Mehron Paradise Basics Palette

I've been wanting a Mehron palette for a long time now. Yet every year at Halloween I waste money on the crappy makeup from the Halloween store that doesn't work. I made it a point this year to get some water-activated face paints because cream makeup is not a friend to my oily skin at all, and I need to do my whole face red this year. So, after researching a whole lot, I ended up ordering the Mehron Paradise Basics Palette.

I was looking at their pastel palette as well, but went with this one because it has the main colors you need, especially the red that I need! It comes with 8 colors: black, red, blue, orange, white, yellow, green and brown. The color pans in these palettes pop out (there are little holes in the back of each one that you can stick a paperclip or something in to help pop out the pans, pretty much like how the Stila palettes are. They sell refills of these colors and many, many more pretty much anywhere online that sells face paints. I looked everywhere for the best deal on these palettes and I ended up getting it off of eBay.

As I stated earlier, these are water activated, meaning you just spray a little water on the top of them to get them working. You can use them with brushes, sponges, cosmetic wedges - pretty much any tool you want to, to create your desired effects.

The paints smell like coconut, which is pretty cool - it's a pleasant smell to sniff while you're doing face paint on yourself or someone else! It also dries really quickly and stays as long as you want it to. The paints will tend to rub off if you keep touching them, but if you use a makeup setting spray it stops them from transferring!

Now for some swatches to show you how pigmented these babies are:

These were all created by dipping my finger into the paint and putting one swipe on the back of my hand. Pretty awesome! I have been playing with these a bunch lately and I'm excited to have some quality paints to use this Halloween. I've already recorded a demo of my husband's Halloween makeup using them, that should hopefully be up on my YouTube channel soon!

This is a picture of the white once it's dry so you can see the difference. I love that they have this finish, it's so much nicer than having cream makeup that never quite sets!! I should mention that they are buildable and you can layer them to create as much intensity as you'd like, which needs to be done with the white more than any other color in the palette.

I wanted to try the Basics palette out to see how I like the paints and now that I know I love them I may have to pick up the pastel palette and a few extra colors as well! They have 4 or 5 different palettes and a ton of the single colors that you can get - endless possibilities! Hopefully these will continue to inspire me to be creative and actually use them for more than just Halloween.