Unexpected! I was caught off guard at what I discovered with this Hera palette. Turns out, I love a navy blue smokey eye on myself. If you have dark eyes and hair, try it! I can’t get enough of the look lately, and it is also surprisingly wearable for everyday. The matte navy blue shade in this palette (“v”) is very pigmented, buildable, and super easy to blend. I would say it performs like a high end shadow and seems to be pretty fool-proof. It’s definitely not a tense zero to 60 moment, like some black matte shadows can be. This navy builds beautifully into a full rich color. No patchiness at all, and I even applied it without an eyeshadow base. And I like to either layer the metallic blue overtop or I pat on some of the metallic gold all over my lids. Truly a stunning result and a new favorite of mine. The reason I took off the star, was because the overall color story of this palette feels a little disjointed and there are some shades in it that I will never touch because I don’t feel like they pair well with the rest of the palette. Also, the two matte blues and matte reds look so similar. Wish those colors didn’t look redundant in the palette. Overall though, if you are interested in the blues in this palette, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you won’t be disappointed by them. That navy matte and that metallic blue deliver and never disappoint. I’ve gotten so many compliments on my navy blue smokey eyes, that this palette is staying in my collection for that shadow alone. Read more

I got both the “Hera” palette and the “Aphrodite” palette, so this review is for both. I do a breakdown of the different shades in each palette below.OVERALL THOUGHTS ON “HERA” PALETTE: Overall, the palette is okay. Honestly, with the “Hera” palette, I feel like a lot of the shades don’t go together too well. Before picking out a palette I always look at all the colors to see if I’ll be able to create a decent number of cohesive looks. I thought I could with this palette, but they always seem to kind of get muddy and not look right. If you only like 1 or 2 mattes and a shimmer for your look, I think the “Hera” color story would work fine. But, if you like to layer a lot of mattes to get a nice gradient, I don’t think you get many looks with this palette. So, like I said, the palette is okay. The quality is okay. It’s $15.69 (at the time of this review) for 16 shades, so that’s less than $1 a shade. So, for the price, the quality is good. I think it just depends on your style of eyeshadow. If you like to get the full gradient look with a few different mattes, I’d skip this. If you usually only use 1 or 2 mattes, you can get a few different looks. For this one, I give 3 stars.OVERALL THOUGHTS ON “APHRODITE” PALETTE - I like this palette a lot better. The shades seem to go together better in my opinion where I don’t end up with a muddy mess or a look that isn’t very cohesive. The quality seems better too in my opinion. So, I’d say if you aren’t sure between the 2, I’d recommend this one over the “Hera” palette. This one, I give 4 stars.The palettes come bubble wrapped nicely. There is a clear plastic sleeve. The palette is cardboard. The product info is on the back. It is made in PRC. Most things, including eyeshadow palettes, are made in China. I find that half will say “made in China” and half will say “made in PRC.” I don’t think they’re trying to hide anything or be shady at all by saying PRC instead of China. Most brands don’t say that a product is made in China in the product pages, since so many things these days are made in China. Usually, it’s only mentioned where a product is made when it’s NOT made in China because it’s a selling point since it’s something different. So, they’ll say it’s made in the US, Turkey, Italy, etc. To me, if I don’t see it saying where it’s made, I just assume it’s made in China. If I get it and it’s not, then that’s just a surprise.There is a cruelty free logo (leaping bunny - Cruelty Free International). I did a search on the leaping bunny website for the brand “Dito Hollywood Studio,” since the back of the palette listed that under “Designed By.” It didn’t come up. The back of the palette said it was “Distributed By: Dito Cosmetics Corp,” so I did a search for that and nothing came up. I also just searched for “Dito Cosmetics” because the website listed on the back of the palette is Ditocosmetics.com, but nothing came up for that either. So, I’m guessing they really aren’t certified by leaping bunny and are just falsely using the logo. I can’t say that for sure, but can say the brand isn’t showing up on the leaping bunny website. I see this with a lot of makeup I get from random brands here on Amazon. They’ll have a cruelty free logo (PETA or leaping bunny) and then I go to look up the brand and it doesn’t show up on the website. I don’t know why companies do that. I know you can be cruelty free without being certified. I’ve seen plenty of brands just say “cruelty free” on their packaging or have their own kind of cruelty free logo, and that’s fine. I’m more likely to trust that than if I see a logo for PETA or leaping bunny and look the brand up and they don’t come up. I’m not even cruelty free and I look, so I’m sure people who are cruelty free will look when it’s a brand new to them. So, not sure why they do this. There is also a talc free logo.The