The Blushes:
I really enjoy the blushes as they all worked well for me and became favorites while I was using them which surprised me. I am not normally able to tell how blush looks on me because I have very fair skin that is rather thin so it often looks pink in the cheeks without blush. But on the days when my skin was less pink all of the blushes showed nicely. They work well for me because they do not immediately apply too much, yet if I wanted more color than initially deposited they do build up. They also blended out well with the highlighter and bronzer that I always use, as well as my setting powder. The color selection I had to work with was appealing to me and it feels like you get a generous amount of blush. While there are shimmers in a couple of them, they never appeared glittery on the cheeks so I was able to control how much glow/shimmer I had through the highlighter used or if I used a cream blush underneath.
The Lip Sticks:
The lip stick/lip liner duos surprised me in how well they worked. When I first received the pink one from my husband I thought it would be heavily frosted and that I wouldn't like it, instead it was shimmery, but not overly so for my tastes. All three of the lip sticks give enough color to build up and look opaque on the lips when used by themselves. If used with a lip liner and not built up so much, you can shift the tone of the lip stick based on the liner used underneath. They glide on and feel creamy on the lips. While I am not sure how hydrating they are, they never felt drying on the lips. I never had a problem with the lip colors bleeding out of the lip line. While the color does transfer off on to everything, generally enough pigment would still be left behind on the lips to stick look recently applied. I would recommend removing lip stick before eating and then reapplying afterwards.
The lip liners in the duos also worked well for me. The one that came with the pink lip stick was a little dry, but not completely. The ones that came with the red (cinnamon) and brown (ginger spice) were much creamier, but also more recent purchases which makes me believe they have improved the formula of the lip liners. I am not sure if they liners really did anything to improve the wear time of the lip sticks they were paired with, but they did not seem to decrease it either.
The Eye Shadows:
I was pleasantly surprised by the eye shadows. Blue does seem to be their weakest color when it comes to eye shadows, those were my least successful in each palette they appeared other than the bright eyes palette. With the e.l.f. eyelid primer the shadows averaged around six-to-seven hours of wear; a few only managed three hours while some lasted eight to ten hours. With the Wet n Wild Fergie primer they generally made it to 12 hours of wear or longer if I actually managed to stay awake longer than 12 hours. The five color palettes did seem to apply more as a wash of color, though they could be built up if desired. The 12 color palettes generally applied more opaquely. They all had some level of fallout, though generally not much if I tapped off the excess before applying; the blues again are the exception to this, they had a lot of fallout regardless of how I applied or how much I tapped off. For most of these applying with a flat shader brush and then buffing out with a cleaning fluffy brush seemed to work best.
Summation:
When I started this, I really wasn't sure what to expect. I know that the price of makeup does not always dictate how well it is actually going to work, but when the packaging doesn't have the name of the brand or which product it is, it does not instill a lot of confidence in the product for me. Colormates proved the concerns I had about it in the beginning unfounded. So far everything has worked fairly well for me and I would happily use these again after taking a break for a little while. After six months of use I am ready to move on to something else, but not because there is anything wrong makeup, just because I get bored with things after a while. I was trying to decide how I would rank the three types of products used, but I could not decide which I liked more than the other, which I think speaks to how consistent the over all line is.
If I did have to warn against anything in the line it would be blue eye shadow, for some reason those particular shadows lasted less time and had a lot more fallout than any of the other shadows. Other than that, if you see something from Colormates that you are interested in, or if you are interested in trying colors you don't normally use, I would say they are a good option to try out. For me, all of the Colormates that I have tested will stay in the Day makeup category. Since this was started more Colormates makeup has been purchased for me by my husband so there will probably be a second round of testing for this brand eventually, but I would like to have some time between then and now as I have been using the same selection of makeup for at least six months, although I will be using a Colormates mascara for October, November, and December (2015); thoughts on that will come later once I have had finished using it.
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