bareMinerals High Shine Eye Color Review, Photos, Swatches

Christine — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 11:00:02 +0000

Bare Escentuals High Shine Eye Color

Killing Me Softly with Bad Packaging

Bare Escentuals High Shine Eye Color ($16.00 for 0.05 oz.) are kind of amazing. If you’re looking for intensely pigmented, smooth as silk, and bright, metallic-like eyeshadows, Bare Escentuals has you covered. There are six shades available: Frost (silver), Moonshine (deep plum), Patina (gilded khaki), Electric (deep teal), Bronzed (bronze brown), and Glisten (golden sand).

These apply so smoothly–as if they were creams or liquids, but they’re very much a loose powder. The powder seems incredibly finely milled, which helps give it that silky texture and intensifies the color as it holds together impeccably. Though I find these shades rather high-shine to wear alone, I love them as bases or mixed with other shadows. I did try wearing Glisten on its lonesome to test for creasing, and it wore well–no creasing six hours later.

Frost is a bright metallic silver. This is easily the most dupeable shade, as most silvers tend to be on the metallic side in finish (if it’s not, then it’s more of a gray, is it not?)
Moonshine is a softened mauve-tinged plum. This shade seemed the least metallic of the bunch.
Patina is a gilded olive green with gold shimmer-sheen. This one is gorgeous if you’re a green fiend!
Electric is a softened blue that pulls just slightly teal. It’s really not teal to me, though–maybe a dusty teal?
Bronzed is a warm bronze with a metallic sheen. This also felt a bit dupeable; it’s just one of those warm bronzes you see often. It doesn’t make it bad, just not necessarily the one to get.
Glisten is a tarnished gold with a metallic sheen. This was my other favorite, along with Patina, but I’m a total sucker for antique golds…

These are beautiful from first swatch to application, but there is a major drawback to this product line. The applicator/tube is a total no-go! However they managed it, when you pull the applicator out of the tube (which is a large sponge-tipped applicator), it also pulls a ton of product onto the edges. In essence, it pulls out far too much product on the applicator itself as well as leaves a lot along the rim of the tube (which just falls on your floor, lap, or wherever!).

I would recommend dumping the color into a jar or else cutting the applicator off — because it seems like the larger sponge-tip does pull much of the excess to the rim, so if you just snipped it off entirely (and used a separate brush to apply), you could leave it in the tube. (Ironically, they tout the applicator as a “convenient, quick-draw wand [that] allows for easy, on-the-go application.”)