Smashbox Full Exposure Palette Review and Tutorial

The Smashbox Full Exposure Palette contains 14 natural eye shadows, a dual ended brush, a 5 week trial of the Full Exposure Mascara and an eye shape chart with a guide on how to get the perfect look for your eye shape. This palette retails for £37. There is also a tutorial at the end of this blog post using shades from this palette.

The palette itself is a really nice sleek case with the brand and the name of the palette has a really cool reflective effect and catches the light when you turn the palette. It has a very simplistic design which I like and has a magnetic lid which keeps the palette closed. Inside there is a large internal mirror which is really convenient, making it a great palette to travel with which is a feature that I look for in palettes.

There are 7 shimmer shadows and 7 matte shadows which unfortunately are very poorly named, they are named S1-7 on the top row and M1-7 on the bottom row to represent Shimmer and Matte. The size of each colour in the pan is quite a generous size and there is a nice combination of neutral colours, ranging from light to dark shades in both of the finishes so my first impressions is that it's a great palette to use day or night. The lighter shades are set in the middle of the palette and then they transition into darker colours towards the outside corners of the palette. I actually quite like this, because it immediately draws my eyes to the centre of the palette because they are brighter shades and then you can contrast between the light and the dark a lot easier in my opinion.

The brush is dual ended and it has a long handle and proper bristles, avoiding the annoyance of fiddling with one of them small sponge-tip brushes. One end of the brush is for matte eye shadows and the bristles look like a blending brush and are quite large, flat and have a rounded shape. The bristles aren't too dense either. The opposite side is designed for the shimmer eye shadows and this is a shorter, more dense brush which has a flat rounded shape and feels really nice and soft. So far I'm liking the brush. I don't, however, see the point of the bristles on the shimmer side being half black and half white. I'm not quite sure of the purpose of that.

These are the swatches from the Full Exposure palette.
From left to right is S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6 and S7

From left to right the shades are M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6 and M7.

It's a shame that these aren't named colours but from the swatches, some of them look like they have nice pigmentation. They all feel really nice and have creamy and smooth consistencies and appear to blend very nicely. I prefer the look of the shimmer shades from the swatches. When I applied these, the brush turned out to be quite useless, it didn't seem to pack on the colour to the point where they looked like good quality eye shadows, in my opinion. I used a different shadow brush and the application was so much easier and they looked so much better. Some colours are better than others, for example I really like S7, S1 and a few of the matte shades because they are nice and vibrant, blend easily and are really smooth shadows. You can easily build them up to an intense shade without them going too cakey. Each shimmer shadow is very nicely paired with a matte shadow below it so you already have a great colour combination duo if you want to match your eye shadows that way.

With the palette you get the Full Exposure Trial Size mascara which is a five-week supply. The wand of this mascara is so big, it gives me the impression that this could be very difficult to apply easily. Also due to the size of the wand, I'm expecting a lot more volume and maybe a bit of lengthening. I have short lashes so this is something that I look for in a mascara. It doesn't have any description on the packaging so I had a look online and this is what it said on the Smashbox website:

"Inspired by the on-set technique of layering a lengthening fiber mascara over a volumising formula, our new studio-tested mascara exposes your longest, fullest lashes. No clumps, no flakes. Just maximum-impact, scene-stealing lashes.

• 104% increase in lash volume
• 32% increase in lash length
• 34-degree increase in lash curl"

Do I think my lashes have a 104% increase in volume? Nope. Do I think they have a 32% increase in length? A bit. A 34 degree curl? Not really. I'm not a huge fan of this mascara, and I know a lot of people aren't either. I do think they look longer with a bit more volume but I don't agree with their statement.

One coat, curled lashes

Two coats, curled lashes.

I applied the mascara like I normally do and this was the result. It does separate the lashes nicely and the mascara wand is quite easy to remove and put back in the tube.

For the tutorial, begin by applying an eyelid primer and white eyeliner a base for the eye shadow. With a flat shadow brush, pat the shade M1 all over the lid.