Front Cover Eye Spy 09/10 Review

Front Cover has been talked about a lot by makeup lovers the past couple of Winters.

I missed it all. Why? I've always been very girly and into my clothes and fashion and jewelry.. but makeup not so much. I wore it, but always the same look and never experimented with anything new. For New Year 2009, some friends and I went to Edinburgh for the Hogmany Street party, and my friend Caz had the Front Cover Rainbow Eyes set with her. I tried the Smokey Eye look, and LOVED it. I couldn't believe I'd managed to create a makeup look that actually LOOKED like it had been done by someone who knew what the Christ they were doing.

I bought  Rainbow Eyes set immediately on Ebay, then saw the Eye Spy one and knew I NEEDED IT. It retailed for £30, I got it for around the same price on Ebay. I then bought the Eye Spy set which by then had been sold out in Boots for £20.

First of all, the palette itself

The front has serious looks created from the palette by pros, and inside opposite the palette, it has a step by step guide to creating 6 different looks using only the palette - Double Line, Vintage & Matte, Matte and Shimmer, Smokey Line, Natural & Understated, and Ultimate Smoulder. The guides are all really easy and I've played around with all 6.

The palette has 15 dome baked shimmer eyeshadows:
Vanilla Ice - A light shimmery white colour, perfect for highlighting.
Powder Puff - A pale shimmery peachy colour, again, great for highlighting,
Burnt Toast - A really rich burt brown, looks great on green and blue eyes, and a good colour for adding depth. I havn't really used this one yet, but I plan to. It looks good on tanner or darker skin too.
Amber Green - One of my favourties! A gorgeous khaki green and gold mix, such a unique colour.
Black Ink - BLACK! Lol what more to say! It has a slight shimmer, but instead of the usual black shimmery shadows having silver mixed in, it's more a metallic black.
Lime Sherbert - A lovely pale greeny gold, reminds me a lot of a lighter version of Amber Green... it certainly isn't a bright lime colour like you'd think.
Parrot - God I love this one! I darn't use it with my pasty grey Winter skin though, I need a tan! A really rich, bright green.
Moondance - A lovely dark bright blue colour.
Lagoon - I adore this colour, I just don't think I could wear it! Very bright shimmery light blue.
Bluebell - Gorgeous silvery denim blue, it really does remind me of the colour of bluebells.
Vintage Violet - A lovely mid lilac with a slight blueish tint.
Bougainvillea - A brighter and slightly lighter lilac.
Tallulah Pink - Gorgeous pale pink with a light shimmer, looks great with golds and browns
Taffeta Blue - I love this colour.. a very dark blue, almost black, with a dark blue metallic undertone.
Moon River - Fantastic bright silver highlighter.

Then there are 5 pressed matte powder eyeshadows:
Glacier - A very pale and cool light green/blue.
Stonewash - A great bluey grey slate colour.
Gothic Grape - A rich and dark grey purple.
Sledgehammer - Bright peacock bluey green.
Iron stone - A dark greyish brown.

Then we have 4 glitter gels, each lid has a small and thin liner brush attached for application:
Sweet Pea - A pale green glitter.
Silverdollar - Silver. Not much else to say on that!
Star Sapphire - Dark blue glitter.
Ingot - Gold!

Next the to glitter gels we have the infamous Shadowline. This is just water in an eyeliner bottle, but the beauty is that it means you can turn any of the eyeshadows into and eyeliner just by mixing the tip of the liner into your chosen eyeshadow.

Finally we have the applicator brush.

Onto the swatches:

L- R Moon River, Taffeta Blue, Tallulah Pink, Bougainvillea, Vintage Violet, Bluebell, Lagoon, Moodance, Parrot, Lime Sherbert, Black Ink, Amber Green, Burnt Toast, Powder Puff, Vanilla Ice

The pigmentation is good.. not amazing but very good. The only ones I really wish were richer in pigmentation are Taffeta Blue, Burnt Toast, and maybe Amber Green too. However the good thing about that is they are fantastic for layering to get a deeper effect, or mixing with other shades. Some eyeshadows with high pigmentation, especially shimmers, can be so messy and hard to work with.
The 5 matte shadows are fantastic for building up a base for a look or just mixing with the shimmers to create something different. I absolutely love Stonewash and Gothic Grape. They are great for creating some really smokey looks with with a little colour.

Some finger swatches:

L- R Amber Green, Burnt Toast, Powder Puff, Vanilla Ice

L-R Black Ink, Lime Sherbert, Parrot, Moondance

L-R Lagoon, Bluebell, Vintage Violet, Bougainvillea

Tallulah Pink, Taffeta Blue, Moon River, Glacier

L-R Stonewash, Gothic Grape, Sledgehammer, Iron Stone

Here I tried out the Shadowliner with a few different colours. L-R on the Shadowliner swatches is Amber Green, Black Ink, Lagoon, Moondance, Taffeta Blue, Moon River, Gothic Grape and Stonewash. Then five swatches L-R Iron Stone, Sledgehammer, Gothic Grape, Stonewash and Glacier.

The Shadowliner is just brilliant. Best and most simple invention ever. It makes the palette so incredibly versatile and you could easily create so many different looks. Imagine having eyeliner to match every eyeshadow.. it's brilliant!

Finally, the glitter gels.

L-R Ingot, Star Sapphire, Silver Dollar and Sweet Pea.

Meh. I'm just not a massive fan of glitter? This is two coats fo each gel, and they've tried to make them subtle but honestly, I'd prefer full on crazy glitters so I could recreate the glitter look on the front of the palette! I doubt I'll ever use these. Probably the only negative thing I can say about the entire palette really.

Sadly this palette is no longer available to buy.. the Fropnt Cover range was exclusive to Boots. However you can buy these on Ebay still, and keep updated on their website for the new products:

• Rainbow Eyes Reborn - In Boots stores now, Front Cover have relaunched their original palette.
• Easy On The Eye Cool
• Easy On The Eye Hot
• Mermaid Dreams palette
• Miss Behaving
• Shadowline now available to buy on it's own.
• And now, you can buy Front Cover internationally from BodyCare2000.

So there we go! I love it :D Took me a while to do all that but it has taken my mind off my raging hangover. I went to an open bar party last night... bad times.