Indie Halloween Week: Aromaleigh Diavoli Collection Review and Swatches

Welcome to another Indie Halloween Week post, today I have swatches of the Aromaleigh Diavoli Collection! This collection has been out for a while, but I thought since it's inspired by the demons in Dante's Inferno, it would be perfect for Halloween week!

I haven't had a post yet exclusively about Aromaleigh, so I'll give you a little background information about them. Aromaleigh was started back in 1998, is one of the first indie cosmetic companies to be started, and they are based in South Carolina. They offer a few fandom related collections, including Hannibal, Sherlock, and the Hunger Games, but most of their collections are historically and mythologically inspired.

Shipping - Aromaleigh is one of those great indie companies who has a fairly quick turnaround time, averaging 2-6 business days. For this order, and most of my orders, the turnaround time has been very quick for me. It shipped 1 day after I ordered, and arrived 3 days after that via USPS, from South Carolina to California.

Here is the whole collection! I only bought sample bags for this collection, and I forgot to take photos of the bags before I depotted them into jars. But, it's better for seeing vaguely what the shadow itself looks like!

Product Size - The sample baggies were very generous, comparable to Shiro if you've seen how much product you get in those. But Aromaleigh only offers sample baggies, and full size jars, no mini jars in between. So it means there's a pretty large price gap between a sample and a full size, and especially so between a sample bag collection, and full size collection.

Free Samples - Yes, Aromaleigh includes free samples with every order, and they are generous with them. If you make a large order you will probably find quite a few samples included.

Aromaleigh is a rare indie company in that they specifically formulate their shadows for use over primer, and even state that in some cases, using them over a glitter adhesive type product will make the beautiful duochromes disappear. Which is actually great for me, because I prefer to use just plain primer for most of my makeup looks. I did a little testing though to see how primer and a glitter glue compare! I did my swatches over Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer and over Glamour Doll Eyes Glitter Fix.

Alichino - "A muted greyed warm green plush matte base that sometimes appears more blue-grey. It has a strong color traveling duochrome effect which ranges from red to orange to gold."

Excuse my swatch on this one, I wanted to do a new way of swatching and changed my mind mid collection. But, I did have a little trouble with this shadow, sometimes for whatever reason, shadows just turn gray on my skin. It could be my skin chemistry, it could be user error, it could be any number of things, but that's sort of what happened. It also just refused to photograph well, so I'll explain how it looked to me; it was a dark green/gray base with purple sparkle and duochrome. Probably my least favorite shade of the collection.

Barbariccia - "A muted/greyed dark brown/green “breen” plush matte base that appears more greenish in sunlight and more brownish under indoor lighting. This color has an intense multichromatic pigment effect which can show gold to red to green iridescence."

I loved the swatch on the website for this, but my swatch didn't turn out as vibrant. I did notice this was one of the few shades that looked better over the Glitter Fix versus the primer.

Cagnazzo - "A deep purplish black plush matte base that flashes magenta in certain lighting conditions. This is accented by a strong violet to aqua color traveling multichromatic effect."

This shade was very dark and the duochrome mostly showed up on either base I used, but the glitter looked a little more holographic with the Glitter Fix.

Calcabrina - "An intense duochrome shade- the base is a very deep brown/violet plush matte, with a vivid color traveling teal/blue multichromatic pigment."

For this shade, the duochrome was actually more prominent over the Glitter Fix, and looked blue and red in different lights.

Ciriatto - "A super intense duochrome shade- the base is a brown/mauve black plush matte, with a vivid color traveling duochrome that shifts from gold to chartreuse to green."

The duochromes were pretty similar for both bases, but it looked more vibrantly green over the primer, and more golden green over the Glitter Fix.

Draghignazzo - "A fascinating shade when it comes to trying to describe it. In some lighting, it appears to have a deep taupe plush matte base. In other light, this base appears more grey. But what you can’t deny is the very strong blue to green to teal color traveling duochrome effect, which sometimes even appears a bit purplish at certain angles!"

The duochrome on this shade was most noticable over primer, where as over the Glitter Fix it just looked like sparkle.

Farfarello - "A muted brownish/mauve plush matte base with a gorgeous metallic copper lowlight and a very strong red to violet color traveling duochrome effect."

