We couldn’t resist when Morphe debuted a Lucky Charms eye palette with coordinating pencil and brush sets just in time for St. Patrick’s Day (because Lucky the Leprechaun and his tasty marshmallows are Irish … ish).
Shooting stars, blue moons, pink hearts, purple horseshoes: We all know the marshmallows are divine, but are they a makeup look?
We enlisted the discerning eye of Lewiston High School sophomore Lilly Smith, who happens to be something of a wizard with a makeup brush, to test the Morphe X Lucky Charms Make Some Magic Artistry Palette and the coordinating six-piece pencil set (available at Ulta in Lewiston and Moscow).
First impressions were promising.
“Ohhh, this is very pretty,” she said upon unboxing the palette.
Expectations were tempered by experience. Themed palettes are popular; results can be mixed.
“I’m hoping that they’re as pigmented as they look,” Smith said, looking over the colors with names like Marshmallow Magic, Cereal Milk and Unicorn.
The (mostly matte) marshmallow colors — Hearts, Blue Moon, Balloons and so on — are stamped with the corresponding image. Again, adorable.
Smith started with You’re In Luck, a matte orange, in the outer corner and crease of her eye.
So far, so good. The color was “nice and pigmented.”
She continued building her eye with Balloons, a matte red, and Shooting Stars, a matte yellow.
Horseshoe, a matte purple applied to the inner corners, proved to have less intensity. Blue Moon, used under her eyes, was “OK.”
“Getting cooler colors to be pigmented is really difficult,” Smith said.
The pencils, including the “very sparkly” Whimsical, a light purple, and Delightful, an iridescent blue, yielded varying results.
Optimistic, described on the Ulta website as “super-gilded copper for lips & eyes,” added gold shimmer to the corners of her eyes in Smith’s look.
Ultimately, she used seven of the 18 colors in the palette and four of the six pencils, finishing with white eyeliner and white mascara she already owned.
“White makes most rainbow colors pop really well,” Smith explained.
Her color knowledge and steady hand come from years of drawing and painting, including art classes at LHS (where she was headed immediately after the makeup session, to attend “Seussical the Musical,” a drama club production for which she helped with costuming. It continues this week with 7 p.m. performances March 17-19.)
The next day, a text update: The makeup lasted well, staying “pigmented and pretty till I took it off. And taking it off wasn’t a nightmare either.”
The final test: Would Smith buy this collection?
“Yeah. It’s really nice.”
Or, as our favorite spokeself would surely say, “Aye!”
