Huda Beauty "Obsessions" Precious Stones in Topaz & Ruby (also Coral) | First Look + Review

I hadn't tried a Huda Beauty product before but was intrigued by these 9-pan palettes. I admit, I'm not the biggest fan of the brand on its own, but I wanted to give these a try to get a sense of the products and how I feel about them.

Huda Beauty released five "Precious Stones" palettes in her "Obsession" line: Ruby, Topaz, Emerald, Sapphire, and Amethyst. As a warm-toned fanatic, I went with Ruby and Topaz. I'm including the Coral palette in this as well as I figured it's a good "in between" palette in that it's sort of similar to Topaz and even a bit to Ruby. It may help you see if you do, or don't, need each one.

There’s no kick-back which is not what I was expecting. The matte formula is quite smooth with very little fallout. The glitter shades are prone to fallout (I apply with my finger so this isn’t as much of an issue for me), but the glitter in these shades is quite chunky and will just landslide all over the place under your eyes.

The Ruby one is my favorite as it has the most pigmentation and I experienced no issues with blending away. The shadows really do look lovely on the eyes; it's super easy to just go ham when applying these. Then you step back from the mirror to review your work and wonder if you really can pull off a look where your eye socket is basically entirely reddish-pink (spoiler, but I can't pull this look off and you probably can't either).

This one will be a great palette for the Winter season as it really makes me think of cranberries and holly berries and any kind of berry associated with Winter. Also, Valentine's Day giiiirls! <3

Huda Beauty "Obsessions" Ruby swatches

Topaz is a great palette for the Fall season. It has that yellow-orange-warm brown color scheme that I cannot get enough of during this time of year. Also, summertime. This palette will look great with or without a tan.

Huda Beauty "Obsessions" Topaz swatches

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I included the Coral palette as one, it's the only other Huda Beauty product I own and two, I can see consumers wondering if they need both Topaz and Coral and wanting to know which one might be better.

The formula of these two isn’t my favorite, mainly because I’m one of those people who loves as much pigmentation as I can get. The mattes go on a bit too sheer for my taste and they do seem to sheer out as you blend. So if you want more opaque application, you have to build it up, blend it out (but not too much, just a little), and then continue to pack it on and blend out. I found this to be the case with Coral but even more so with Topaz. I put 5 or 6 layers of the matte shadows on and it’s still appearing quite sheer on the eyes.

I feel like there’s two critiques I've heard regarding the Huda Beauty eyeshadow formula: the level of sheerness of some of the mattes, as well as the ease of which the matte shadows can be blended away, and that some of the metallic shades don't apply that well and are essentially duds (they look super pretty in pan but don't apply as you would expect them to).

For the price, these palettes perform decently (each palette is $27) so it's really a pretty reasonable price tag. I feel like some shades are more winning than others, and if you're not married to the ABH hyper-pigmented matte formula, you may be OK with these. The trick is to not blend the mattes out too much, and either wear a glitter glue with the glitters or apply them onto your eye primer before it dries. The satin formulas are what Goldilocks was looking for: porridge that's "just right".

Thanks for reading! <3