Illamasqua Week - Liquid Metal Review

 

Illamasqua's Liquid Metals are one of those products that 'does what it say on the tin'. The product is basically a metallic cream-liquid  that looks as close to real metal as i think a cosmetic is ever likely to get. Wearing them is like wearing a piece of metallic foil on your face! They come in 3 colours, Enrapture - copper/bronze, Solstice - pure gold and Phenomena - silver, i only have the first 2 (well Enrapture is claire's but she lets me use it). They are meant to be used wherever you want, eyes, lips, face and body.

I really love these. They apply beautifully, creamy and smooth and are very richly pigmented, they appear on the face just as they look in the pot. But you can also apply them very faintly to give a metallic glow to your skin, like a bronzer or highlighter. I also really like the fact these products are multi-use,  had been considering buying Illamasqua's amazing gold lipstick, but figured if i got this is works as a lippie, eyeshadow and face product. 

These cost £17 each and you get 8g of product, which i imagine will last forever as you only need a very light amount to get full pigmentation. They come in little jars the same size and shape as their eyeshadows, but hingeless and made of clear plastic. The jars are entirely full of product and have a black lid which just clicks on top. These came in the same little black cardboard boxes as the eyeshadows, but without a window in the lid. I really like this packaging, it's functional and pretty and elegant.

 

Here are a bunch of swatches so you can see the colours on my skin:

left to right: Solistic applied sheerly, solstice applied heavily, Enrapture applied sheerly, Enrapure applied heavilly.

 

 

 

The last one particularly shows how metallic the are. The gold in particular looks almost like gold leaf! You can also see the amazing pigmentation. I can imagine that both of these would look amazing on dark skin tones.

Oddly Solstice seems slightly more pigmented then Enrapture, in the above photos the heavy swatch of Solstice took only one sweep of my finger on the product and then just one sweep across my skin whereas Enrapture took about 3 sweeps to get it that pigmented. You can also see that it is easy to just get a nice sheer wash of the metallic colour, all i did was take a small swatched with my finger and blend it out.

So how are they in use? Well on my lips the colour went on smoothly and was completely opaque. It also lasted a really long time which surprised me, and would have lasted longer but unfortunately i found it felt rather uncomfortable, very dry and sort of powdery on my lips, so eventually i rubbed it off. Great for photos though and maybe if i'd used a gloss over the top, or a balm underneath, it would have felt better. On my face these work brilliantly, they go on like a cream but then dry until they're basically smudge resistant, i can imagine these making an absolutely gorgeous bronzer on people with darker skin tones than me, us pale girls can use them sheerly for a golden glow :) On the eyes these look absolutely beautiful, they go on again smoothly with no patchiness but unfortunately, like the cream eyeshadows they crease in my socket line (having said this i realise i've never worn these over primer or tried setting hem with powder, i will have to see if that makes a difference). Now i find this more forgiveable with this product as it is not specifically designed for use in the eye. Also the creasing genuinely doesn't seem as bad as in the cream eyeshadows and as the colours are so beautiful and unusual i can forgive a bit of creasing more. I bet these would make amazing bases for other metallic shadows or pigments too. 

So would i recommend them? Well i think they really come down to personal taste. With most of the other product's i've reviewed, if you didn't like the really avant-garde colours they also have more 'ordinary' colours with the same formulas. With these however there are only 3 colours and they are all definately extra-ordinary. If you only wanted these to use as eyeshadow i am not sure i would recommend them as they do crease. However i think these are amazing products, i think if you like to play with unusual looks, or ever do makeup artistry then i think these would be wonderful in your collection. I love how differently you can use these, sheer as a bronzer, thich as a body paint, lip stick, eyeshadow, even in your hair! I think they are quite pricey but you get a LOT for your money and i'm pretty sure these will last you forever (well unless you use it every day heavilly)