Sparkled Beauty

So, I went and got 5 of the Cover Girl Flamed Out eyeshadow pencils. Here's a quick review and swatches for you :)

These are the regular pencils that need sharpening, not the twist up kind. The tight plastic seals on the products are great in preventing store swatching, but hard to remove. Be careful when you try to take them off with a sharp tool :)

As I mentioned in the haul, the shade names aren't printed on the pencils, only numbers. I'm not a fan of referring to a shade by numbers, come on Cover Girl!

Here they are, close up.

From top to bottom: 300 Silver Flame, 345 Ice Flame, 335 Ashen Glow Flame, 310 Red Hot Flame and 350 Melted Caramel Flame.

Cover Girl went earth toned with these pencils, interesting choice for a summer release. Red Hot Flame is definitely a unique shade for eyeshadows, especially drugstore.

Look how pretty they are all lined up. This explains my constant weakness for this type of products.

None of these 5 shades are matte. They all carry a shimmery sheen, some stronger than others. A note before we continue on, I intensified the swatches by swiping the pencils a few more times than what I would normally do on the lids, to show you the colours.

On the eyes, they will look a bit more sheer and subtle. Also, the pencils have a drier texture to them, which makes blending not as easy.

On the first row:
300 Silver Flame is more of a darker grey with silver sheen.

345 Ice Flame is a baby blue, the kind of shade that brightens your eyes.

335 Ashen Glow Flame is the light olive green with gold shimmers.

Something I haven't experienced before is that these Flamed Out pencils offer a cool feeling in contact. They are awesome to wake up tired eyes in the morning or chill them out on hot summer days. Brownie points!

Second row:
310 Red Hot Flame is an orange-y red, quite bright.

350 Melted Caramel Flame is beautiful, the taupe leaning to brown colour that lots of us love.

The eyeshadows are soft but not crumbly nor breaking easily, easy to apply. If worn as eyeshadows, they need to be built up for the colours to show. Worn as base, they create a beautiful canvas for whatever is applied on top of them.

I found a perfect way to wear these pencils - lighter shade in the inner corner, darker shade in the outer corner and a powder eyeshadow in the crease to blend out the edges. Check out the FOTD to see how that looks.

A word of warning: I do NOT suggest wearing these eyeshadows on the waterline or the tear duct! I found that out the hard way, please follow the link above to the FOTD post for more details.

Wear wise, these pencils last all day (no base/ primer). I noticed very little fading. No creasing either. All in all, they work well for me as cooling eyeshadow bases. Think of them as the Hourglass ambient powders, adding the glow to your eyes but from underneath instead of on top of the makeup.

The only thing I would ask Cover Girl to change on these is to print their names on the products, and tweak the formula so they could be used in the waterline.

If you are out hunting for this Cover Girl Flamed Out collection, the floor display (pictured, spotted at Lawtons and Shoppers) is big and 2-sided, The table-top display (spotted at Walmart) is smaller, with less products.

The eyeshadow pencils retail around $7.50 each, 10 shades in total, 2 each. I'm not sure they are permanent or LE. Review of the eyeshadow pots is coming soon.