Mark Celestial Eyes Shimmery Cream Shadows

I think I should stop having any kind of expectations for a product, because it almost always pleasantly surprises me that way. The Jillian Dempsey for Avon Professional Multi-Pencils did, and now these Mark Celestial Eyes Shimmery Cream Shadows as well! Actually, I might be speaking too soon, because I've only swatched these and haven't actually worn them yet. Creams shadows are always tricky with my oily lids, and in my experience there are only a handful of cream shadows that didn't crease on me, Visee Aqua Shining Eyes, Lavshuca Eye Jelly, and Lancome Colour Dose, all three of which have been discontinued, and the only one still available now is Laura Mercier Metallic Creme Eye Colour.

Grey Storm and Purple Halo. All pictures taken in natural light without flash.

Anyway, despite the risk of creasing, these Mark Celestial Eyes Shimmery Cream Shadows caught my eyes with their "artsy" pigment splatters and I bought them anyway. There are 4 variations available, Grey Storm, Purple Halo, Mint Sky, and Copper Dusk, and I thought they all looked kind of neat ^.^ I haven't seen a cream shadow like this before so I'll give props to Avon for going the creative route. But with that I have to say the packaging sucks. Think about it, it's a cream shadow, and when packaged like a powder shadow it's bound to dry out quickly, since that compact isn't air tight in anyway. But I guess very few cosmetics makers actually pay attention to the packaging of their cream shadows, and most put them in a pan or jar anyway. And I suppose Avon wouldn't be able to squeeze a dual color cream compact with pigment splatters into a tube ^.^

Mint Sky and Copper Dusk

The first neat thing I found is that when swirled together, those pretty pigment splatters will mix with the cream color to create an entirely different color. It's such a cool idea, the problem is that this altered mix of color will last only for the first couple of uses. After it's used up, well, you end up with just the base cream color. And not that the base cream color isn't pretty, I just wish they had done a marbleized mix instead, so that even when you're halfway through the pan, you can still cook up a different color each time you swirl. Now wouldn't that be cool? Anyway, due to the pigment mixing with the base cream color, I swatched each combo twice but only took pictures if the second swatch yielded different colors than the first.

Grey Storm and Purple Halo

The texture of these cream shadows moist but not greasy, so here's to hope they won't crease. And when their name says "shimmery" cream shadows, it really meant metallic cream shadows. They aren't as sparklingly metallic as Laura Mercier, but they are definitely and undoubtedly metallic. As far as I can tell, they aren't scented, but I didn't sniff them because I didn't want to inhale the loose pigments at their surface. 

Mint Sky and Copper Dusk

- Grey Storm: a combo of an opaque off white and smoky gray base colors with silvery pearl and deep charcoal pigments sprinkled on top. With this combo, the charcoal pigment is so intense that it altered a good portion of the off white cream shadow while not making any visible change to the smokey gray cream shadow. So even when I swatched this a second time, the resulting color mix is the same.

- Metallic silvery gray

- Metallic smokey gray

- Purple Halo: this is a combo of a fleshy pink and cool lavender base colors with a coppery peach and lavender pigments sprinkled on top. And boy do they alter the base colors, though only for the first swatch, which is really too bad because resulting color mix was so pretty in addition to being multi-dimensional!

- First swatch: this 1st swatch contained most of the coppery peach and lavender pigments mix, which rendered the both base colors plummy as well as giving them a duo chromatic finish.

- Duo chromatic metallic plummy taupe with a metallic plum sheen.

- Duo chromatic metallic plum with a metallic beige pink sheen.

- Second swatch: back to "normal" I guess, but with only the lavender base color loosing its duo chromatic finish.
- Duo chromatic metallic dusty pink with a metallic fleshy pink sheen.
- Appears lavender in the pan but swatched a cooler metallic purple.

- Mint Sky: this is a muted flamingo pink and turquoise base color combo with hot pink and jade green pigments sprinkled on top. And although the pigments seemed to only affect the pink base color, but boy did it change that pink, holy cow! See the swatches for yourself!

First swatch: woowee! I never knew that if you were to mix green with pink, you'll get such a cool color!

- Duo chromatic purplish taupe with a metallic gold sheen (that you can't really see from the picture, sorry... -.-'). It was gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous!!! But it only lasted for the 1st swatch T.T

- Duo chromatic metallic turquoise that's quite vivid, also with a metallic gold sheen that's not really visible from the picture.

- Second swatch: the pretty purplish taupe is gone but the turquoise remains the same, so I didn't bother to swatch it well like I did in the first swatch. Boo. Hiss.
- Duo chromatic plummy purplish dusty pink with a metallic gold sheen. Still beautiful, but I liked its previous rendering better.
- Same duo chromatic metallic turquoise with a gold sheen that isn't well capture in the picture.


- Copper Dusk: a combo of pale fleshy peach and warm milk chocolate brown base colors and coppery gold and rosy gold (towards the lower right hand corner) pigments sprinkled on top. These 2 base colors remained the same and didn't change the second time around.

- Metallic but translucent champagne with some gold shimmers. It goes much more translucent than it looks in the pan and would probably make a gorgeous base color.

- Metallic coppery burnt gold. It wasn't a true copper.