Essence Metal Glam collection – swatches and review

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How to cite: Wong M. Essence Metal Glam collection – swatches and review. Lab Muffin Beauty Science. March 4, 2014. Accessed March 28, 2024. https://labmuffin.com/essence-metal-glam-collection-swatches-and-review/

Essence’s Metal Glam trend collection has finally reached Australian shores! It will be appearing in stores in March. Here’s some of the offerings:

First, what always gets me excited in the Trend collections – the makeup!

Naturally, the makeup in this collection is super shimmery and metallic. From left to right, I’ve swatched Gold Digger highlighting powder ($5.35 – mine came shattered but is meant to be pressed), Steel-ing the Scene eyeshadow ($4.25), and Glam-Me liquid blush ($4.95).

All three were packed with dense shimmer particles – these products are not for the shimmer-wary!The highlighter powder can be easily toned down to provide flattering glow, but the other two products aren’t quite as work-friendly.

There are three other shades of eyeshadow available, and thanks to the dense, dense shimmer (my swatch is just one swipe), I would guess that these would be great as metallic eyeliner with some foiling medium.

The blush… ah, the blush. I was super excited to see yet another blush finish, but this is just not going to work for me. Too pale, too orange, too much shimmer. If you’re pale and love shimmer this would work for you, but I doubt this will be flattering on most people, unless you tap just the slightest amount over your regular blush to add “glow”.

Onto less disappointing things – the polish!

From left to right, the swatches are Gold Digger, Glamour Girls, Petal to the Metal, Steel-ing the Scene ($2.95 each) and Steel-ing the Scene gold topper ($3.50). The gold topper is made up of irregular shards of cool-toned gold glitter. Like the more luxe gold leaf polishes, it comes with an opaque bottle, but luckily you can peel off the reflective gold sticker to see how much you have left.

I want to get this out of the way now – I HATE how Essence reuses shade names! It’s handy for matching your eyeshadow to your nails I guess, but it’s so unnecessary, especially when you end up with two completely different polishes in the same collection, with almost exactly the same name. It’s confusing, and if the Essence naming department is reading this, I’m happy to come up with witty names for you! The gold shard polish? Golden Showers. As Gold As It Gets. The Gold and the Beautiful. Golden Mile. Glitter Rain. Gold Mine. I seriously came up with all those in under 30 seconds. Hit me up, Essence! I’ll do it for free!

The polishes are delightfully metallic, and almost (but not quite) brushstroke free. I’m very impressed. The odd one out here is Petal to the Metal, which consists of silver shimmer in a very pale purple base – the others are straightforward metallic chromes.

“Do they stamp?” you ask. Yes! Yes they do. Left to right: Gold Digger, Steel-ing the Scene, Glamour Girls, Petal to the Metal. The plates I used were Bundle Monster and Messy Mansion.

The metallics stamped predictably well, but Petal to the Metal is pretty damn good for a purple! I’ve used these for a couple of manis already. I’d highly recommend them if you’re looking for dense, foolproof stamping metallics!

There’s always a few left-of-centre products in every Trend Collection, and this time it’s jewellery stickers.

There’s stick-on jewellery ($3.50), which I thought would be extremely kitsch and tacky, but it’s… not as bad as expected. I wouldn’t wear this out shopping, but if I were the type to go out clubbing, this would be a winner – no worrying about losing expensive jewellery while drunk dancing, and they’d look good under the lights. They’d be good for appeasing little girls who want to buy what mumma’s buying too!

The stick-on eyeliner ($3.50) freaked me out at first, but again, it’s surprisingly comfortable and not entirely obvious that you have something stuck to your eyelid. I didn’t bother with the rest of my makeup because I took this off immediately. Maybe good for a costume party? It definitely gives a sheen that would be tricky to accomplish with regular makeup.

The collection also includes 3 varieties of nail stickers ($3.50) and metallic lip gloss in three shades ($3.50).

My number one pick from this collection would obviously be the metallic polishes – the quality is superb, both as regular polish and for stamping. The brushes are surprising soft and even for such a budget product. The eyeshadows and highlighting powder are pretty sweet too. I would also keep an eye out for the nail stickers – they appear to be metallic full-nail shields, which are usually hard to find, so if the quality of those are good, I would stock up on them as well.


This product was provided for editorial consideration, which did not affect my opinion. For more information, see Disclosure Policy.


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12 thoughts on “Essence Metal Glam collection – swatches and review”

  1. I’ve never seen stick-on jewellery before! How interesting, especially from a cosmetics brand too. And it’s a shame that your powder came shattered. Was it not packaged very well?
    x Court

    Reply
    • Not super well-packaged, but I have high standards thanks to being a nail polish nerd 😛 I do like how Essence do cute little non-cosmetic things with each release – there’s a diary and a earphone cable clip with the current releases here in Switzerland!

      Reply
  2. oh, as soon as I saw the polishes I wondered if they stamped! yay! will have to pick them up. not sure about the stick on eyeliner and jewellery…

    Reply
  3. stick on jewellery and makeup is just weird although that ring looks nice if it was real. the polishes look nice though!

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