Front Cover Make-Up Set: Colour Of The Season Pink S/S 2012 (Photos & Swatches)

If you have ever been in a Boots during Christmas time, you'll no doubt have seen Frontcover's make-up sets (or you may even have bought one as a gift or received one yourself).  I have always been intrigued by their huge boxed palettes and the consumer hype that surrounds this brand; many of their kits regularly sell out when they're introduced in stores.  So what is all the fuss about?!  I want to know!

I was sent one of the new Frontcover make-up sets for S/S to try out.  Colour Of The Season: Pink* is a boxed palette which gives you (most of) the products that you need to recreate the look on the cover.  It's a simple chic and feminine everyday look centered around the colour pink which was popular on this year's Chanel runways.  On the back and on the inside cover, are easy to follow make-up tips to advise you on how to use the products included in the set to get the overall cover look.

Colour Of The Season: Pink contains 3 domed baked eyeshadows, 3 lip glosses, a black kohl eye pencil with a smudger tip, a lip liner, a baked powder blusher and a nail polish, as well as two brushes; a cheek brush and a double ended eyeshadow brush.  You also get a pencil sharpener too which is always handy to have in a set like this.  Onto the swatches!

The 3 lip glosses offer 3 different variations on the pink lip look.  Coral Peach is a nice sheer shimmery pink, whereas Desert Flower is a 'barely there' nude.  I found it impossible to get DF to show up on me, even with multiple layers, so that shade would only really work on those with very naturally pale lips.  Rosebud is definitely the standout lip gloss in the set, look at that beautifully pigmented fuschia pink!  The formula of these are pretty average though (not really sticky or scented, wear time is maybe an hour or so), and I'd recommend wearing a lip primer underneath Rosebud to help it stay put.

The baked eyeshadows were very disappointing.  As you can see they're not very pigmented at all (I swatched all three quite heavily to get them to show up), so I think these would look better used wet or with a damp brush.  An eyeshadow primer like UDPP would be an absolute MUST if wearing any of these!  Peach Skin is a pretty neutral pink with finely milled shimmer in it, Wolf is a shimmery grey that looks a bit taupey in some lights, and Black Spark is a light black with lots of silver glitter.  The glitter in Black Spark is very chunky and I had some fallout issues with all three of these, majorly so with Black Spark.

The Baked Powder Blusher looked incredible when I first put it on; it had just the right amount of shimmer in it to look like beautiful pink blush combined with a highlighter.  Unfortunately, the pink in the blush quickly faded by mid-morning and left me with just the shimmer particles on my cheeks, not a good look!  This may just be because my skin is oily/combination, so it might be better suited for drier skin.  The Black Kohl Eye Pencil fared much better, but did require setting to prevent it smudging and the Lip Liner sadly quickly faded and didn't exactly colour match any of the glosses in the set.

The two brushes included were too rough for me to use and shedded immediately, so I used my own in the end.  The Nail Polish wasn't great either.  It was very thick and gloopy so it took me ages to apply and then it chipped literally within the hour!  Such a shame because it's a slightly darker version of one of my favourite polishes from China Glaze - Fifth Avenue.

Summary: I don't think the products in this set meet my relatively high make-up expectations, as I was looking for an everyday make-up palette and this certainly let me down.  However, I think that my opinions are largely based on the fact that I'm slightly older than perhaps the target audience for the Frontcover sets?  I can imagine this being a nice make-up set to buy for someone much younger (early teens) who is just starting to get into make-up and wants to experiment.  In that context, I would say it's more than ideal, but if you're looking to achieve a more professional make-up look, then perhaps try something else.

*PR sample