Illamasqua Reflection Palette and Shard Lipstick

I don't often post about Illamasqua, whilst I love them and a couple of their products are in my daily staples (liquid liner in Abyss, I'm talking about you), sometimes I find them just a little too edgy, not to mention precise for me.  That said, I love the fact that they take risks, and that they feature shades difficult to find elsewhere.  The Sacred Hour collection, however, is designed for the risk-averse, which is far more down my alley.

My picks from the collection (which also encompasses a set of eyelashes, two blushes, two nail polishes, and a new variant of the Skin Base foundation designed purely for the undereye, plus a set of gems) are the Reflection palette and the lipstick in Shard.
 

Reflection is a selection of almost neutral shades, and Shard is a beautiful plum matte lipstain.  Let's take a closer look:

Natural Light

 

With Flash

The eyeshadows have an innovative powder to cream formulation, almost a gel, which makes them bouncy in the pan, and almost entirely gets rid of fallout, which, particularly with the darker shades is a blessing!

Clockwise from top left, the shades are: Precipice (icy pale yellow), Acute (silvered plum-mauve), Graphica (sparkling charcoal), and Dart (medium bronze).  The shadows are perfect for being applied with your fingers - I found that applying them with a natural-hair brush washed the shades out a bit.  Here they are, applied with a brush without primer:

The yellow doesn't show up so well on my skin as my skin is slightly yellow, but I love the mix of colours, and think it'd be easy to get a range of looks from this quad.  My favourites in particular are Acute (surprise!) and Graphica.  I find the shadows to be long-lasting even without a primer.

Here you can see them with the lipstick, which I adore. A long-lasting stain, this is a perfect cool purple (or, as illamasqua describe it, a red-violet).   It can be applied fully as a completely opaque lipcolour, or sheered out as a stain, as below:

Applied fully, you can get a proper "goth" look going on, which I rather like, but your mileage may vary.  I don't find it quite as drying as Illamasqua's other matte lipsticks (ironically), and the stain has excellent lasting properties.

What do you think of my picks of the Sacred Hour collection?

The Fine Print: PR Samples.

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