Smashbox Full Exposure Palette – The Perfect Neutral Palette.

I think it’s one of my biggest reviews of all time. There are a lot of swatches and it’s going to be very interesting.

An universal eyeshadow palette is one of the girl’s must haves. That’s why today I’m going to tell you about a fabulous palette of such kind. Smashbox Full Exposure consists of 14 neutral shades – from nudes to blacks, from shimmers to mattes. The top row has 7 shimmery shades and the bottom row has 7 matte shades.

In addition to this you will get a nice bonus. The palette comes with a step by step guide to make up most of your eye shape. After 9 years research of 5000 different faces Smashbox experts made a great study and worked out a breakthrough eye shape chart for six common eye shapes found throughout the world. Let’s have a look at the chart:

For almond and round eye shapes:

For upturned and downturned eye shapes:

For monolid and hooded eye shapes:

There’s also a dual-ended brush to use with both formulas. The fluffy end is perfect for blending matte shades and the flat end helps you to lay down shimmer shades. Smashbox experts thoughtfully divide the brush into two parts with black bristles on one side and white on the other, so you’ll never mix dark shades with light ones.

The brush is quite soft. It isn’t like the Hakuhodo brush, but it’s quite useful. To prove it I’ll do a test for you. We take the brush, touch the petal with it and see the result. To the right there’s one more petal without any defects. You clearly see no difference between them, don’t you? By the way, the bristles of the brush are artificial on both sides.

Now let’s talk about the shades themselves. As for me it is a fantastic range of shades for both beginners and pros.

Personally I divide the palette not only into the top and bottom rows, but also into the right and the left parts. Though the shades are considered to be neutral, it seems to me that the left part has warm shades and to the right you’ll find cold colours.

The shimmer shades sparkle and glitter beautifully in sunshine.

To my mind the colours are true to life. The range of the colours is generally beige, but with some shades which can give you an opportunity to accentuate your eye colour and to work with your eye shape. The palette has everything you need. That’s why creating nude makeup isn’t a problem for me anymore. With this palette I have every necessary colour ready to hand.

Let’s have a look at the swatches. Here all the shades are layered over a primer and shown with maximum pigmentation in the same order as in the palette: shimmers on top and mattes on the bottom.

To conclude I can say that all the shimmery shades are tent to fall out all over the face (except S4, which is ideal). They are difficult to work with and the best way to apply the shimmery shades for me is to press them down across the lid. The matte shades are beautiful, smooth and perfectly blendable. When using over a primer all the shades are quite long-lasting. I’ve never used any eyeshadows without a primer because of my hooded eye shape.

And now your favorite and long-awaited part – eye makeup examples!

The first is simple and cold, one of my favourite. S4 used all over the lid with a black eye liner.

Here we use S4 with dark S6 in the corner to get an evening makeup.

Use S4 (my favourite one as you can see) in the corner and S3 all over the lid to get a very simple, but spectacular variant.

Here we have a matte variant, an example of truly nude makeup. Add M4 in the corner of your eye and under the eyebrow and M5 in the crease.

A bit complex variant of makeup. Use M4 in the inner corner and under the eyebrow, M2 in the crease and M7 in the outer corner of your eye for an impressive office makeup.

For a more dramatic look we use the black shade all over the lid and add S7 over it.

I think Smashbox made an organic and sophisticated palette with the help of which you can create so many different looks and you can hardly fail with one of them. And, of course, it’s a great palette to have if you’re a neutral lover (like me). The range of colours is wonderful and you can wear most of them individually.

That’s all for now. I hope the review was useful for those who read it till the end and didn’t forget the beginning.

Price: 48$

Score: 5 (out of 5)