This shade definitely looked more beautiful over primer, and also looks really similar to Libicocco, and this one didn't really look even close to the website swatch, so much so that I almost wonder if this is really Libicocco also.

Graffiacane - "A deep warm brown plush matte base with an intense color traveling duochrome effect that ranges from gold to chatreuse green."

Another shade with the duochrome was more obvious over primer. The base color looked more reddish-brown to me, and the duochrome looked more green.

Libicocco - "A greyed violet plush matte base with metallic copper undertones and a strong copper to red to violet color-traveling duochrome effect."

This was one of my favorite shades when I swatched it, but I didn't notice that it looked so similar to Farfarello. The duochrome was better over primer, but it also looked almost metallic.

Malacoda - "A deep purplish taupe plush matte base with an intense color-traveling duochrome effect that ranges from copper to green to aqua."

I had a hard time seeing the duochrome on this shade for both bases, it mostly just looked like sparkle.

Malebranche - "A rich midtone copperish brown with slight metallic effects, and overlaid with a pale blue to silver duochrome effect. In different lighting, the duochrome can appear to blend with the base color, giving this shade a purplish lean."

I would say this shade looked better over the primer, but it wasn't a big noticeable difference. Also, this shade stained my skin pink after removing.

Rubicante - "A muted rich red plush matte base with violet tones. It is overlaid with a strong duochrome effect which ranges from blue ro violet."

You could see the purple duochrome much better over primer for this shade, and this was another favorite.

Scarmiglione - "A muted midtone purplish grey taupe plush matte base with a very strong color traveling duochrome which ranges from vibrant gold to chartreuse."

Definitely more duochrome over the primer, but combining the purple/gray base with a green duochrome, mostly just makes it look like a brownish shadow.

Entire Aromaleigh Diavoli Collection over primer

Entire Aromaleigh Diavoli Collection over Glitter Fix

Overall, I loved this collection, Aromaleigh has some unique duochromes that you really can't find many other places. And they are totally right, I found that most of the duochromes completely disappeared with Glitter Fix as the base. Lesson learned, always use a good quality primer with Aromaleigh shadows and they will shine in all their glory! If I had one criticism of these, it's that the names are hard to pronounce and remember. You will probably have a harder time remembering that for instance, Draghignazzo was your favorite. It's hard to spell, and it's hard to remember, and tough when most of the shadows look similar in the jars. It's not memorable enough is the right word I guess.

My other small criticism is that you really have to pack on these shadows to get the desired duochrome effect. And once you start putting these on your eyes, it will be difficult to see the duochrome if you were doing a lot of blending.

Customer Service - I don't review the customer service in every review, just because I don't always contact them with any requests or specifics, but I have had exceptional customer service from Aromaleigh and I wanted to make a note of it. You may remember from a previous review of some of their products I fell in love with one of their recently discontinued shadows. Head over heels in love with this shade called Talisman. I only had a small sample and on a whim I decided to contact them and ask if I could round up enough people to buy as many jars as a batch of making this shadow would require, if they would make it for us. They kindly obliged, as they still had the ingredients left, and I showed the swatch around and asked if people would be interested in buying a jar or two. I had enough of us, so I emailed her back and let her know, and their customer service representative, Carol, had Kristen make it for us and it was put up on the site for us to buy, at the discounted 50% off rate! I mean, they went above and beyond for some of us customers, and let us buy it at a discount, I was just blown away. And it means I will probably order every new collection they come out with, because the customer service was great, and the products are great. I love that about indies, the products are great at a lot of companies, but once the customer service goes above and beyond for me, I just want to throw all my money at them.

This is just my customer service experience, I know others haven't been as lucky, but I can't speak to that.

Availability - This collection is still available, until November 30th. They usually heavily discount collections when they discontinue them, so watch for that.

Overall Satisfaction - I liked this collection, but I don't expect to buy any in full size. They are all very unique though, but the names are hard to remember.

Upcoming Releases - The holiday Saturnalia collection will go live mid-November. And there will be the Star Nymphs collection in 2015.

What did you think of the Aromaleigh Diavoli Collection? Let me know in the comments!

For all other Aromaleigh reviews, click here