Review: J. Cat Beauty X-Treme Pocket Shadow Palettes

J. Cat Beaty is a cruelty-free brand from America that officially launched on Philippine shores last year. They're known for their highlighters and colorful makeup. I first heard about this brand from thataylaa, a YouTuber who loves their highlighters.

While I wasn't too intrigued by their highlighters, I saw these little palettes on their Instagram page and decided to snag a couple of them when I saw them on their official Shopee store. These palettes were apparently well-loved and were under PHp 500, and since I haven't tried anything from this brand yet, why not, right?

The Palettes

I got two of the three palettes from this line as these were color schemes that appealed to me. Red Carpet Premiere is full of warm neutrals and Pops of Paparazzi has a more rainbow-colored theme to it. While I wouldn't exactly call the, pocket-sized (unless you had rather large pockets), they're definitely portable and would be great for travel if you had access to a mirror.

They have pale pink packaging and a clear lid that shows top and bottom rows of matte shades as well as two middle rows of metallic shades (shimmers, foiled shadows, and pressed glitters). Both palettes are of course cruelty-free but is not vegan as they both have carmine, which is a powered pigment made from crushed beetles. If you have an allergy or any other concern with this, I would like you to keep this in mind.

It's also important to note that the shade names and other information aren't printed on the palette itself and are included in the box that it comes in. If you're not a fan of bulky packaging but want to keep the names for reference, you can always cut it out of the cardboard and glue it to the back.

Anyway, the shades are varied enough that you can come up with a number of looks without feeling stifled or intimidated by what you're given. There are no repeat shades either and there is a good mix of light and medium shades to make multi-dimensional looks too. Swatches are as follows:

Red Carpet Premiere

Left to Right: Beginning, Interviews, Fans, Photoshoot, Glam Team, and Celebrity

Left to Right: Formal Gown, 1st Debut, Dress up, Screening, Entourage, and Hot Ticket

Pops of Paparazzi

Left to Right: Back Off!, A-List, BTS, Flash, On the Go, and Money Shot

Left to Right: Zoom, Highspeed, Standby, Gossip, Close Up, and Personal Space

My Final Thoughts

Don't let the swatches tell the whole story. While the shades do swatch well, I wouldn't say that the quality of these shadows are great across the board. Red Carpet Premiere is the more consistent of the two because all the shades are soft and easy to work with. The matte shades adhere to the eyelids well with or without set primer and blend out seamlessly. The shimmers also have great lasting power, despite many of them having a creamier texture. They do irritate your eyes if you accidentally get some in your eyes, so do be careful with the placement on your brushes.

In this photo, I have Hot Ticket all over the crease, Dress up on the lid, and Fans smoked out on the lower lash line.

Another thing I will say is that the pans are pretty shallow because I have only been using the shade "Beginning" to set my eye primer in all my eyeshadow looks this month, and I already hit pan on it. I wasn't expecting to hit pan on it so soon, especially when the packaging makes it seem like the pans a re a lot deeper than they look.

However, Pops of Paparazzi has more inconsistencies when it comes to quality because the shimmer shades and most of the mattes are great, but there are a lot of duds in this palette. The purple shade "BTS", has no pigment at all. To even get the color to show up, I had to scrape a bit out of the pan and swatch it over a part of skin that I ran a makeup wipe over.

I blended out Close up on the crease, stamped Back Off! on the lower lash line, and have On the Go and Flash all over the lid for this look.

The rest of the shades swatched fine over dry skin and performed fine on the eyes. Many of the matte shades blended out beautifully and retained their intensity throughout a day of wear. The metallic shades were just as good as the ones in the Red Carpet Premiere palette.

So, which one is better? It's hard to say. I do think that it depends on your preferences. If you are looking for a nice quality warm-toned palette for less than 500 pesos, I totally recommend Red Carpet Premiere. But, if you don't like purples but still want a colorful palette with pigmented rainbow hues, Pops f Paparazzi isn't too bad either. I wouldn't call it a must-have product though.