Sleek Storm

I've never really been into shopping online (I'm impatient, don't want the hassle of lost or faulty shipments and hate paying for shipping), but my growing beauty habit changed all that. Living in Australia means not only are cosmetics overpriced, but we simply don't have access to a lot of popular international brands and products. While I still struggle with my impatience (and wonder incessantly about my orders in transit, and why they haven't reached me yet), the reality is, even with shipping costs factored in, a lot of online purchases still turn out to be better value, notwithstanding the fact you're getting something you want that's not available in stores.

I've read so much about the high street UK makeup brand Sleek and was fairly keen to try out a few items in their range to see if they lived up to all the positive reviews. As Sleek can't be purchased here, I ended up ordering 2 i-Divine palettes (Storm and Bad Girl) and the Rose Gold blush. I wanted to get the Au Naturel palette as well, but it was (and still remains) sold out on their website. I choose Storm because from swatches I'd seen, it looked right up my alley, and Bad Girl because the dramatic, dark shades seemed ideal for going out/nighttime, and the Pixiwoo girls have featured the palette in a couple of their videos (e.g. Rock Chic, Lea Michele at the Golden Globes 2012). I'll make posts about the Bad Girl palette and Rose Gold blush later, but for now I'll focus on the Storm palette.

With flash

Storm contains 9 shimmery/metallic shades and 3 matte shades (a light tan, medium brown and black). Much like the Naked palette, the matte shadows don't really attract me and I don't don't anticipate I'll use them very much. The pigmentation of the mattes isn't as good as the shimmery shades, the light tan is too similar to my skin tone to make any impact and the black is nothing special. My favourite colour in the palette is probably the 7th from the left in the above swatches, great for a smokey bronze eye. The colours in the first row are generally quite light and orange/yellow-leaning, and might be a tad too warm for my skin tone. I prefer the darker metallic shades in the second row, though they're a little heavy for daytime wear. The shade second from the left looks like it might be useful for highlighting, but it's quite frosty and white, so I wouldn't recommend it for that purpose. Overall, the shadows didn't disappoint in terms of pigmentation and texture, and I was pleasantly surprised by the streamlined and compact packaging. The large mirror is a bonus and great for travel.

I purchased my i-Divine palette direct from the Sleek website, where it sells for $US10. While shipping is $13.50, it still works out to be cheaper than if I purchased through Crush Cosmetics (though you'd have to wait longer). Sleek don't provide tracking links for orders, which isn't ideal, but not uncommon. I made my order on 26 January, it was despatched on 2 February and arrived 17 February. Not exactly speedy, but reasonable for standard international delivery. At the very least it got here, which is more than can be said for 2 other orders I made from other websites around the same time. Did I mention my love-hate relationship with Internet shopping?