A new obsession - Ben Nye Lumire Grande

After spending the last 2 years IMAT's eyeing the Ben Nye products a friend finally bought some and gave me such rave reviews ( waves Hi @ Su ) that I finally decided I needed to check them out properly, after doing some googling I set my eye on the Lumiere Grand collection in pressed palette form.

 There are a few websites around that sell it, with most Aussie based sites retailing it at around $90 AUD with approx $10 shipping, then I stumbled across Camera Ready Cosmetics in the US, they are selling 2 versions of the Lumiere Grand, the 6 colour palette is approx $35 and the 12 colour ( which is the option I chose) at $60 with a shipping fee of approx $10USD.  I also decided to add 2 small bottles of the Ben Nye LiquiSet into the order, these were $4USD each.  Shipping times from the Us were pretty reasonable (2 weeks ), despite the site saying anything up to 60 days was possible.

The Ben Nye palettes come in this great palette that looks very much like an old art watercolour set with each individual colour clipping into place in the tin and a flat tipped square FB-7 brush.

 Pictures of how they clip into the palette

 The FB-7 flat tipped brush

 The individual Ben Nye pans are HUGE! almost the size of a 20c piece and quite deep, they are also stamped with the Ben Nye logo.  These colours are nothing short of AMAZING with the metallics being crazy shiny and the brights being incredibly pigmented and oh so bright. When you then add the Liquiset, it turns each colour into kind of a watercolour eyeshadow and the vibrancy and hold just explodes and intensifies insanely.  I haven't tried it out yet but using the LiquiSet they could make for intensely bright liner colours as well. I think these are easily set to become a new favourite :) Keeping in mind though these are super bright colours and aren't for everyone, but if you get a kick out of bright eyeshadow they are well worth looking at.

As always onto the swatches, cause that's where the fun's at!  For these swatches I have done them slightly different to usual the top swatches on each image are the colours dry on a base, and the bottom row of each image is the colours swatched wet with the LiquidSet.

Top Row... woops it's round the wrong way :(

 The swatches in order, left to right are RL-6 (sun yellow), RL-12 (cosmic blue), RL-16 ( Azelea), RL-4 (silver), RL-3 (Aztec gold), RL-1 (ice)

Bottom row... also backwards, oh well.

Colours in order left to right - RL-17 (cosmic violet), RL-14 (amethyst), RL-10 (jade), RL-8 (chartreuse), RL-7 (tangerine), RL-2 (iced gold)

Favourites????  Hmmm silver, iced gold, cosmic blue.... ah screw it... all of them :D
I've already indulged in another order from camera ready, with some more single shadows, a couple of Ben Nye blushes and some empty palettes to hold them all!

Has anyone else tried out Ben Nye and what do you think of them?