I LOVE the eye shadow I bought here. It's black, silver, and gold, with tons of sparkles. Perfect if you want to add a little shine to your eyes!

When you think "Ardene" you think jewelry and accessories that are usually 2 or 3 for 10$. Certainly not the first place you would think of to buy eyeshadow. I certainly didn't, a lot of times there cosmetics tend to be cheap and look like it. I was really surprised when I decided to try out their eyeshadow. At 2 for 5$ I figured I had wasted more money on crappier things before.
The color is also what prompted me to try it. I had been looking for a nice brighter purple, as well as a bright pink. When I got home and tried them I decided I would (eventually) get back there and buy other colors.
The eyeshadow wasn't powdery and was very pigmented. I really didn't think such a cheap eyeshadow would be as bright as it looked.
I was very pleased with it and have bought several of them. A surprisingly great product at a more than reasonable price.

The website boasts these colours as being "Punchy vibrant colours for trendy girls who aren't afraid to stand out." True? I think so!

I never thought I would end up buying beauty products from Ardene; their prices are just always so ridiculously low (I probably paid 10$ and got 3 sets of 5 colours for it), I don't expect quality. But then one day I walked in and saw a salesgirl with blue eyeshadow that looked too good to be true - and too expensive to ever be mine. It started from her inner lid, a light blue, and continued outwards gradating to almost navy or black. It looked great and amazingly trendy. I wanted. I wanted badly. So I asked where she got it, to add to my neverending wishlist of impossibly expensive cosmetics. But no! She told me she'd gotten it right in her store, and showed me to the colours. I grabbed up the blue palette, a green one, and my mum and I bought a couple others as a gift for my sister. Since then I have also bought a three-colour set of baby blue, charcoal and yellow.

These colours all have a faint shimmer, they are soft and easily applicable, and blend very well. I use them alongside colours from various different companies - some of which, like Annabelle, whose colours wear out quickly. Not so with Ardene's collections. They remain strong and as bright as they look in the palette. It's also easy to mix the colours with those of other companies. For example, I often use the yellow to mix with a hot pink from Inglot to create a nice, bright orange. It's great to have such a huge range of colours - that friends and peers often comment on - and know that it came at such a low price.

Only problem is that it transfers easily, so don't rub at your eyes too much. Also, if you're hot and your lids come into contact a lot with the skin below your brow, it's not unlikely that it'll wander up there, bright as ever, and kind of annoying to have to fix... repeatedly. I also find the charcoal colour collects easily in the crease of my lid; not so nice, so I use it primarily on my outer lid to avoid that. One day I'll buy a nice charcoal shadow for anywhere on my lid, but for now my budget says YES to Ardene's eye shadows.