palette has beautiful artwork on the front. The palette has magnetic closure. Inside there is a nice mirror in the lid. It isn’t the full size of the lid, but it’s a decent size. The “Hera” palette mirror is square. The “Aphrodite” palette is circular. The mirror works nicely, it’s not like looking into a funhouse mirror. There are shade names below each shade. They’re Greek letters.The ingredients are listed on the back of the palette.For the “Hera” palette, there is a warning that says - “SHADES 4#, 8#, 13# CONTAIN A COLOURANT NOT APPROVED FOR THE EYE AREA IN THE USA. WARNING: FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. IF IRRITATION OCCURS, DISCONTINUE USE.” This is something I see all the time on palettes, even from well known brands. It’s usually with palettes that have pressed pigments. But, it’s also in palettes that have a lot of red eyeshadows. In this case, the 3 eyeshadows they are talking about are the 2 matte reds and the dark navy blue matte. It is because the dyes can cause staining and/or irritation. What I found odd was that there wasn’t a warning for the pressed glitter shade. Shade “13” is in the bottom left corner. The pressed glitter is in the bottom right corner, so I thought maybe I was reading the labeling on the back of the palette wrong, but I don’t think so. The pressed glitter shade would be shade 16. Pressed glitters always have eye safety warnings, so I was surprised that shade 16 wasn’t included in the warning. Although, the warning says they contain a “colourant” that’s not approved for the eye area. It’s not talking about little particles that could fall into the eyes and scratch the eyes, damaging them. So, I guess it needs a warning of its own. I don’t like pressed glitters. They just get everywhere and are a pain so I just don’t use them. So, I’m happy there’s only 1 in this palette.For the “Aphrodite” palette, there is the same warning, but for different shades - “SHADES 8#, 9#, 13#, 15# CONTAIN A COLOURANT NOT APPROVED FOR THE EYE AREA IN THE USA. WARNING: FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. IF IRRITATION OCCURS, DISCONTINUE USE.” For this palette, shade #8 is a shimmer shade that looks like it’s a orange color. Shade #9 is a peachy orange matte. Shade #13 is blue matte with silver micro glitter. Shade #15 is purple shimmer. Again, same as the “Hera” palette, there isn’t a warning for the pressed glitter, which in this palette is shade #5.You get 16 shades in both palettes.I did finger swatches on my clean forearm (no lotion, primer, etc.) for each palette. I describe each one below…🟥”HERA” PALETTEIn “Hera” there are 8 mattes, 2 mattes with micro glitter, 5 shimmers, and 1 pressed glitter.MATTESThese are soft and smooth. They do feel a little dry, not velvety smooth, but are smooth enough. The ones in the first 2 rows had nice pigment. But the ones in the next 2 rows were patchy when I swatched except for the light peachy tan and the baby blue. The dark navy blue wasn’t quite as patchy as the bright blue in the 3rd row, but it felt gritty to the touch. So, I was interested to see how they performed on the eyes. They performed okay. The dark navy wasn’t patchy on the eyes at all. It works well to deepen up your look. The bright blue kind of blends away.MATTES WITH MICRO GLITTERThere is a brown with silver micro glitter (2nd row, 1st shade on left). Unlike the true mattes, it’s not very pigmented. It’s very sheer. There is a lot of micro glitter in it, but it just falls away. A lot of mattes with micro glitter, when you go to blend them, the glitter just falls away…a lot of times onto your face, which is why I just would rather have true mattes. But, with this one, the glitter was falling away even from the swatch. So, I knew it definitely would fall away as soon as I tried blending it.The other matte with micro glitter is black with silver micro glitter (3rd row, 2nd shade on the left). It was just like the brown - not very pigmented, glitter falling away easily. The glitter blends away when applied to the eyes. So, you do end up with glitter pieces on your face. I would just suggest doing your eyes then the rest of your face, but these aren’t very pigmented so they don’t provide much use for me.SHIMMERSThere are a few different finishes when it comes to shimmers. There are true shimmers, satins, and a marbled baked shimmer.There are 2 true shimmers. The first is sheer, more like a topper shade. But, it’s still pretty and goes on smoothly. The other one isn’t as sheer feeling or as shiny as the first one. But it is soft and goes on smoothly. These apply to the eyes nicely.SATINThese have good pigment but really dry. They have a slight sheen, but not very much of one, even for a satin. These work like a matte since they don’t have much sheen. I have really hooded eyes so usually don’t like any sheen at all in my crease area, so normally I wouldn’t even use a satin there. But these I was able to because they have like no sheen.MARBLED BAKED EYESHADOWThere is 1 baked eyeshadow in the palette that is marbled (2nd row, 3rd shade from the left). It is a pretty shade. It’s dry feeling like baked shadows are, but it has good pigment. Baked shadows work great wet or dry. When dry they can often be dry feeling and kind of powdery. This one wasn’t too bad. When wet, they usually get a more pigmented, even shimmery/metallic look. So, I was really interested to see how this one looked when wet! I did a swatch wet and dry to show. It gives a little more impact wet. It’s hard to tell in the photo I feel like, but it’s beautiful both ways.