Beauty Bay Wilderness Palette Thoughts! (with makeup inspiration attached!)

Long time no post!

I just wanted to share a look I did using the Beauty Bay Wilderness Palette. This has been a widely loved palette online and while I normally find myself wary of "hyped" products, I was deeply intrigued by the color story and the fairly affordable price! It was originally going for $15, but after SEVERAL restocks, they ended up raising the price to $18.

I wanted to share my experience with the palette. I find that you can read/watch all the reviews you want, but ultimately it's your own experience with a formula where you can form your own opinion.

Overall I do enjoy using the palette. The mattes are super pigmented and blend out really nicely. There's a gorgeous variety in color and depth (which is something I harp on a LOT of palettes. I love a good range of depth!). Some folks compare the Wilderness palette to the discontinued Melt's Muerte and Vida palettes. I can see the comparison, since the Wilderness palette contains both warm, swampy greens and bright reds with deep blues.

Look at how beautiful it is!

So far I like the mattes. They're very pigmented! The red shade Poppy is especially vibrant. I remember when I was first getting into makeup (roughly 2016/2017) the only good red matte eyeshadow readily available was Sugarpill's Love+. The darker red, Raw, is ok. It does deepen Poppy, but I wish it was darker! I like using Twilight to deepen Raw and Poppy, but it would've been nice if Raw was able to deepen it (to my liking).

The most disappointing thing about this palette however is its shimmers. Whew. They disintegrate within half an hour on my lids. They swatch well and look pretty but their performance leaves a lot to be desired. I know it's normal for me to get creasing on my lids, that's just what happens to makeup throughout the day. The level of creasing that these shimmers go through is NOT normal for me. Even with the proper preparation and primer, they just don't want to adhere to my lids.

Although they look super different when swatched out, the two green shimmers Moss and Breeze also mysteriously manage to look practically the same on my lid. Have yet to figure out why that is.

The top 10 rows of the palette

The bottom 10 rows of the palette

The swatches look a little lack luster, but as many of us know at this point, swatches only tell so much of the story! It just gives us an idea of how the color might look! Plus it's fun looking at sparkles. :3

As much as I enjoy working with this palette I'm not sure if I would recommend it. It's actually a REALLY large palette (and comes with a mirror). I like that the packaging isn't bulky, but for some reason all the photos online made me think it was smaller LOL? I also live in the US and man, it took quite a while to get! I'm an Aries so I'm impatient, sorry! If you have $18 to spare and want to experience it yourself, I say why not! The biggest reason I can't fully recommend this palette is because of the shimmers. :( Even with glitter glue, they crease into nothingness so quickly. The shimmers feel like a cream hybrid where it's kind of squishy, so it's kind of useless to try and pick it up with a brush.

Here's a small compliation of looks I did using the mattes of this palette! There's supplementary palettes for other colors, but usually just for adding depth or for the shimmers. A good majority of the shimmers I used are from Clionadh Cosmetics where I purchased for the first time after a LONG time this past Black Friday. Can confirm they are worth the love for sure! That will be addressed in a future post. :) Did want to disclose that I did edit these photos, but only minimally! Just wanted to showcase how beautiful the colors are and sometimes the lighting I shoot in is a tad dull.