QUO, the home makeup brand of Shoppers Drug Mart here in Canada, has launched their Summer 2018 collection, and it’s full of celestial hues and oil-slick rainbow ombre packaging!

 

I’ve been trying out the products over the last few weeks, so let’s dive into my thoughts!

I feel like I say this ever time I try out QUO‘s seasonal face palettes but… they’re really good. Like *REALLY* good. QUO has a habit of releasing these kinds of three-pan face palettes whenever the season changes and I never get sick of them because I swear they have yet to release a dud.

Each palette comes with a blush, highlighter and bronzer. The Orion palette is a cooler palette that is slightly more suited towards paler skintones, but I’d like to point out that the bronzer shade could also double as a contour colour because it has a lot of grey in it. I love it as a bronzer on me personally, but the tone looks just right for a contour as well.

The Terra palette is more warm-toned and definitely has more of a warm-golden bronze. I especially love the coral blush in that palette!

Swatched out you can see full on pigmentation in both palettes.

I really, really love Orion on me. While I’m drawn towards coral blushes (like in the Terra palette), cooler pink blushes do tend to look “nicer” on me. And that highlighter? Holy cow – how blinding is that??

Terra doesn’t quite suit me as well as Orion does, but it’s also significantly deeper in comparison. The highlighter is a lot more subdued on me, but that’s because it’s darker than my skintone and isn’t able to cast a reflection as easily.

I am always extremely skeptical about eye creams because I have huge problems with oily lids and creasing shadows. It’s very, very rare (if not impossible) for me to wear a cream eyeshadow without creasing. But look at those colours! I was game to try them out despite my argumentative eyelids because they’re just so gorgeous.

Single layer swatches demonstrate that they’re a little bit translucent and definitely need to be built up if you want to wear them as a more solid colour. I definitely found the colour in the package was a little deceptive and these weren’t as duochrome as I was expecting.

Galactic applied nicely to the lid and it was fairly easy to blend out with another brush that had eyeshadow on it (the purples). Sadly…

I had a lot of crasing problems with Galactic. What you’re seeing above, in the inner part of my lid, is creasing within the first five minutes of wear. I was really sad because I thought it was going to hold out at first, but it sadly gathered and separated there pretty quickly. Usually if this happens to me it’ll only get worse throughout the day but that didn’t happen with this one. Galactic actually stayed like this through a full work day which really surprised me. So if you’re not prone to creasing like I am, you may do really well with this eye cream!

Of course, I couldn’t just try Galactic, I had to try out Aura too, especially since it was such a gorgeous colour. In a swatch this one didn’t look that amazing, but it was absolutely transformative on the lid. It went from being a blue/white on my arm to a lavender/blue pearl on the eyes.

Impressively, this one barely creased on me. I was completely taken aback! That tiny, TINY amount of separation on the inner part of my lid is really impressive for me. (And yes, these are over top of eyeshadow primer.)

Next up – lip gloss! Although lip gloss isn’t exactly my thing, I know it’s been making on heck of a comeback so people are always excited to see new and fun shades.

The colour range is certainly unique – Stargazer is a milky hot pink, High Beam is a translucent light pink pearl and Celestial is a sheer base with blue particle shimmer.

I suspect Celestial is a bit more of a topper colour for most people, and I think it would work best that way because it’s super hecking gritty. It’s the kind of gritty where it feels like I’ve got fine granules of sand stuck in my gloss. Sadly, although the colour is pretty, that grittiness makes this a total pass for me.

High Beam is definitely less gritty than Celestial (although there is some shimmer in it), but it’s also slightly patchy. (Honestly, I’m a bit confused on how people WANT their glosses. Some people want opaque colour, some people want translucency… but people who want it to be translucent also don’t want it sinking into their lip lines which is damn near impossible to achieve with a milky, sheer-ish base.) So High Beam is somewhat sheer and would most likely make a great lipstick topper.

And then there’s Stargazer… and people… I was NOT prepared. Holy smokes. This colour is solid and opaque, and has a reflection that could rival most face highlighters. The texture is smooth – slick and yet creamy. It actually *feels* sexy to wear this one – which is not something I ever thought I’d say about a gloss. This one is completely different from the other two above – much, much nicer on the lips!

And lastly, like any appropriate summer collection should have, QUO has released Illuminating Drops. They come with your usual dropper style tip and you can use them as a regular face highlighter or mix it in with your moisturizer, primer, etc.

Much like the face palettes, you’ve got a cooler toned one (paler) and a warmer one (definitely more bronze). They feel a bit slippery to the touch, but not oily which is great.

Honestly, I was pretty nervous about using a liquid highlighter on my face because I don’t use them that often. However, Champagne Pearl turned out to be beautiful. It’s a bit more of a softer glow when you compare it to the Orion powder-trio highlighter, but I think some people may like something a bit softer than a blinding highlighter. I was also impressed with how easy it was to blend out with my finger tips! I dabbed a few pats of it on the tops of my cheekbones with my fingers and then blended it all out without any brushes. It melded into the skin seamlessly! (I haven’t applied Radiant Bronzer to myself because it’s definitely too dark for my skintone, but it’s a lovely tone and the texture feels the same as the lighter one.)

Final Thoughts

My top picks are:

• Definitely the Face Palettes – in particular the cool-toned one (which is a surprise as I thought I’d like the darker one more).
• I think the colours on the Eye Creams are beautiful and if you’re not prone to creasing, these may definitely work for you as I only had minimal initial creasing upon application (which, quite frankly, is miraculous – normally my whole eyeshadow look goes to hell in a handbasket with a cream shadow). Out of the two, I’d definitely choose Aura as it’s the most unique.
• Stargazer Lip Glos if the colour is up your alley. The colour is incredible and it was super comfy to wear!

Let me know if you’ve picked up anything from this collection!

The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.