Review: The Blushed Nudes by Maybelline

The blushed nudes palette is always all over my Pinterest feed and that’s probably because it looks really pretty (and its pink sooo). Me and this palette met when I needed an extra product to qualify for an offer and thought why not? I love Maybelline and their products make up the core of my collection as you can see in my Makeup Essentials post, so I had high hopes for these shades and was excited to try them.

I am a fan of matte shades as opposed to shimmers so in hindsight this palette was a horrible choice for me. There is only one matte shade which is the ‘pinky purple’ (second to last on the top row) and the rest all have shimmer, some more-so than others (not really sure if this is a pigmentation issue or its supposed to be like that). When I started swatching, the top layer of shimmer was removed from some of the shades and they now swatch near enough matte, with some specs of glitter that are still prominent enough to make me dislike them. Some of the shades I do like, such as the 1 matte shade that I mentioned earlier, as well as the rose gold shimmer shade which would be a really pretty lid colour. As for the rest of the shades, some are mediocre and then some just seriously have no pigment. There’s also loads of kick back when you pick up product with a brush which is a huge con.

I do think there are stunning nude shades in here, I just wish there were more mattes so that I didn’t have to mix and match with shades from my other palettes (I hate putting shimmers in & above my crease). You can make a really pretty rose gold or champagne look with this, and the packaging is really cute. It also comes with a small double ended brush.

One thing I noticed is that the shades are laid out differently for almost everyone, and some peoples pans appear deeper set in the packaging than mine. As you can see from the pictures, mine almost looks flat. On the back of the packaging it describes how the shades are laid out in their order to make trios, duos and quads for set looks, but if the layout is different for some people then I don’t see how that makes sense… Also, there are no shade names, something which would have been cute for a palette like this.

To round off my thoughts on this palette, for beginners this will take a lot of work and could easily turn into one big mess. Arguably though, you get what you pay for at £9.99. The shades lack pigment and many are similar in colour, so you can’t get much definition. Overall, I wouldn’t repurchase this and would recommend you pass on it. The ‘hype’ surrounding it most likely comes from the fact that it looks nice and is a good idea – just not very well executed. I will continue to try and experiment and create different looks using this since I have it, but once I hit pan that’s pretty much it.