Great eye makeup - very long lasting well worth the money (Benefit Big Beautiful Eyes)

Member Name: emmajt81

Product:	Benefit Big Beautiful Eyes
Date:	15/10/09 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No need to reapply during the day - colour lasts - great combination of colours

Disadvantages: A bit expensive but it's worth the price tag - could do with a bit more product too

Recently I came back from Portugal and spotted this little gem in the booklet on my Monarch plane home. I am one of those people who is now at an age where I have a set routine for my makeup and always use the same colours. I am fairly good at blending, have nearly perfected it over the years. For about 3 years now I have used something very similar to this product by Lancome. My main stipulation is the dark brown has to be very dark and it has to have a lighter colour in the palette for blending. So when I saw this, and saw it was by Benefit who are a great brand, I thought I'd give it a go.

The product comes in a little box sleeve - you pull it out and the lid of the product flips over - it's magnetic so when it closes it really does shut properly, although I always put it back into the sleeve anyway. It's actually a very cute little package. At the top you will find instructions on how to give yourself 'big beautiful eyes' if you need any tips, and at the bottom is your palette. It has a concealer (which I don't use at all) and three eye shadow colours - one of which is supposed to be a liner but they are best as simple eyeshadows in my opinion. You also get two brushes to apply it with, one which has two ends and one which has one end.

The eyeshadows in this palette are dark brown, light brown, and a base. I use the base to cover my lid first, and then apply the lighter brown more in towards the eye sockets, and then use the dark drown from the middle out towards the edge of the eye and up towards the eye brow, blending it as I go so it looks like a gradual change of colour. I do still use my Lancome eyeshadow but mainly because as well as a dark brown, in that palette I also got a very light almost goldy colour which is great for a quick sweep directly under your eyebrows for a bit of shine and glimmer and again to blend the brown into. So I am using both alongside each other now! The eyeshadow goes on smoothly and the brushes are really easy to use. One thing I will say is that you don't get much eyeshadow - there's a fair big of packaging and it's quite bulky to fit in your makeup bag, but the eye shadow itself isn't very big.

Like I said I've been using the similar Lancome product for a while, which was about the same price to be honest, but I have found that the Benefit product actually stays on my eyes all day long - no need for reapplying. I'd find with the Lancome product that after 6 or 8 hours the dark brown would have faded and I'd need to top it up. Not with Benefit - even in recent temperature of 110 degrees in Vegas where my friends' makeup was actually melting on her face and giving her panda eyes (nice!) mine stayed in place perfectly! This is why it's always better to buy makeup for a bit more money rather than the cheap stuff! My Lancome product never used to melt on my face either - just gradually faded whereas Benefit doesn't.

All in all this is a great product - perhaps a bit less packaging and more eyeshadow would be better but this eyeshadow is very very good regardless. I paid £16.50 for this onboard Monarch so I have no idea how much this is in normal shops - I would imagine about £20. I would still pay this and I hope they don't discontinue it anytime soon because this is such a good long lasting product. And the colour looks fab! Well worth buying.

Summary: Great eye makeup - very long lasting well worth the money - add it to your makeup bag