Awesome Autumn: Essence's Latest Launch is Brilliant Budget Beauty

As we leave the summer corals and sky blues behind, autumn/winter 2015 beckons with budget brand essence leading the way with a new season collection full of warm golds, bronzes and sultry greys. Their new launch includes a collection of palettes, some mascara, nail polish, two matte blushes and some lip products.

At a first glance one could easily dismiss these bargain beauty buys as ‘teen makeup’ mainly down to the brand’s packaging and marketing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some real gems to be found in the range. I especially love the ‘All About Bronze’ and ‘All About Greys’ eyeshadow palettes.

If you are as much as an eyeshadow palette fiend as I am, then you probably already have more than enough of this kinds of colours in your stash to warrant purchasing. That being said, there are some Urban Decay eyeshadow dupes in here, so, if you haven’t managed to get your hands on any of the Naked palettes, then these essence offerings might be worth a look.

One of my favourite eyeshadows of all time is hands down UD’s Half Baked. It’s smooth, pigmented and is an all-round perfect lid shade. When I’m checking out a new eyeshadow, my first port to call is to swatch it next to any similar colours that I already own to get an idea of consistency/tone (how many golds does one girl need? Ahem.. lots apparently).

Imagine my joy when I discovered that the second colour (bottom row) of the All About Bronze palette, is a near dupe for UD’s cult favourite! It is missing some of the complexity of the UD shade, and is a slightly warmer toned, but when applied to the eyelid the effect is very similar.

Another colour in the All about Bronze palette to catch my eye was the first shade (top row). I immediately swatched it next to UD’s Sin eyeshadow and though the latter has a stronger pink champagne base, the two are very comparable. I did notice that the texture of this shadow was slightly crumbly but this can be offset by dampening your eyeshadow brush first with water or some Mac Fix Plus if you’re feeling very fancy! Doing this will in turn make the eyeshadow more metallic and will aid in eyeshadow application.

The third shade (top row) and UD’s Toasted eyeshadow are also very comparable, with both of them having a pink-brown shift and intense pigmentation.

I could only see one real dupe in the 'All About Greys' eye palette and that was the third shadow (top row). It looks very similar to UD’s Gunmetal eyeshadow though it’s less metallic and is absent of the tiny micro glitter present in the UD offering, which might just be a good thing.

Some of the stand out shades from this palette include a creamy, cool toned white (first eyeshadow, top row), a beautifully buttery silver shade that seems like much a higher end quality shadow (shade 2, bottom row), a mid-tone grey with a detectable purple-red iridescence to it (shade 3, bottom row) and an intense black ( shade 4, top row).

The let down in this palette, for me at least, was the last eyeshadow in the palette- a black shade with a grittier texture, probably due to its copious micro glitter.

Overall these two bad boys are really nice palettes to play with. Due to the amount of shimmer in the shadows however I’d definitely recommend doing your eye makeup first before going in with a base. The distinct lack of straight up matte shadows and the fact that there are several similar mid-tone colours, could mean that you’ll end up reaching for another palette to compliment your look, but for eight decent shadows under five bucks, we won’t complain!

Both sets cost €4.99.

Are either of these palettes catching your eye? Will you picking up any budget beauties for the leafy season? To the comments!