Loreal Eyeshadow Quad in Desert Sunrise

The weather has been on its best behavior lately but along with it comes ALLERGY SEASON dun dun dun. For the last few days, it feels as if the area around my nose has been on fire. I've actually sneezed so hard and so much that I've woken up with stomach pains from contracting my muscles when I sneeze. At least I'm still young and have control over my bladder. I shudder to think what will happen when I hit senior citizen status. I've been scratching and rubbing my eyes as well, so I look like a strung out addict with bloodshot eyes, wobbling around the street rubbing my nose and eyes while holding my stomach, trying to shove nasal sprays up my nose. I'm thinking about investing in a Neti Pot.

The review for day will be on Loreal's Eyeshadow Quad in Desert Sunrise. It's around $7 at all drugstores but I managed to get this on for $2 with the Rite Aid reward points. Sweet deal because I am not a big fan of this and would be pissed if I paid the full price. I don't have much good experiences with drugstore eye shadows, especially with the Maybelline Smokes collection. So I'm not surprised with this quad as well.

All of the colors are extremly wearable, shimmery (#4 being the only exception), soft and easily blended. But I just could not get this to show up vibrantly on the lid. I got this to show up by rubbing the shadows on my finger then pressing it firmly onto my hand. With a brush, none of these showed up quite as nicely with or without a primer.

However, the fact that they don't show up vibrantly became a good point for me. I tend to go a bit heavy with my shadows and expect the color in the pan to show up exactly on my eyelids. Since these don't do so, these make perfect subtle work appropriate eye shadows. It was damn near impossible to go full throttle on my eyes, and I ended up with a soft brown look with minimal blending.

It also came with pretty good instructions on the back, so if you're starting out in makeup, then this would be a good template.
One strange thins I've noticed is that other reviews show this quad in a brown packaging while mine is in black. So maybe the formula changed with the packaging because everyone was raving about the pigmentation.