P R I S M – A Holiday Palette Review

Hi!

When Anastasia Beverly  Hills first put out pictures of their holiday collection for 2017, the only thing that caught my eye was the Prism palette. I love blush, but I am not a fan of blush or face palettes – I find that they are a waste because there’s always one shade that you don’t like or just don’t use. I’m also not a liquid lipstick fan. But the eyeshadows – oh, those beautiful eyeshadows. That palette called to me.

To be honest, I was ready to accept that I was never going to have it ( When ABH says limited edition they tend to mean it – RIP Master by Mario palette) when my friend Sarah was kind enough to volunteer to be a mule for me. I placed my Sephora order and have been using the palette ever since and I’m ready to review it.

Let’s start with the good stuff – these shades blend. I am extremely lazy and yet these shadows always look so much better than any other shadows because they are seamless without effort. Every single shade was super easy to use – even with a dry brush (I tend not to wet my brushes and not to use fingers; too much effort). I will say that the foiled shimmers work a lot better with a synthetic flat brush – I’m using a R20 one from Signature cosmetics.

The pigmentation was also definitely there – Eden was the lightest shade, almost too light for me but it showed up. The shades I was not a fan of were quite pigmented as well, it was a case of dip twice and blend once. I don’t really mind going back to add more, so they were fine for me.

The bad news is that the dark shades are quite chalky. The Modern Renaissance palette had beautiful dark shades that were super soft, but the Prism palette just does not have the same level of softness. This is a really minor difference but it is there and it is noticable.

The even worse news is that two of the shades are a bit sucky. The shade Sphere is meant to be a neon yellow. Mine is a lot more flat and green toned. It’s by no means a bad shadow, but it was disappointing not to get the bright yellow I’ve been seeing in everyone’s Instagrams. The shade Osiris was also quite disappointing – it looks like a dark blue foiled glitter shade, but is more deep chalky purple matte with lavender glitter. The first day I used it, it looked awful. It was mostly my fault for being late and not having time to build it up, but I usually don’t expect metallics to need that much work. I used it again as part of a purple smoky eye, and it was much better.

The final problem was glitter transfer. I know I have hooded eyes but it really sucks when your eyeshadow is a mess just three hours in…

Look, I know there’s lots of negatives in this post, but honestly I really love the Palette. The colour selection is amazingly creative and they are easy to use pigmented shadows. It is expensive (local resellers are pricing it around R1000) but it’s worth it for me.

I’d say if you’re into doing interesting and fun looks on your eye, and are an ABH fan, get the Palette if you can afford it. But if you like a neutral look, this is not for you. It was actually a bit difficult to put together a look that wasn’t glam with this. That’s not a complaint – just an observation. 😀😉