Review: Juvia’s Place Eyeshadow Palette ‘The Saharan’

I had INCREDIBLY high hopes for this palette when it was announced. After seeing preliminary swatches, I was positive I’d be purchasing because I couldn’t pass up some of the foiled shades Juvia’s Place included in this palette. Just looking at Kia and Wodaabe made me drool.

Honestly, truly.

I was overly thrilled, however, with some of the shades that seemed to be duplicates from other Juvia’s palettes – just renamed. Senegal heavily favors Sheba from ‘The Nubian 2’ and Jamila (although wonderful to have an orange brick transition shade, is nearly identical to Morocco, also from ‘The Nubian 2’. Finally, Bororo is a near identical dupe for Calabar in ‘The Masquerade’ palette. Just something to think about as you look for duplicate shades already in your collection. As you can see, this fact clearly didn’t deter me from purchasing. =)

The stars of this palette are really its metallic shades. This isn’t news to any Juvia’s lovers out there – Juvia’s consistently delivers amazing foiled shadows. As I said earlier, Wodaabe and Kia are drool-worthy and you can add Senegal and Iman to that category as well. The rest of the shimmer shades are lovely as well, but best applied over shadow primer as there was a lot of fall out when picking them up with a brush. To ensure the foiled and shimmer shades stay on your lid all ways, definitely use a top notch primer. I personally use Too Faced Glitter Glue primer for shadows like this. It is formulated to keep glitter on your eyeballs so it can definitely take on a shadow this pigmented!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t that impressed by the mattes in this palette as I have been with the mattes in previous palettes. I had a lot of trouble getting Jamila to swatch with my finger and even more trouble trying to get it on my brush. I felt like I was really digging just to get a tiny bit of product. I prefer Morocco from ‘The Nubian 2’ palette to Jamila. Also, for being a brand with such a reputation for pigmentation, I was disappointed with the performance of Chad. This was Juvia’s chance to make the black of all blacks, but it really fell short for me. Again, I had trouble picking this up with my finger and my brush. I’ll stick to Anastasia Beverly Hills ‘Noir’ or Melt Cosmetics ‘Dark Matter’ for my smokey eye fix.

Overall, you cannot beat this palette for the price. I cannot stress that enough. For roughly $30 (use a discount code like DUPETHAT at checkout for $$ off) you get 12 shadows (8 amazing / 4 pretty darn good) and you can play around with a whole spectrum of colors and formulas till your little heart bursts. Meanwhile, I’ll just be waiting for The Saharan 2 to release so I can keep getting my Juvia’s Place fix!