Good morning ladies :) Today's the day and I'm starting my Week with Freedom Makeup. I recently received some new & exciting products and decided I'll be bringing you this week's 4 posts about them :)
If you don't know it already Freedom Makeup London is a new company of affordable, professional makeup brought to us by the geniuses behind Makeup Revolution. I own few bits from them already and have done few posts which I will link here (post 1, post 2, post 3). Recently we were blessed with quite a few new launches, that I just had to try. First being cream contouring palette :)
Freedom Makeup Pro Cream Strobe Palette with Brush (RPR £10.00 - buy here) is as the name suggest a cream contour kit that comes with a contouring brush. Packaging is as with any MUR or Freedom palettes black, shiny plastic with a mirror inside. Plastic is a little on a cheaper side of things, but nevertheless black packaging looks ok and it's actually quite light, making it not a bad travelling companion :) Inside you will find 6 creamy shades, 3 for matte highlighting/strobing and 3 for bronzing/contour.
Highlight/conceal/strobe:
We get two cream foundation like shades with one being light beige with pink undertones and second light banana shade, the last shade in the top row is a larger pan with a little satin finish to it, meant for highlighting. This is one of my fave shades from the palette. I'm extremely pale and for me to find a shade that's actually paler than my natural is an amazing accomplishment. I always have a problem with cream strobing as I already use the lightest foundation shade and it's difficult to find something even lighter to bring attention to the high points of my face. Well, not anymore. All the shades are nice and creamy and need to be set with a little powder. I highly recommend translucent powder to do so. I also really like a first shade as it can be used to conceal the dark underage circles. Due to it's creamy formula you will need to set it and I would even recommend baking it. All shades are very natural and easy to blend.
Bronzing/contour:
As with highlight shades, we also get 3 bronzing shades to play with starting with light bronzing, through dark, neutral contour and finish g with medium bronzing shade. I'm not 100% sure what I expected these shades to be but my first reaction was noooooo. Let me explain. Being a ghostly pale, I cannot use warm toned bronzers as they look yellow/orange on me, which just doesn't look natural at all ! I have used the palette few times now and my opinion changed a lot. I now use a combination of light and medium bronzing shades to bronze up my complexion a little bit and use a contour shade for chiseled cheekbones. I them set it all with a cool toned contour bronzer and they last well on my dry skin throughout the day. Dark contour shade is the only neutral tone shade in the trio so if you are looking for cool tone shades you will not fin them in this palette. I still think the formula is excellent as it blends easily and lasts well, given it's set with a powder over it.
Contour brush:
I think it's an excellent idea to add the contour brush to the palette and sell it as a set a many people don't own specific contour brush. This brush is short and sturdy, making it a great and comfortable choice for a face brush in general. Shape and bristle density is good and makes application of product quite easy. However blending isn't as easy. I'm not sure why that is as the brush isn't too dense and that should help with blending. The minus for me is the way the bristles are cut in my brush. You can see from the pictures I've taken, the cut is far from perfect. This may be just an unlucky batch as I've seen few more reviews of these palettes and the brushes look well cut there. I'm a little disappointed with this brush in general.
To sum it up. I think I prefer the highlighting shades to the bronzing shades in this palette, especially the nearly white highlight shade (shade 3 in the palette, right top row). I find formula really good, blendable and lasting well on a dry skin, combination and oily will need to set it with a good powder. I find it works best for me, if I set bronzing shades with cool toned product as they are a little too warm for my liking. I like the packaging, especially when it comes to how light the palette is, great for traveling. What do you think ladies? Is it something you are lusting after? I want to know what your thoughts are so as usual, let me know in the comments :)
Thank you for reading & I'll see you Thursday with part 2 of our Week with Freedom :)
Love,
