Opia eyeshadow (Primark)

Hello my little faeries! Today I have a review for you of an eyeshadow I received in a swap on Makeupalley. I'm reviewing it because it's from a brand I'd never heard of before called Opia from Primark which is a bargainous, cheap store here in the UK and Ireland where you can buy clothes, shoes,  jewellery and accesories, homewares and, apparently make-up too for very low prices (I sound like an advert). 

I'd never thought to look there for make-up, and I'm not sure I'd have bought this myself as it doesn't actually have an ingredients list on the jar, though there is a chance it came in a box or some sort of outer packaging with the ingredients, I can't find it anywhere on the web (if you do know the ingredients, please let me know). It's difficult to search for as it has no name or shade number or anything! I can only identify it by "opia" on the lid!

I haven't put this on my eyes yet, only swatched it on my arm, but that's because I have sensitive skin and a lot of allergies and the like, and I'm not keen on sticking an unknown brand on my face. To start, here's a photo to show you the size of the jar. That's an old style MAC pigment jar, and a MAC Fluidline jar to compare it to for size, I hoped most of you would be able to relate to these. It's a reasonable size for a loose eyeshadow, but is tiny compared to the jars from somewhere like Sugarpill, for example.

Now here's the swatches... (enormous photos so you can see all the detail)

Without Flash

With Flash

It's a sort of graphite base colour when applied, with fine holographic particles leaning toward the bluer side of the spectrum. As you can see, it looks best when applied wet (I just used water, nothing else). The primer I used here was Urban Decay Primer Potion in Sin (I used Sin rather than the Original so I could see where I'd applied it on my arm!!). When applied on it's own it was a bit uninspiring... I wasn't wholly impressed. Wet it's actually quite pretty, but I still don't feel it has that oomph I'd like to see. It reminds me a little of Fyrinnae Biker Chic, but watered down a ton, and with nowhere near as much complexity.

I didn't leave it on a long time for a wear test as I didn't know what the ingredients were, as I explained earlier, but I can tell you that it the dry swatch came off easily with make-up remover, the bit over UD PP required a little more scrubbing, but oddly the wet swatch stuck the most and stained a little. I suppose that's because it managed to pack in more product. I didn't try it wet over primer, that would probably have been useful.You may be able to see  in the photos that there was a fair amount of fallout from the swatches, so I imagine it might end up travelling down your face throughout the day. I can't say how much it would crease without a proper test on my eyes, but I'm still not comfortable to do that with something I don't know enough about.

I'm not really sure what I think of this as I'm still hesitant to actually use it on my face, but for a cheap product it does seem to have strong pigmentation, and it is quite pretty. I just don't think it measures up when compared to other similar shades I've tried from other brands, but that may not be a fair comparison, I don't know. I wonder if it's a poor man's Stella but I don't own that so I can't compare, but from swatches I've seen, I'd guess the Opia one has more or a dark grey than a black base compared to Sugarpill's Stella. If you're strapped for cash, I'd say this is a good thing to go for (sorry I can't give you an exact price as I didn't purchase it myself, but knowing Primark, it won't break the bank!) but personally, I'd save up my pennies and buy a different brand with more complexity and depth.

What do you think?