Review: Rimmel Glam'Eyes HD Palette in True Union Jack

I recently had a spot of luck and managed to bag myself a few Rimmel goodies from Danniella when she held a Twitter giveaway! I'm an avid fan of her beautiful blog Beauty in Japan and was absolutely ecstatic that I'd won. She even popped in an extra special present which I'll tell you more about soon! One of the products I received was the Glam'Eyes HD Palette in True Union Jack. I was so excited about this. I love the design and the colours. It's very cool and innovative and I sure do love me some home pride! I've looked at these palettes in Boots before and kept putting them back because I couldn't justify £6.99 on something that I probably wouldn't use very often.

As I've said, I love the design. It's very compact and attractive. The packaging is surprisingly sturdy and I've even knocked this onto the floor from a substantial height (accidentally!) and the shadows stayed intact. It comes with a tiny double-ended sponge applicator which went into the pile with all my others. Handy to have in an emergency but I tend to use brushes. The back of the palette shows a little diagram of a suggested way to wear it which is great for such an adventurous palette. It can sometimes be a little overwhelming trying to figure out what to do with a colour combo like this.

I have to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. The pigmentation wasn't anything to write home about and the highlight shade had very high fall out. You can see the photo above that there's silver shimmer all over the place and it doesn't even seem to have a real base, it's just shimmer! The two brights are quite sheer and it was nigh impossible to build them up. The black outer corner shade was the stand out for me, pigmentation was good and it was soft and easy to blend. It's just a shame that there's such a tiny amount of it in the palette.

You can see here how sheer the colours are on me. I found that even as I was applying it the pigmentation was fading rapidly and trying to blend them made them disappear completely. It was also very difficult to manoeuvre my brushes around the palette because the pans are so small and in such awkward shapes. I really struggled to load my brushes with precision. I honestly wouldn't wear this out of the house. I think I just looked messy and I wouldn't expect my eye shadow to look as washed out as this even after a long day.

I don't think of myself as being particularly difficult to please so I was surprised at how much I struggled with this! I think it's possible that the paleness of my skin had an effect on how pigmented these looked because I've looked at quite a few reviews and they all seem to be positive and the swatches look great. Very weird. Regardless of my experience, I think it's well worth having a go with one of these palettes, you can get them for just £1.99 at Fragrance Direct here. There are some really pretty colour combinations in the range and I'm sad that it didn't work for me!

Final Verdict: Just did not work for me. Worth a go for £1.99 but don't say I didn't warn you!

Have you tried these palettes? How do you rate Rimmel's eye shadows? 

Lauren