Penneys Gilt Makeup: More Fools Gold Than Precious Metal

Clockwise from left: Eye Defining Liner and Brush, Liquid Gold Metallic Cream, Shimmer Plumping Gloss, Black Gold Eyeshader

I dunno why I keep doing this to myself; it must be my community-minded spirit. Tasked by Aphrodite to get her a bottle of the Penneys-stocked and hysterically-named St Moriz self tanner, I also picked up some of the new makeup it has out. Penneys (Primark to our UK readers) has a collection of what I reckon is festive-season-themed beauty bits called 'Gilt', which consists of a cream liner, glitter pencil, gold cream shadow and a plumping shimmer gloss.

Lets start off with the swatches - note these are thickly, and I mean thickly, layered  - so you can get an idea of the payoff you'd get if you spent four hours layering up for any sort of intensity. Yes, I am being slightly sarcastic, but in normal use, are these products any good?

Are they heck. This stuff always looks on the passable side of fine, some of it is even quite cute, but there's probably one product out of every ten that's any good at all.  Of these four, there's one that's half-useful. Lets start with the most evil first though, shall we?

Step up Eye Defining Liner and Brush, €2.50. You are pure shite. You are a thin, insipid gruel of a cream liner and if this blog was Oliver Twist, it'd be asking for more. The brush with this would tear the bejaysis out of delicate eyelids and I don't care if it's a tiny price, it's crap and that's that.

It's difficult to get any colour intensity out of it at all - see it in comparison to one swipe of a Lancome one above - it's too dry, doesn't spread well and would give you draggy-looking liner flicks that a recovering alcoholic in the intense throes of delirium tremens would be proud of.

Next!

Liquid Gold Metallic Cream, €2.50, is another insipid milksop.  Consider the name, if you will. I expect an Illamasqua-alike liquid metal finish based on that title and while it looks nice in the pot, on the skin delivers nothing much more than a slightly sparkly wash of colour. Fine for a very lightly shimmering eye, not fine if you were planning on gold-leafing your lids. This doesn't set either, so you'll get creasing and if you've oily skin, expect this to not last kissin' time. You could get some use out of this as a base for powder shadow, but really, it's another miss for me.

I'm no fan of plumping lipglosses no matter how little they cost so Shimmer Plumping Lipgloss, €3, was never really going to find favour. On the lips it does that annoying tingling thing, so if you like that then you'll be happy, and it has a really odd smell: sort of a mix of candyfloss and mint. Not a fan. As a topcoat this is nice enough though: I layered it over both satin-finished red and pink lipsticks and it does give a nice golden glow. So yeah, a luke-warm thumbs up on the result; I could definitely do without the tingling and the scent.

The last product, and the best of a (very) bad bunch is Black Gold Eyeshader, €2.50. A fat crayon pencil, you can forget using this as a liner on its own - it smudges and budges  - and instead, make it a first step for a smoky eye. It's got nice gold sparkles in the mix, blends out quite well and will act as a key for powder and pigment.

So in summary, while there are a couple of passable things here, I'd have to say of these products that they're unfortunately much less Gilt and a lot more like Fools Gold.