Sleek Makeup – Top Product Picks

Sleek MakeUP is one of the UK's bestselling beauty brands with their popularity soaring over the last twelve months due to the massive buzz surrounding the launch of their Solstice Highlighter Palette. It became THE must-have highlighter palette after being featured by the likes of Jaclyn Hill and NikkieTutorials. The palette became so sought after that Sleek couldn't keep it in stock and it's still their best-selling product to date. The popularity of the Solstice Highlighter Palette has also brought a lot more attention to Sleek's other products.

Sleek MakeUP is a great budget friendly beauty brand with frequent new launches as well as having generous shade ranges too. If you're new to Sleek as a brand, it might feel a little overwhelming deciding which products to try so I've put together my current five favourite Sleek Makeup products which I'd thoroughly recommend trying, obviously alongside the highly-coveted Solstice Highlighter Palette.

Top Sleek MakeUP Eyeshadow Palette

Before the launch of the Solstice Palette, Sleek were most known for their iconic i-Divine Eyeshadow Palettes with an impressive 22 palettes to choose from. The Sleek i-Divine Eyeshadow Palettes each contain twelve eyeshadows within a matte, black plastic palette with a mirror within the lid and a dual-ended sponge tip applicator. The shadows are mineral based offering intense pigmentation, longevity and great blendability and I'm always very impressed by their formula. Sleek often release limited edition palettes throughout the year but they have a number of popular permanent palettes; one of which is the Sleek Storm Palette which launched back in 2009.

The Sleek Storm Palette contains a great mixture of matte, satin and shimmer shades with no disappointing shades within the palette. The Storm Palette is very much a neutral lover's dream palette, but what I particular love about the palette is that it contains some colourful shades alongside the typical neutral golds and browns you'd normally expect to find in a neutral palette. The shades on the top row of the palette are softer in tone in comparison with the bottom row with a pale bronze, a light champagne, a light chocolate brown, a gold, a rose gold and a red-toned brown. Whereas the bottom row features an intense chocolate brown, a denim blue, a forest green, a navy, a dark chocolate brown and an intense matte black.

All of the shadows within the Sleek Storm Palette are very buttery and soft with fantastic pigmentation and can be applied with or without an eyeshadow primer. I've never experienced creasing with any of my Sleek i-Divine Eyeshadow Palettes, and their compact and slim packaging makes for a very travel-friendly palette. I also like that shadow formula isn't too soft that you'd have to worry about the shadows crumbling and causing havoc within your makeup bag. Sleek describe their Storm palette as being perfect to take your look from natural to bold, which I agree with completely—hence why it's one of my makeup bag staples.

Sleek Contouring

Going from one of Sleek's first releases to one of the most recent Sleek releases with the Sleek Cream Contour Kit. Sleek already have a Contour Kit which contains a powder highlight and contour powder in a range of different shades, but due to popular demand Sleek have launched a cream contour kit. The Cream Contour Kit contains 6 x 2g pans of different coloured creams to sculpt, define and enhance the complexion to create the illusion of refined features. Within each Sleek Cream Contour Palette there are two highlighter creams and four contouring creams which can be used individually or blended for a custom shade.

The palette itself has similar packaging to the i-Divine Eyeshadow Palettes with matte, black plastic casing and a generous mirror within the lid but the Cream Contour Palette is perhaps a third bigger in size than the Sleek eyeshadow palettes but is still relatively compact and travel friendly. From the four palettes on offer, I have the Light palette which is the palest palette available and is not as pale like I thought it would be but I can still use most of the shades within the palette. The first two highlighter shades aren't light enough for me to use as highlighters but I can however use the first yellow toned shade to counteract any purple tones in my complexion, and the second pinky toned shade works very effectively as a corrector under my eyes for any dark circles or discolouration. They may not work as highlighters for skin as pale as mine but they're creamy and pigmented enough to be used to correct the skin and I'd recommend setting them with powder when using the creams around the eyes to prevent any creasing.

