Review: ColourPop Chasing Rainbows Palette

Hi everyone! I don’t know what got into me, but around Boxing Day, ColourPop was having a sale and I purchased a whopping 4 ColourPop palettes! I’m trying to get reviews of the palette out now, and this is the first one. The Chasing Rainbows palette came free with my order, and I noticed that my friend Cleia from Always Cleia also got this free with her order. I though it might be fun to release our reviews together, so I suggested it her and she was game! Go see what she thought of this palette and the looks she created!

The Chasing Rainbows palette isn’t the type of palette I would normally pick up for myself – it’s so bright and colourful with not very many options for neutral looks (which I wear 95% of the time). As bloggers, we tend to review things that we buy and are excited to use, so I thought it would be quite interesting to do a review on it coming from a point of view where it was something I wouldn’t have purchased myself.

THE BASICS

The Chasing Rainbows palette is a limited-edition palette that was released in November. Although the bright colours make it look like a palette that was released in the spring or summer, it was actually released as part of their holiday set. Nothing about it screams the holidays! It contains 15 eyeshadows in a combination of mattes and shimmer finishes. This palette retails for $20 USD on the ColourPop website, and it is made in the USA.

The iridescence of the packaging with the sleeve on

The cover of the palette isn’t quite as iridescent or holographic, but it’s still cute!

THE PACKAGING

This Chasing Rainbows palette comes in a cardboard case that closes with a magnetic closure. I have to say that I love the iridescent, holographic packaging of this palette. The sleeve that it comes in has a much more iridescent quality to it compared to the actual cover of the palette, so the packaging loses a lot of the iridescence once the palette is out of the sleeve. The inside of the palette is strongly holographic, though – it’s so mesmerizing to look at in the sun!

One thing I don’t like about the packaging of this palette is that it doesn’t come with a mirror. I don’t own any drugstore palettes, and all of the more expensive ones I use regularly come with a mirror which I always put to use. At $20, it’s tough to expect ColourPop to include a mirror and it’s understandable that it doesn’t have one, but I definitely would have appreciated one for a palette of this size.

 

How gorgeous is the holographic packaging of this palette?

THE SHADES

This palette contains 15 shades, 9 of which are mattes and the remaining shimmers. I really enjoyed the mix of mattes and shimmers included in this palette, and thought there was an appropriate amount of both. Some of the mattes have a subtle amount of shimmers in them (such as Feeling It and Manifest It), but they don’t translate much in swatches or on the eyes. The shade descriptions below come from the ColourPop website:
Wiggles: Matte light peach
Blurred Lines: Opal-gold duochrome
So Meta: Metallic marigold
Feeling It: Matte red brown with copper flecks
Realness: Matte deep red brown
Woke: Matte mid-tone salmon pink
Wish List: Matte vibrant coral
Manifest It: Matte fuchsia with pink flecks
Keep Cool: Matte deep orchid
Not Playing: Metallic lavender with a pink flip
Lucid: metallic eggplant with a blue flip
Bring It: Matte teal
On One: Metallic blackened turquoise
Eclipse: Metallic taupe
Prism: Matte blackened aubergine

When I first saw swatches of this palette online, I felt like ColourPop could have done a much better job making the shades live up to the name “Chasing Rainbows” and actually incorporate colours of the rainbow. After receiving and testing out the palette, I realized this palette is more well-rounded in colour than I originally thought, but still not what I would personally imagine a rainbow-themed palette to look like. As a neutral lover, I can appreciate that there are browns in there to make the palette more useable, but I feel like instead of having so many red-based shades, they could have included a lighter blue and a green. We’ve seen the brand be able to pull off these types of shades in other palettes, so I feel like they really missed an opportunity there.

When it came to colour selection, I found it a little difficult to do a neutral look with the shades included in the palette because the neutrals were so cool-toned, but the only transition shade is a warm-toned coral (Woke). In the end, it was doable, but I felt like it took a lot of work. I know this isn’t meant to be a palette you use for neutral looks, but if they provide neutrals in the palette, I would want to be able to easily create a full look with them. On top of that, I found Woke almost borderline too deep of a shade to use as a transition shade. I know transition shades aren’t really universal, as some peoplee require lighter transition colours and others require darker, but I feel like there are certain shades that work for a bigger variety of skin tones. For people with fairer skin tones than me, Woke might be entirely too dark, or too warm.

Another thing I personally found to be missing from this palette is a browbone highlight. Wiggles is too similar to my skin tone to use as a highlight, and Blurred Lines is too glittery and duochrome-y. However, given these two missing shades, I still feel that I generally enjoy the colour selection in this palette, and I think there are many good combos to be had here.

