Sephora Hot Hues Baked Eye Shadow Palette

Sephora Hot Hues Baked Eye Shadow Palette is another perfect example of why Sephora packaging is just god awful. Granted, this was one of Sephora's first attempt into the dry/wet baked powder eye shadows so from these to the most recent Outrageous Prisma Chrome Metallic Eyeshadow has been a gigantic step forward. But still, can a compact be any uglier?

Burnished Cocoa and Vivid Mulberry palettes. All pictures taken in natural light without flash.

For one, take a look at how big and thick it is! And cheesus crisp it's heavy! What in the hell did they put in there?!? I can almost bash someone in with it!

But other than the packaging, the baked eye shadow is not so bad. Each palette features a large pan of shimmer and matte for base and highlighting, and 4 additional smaller pans for lid, crease, and lining. The large pan has the best texture while the rest are rather dry and chalky, but this is to be expected given they are baked powders. But they are very decently pigmented, especially when used wet.

- Burnished Cocoa: this is a warm palette and in my humble opinion the better one of the two, both in texture as well as in wearability. For some reason, this palette is softer and less dry than the Vivid Mulberry. There are a couple of metallics and semi-metallics in this palette, but nothing as intense as the Outrageous Prisma Chromes Metallic Eye Shadows.

Clockwise from top left:
- Champagne: low intensity and shimmery when dry. Medium intensity and semi-metallic when wet.
- Cream: very sheer and matte when dry. Low intensity and gains a satiny sheen when set.
- Peach: medium intensity and shimmery when dry, and redder too. High intensity and metallic when wet, becoming a lighter metallic peach.
- Bronze: medium intensity and satiny when dry. High intensity and gains luminosity when wet, and turns a bit coppery also.
- Ashy taupe: medium intensity and shimmery when dry. High intensity and metallic when wet, turns more beige-y too.
- Bitter chocolate: high intensity when dry, with matte base and sparse and scattered, barely visible shimmers. High intensity and satiny when wet.

Left picture is dry swatches and right picture is wet swatches.


- Vivid Mulberry: hmm...I think I see a trend here. Like the Smashbox x Curtis Kulig Love Me Palettes, as I was so so so much more excited about the cooler one of the two, only to be utterly let down. I was looking forward to this Vivid Mulberry palette so much, because in the pan the colors look way more interesting than those in Burnished Cocoa. Then I swatched them and was crushed. Not only it's much drier and chalkier, the colors aren't really wearable at all for me. So this palette is pretty much crap when used dry and is better when used wet. In addition, the finishes are disappointing, with two barely semi-metallics and the rest being ho-hum matte and shimmery.

Clockwise from top left:
- Lilac-tinged pink: low intensity and shimmery when dry. Medium intensity and more sparkly when wet.
- Lilac: medium intensity and matte when dry. Low intensity and shimmery when wet. This color is kind of "backwards", in that it becomes more translucent when wet, and the shimmers shows better. Usually it's the other way around, and a wet shade becomes less shimmery and more opaque.
- Pastel lavender: low intensity and matte when dry, medium intensity and shimmery when wet, and gains more pink too.
- Deep purple: sheer and matte when dry. High intensity and semi-metallic when wet, with a silvery semi-metallic sheen. This color shows the most dramatic changes in texture and finish going from dry to wet. When dry, this and the candy purple below are the probably one of the crappiest eye shadow I've ever encountered. They feel like dirt, dry, gritty, and dusty, and applies patchy and uneven. You can see the patchiness in the swatch! But when wet, this color gains drastic pigmentation and opacity.
- Candy purple: sheer and matte based when dry, with scattered shimmers that are barely visible. Medium intensity and semi-metallic when wet. Like the deep purple above, it also turns opaque when wet, and the semi-metallic sheen is subtly shimmery.
- Blackish purple: high intensity when dry, with matte base and sparse and scattered, barely visible shimmers. High intensity and luminous when wet, although the shimmers don't become any more visible than they are when dry, which is too bad.

Left picture is dry swatches and right picture is wet swatches.