The four contour shades within the palette include quite warm toned shades for a contour palette as cooler toned contour shades are usually recommend to create natural shadow and definition. On the plus side, because there are warmer shades within the palette you could use them for bronzing as well as contouring and the cream formula means you can apply them with your fingertips or a brush. I prefer to use cream contour and concealing products with my fingertips as I find the warmth of my fingertips helps to mesh the creams with my skin better than I would be able to with a brush. For contouring though you could always use a brush to 'outline' where you want your contours to be and then go ahead and blend with your fingers/brush. I find the contour and bronze shades give a natural and more subtle effect than powder formulas and I like that they don't fade throughout the day. If you're new to contouring, I think a palette like this is ideal as you can practice with the range of shades and they're easy to blend too.

Highlighting and Strobing 

Following on from the massive success of the Sleek Highlighting Palettes (of which there are four), Sleek launched two Strobing Soufflés just before Christmas as part of their Rockstars Collection in Pink Opal and Smoky Quartz. The Sleek Strobing Soufflé is unlike any other highlighter I've tried before as it has a spongy, gel-like formula which feels like a cream yet applies like a mousse and can be both sheer or intense depending on how much you apply and your application method. The Smoky Quartz shade is a warm bronze, whereas I have Pink Opal which is metallic and sparkly pale pink which beautifully flatters my skintone. I've found that the best methods of application are either with a damp beauty sponge to bounce the Strobing Soufflé across the high points of the face or using a fingertip to dab onto the skin. Although the Sleek Strobing Soufflé is intended for use as an highlighter, it makes for the most stunning cream eyeshadow when worn alone or an eyeshadow topper by pressing it over the top of other eyeshadows for added sparkle and dimension.

Larger Lips with Sleek Lip Liner

Lip liners used to be massive in the 80's and 90's, and after Kylie Jenner's attempts to convince everyone that her larger lips were down to using lip liners it's safe to say everyone went crazy for them once again. If you watch makeup tutorials on YouTube, you're pretty much guaranteed to see lipliners used so they're a lot more popular than they used to be and brands are bringing out new lip liner formulas left, right and centre. Sleek however have had a pretty good range of lip liners for some time now (way before the recent lip liner trend resurfaced) and I really like both their Twist Up Lip Liner formula and their Eau La La Liner formula which can be used on both the lips and the eyes.

The Sleek Twist Up Lip Liners are ever so fuss-free with their twist up, colour coded packaging so you don't have to mess around with sharpeners and you can see which shade is which without opening lids or checking shade names. I have a few of the shades in the twist up format but my most worn shade is most definitely Macaron which is the ultimate peachy pink hue which can be worn all over the lips on its own or under nude, pink or peach toned lipsticks and glosses. I personally love wearing Macaron on it's own for when I want a matte lip with a slick of lipbalm over the top for extra comfort but it's also my go-to for when I want to wear a brown-toned nude shade, but want it to look a little peachier. Due to the retractable packaging, they can break quite easily within the plastic tube so I wouldn't recommend carrying it around in your makeup bag, but it is long wearing so you shouldn't need to top-up throughout the day anyway.

Sleek Lip Plumper

The Sleek Power Plump Lip Crayons are a relatively new release as they launched in the summer of 2016 but I never hear much about them, but I really love them. Sleek describe them as being super pigmented and tingling lip crayons which glide on effortlessly for a pop of colour, with an addictive buzzing sensation. The 'tingling' sensation is designed to enhance the appearance of your lips and help them appear fuller. The pencils are sharpen-able and have a colour coded base which is handy if you store your lip pencils/liners upside down to know which shade is which. The pencils really do glide across the lips imparting both pigment and shine, but the shine does disappear within an hour to leave behind more of a satin finish and in my opinion they give the famous NARS Satin Lip Pencils a run for their money at just a fraction of the price. There are six shades to choose from in total within the Sleek Power Plump Lip Crayon lineup and I have Colossal Coral which I think is a pretty good dupe for the NARS Lodhi Satin Lip Pencil which I also own. I do find the NARS Satin Lip Pencils to be a little longer lasting but they're £20 each and the Sleek alternatives are less than a quarter of the price which is amazing, and I love wearing Colossal Coral layered over the Macaron Twist Up Lip Liner for the perfect, pretty, peach lip as we transition into Spring.

Please make sure you check out our exciting range of Sleek products here on Luxplus, and we hope we've inspired you to make a new purchase or two...