 

THE PERFORMANCE

Shade selection aside, this is a really high-performing palette. While the texture of the some of the shadows lean a bit on the drier side, almost all of the shades are pigmented and easy to use. I’m really impressed with the performance of the palette! Below is a breakdown of the performance of the shades:

Wiggles: Decent pigmentation and ability to build up colour.
Blurred Lines: The texture is a lot softer than the rest of this palette and a little bit crumbly. This can have a little bit of fall-out during the application progress if you’re not careful.
So Meta: A little drier in texture. This swatches decently but took quite a bit of work to show up on my eyes.
Feeling It: Smooth texture and great pigmentation. I was really impressed with this shade.
Realness: The chalkiest and driest shade in the palette, but the colour does build up well.
Woke: This shade feels really buttery and pigmented. A standout of the palette.
Wish List: Texture is soft and colour is vibrant. Another standout shade.
Manifest It: Fuchsias tend to have a lot of trouble with pigmentation, but the richness of this shade surprised me. It also didn’t feel as dry as I thought it would.
Keep Cool: Great soft texture and the shade is vibrant. The colour builds up well on the eyes.
Not Playing: A really interesting shade that I’ve never owned in my collection, but has a very similar texture to Blurred Lines. It’s soft and a little crumbly, so you may get some fallout while applying.
Lucid: Soft texture with beautiful pigmentation. I own a lot of brownish-purple-blue duochromes and thought this would look a lot like the ones I already own, but I found this really unique with a strong flip.
Bring It: Less dry in texture than I initially thought it would be; the colour builds up well and is easy to work with.
On One: Not as buttery as I expected, but the pigmentation is wonderful and the duochrome is strong.
Eclipse: Very soft and buttery without any fallout, and I was impressed with the metallic finish.
Prism: A bit dry in formulation but has very buildable colour and great pigmentation.

The only issues with when using it on the eyes was Blurred Lines, So Meta, and Not Playing. I found it a little hard to build up So Meta, even when I packed it on my lids – it worked out fine, but it wasn’t nearly as pigmented as I would have liked. Blurred Lines and Not Playing are a bit sheer, and there’s not much I can do with them other than use them in the inner corner.

My favourite shades from this palette when you take into account both performance and colour are Woke, Wish List, Keep Cool, Lucid, On One, and Eclipse. These shades are really on fire!

 

THE LOOKS

As always, I wanted to incorporate all of the shades into my looks, but because the palette is so large, there were a few that were left out. In the end, I used most of them, but would have needed to create a fourth look in order to incorporate all of the shades into my looks!

LOOK 1

This was my red-toned look, where I tried to use all the reds and oranges in the palette. There were a lot of them! I placed Woke into the crease as my transition shade, So Meta in the inner third of my eye, and Wish List on the outer 2/3 of the eyelid. Then I used Manifest It to deepen up the outer V and dragged it down to the lower lashline. Lastly, I took Blurred Lines and placed it in the inner corner and browbone.

 

LOOK 2

This was the purple look I did with this palette. Purple is so hard to photograph because the colour always ends up looking different! For this one, I placed Woke into the crease as my transition shade, then Keep Real in the inner and outer third, keeping the middle of my lid bare. I then placed some concealer in the middle to make sure the area was a blank canvas, before putting the shade Lucid on top of the concealer and then blending the edges into Keep Real. I placed Not Playing in the inner corner of the eye, and Wiggles on the browbone.

 

LOOK 3

Look 3 is my neutral look, but in this case, neutral does not necessarily mean natural. This is actually quite a dramatic look because of how dark it is, and in order to test out some more shades, I added a pop of colour to the lower lashline. Again, I used Woke as my transition shade, and then I took Prism into the outer third of the eyelid. Then I applied Eclipse over the rest of the lid, blending it into Prism. Lastly, I used a pencil brush to place Bring It on the lower lashline for a little bit of colour  Blurred Lines went into the inner corner, and Wiggles on the browbone.

 

THE SUMMARY

The Pros

-Affordable price
-Good colour selection for a variety of looks
-Eyeshadows are high-quality and pigmented

The Cons

-No mirror included
-A few of the shades are a little problematic to use
-No highlight or transition shade

I’ve reimagined the palette but changing up some of the shades and reorganized the palette in a way I think makes the most sense – the idea comes from Stashy, who used to do this in her palette reviews! The top rows are neturals, the second rows are reds and purples, and the third rows are greens and blues. I changed 4 shades in the palette: 1) I made the shade Wiggles lighter so that it could work better as a highlight shade, 2) I changed the colour that was “Feeling It” and turned it into a lighter, cooler caramel tone to be used as an alternative transition shade to Woke, 3) I changed the colour that was “On One” into a brighter turquoise, and 4) I changed the shade that was “Blurred Lines” from an opal duochrome shade to a deep matte indigo that I thought it would go well to with all of the blue and the purple shades in the palette.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing with this palette. I don’t know if it’s one that I’ll pull out every day, but nonetheless, I’m impressed with the quality of the palette and think that there are some really fun looks to be found within the shades. If you own this palette, have you enjoyed using it?