So far, 2 cream shadow releases this year have caught my eye: the Charlotte Tilbury Eyes to Mesmerize and the Burberry Eye Colour Creams. The Charlotte Tilbury definitely didn't disappoint and are wholly worthy of all the good reviews I've seen. The Burberry Eye Colour Cream while not entirely a dud, certainly didn't wow me either. 

Let's start with the very good...

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Charlotte Tilbury Eyes to Mesmerize in Norma Jean $32/.24oz

Originally I bought 3 of these, but couldn't justify keeping 2 of them - loved the colors but ultimately I knew I wouldn't wear them enough - so they got purged. I only kept the one I knew I would get semi-regular use out of. See...I'm trying to be more reasonable ha ha!! All that to say I did get a chance to play with more than Norma Jean, so I was able to get a good feel for these cream shadows overall. 

The Eyes to Mesmerize cream shadows are very lightweight, pigmented, easily blendable (alone & with each other) and can be sheered out or built up. They are pretty silky & creamy, so if you are prone to creasing you'll definitely need a primer. But overall, these are probably the nicest cream shadows I've used. Norma Jean specifically is a beautiful all over color (many times I'll wear it up to the brow line), and also makes a great base to build on. Definitely recommend trying these out if you haven't already!!! 

Burberry Eye Colour Cream in Dusky Mauve, $30/.13oz

Beautiful Burberry packaging of course, especially the weighty glass pot that makes it very easy to store together if you have more than one in your collection. I don't think I've ever been disappointed in Burberry packaging, so this is kind of a given ha ha! 

Next big positive for me is the wear time. I can get a good 5-6 hours without it creasing - without primer!!! With primer this stays put ALL day, until I take my makeup off. Pretty amazing considering it's a cream! Or is it???

Texture wise, at first this reminded me of the Chanel IdO's, but I don't currently have one to test it against so I'm only going from memory. It's got a similar bouncy, creamy, silky feel but what I came to realize is that it also has a strange sort of dryness to it - if I press to hard the product itself actually starts to crumble a little. Weird huh? it can be pressed back together, but then I'm left to wonder how long this will last before it's too dry to use? 

This Dusky Mauve color isn't all that mauve on me. and pulls more warm to where it ends up looking more brown/taupe. I wonder if cool toned lids will find it more mauve?? This color is also not that pigmented, and takes some real effort to build it up. Altogether I find this a little hard to work with, but I've kept it because of the wear time and because it makes a nice base color and also looks really nice worn alone. 

Here are some sunlight swatches. Top of each swatch I tried to blend out a bit.

It only took one little dip into the CT pot to get this much Norma Jean on my arm! It's got such a pretty, champagne shimmer, but when sheered out definitely isn't disco ball. Dusky Mauve on the other hand, took so many dips to build this up that I lost count. It also has a really pretty, multi-dimensional shimmer, though I find it doesn't translate to my lids all that much. Overall, big thumbs up for the Charlotte Tilbury Eyes to Mesmerize, but questionable for the Burberry Eye Colour Cream (maybe other colors are different?). 

Have you tried either of these? What did you think??