NYX Primal Colors

I was really super excited when I saw these, even though NYX shadows are always a hit or miss for me. It's the first time I've seen crazy neons from them and decided to give them a try. I got 2 colors - Hot Yellow and Hot Red - because yellows and reds are the two HARDEST shadows to find (especially good ones). Why not put these to the test?

I will say, I wanted to love these but they were just kind of disappointing. You can get them to work well if you do some work, which I will talk about in a minute...the thing that totally sucks, which I didn't realize until after I had done my YouTube video about them, is that these aren't eye safe. They're just "face and body powders" even though the sites that sell them, sell them in the eyeshadow section. So dumb! So now they're even LESS useful to me, because even if I'm using them for SFX work, I've still got to lay down a white base before I can even use them. Not worth it whe I can just use a Mehron paint!

Here's Hot Yellow with and without flash - I think I knew as soon as I opened it and took a peek up close that it was going to be chalky.

Hot Red is more pigmented than the yellow, but still has some issues.

Now for the swatches:

As you can see, they're powdery and chalky with no base. You NEED a base with these. I used NYX's white eyeshadow base on the right and you can clearly see what a difference that makes. You really need to pat the color on to get full intensity, and even then they give some issues with blending. But if you're looking for good bright shadows that you don't mind putting a little work into, these are only $6 a piece so in the grand scheme of things, they're really not that bad. I just wasn't as amazed with them as I thought I would be. I have a few yellows and a few reds that give that awesome pigmentation without having to work hard at it, granted they are a little bit more pricey than the NYX Primal Colors, but I just prefer the lazier way of not having to pack on color so much to get it to show!

You can see my quick review video of these here: