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The ColourPop Sage The Day Palette, $14 at Ulta and ColourPop, contains 9 nature-inspired shades of green and brown. There are 4 true mattes, 4 shimmers, and 1 matte with sparkle. None of them are pressed pigments or glitters. The palette and pans are the same size as most of ColourPop’s previous 9-pans, like their monochromatic series. It is made of cardboard and the pans are magnetic and removable.
I like that this doesn’t smack you over the head with green but instead includes a wide variety of highly complimentary shades. For only being 9 shades, you can do a lot with this. A while back I decided I wanted to focus on using all my monochromatic 9-pan palettes from ColourPop and quickly realized that was a bad idea. I don’t know what it is about looking at 9 shades of a single color family that paralyzes me. Shade selections like these are much less intimidating.
The three lightest matte shades are all great quality with good pigmentation and easy blending. They feel soft and smooth and they adhere well to the lids without dusting away too easily. Picking up color on a brush is very easy and I don’t have to spend a lot of time building up color. The deepest one is also pretty good. It can be a little more tricky to get to adhere evenly but I feel this is one of ColourPop’s better deep mattes. It surprisingly blends out well without needing a transition shade to look good.
Manifest is the lone matte with sparkle and it has tinier sparkles than some other matte with sparkle shades I’ve used from ColourPop. There is fallout but it isn’t nearly as messy and some of that sparkle actually stays on the lid. It’s actually a usable shade, in other words.
Three of the shimmers have some sparkle mixed in with them. There is some sparkle fallout with Retreat Me having the most. Nature Bae is the only one that has all fine particles. All of them pick up on a brush and transfer to the skin without having to work hard or use tricks to get them to show up.
If you like this selection of shades, go for it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. This has been one of the more enjoyable eyeshadow palettes I’ve used in a while.
Swatches
Lit Vibes – Pale beige shimmer with a strong, vibrant green sheen and a good amount of gold sparkles.
Retreat Me – Nearly metallic greenish gold with lots of silver sparkles.
Sips Tea – Matte, pastel mint green.
Keep Calm – Light matte green. Leans more yellow than blue.
Tree of Life – Medium olive shimmer. This one has a deeper grayish base color with lots of fine yellow gold shimmer and gold sparkles.
Intuition – Medium, matte orangey brown.
Manifest – Deeper warm brown with tiny sparkles.
Nature Bae – Warm reddish-brown base with strong blue-green sheen. All fine shimmer.
Smudge Me – Deep greenish brown with a matte finish.
Looks
For this one I used Intuition as a transition shade over a large area of the crease and lower lashline to add a soft warm glow. I applied Manifest to the outer lid to add some depth and used Smudge Me close to both upper and lower lashes for definition. Finally, I topped the center of the lid with Tree of Life using a dry brush.
To start this out, I blended both of the pale matte greens in the crease and applied Tree of Life all over the lid with just a dry brush. On the lower lashline, I applied Intuition over a somewhat large area and then used Manifest more tightly against the lower lashline. For pops of light, I applied Retreat Me to the inner corner and Lit Vibes to the brow bone, also using dry brushes. All the shimmers had some fallout but nothing super bothersome.
This is a super easy look that doesn’t look too basic. All I did was sweep Intuition lightly but broadly all over the crease and along the lower lashline for soft warmth and definition. Then I topped the lid with Nature Bae.
Very similar concept as the last look, but this one requires more time to do. I applied Smudge Me heavily all over the lid and blended it carefully through the crease without using a transition shade. The quality of this shade is pretty good but because it’s so dark, it takes longer to apply and blend out evenly. Using a few different types of brushes really helps. Then, I layered Nature Bae over the center of the lid.
For this one, I wanted to use one of the matte greens in a more “wearable”, or not-scary way. This is mainly a neutral eye with a subtle pop of matte green on the lid and an echoing of shimmering green on the lower lashline. Intuition is broadly blended through the crease and Manifest is used for depth on the inner and outer portion of the lid. To blend Keep Calm into the brown shades, I went back and forth between all three shades used on the upper lid, building up intensity and sweeping them into each other along their edges till I was happy with the look. Smudge Me is blended along the lower lashline and taken far enough down to make room for Retreat Me to have some space underneath the lower lashes.