🟨”APHRODITE” PALETTEIn “Aphrodite” there are 7 mattes, 1 matte with micro glitter, 7 shimmers (1 marbled shimmer), and 1 pressed glitter.MATTESThese are soft and smooth. They feel velvety smooth. Not dry like the ones in the “Hera” palette. They are really soft so there’s a lot of kickback in the pan. I never mind kickback because that usually means they’re soft, so they’ll blend easier. These are pigmented and blend easy, so I’m happy with this. I feel like the colors in this palette mix better together than the ones in the “Hera” palette.MATTE WITH MICRO GLITTERThere is a navy blue matte with silver micro glitter (4th row, 1st shade on left). It has pigment, but it’s patchy. My guess is because of the micro glitter in it. It feels rough and dry. There’s a lot of kickback in the pan. There is a lot of micro glitter in it, but it just falls away. A lot of mattes with micro glitter, when you go to blend them, the glitter just falls away…a lot of times onto your face, which is why I just would rather have true mattes. But, with this one, the glitter was falling away even from the swatch. So, I knew it definitely would fall away as soon as I tried blending it.With the fallout of this shade - color and glitter - I’d definitely recommend doing your eyes first then the rest of your face.SHIMMERS - There are a few different types of shimmers on this palette. There are true shimmers, a shimmer that is more of a metallic, a satin, and a baked marbled shimmer.TRUE SHIMMERSThere are 3 that I would call true shimmers - Row 1, shade 1 & 3. Row 2, shade 4. Row 4, shade 3.Row 1, shade 1 and Row 4, shade 3 are pigmented and opaque. They are soft and smooth. They pick up easily with finger or brush. They glide on smoothly.Row 1, shade 3 is more on the sheer side and feels a little drier, but it is still soft where there is some kickback in the pan. But, it can be built up to look how it does in the pan. It takes about 2 layers to look like it does in the pan. It has silver micro glitter in it.Row 2, Shade 4 is a shimmer with a lot of micro glitter in it. It is GORGEOUS! This has an orange base with gold and even maybe lime green micro glitter. It has such a beautiful sparkle to it. Usually I don’t like shimmers like these, but this one is gorgeous! It’s soft, smooth, glides on. There isn’t a bunch of fall out with the glitter.METALLICRow 1, shade 4 is what I would call a metallic. It has a wet, metallic look to it. It is soft and smooth. It glides onto the skin. It isn’t chunky at all.SATINRow 2, shade 2 looked like it was going to be a satin in the pan, but it had more sheen than I expected. I’d still call it a satin, but it definitely has a nice sheen to it. It’s soft, smooth, glides onto the skin. It isn’t completely opaque. It’s a little on the sheer side so it doesn’t show up exactly like it looks in the pan on first application, but it can be built up to look like it does in the pan.MARBLED BAKED SHIMMERThere is 1 baked eyeshadow in the palette that is marbled (3rd row, 3rd shade from the left). It is a pretty shade. It’s dry feeling like baked shadows are, but it has good pigment. Baked shadows work great wet or dry. When dry they can often be dry feeling and kind of powdery. This one wasn’t too bad. When wet, they usually get a more pigmented, even shimmery/metallic look. So, I was really interested to see how this one looked when wet! When it is dry, it doesn’t have much sheen to it. It gives a little more impact wet where it has more of a sheen. Read more

I love the artwork on this palette. I would give it a five-star rating except for the fact that some of the shades contain ingredients that are not approved for cosmetic use around the eye area in the USA. I think that's probably referring to some glitter in 3 of these shades. I really got this palette though when I spotted the one shade on the lower row that is a very light pinkish peach. I have blue eyes and I love this shade range! It's a really good shade on my aging eyes because it really makes a pale blue pop. After it came in though I fell in love with the ivory gold highly frosted shade right above it. To me these two colors are worthy price of the Palette. There are of course other good shades here too but many are very bold and I would only use them in moderation, using to line my eyes only, or for costumes. I do think that these colors would be excellent for costume or cosplay. These are highly pigmented shades that my brush pickups easily. They are blendable but because they are highly pigmented it can take a bit of brush work to get a really good blend. The really dark shades will give you a good line with an angled brush. The artwork is gorgeous and there is a good mirror on the inside cover. Each Shadow part is fairly large and well sized to work with. (I hate tiny little pots that you can't really rub a brush in!) It's thin and doesn't take up much room in my makeup box. I have also received the Athena palette. It has more green and warm shades. There's one pot that has glitter in it that looks a little bit big to be safe to put on the eyes to me. The artwork on this pallette is also just beautiful. It also has a nice mirror. Read more