Sleek Cleopatra’s Kiss Highlighting Palette | Swatch and Review

One of last year’s most popular makeup items in the beauty community was the Sleek ‘Solstice’ Highlighting Palette. This year, Sleek have released a new version of their popular highlighting palette – this time called ‘Cleopatra’s Kiss’, and focusing on slightly deeper skintones.

First, the packaging. I love how Sleek package their highlighting palettes – four simple pans filled with product, a little brush (which I’ve honestly never used) and a large mirror. The packaging is gold and reflective and this is perfectly sized to take with you to travel.

The palette contains four shades, two creams and two powders (different from the Solstice palette, which had three powders and one cream. These shades tend to lean warmer and deeper than the previous palette, with more golden tones to the shades.

Shades swatched Left-Right, Bottom-Top: Sphinx; Delta; Dynasty; Goddess.

By far, my favourite shade from this palette is Goddess – in all honesty, in my paleness it’s really the only shade I can pull off. Dynasty as well is simply gorgeous, however the formula isn’t my favourite. I’m more a powder highlight kind of girl, and there’s something I just can’t quite work out with a cream formula. I’ve been using this in the inner corner of my eyes and ‘setting’ it with a similar shimmer shade and have noticed that pop lasting all day, whereas it would normally fade – so that’s a trick that I’ll keep doing.

On me, these shades don’t quite work – I used Sphinx very lightly once and had to diffuse it quick smart, I’m the kind of pale where it just looked like a dark stripe on my cheekbones. Dynasty is the one shade I’ve been using consistently, and Goddess I can use lightly mixed in with a whiter highlight like Becca’s Pearl to mix – Delta just sadly is never going to work for my skin! In terms of lasting powder, these tend to fade on me by the end of the day, into a more glittery sheen. It doesn’t look chunky at the start of the day, but it does towards the end of the day.

I’m sharing this review with you guys, because I’m all about transparency and honesty – this palette just didn’t work for me. I think it’s absolutely gorgeous, but for any pale girls like myself I’d recommend giving it a miss, or trying out the Solstice Palette instead. For more medium-deep skintones, I think this will be absolutely amazing on you! I just wish it would suit me better, because those shades are right up my alley! The powder formula isn’t quite as phenomenal as the Solstice Palette, but for $25 or less, with four different shades – this is an amazingly affordable palette, and something I’d recommend at least swatching so you can see if it’ll suit you!