When I visited Amsterdam with Kruidvat in December, I was spoiled with a huge Sinterklaas bag filled with Kruidvat goodies. Since Kruidvat had just picked up a range of I Heart Makeup products to sell as a special, temporary offer, I was lucky enough to receive the Chocolate Palette, €9,99, and the Unicorn Hearts rainbow highlighter, €5.99. These are two very popular, very affordable products that have become collector's items because of their aesthetic value. Since these are so sought-after, and because Belgian beauty lovers are still pretty much unable to buy this anywhere offline, I figured you guys could use a review. Let's dig in!
First up, the Chocolate palette.
This is a really cute, chocolate bar shaped palette containing 16 shimmery eyeshadows in mostly warm, neutral tones, and a few golds thrown in for good measure. The I Heart Makeup chocolate palettes were clearly inspired by the Too Faced chocolate bar palettes, but this is inspiration done right: similar concept, different execution. Honestly, I think the I Heart Makeup packaging is cuter. Sorry, Too Faced!
For these swatches, I applied one finger swipe to my forearm. I was honestly very pleasantly surprised by the pigmentation of this palette, seeing that it's just 10 bucks. Not every shade performs as well, but on average this is very decent performance for the price point. Golden is the clear standout shade, pretty much the most gorgeous, molten gold foil eyeshadow I have ever swatched. These shadows work best with a heavy duty primer underneath, which will help the colours last throughout the day. I feel like quality-wise, this palette performs better than my Makeup Revolution palettes.
I do feel like a lot of the shades are just TOO similar, which is a pet peeve for me: I'd take a smaller, more efficient palette containing 8 clearly different shades over a repetitive 16 shade palette anyday. Also, literally all of the shades in this palette are shimmery. A 100% shimmery palette simply offers little variation in use. If this palette would contain a couple of mattes for blending and creating depth, this would be a homerun for me. Still, I actually really like this palette and have been using it regularly. Who would have thought!
I used Ribbon, Edible, Cocoa and Limited in this look. Despite the overload of shimmery shades, this is still a very nice look that illustrates how nicely the shadows blend. All in all, great value for money.
Let's look at that Unicorn Hearts highlighter!
The Unicorn Hearts highlighter looks a bit more "budget", with the cardboard packaging. Still, the rainbow heart is absolutely whimsical. It looks like a prop from a My Little Ponies movie - doesn't get much better than that. As far as using it as an actual rainbow highlighter, the shape is not ideal; the cardboard edges come up quite high, making it hard to swipe all the colours in one go with your finger. In addition, the highlight is quite wide, wider than the average person's cheekbones. If you wanted to use this highlighter with all the colours next to each other on your cheek, you'd have to layer the shades one after the other with a thin brush. Kind of a lot of hassle, if you ask me.
The colours sort of kind of show up if you underexpose the pic, but in real life, they all look pretty much the same: like a cool, frosty, super shimmery (but no glitter!) highlighter. I feel like this highlighter does emphasize the skin's texture more than some other highlighters I own, but that might be because the shine is SO out of this world. I mean, if you love that mega in your face frosty highlight, this is an amazing budget option!
Yep, this highlighter does not mess around! I would't wear this on a regular day, but I did pull it out for New Year's eve and used it both as a highlight as well as an eyeshadow. You only need a tiny amount with this because it is quite pigmented, and the highlighter lasts well on my skin. In sum: not a "real" rainbow highlighter in regular use, but still a very lovely, frosty highlighter.
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