Poundland and just the other day I took a stroll amid the lotions and potions of B&M and came across a rather familiar looking makeup range.
At first glance of the packaging of this range you’d be forgiven for thinking it was MUA, but a closer look shows it branded as The Colour Experts range. This wasn’t your usual 1 or 2 items which is common place in B&M, there was an entire display of The Colour Experts range including eyeshadow palettes, blushers, lipsticks, eyeliner, mascaras, powders and nail polish.
I decided to pick up a few bits all in the name of yknow, blogging research.
The palette emblazoned NAKED is also called the Natural 2 palette and is what I’m taking as a dupe for the ever popular Naked 2 Palette. MUA do this exact palette in the new white packaging (which I already own – duplicate dupe!) and it goes by the name of Undress Me Too.
Comprising of 3 matte and 8 shimmer shades this palette is an excellent dupe for the 2nd in the Naked series from Urban Decay. Offering up cool taupe and rich bronze shades the shimmer shadows in this palette are a brilliant quality for the price. The matte shadows as with most budget priced matte shadows aren’t up to much cop and come off quite chalky and to be quite frank, don’t really get much use from me. I swatched a few of my favourite shades to show the pay off of colour without primer and I’m pleasantly surprised.
Ideal taupe and bronze shades for upcoming autumnal smokey eyes.
I find that what can distinguish a budget product from your normal drugstore or high end brand is the branding and packaging. I’m a sucker for product with a cute name and have found myself buying a lipstick or an eyeshadow palette based entirely on the name (ILOVEITITSMYTHINGLETITGO) and the initial lack of names on the shadows or lipsticks from MUA made the products feel cheaper somehow.
“What colour is your eyeshadow?”
“Shade 2”
…isn’t quite as glamorous or intriguing as “Sin” or “Gunmetal”, but I suppose its a small price to pay for an, uh, well.. small price to pay.
The blushers and lipsticks are a different story each with their own name. There are 7 different matte blush shades on offer each owing their name to a different day of the week. I picked up Warm Wednesday and Cool Sunday, a warm peach shade and a cool pink and I’ve a sneaking suspicion I’ll be heading back to pick up the other 5 shades to complete my set. Unlike the chalky matte eyeshadows the blushers are pretty good quality with decent colour pay off.
The “highlighter” of this trio is actually an eyeshadow in Shade 2 but for me is a little cool to actually use an eyeshadow. I did intend to use this on the inside of my eye to brighten (like all the gurus do) but after falling in love with the iridescent pinky glow that this gave when swatched I’ve decided to use it for a highlight.
The lipstick disappointed me a little in that there isn’t as bold a colour pay off as I would have liked. This is the shade “Jazz” which I expected to be quite a deep plum shade judging by the bullet/packaging but when swatched it was more of a berry shade – there were no testers on the stand so I couldn’t swatch until I got home!
Like MUA the single products such as the blushers and lipsticks come in at a not so bank breaking £1 and the palettes? Well they come in at £1.50 cheaper than the MUA counterparts at £2.50 – 31p an eyeshadow? Not so shabby.
Have you seen The Colour Experts range in your local B&M?
The eyeshadows and blushers look amazinggg! Thank you for the tip!
Jasmine // Magpie Jasmine