I recently picked up the new ’24k Nudes’ palette from Maybelline in my Ulta haul, and after using it for a while, I have a review for you!

This retails for $11.99 at Ulta.

This palette. I… I’m. I just. I’m just going to say it. I’m honestly disappointed with it.

There I said it! For so long I was trying to be like “well it has this going for it, well it’s not ALL bad” but I need to be better at saying that sometimes things are bad, because how will people take my reviews if I just love everything! And well I think this palette is a little bad. I’m sorry, but I do. The more I think about it, the more I’m like “Maybelline, you could have done so well with this! This could have been SO good.”

I’m not mad at you, Maybelline, I’m just disappointed.

This is the same set up as the other Nudes palettes, instead having gold packaging instead of the black, or pink colors of the others. It features 12 shades, 3 mattes, 1 satin, 1 glitter shade, and then the rest are shimmers.

Maybelline’s greatest advertising for this palette was that it featured a new and improved, and more pigmented formula than the other Nudes palettes they have put out. I own both the original Nudes palette and the Rock Nudes, and I do like those. I can create looks out of them, and do find the matte shades really nice.

So with that advertising, I was expecting some creamy, pigmented shades.

And I mean, the same goes for this one, in that the matte shades are the best part of it. They are pigmented and do blend and build up nicely. I do wish there were more mattes. There’s only the cream shade, which I like to set my eyeshadow primer, and the two darker ones which I use to deepen the outer corner.

But the shimmers – so most of the palette are…  Eh. Let me just show you swatches.

So. It isn’t all bad. The mattes, and that gold shade on the end of the 1st row are beautiful. That gold shade. Make a single of that gold shade. It’s the thing saving this entire palette.

But for those lighter shimmers, especially that first shade in the 2nd road, it’s just not there. I would try to use them to highlight my inner corner and just really not see anything. And that maroon and green shade in the 2nd row – you can build them up to something. But they would blend away, and did require a lot of work, and just didn’t look like they did in the pan. That 2nd to last shade in the 2nd row, obviously that copper is just not there. You can just see in the swatches that these shades don’t live up to how they look in the pan, and that was after building them up a little on swatching.

The shimmers also do this weird thing, where they almost form hard pan right away? They form this weird hard area, and are chunky, and almost get worse the longer you use them. Maybe it’s just mine, but it happens. I feel like I have to really dig into them to get the pigment.

My other gripe with this is that it is hard to get complete looks out of it. I always needed to combine this with other palettes, because although there are matte shades, there are no light transition shades to truly finish out a look.

So overall, can you use this palette and get looks out of it? Yes. BUT. Just not my favorite. It’s a lot of work, and it’s just too high maintenance.

There are much better drugstore palettes out there for the same price, or even cheaper. The CoverGirl TruNaked palettes are much better – and they’re the same price.

I would honestly say pass on this palette. I’ve seen better.

(But I promise I still love Maybelline. This is just a little miss on their part. I still love them for that gold shade. It shows me they have potential.)