A few weeks ago, SMASHBOX released seven mini palettes in collaboration with SHAY MITCHELL. They’re being sold at SEPHORA and ULTA as well as number of other retailers for $29. I purchased the ABLAZE palette. 

It’s a hard plastic palette with a holographic design on the outside. 

It has a large mirror for how small it is and even though it only contains 6.2g of product, the pans are still large enough to use a fluffy blending brush without issue. I think the price is a little high for the amount of product. It works out to $4.68 per gram. But I was attracted to the color scheme and a few people asked me to review these palettes so I figured that I’d try one. I think this is actually the first SMASHBOX product that I’ve bought and overall, I’m pleased!

It contains 8 eyeshadows: 4 shimmers and 4 (mostly) mattes. RELAXED is light peachy beige. This is was the only dud in the palette for me. The texture is powdery and it took a lot of layering to get an opaque swatch. The pigmentation also faded pretty quickly. SIESTA is a rosey copper metallic. It’s soft and rich but I’d recommend using it either wet or with a glitter adhesive for longevity. It faded pretty quickly with just a regular primer. 

NIRVANA is medium berry color. It has microshimmer that doesn’t show up on the skin. I love this color. It has nice color pay off and blends easily. DELIRIOUS is an orangey copper metallic. As with SIESTA it was soft, pigmented and easy to apply.

MOCCASIN is a light peachy gold metallic. It had nice pigmentation but the formula is pretty dusty and the color faded a bit after a few hours.

TORCH is a medium dark reddish bronze. This is only metallic that didn’t fade at all on me during the course of the day. THROWBACK is warm red brown matte with orange undertones. It had really nice pigmentation and blended effortlessly.

DARK HORSE is a very dark brown matte. I was super impressed with this color. It was crazy pigmented and buttery and not the least bit patchy. 

I’m very happy with all of the mattes except for RELAXED which was more powdery and less pigmented than the rest. I liked all the shimmers too but as I mentioned they perform better wet. Although most of the shadows are a bit on the powdery side, I didn’t find that it negatively impacted their performance. This palette definitely has some similarities to other palettes released this year. ABH MODERN RENAISSANCE, VIOLET VOSS HOLY GRAIL and HUDA ROSE GOLD all come to mind. But for me personally, I can’t get enough of these shades. And although I do like this palette a lot, I don’t think I’d buy any of the others. This is the only one that stood out to me as far as colors that I know that I’d use regularly. It’s a great palette for travel and I think most skin tones could create a lot of different eye looks using only this palette. Overall I give it a B+ and I do recommend it.