Nikkie Tutorials x Beauty Bay eyeshadow palette review: Has the queen of colour delivered?

Bright and bold make-up lovers, rejoice. Dutch make-up artist and beauty YouTuber Nikkie de Jager, better known as NikkieTutorials, has launched a new eyeshadow palette in collaboration with online beauty retailer, Beauty Bay.

The new product has been a long time coming for the YouTube star. After her last eyeshadow palette launch in collaboration with Too Faced was met with controversy back in 2016, the make-up artist avoided working with another brand on an eyeshadow product – until now.

When revealing her new limited edition collaboration with Beauty Bay in a YouTube video, de Jager admitted that her earlier partnership with Too Faced “almost ended her career” after the brand allegedly changed the quality of the palette they worked on together without informing her, which led to fans criticising her authenticity.

So why Beauty Bay? The brand has partnered with other make-up artists to create eyeshadows in the past, including Manchester-based artist Mitchell Halliday, otherwise known as “MMMMitchell”, with great success.

In her reveal video, de Jager claims Beauty Bay’s eyeshadow formulas are one of the top three best formulas in the business. This inspired her to work with the brand on the NikkieTutorials x Beauty Bay pressed pigment eyeshadow palette, which launched on 31 August and retails at £25.

With so much hype and anticipation around the new launch, we got our hands on the coveted palette to see if the formulas live up to the hype, testing its colour range and packaging, as well as the eyeshadow formulas, and their blendability, longwear and ease of application.

We considered whether there was any fall out when we applied the eyeshadows (excess eyeshadow falling under the eyes) as well as how well the colours and glitters translated onto the eyes.

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NikkieTutorials x Beauty Bay pressed pigment eyeshadow palette: £25, Beauty Bay – buy now

The 20-shade eyeshadow palette offers a mix of matte and pressed glitter formulas in an unusual array of colours, ranging from a hot orange and periwinkle blue to a duo-chrome silver and a deep mulberry shade. Each pan is impressively large given how many there are at such a reasonable price. For comparison, we’d say that each eyeshadow is around twice the size of those found in Huda Beauty’s palettes, and those cost £56.

With bold artwork on the front, the compact has two openings which reveal contrasting sides of the palette, symbolising the two sides of NikkieTutorials's personality. Each side has its own mirror, one of which offers a magnified reflection to help you see close-up details of your eye look. The palette also arrives with an information card detailing how best to apply each shade, whether that’s with a brush, your finger, or both.

The make-up artist is famed for her bright and colourful eye looks, which are certainly catered for in this palette, with everything from pinks, a bright yellow, a true red and a sea green. But the darker side gives this product far more versatility, as it contains more neutral shades that will add definition to the crease or act as transition shades for the colourful hues.

With eight glitter shades alongside the matte formulas, there’s no shortage of looks to be created with the palette. Although the colour story seems slightly confused at first, we found that each shade had its own perfect match – the true red shade can be softened and blended with the orange, for example, while the deep purple works beautifully with the duo chrome pink shade, named “pride”.

Now to the all-important question: Do the formulas perform well on the eye? The matte shades are the kind that take a bit of building rather than being super intense from the off, but we prefer this, especially with bold colours, as it gives you more control over the amount of pigment you apply to the eye – as it’s always easier to build up shadow than it is to take it away.

All of the matte colours translated well onto the eye rather than just looking great in the pan but dull on the skin (which is often the case with bright eyeshadow shades) and they were creamy enough to blend out easily without being chalky.

The colour pay-off didn’t fade with wear, lasting all day, and we found the bold colours relatively easy to work with, as long as you’re happy to build up pigment with a few layers, which we were. We did experience some slight fall-out in the pan, but not when applying it on the eye.

The glittery formulas, however, were slightly more hit and miss. The YouTuber did explain in her palette reveal video that as these are pressed pigment shadows, you will get the best results from being gentle with the shimmery shades, as they aren’t as finely milled as the matte formulas due to the glitter particles. We used our finger to apply them to the lid rather than a brush as the warmth of the skin helps to pack on the product and blend.

While some of the glitter shades are more shimmer-based, most of them contain more defined particles of glitter, like “pride”, the pink shade with silver glitter reflects, and “Roxy Catan”, a peachy pink with gold glitter running through it. The difficulty with these shades is that it’s hard to create glitter-heavy formulas that last on the eye.

Some of them were easy to apply and translated beautifully on the lid, like “all-in”, an unusual silver-gold shade that changes in the light and lasts all day, whereas others did not perform as well. For example, “mama tutorials”, a baby blue shimmer shade, faded almost instantly after application, leaving the blue hue without any glitter (no shade to Nikkie Tutorials’ mum here).

Shimmer shades are naturally more difficult to work with, and most of the eight glitters worked well on the eye, so we wouldn’t say this is a make or break for the palette. The make-up artist suggests using an eyeshadow primer or base when using the eyeshadows, which will also help with longevity and application.

Be aware of fallout, however, as we did experience this with all of the glitter shades. To avoid this spoiling your base make-up, apply your eyeshadows first, or pack a lot of setting powder under the eye before your eyeshadow – this will catch any fall out and you can swipe it away afterwards, leaving no accidental smudges under the eye.

When considering the palette’s innovative packaging, unusual yet surprisingly versatile colour story, the huge pan sizes and blendable, long wearing formulas (aside from a few of the shimmers), we’d say this palette is a total dream for colour lovers, especially at this price.

We can’t think of another palette that offers this many high quality, generously sized shades at just £25, making it a competitive addition to the make-up market. It’s inspired us to experiment more with colour and we’re pleased to see such a well-thought out collaboration between NikkieTutorials and Beauty Bay.

The palette is currently out of stock, but you can sign up to be notified when it returns.

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