Again with all my little expensive make up sets my mum tends to buy them for stocking fillers and birthday presents for me - I tend to like the normal brands like Rimmel & Max Factor.

This Benefit Primpcess set was a birthday this year and to be honest this was the first time I have tried out the Benefit brand. Wasn't sure what to expect but I always heard good friends so had very high expectations.

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The packaging

The make up box is made out of a hard cardboard and opens at the bottom using a magnetic clasp. The outside of the box is orange in colour and the background image kind of resembles a throne cushion. The sides of the box and inside are a pink purple colour.

When you pop the lid open the inside resembles a cute little make up case complete with a mirror, mascara tucked nicely into its own little holder, eye colours all grouped together and the creaseless cream sitting at the bottom next to the eye brightner and concealer. The outside of the box looks great but the inside is very chic. You will be proud to carry this around in your handbag!

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Labelling

The front of the box claims this make up set is a "glamorous eye pinting kit" - and also gives you the name of the product and brand on a lightly pink background.

On the back of the box it tells you what is inside, which consists of:

* 1 x "Bad Girl Lash" - Mascara - 4g
* 3 x Eye shadows in cream (accent shadow), pink (contour shadow) and brown (liner shadow) - 0.8g
* 1 x Creaseless cream shadow liner (which comes in a pot as opposed to the other colours) - 3.2g
* 1 x Boi-Ing (which is desribed as an "industrial strength concealer") - 1.25g
* 1 x Eye bright (which is pink in colour and used to "waken up your eyes") - 1.25g

You also get two little brushes in this for application!

So as you can see you don't get very much of each product in the set and they are more like test samples.

Dissapointing fact for me has to be on the back where it gives you a total shelf life of up to 6 months. Not very good for an expensive make up set if you don't get a lot of use out of it.

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What do I think of the products?!

I will start by telling you the best bit of this set - for me, my favourite thing has to be the creaseless cream which does exactly what the packaging says which I was very happy with... I normally need to be careful with eye make up because I do have a lot of wrinkles on my eyelids which I am quite self-concious about. The colour of this is a light bronze/cream colour and in the pot it comes in you literally put a finger in and rub a bit out. The texture is like a hard mousse. The colour goes great with my complection and you can use other eyeshadow on top for a more dramatic look - it also doesnt rub off or cause irritation. I have been using the creaseless cream for 2 months constantly since my birthday and when you look in the pot barely any has been used so has the potencial to last a long time. My favourite thing in this set.

I wasn't too impressed with the concealer or the eye brightner - I hated the concealer as it was quite hard to mix in (it went bright orange on my skin) and wasn't the same texture that I am used to... and the eye brightner goes on to my skin bright pink and when rubbed in and you happen to not be wearing a lot of other make up, it can make you look a bit poorly.

The mascara is quite small and compact which I liked for carrying around in my handbag and it did work well at making my lashes quite dramatic - which is hard as I barely have any! However I noticed after about 6 weeks of use the mascara got quite clumpy and I ended up having to throw away as it was useless. That was dissapointing for me as I would expect mascara to last arounnd 3 months, and a Benefit one to last much longer!

I quite liked the cream and pink eye shadows for a nice, light natural look and was great to going to work in. However when using the brown as a liner, it didn't work well for me... made me look a bit of a panda no matter how little I used and didnt blend in well with the cream and pink. So I tend to use just the pink and cream on their own.

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Price & Availability

I believe my mum got this in a Debenhams display and I have no idea what she paid for it, but when I look online the cheapest I can find it is £14.59 on Ebay!