Product Review: Denim Wanted! from essence

I am constantly on the look out for inexpensive, quality makeup so when I stumbled accross this new collection by Essence while in Ulta last week I had to give the products a try. I have never used anything by Essence so I was a little skeptical but they had a few of the eyeshadows out for swatching and when I tried them I saw they had amazing color payoff. I  was so excited especially when I found out that everything was under $3.00. I bought two of the eyeshadow duos and one of the gel liners.

The first product I tried was "Love My Jeans" eyeshadow duo,  it contains a ballet pink and light silver-grey.

When first swatched the color payoff is decent and the texture is very nice and soft. However as you can see from the pictures they are not as pigmented as I had first hoped.

with flash

without flash

The next duo I tried was "My Boyfriend's Jeans", it contains a dark, almost navy purple and a silver. These shadows had better color payoff than did the first duo and also had a very soft, blendable texture.

with flash

without flash

The other product I purchased was one of the gel eyeliners in "Vintage Style", its a basic black. The gel eyeliner seemed a little too hard and the brush provided was a little too soft. However once I started to work with the product a bit more it seemed to warm up and go on a lot easier, it seemed to be quite long-wearing as well.

with flash

without flash

I did a quick look using the Boyfriend's Jeans duo and the gel liner to try the products out a little more.

The only major problem I experienced was that the eyeshadows were almost too soft and blendable, they tend to blend and blend and its hard to get the color to concentrate but overall I think they were a good buy for the price. The gel liner wasn't amazing and I actually think that the one by Maybelline is better (its about 7-8 dollars) but again, for the price not bad at all ( I will probably continue using this gel liner and wait until its used up to buy a different kind).

Overall I have to give this collection a B -

I wasn't super impressed but I am glad I bought these products and tried them out, I plan on continuting to use them but I'll probably test out something new next time.