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The Sephora Collection Fearless Cool Nude Mega Mix Palette is one of several newly released, budget-priced palettes featuring the ability to rearrange rows of shades within palettes to customize them to your liking. This one mainly contains cooler-toned browns and taupes with various formulations ranging from a cream-powder hybrid matte to true powder mattes, as well as shimmers with a mixture of fine shimmer and larger sparkle, and flakier/chunkier shimmers that resemble glitter.
Price: $18.00
Availability: Sephora
Swatches
Shades are not named but are numbered 1-9 starting with 1 at the top left corner and 9 at the bottom right corner.
1 – Cream-powder hybrid. Ulta pale taupe with a mostly matte finish.
2 – White sparkly shimmer with a subtle golden sheen.
3– Medium shimmery taupe. Mostly small shimmer particles.
4– Flakey white shimmer with a subtle blue sheen.
5– Sparkly silver shimmer.
6 – Matte black base packed with lots of silver sparkle.
7 – True powder matte. Deep cool-toned brown.
8– Light bronze sparkly shimmer.
9 – True powder matte. Medium cool taupe.
The cream-powder hybrid is more powder than it is cream. Pressing into it does not cause me to leave a dent in the pan. In the swatch above, it is layered pretty heavily, and in that state, it looks like it has a bit of a satiny-sheen to it. I don’t find that it has a satin finish on the eye though. Instead, it looks mostly matte but it looks heavier/thicker than a standard powder matte and emphasizes the natural texture of my lids.
The two true powder mattes were both nice. The lighter one was a tiny bit powdery in the pan but nothing excessive. Both had a good amount of color payoff and went on mostly evenly. Very little to no fallout from either.
There is a ALOT of shimmer in this palette and most of it is larger sparkle. If you like pinpoint reflects and you don’t mind sparkle fallout, you’ll probably be okay with this. If you prefer smoother-looking (metallic/satin) sheens and hate fallout, I’d caution you on picking this up. The composition and finish of the shimmers varies by shade. Some have much more sparkle than others, some are a bit more opaque than others. I thought they all generally were easy to pick up on a brush, without having to dig or press hard into the pan to do so. They also transferred easily from my brush to my lid. I nearly always found using my fingertip instead of a brush to be more effective at depositing color more heavily/opaquely. The formulas feel “balanced”, meaning they are neither dry/dusty and do not fly up in the air at the slightest touch, nor are they very creamy or emollient-feeling. I like the balance that they have.
Looks
Look 1:
- No Primer
- 1 – Crease/transition
- 9 – Add depth to outer crease
- 2 – All over lid (dry brush, fingertip)
- 3 – Lower lashline (dry brush)
- Loreal Voluminous Noir Balm Mascara – Upper lashes only
Shade 1 was barely deeper than my skin tone and very cool toned. This one has an almost-creamy feel to it and I thought it sat a little heavy on my lid.
I didn’t use enough of Shade 9 here to get a good feel for it.
Shade 2 went on a little sheerer than I wanted with just a dry brush but I liked how it looked when pressed on with my finger. It had borderline annoying fallout applied this way. The sparkles are small but heavy and they fall down under my eyes easily.
Shade 3 didn’t seem to have as much sparkle in it, and more fine shimmer. I didn’t notice much fallout the way I applied it to the lower lashline.
Look 2:
- No Primer
- 9 – Crease/transition
- 7 – Liner
- 5 – Center of lid
- 8 – Lower lashline
- Refy Lash Sculpt Mascara – Upper lashes only
- Make Up For Ever Artist Color Pencil in Infinite Nude (this shade is discontinued but Boundless Bisque is similar) – Waterline
Shade 9 was a little powdery in the pan when I went to pick some up on the brush. It wasn’t a crazy amount but it wasn’t a particularly firmly pressed shade. I tapped some of the excess color off onto the back of my hand before applying it to the lids just so I could get more of a gradual buildup of color. It blended nicely without the primer underneath. It was a nice true cool toned neutral taupe on me (not too grey and definitely not a warm brown) that I could see myself using on a day where I just want “natural” looking eyeshadow.
Shade 7 worked well as a liner. Plenty of pigment, not too “soft” or “silky” of a formula. Stayed where I placed it with my brush and built up well.
Shade 5 was more sparkle than anything. I thought it might be a little more like a metallic but it’s just a lot of large silver sparkle. It adhered surprisingly well for how sparkly it is but I did get quite a noticeable amount of fallout. It wasn’t that hard to brush off with a spoolie. This shade looks blue on Sephora’s website. It’s definitely not blue. It’s a true light/bright silver.
Shade 8 is also sparkly but has a sheer brown base color. I got some fallout from this as well but it also was not difficult to clean up.
Look 3:
- No Primer
- 9 – All over lid/crease
- 6 – All over lid (layered over previous shade), lower lashline
- 4 – Inner corner (wet and dry brush)
- Loreal Voluminous Noir Balm Mascara – Upper and lower lashes
- Make Up For Ever Artist Color Pencil in Boundless Bisque – Waterline
This is mainly to show the texture of Shade 6 on the eye compared to in the pan. There’s a lot of matte in the shade but also a lot of sparkle. It’s a fairly deep black with good color payoff. I got a lot of both pigment and sparkle fallout from it the way I applied it in this look. I applied this with a combination of flat shader brushes and my fingertip.
Shade 9 is my transition so the black looks more smoothly blended. I did not intend to apply the black so heavily over so much of the lid and if I’d realized that’s where I was going to end up, I would not have applied this taupe shade so heavily underneath it.
Shade 4 is the flakiest shimmer in the palette. The clumps break up into smaller bits of shimmer if I smooth over them enough. I started with a dry brush but them dampened the brush as I continued layering more color on.
Look 4:
- ABH Eyeshadow Primer
- 7 – All over lid/crease
- 1 – Transition, used very lightly around the edges of shade 7, lower lashline (underneath the shimmer)
- 5 – Center of lid, lower lashline (wet brush)
- 2 – Inner corner (wet brush)
- Loreal Voluminous Noir Balm Mascara – Upper lashes and lower lashes
- Urban Decay 24/7 Glide On Eye Pencil in Mushroom – Waterline
I applied and blended Shade 7 mostly with a flat shader brush. It had plenty of pigmentation but wasn’t difficult to blend or apply evenly. I didn’t have much fallout from it. It darkened ever so slightly in the line of my crease but was easy to even back out by applying a bit more color in lighter areas.
Shade 1 is so light it almost blends in with my skin tone. I found it worked well to even out any redness or discoloration on the lower lashline, and the creamy formula sat better on that part of the eye.
Shade 5 is mostly sparkle with little to no base color. Applying it with a wet brush gave me this less-sheer look but if I use a dry brush with this, it will look more like scattered sparkles.
Shade 2 has finer, more dense shimmer and goes on with even more opacity than Shade 5. I prefer this texture more. It took on more of a metallic finish applied this way.