Smashbox Eye Wish Palette review, swatches, photos.

According to Smashbox, this palette is

A limited-edition mega eye palette that includes 12 shadows, four cream eyeliners, and mini versions of Photo Finish Lid Primer and Mini Lash DNA Mascara, all in an elegant, gold, mirrored keepsake box.

This versatile eye palette helps you create an endless array of festive eye looks using Smashbox’s step-by-step “Get-the-Look” cards, included with this palette, which illustrate countless ways to wear these stunning shades. Eyeshadows and liners are numbered for easy application according to the “Get-the-Look” instructions .

It contains:

12 x 0.63 oz eyeshadows in champagne, soft gray, matte bone, ballet pink, shimmering bronze, mauve, aqua, cool gray, warm brown, eggplant, deep teal, and charcoal
- 4 x 0.105 oz cream eyeliners in dark brown, black violet, blue-black, and gunmetal
- 1 x 0.02 oz Photo Finish Lid Primer Mini
- 1 x 0.20 oz Lash DNA Mascara Mini

It coems housed in this beautiful gold textured box, and opens up quite space-efficiently. There’s no extra space wasted here, and there is a decently sizable mirror inside.

I purchased this just before Christmas as there was a deal at Smashbox.com for a free waterproof palette with a $25 purchase, and this just seemed like too good a deal to pass up. At $45, this palette is a pretty good deal even by itself as it houses 12 shadows, 4 cream liners, a mini mascara, and a mini primer. The shadows are very sizable and I can see this lasting a really long time.

It does come with a primer and mascara. The primer is OK as primers go—I don’t find it as long lasting as UDPP or TFSI (Too Faced Shadow Insurance), but it does brighten colors just as well as those two primers do. I don’t think I’ll repurchase, but it’s a nice travel sized eye primer to go.

I really love it when companies include mascara minis in these palettes, because it gives me a chance to try new wands and mascaras that I don’t normally get to. It’s a pretty sweet deal. The Lash DNA mascara included here is very nice, providing a really nice, natural-looking thickening effect that doesn’t ever build up to be spidery-leggy, though it can clump up. It is a pretty fat wand, so I would wipe it off before I use it on my eyes.

The palette itself contains 12 beautiful shadows and 4 cream liners. These are not in Smashbox’s famous Jet Set formula, and these do move around quite a lot, and crease if you use it as a cream shadow. I do find though that these are absolutely beautiful as smudged liner  with some of the matching shadow over it. If these were in the Jet Set formula though, that would have been much more preferable as these do smudge and move around all over the place when they are not smudged and set with powder.

The shadows are quite beautiful, and come in a variety of finishes. I especially love the inclusion of a dark, almost-gray black and a cream color both in a matte formula. These two matte colors go a long way to make this palette more versatile for work time as well as being your go-to palette for the holiday parties. The colors are rich and pigmented and go on smoothly. My swatches are on a dry arm but let me assure you that these look beautiful over a primer. The jewel tones in particular are so rich and wondrous—my favorite are #10 and #11. Just beautiful jewel tones in blues and purples. Be still, my heart!  Those colors particularly look beautiful over their matching liners.

The palette also includes some useful, easy warm browns as well as grays and black, so it can go from super smokey, or super colorful, to also neutral and work-friendly.

These blend beautifully and are well-milled and buttery. It’s my first encounter with Smashbox eyeshadows and I confess I am very, very pleased with the formula! Even the mattes are quite soft and not at all chalky.

Overall, I think I can give this palette a B+. It’s definitely a keeper for me, and I’ve been using it a lot, but it would have been better if the cream liners were in a better formula and didn’t smudge all the time.

Hit the jump for swatches.