HEMA is a department store in the Netherlands that is considered typically Dutch. It’s the place where you can buy stroopwafels (syrup waffles), licorice and a tompouce (Dutch pastry). HEMA can also, occassionaly, be found internationally because apparently everybody loves HEMA.

HEMA always had a beauty line with mostly basic products. From time to time I would check out if there’s something new that looks promising, but HEMA didn’t really do big launches and special products. Just the basics.

Until this month! HEMA launched a whole new beauty collection called B.A.E. beauty (Before Anything Else). Completely vegan, very millenial pink-ish and clearly inspired by K-beauty, Glossier and Lime Crime. And I’m not mad about that, not for a second.

When I read about the launch I ran to the store (not even kidding: I read about it in the morning at work and I went to the store to check it out and grab some products in my lunch break) because it sounded so promising. I love me some HEMA and you know I can’t resist a good beauty launch, so I made sure I grabbed some products to try out on Weeks of Beauty!

We’re seeing lip liners, lipsticks, liquid lipsticks, lipglosses, lip strobes, lip balm, liquid blush, highlighters, face gloss, powder foundation, tint foundation, baking powders, bronzing kits, concealer, primers, face mists, brushes, eyeshadow palettes (both baked and regular), face oils, highlighters, highlighting palettes (hello Lime Crime style, liquid eyeshadow, eyeshadow sticks, eyeliners and mascara.

Basically: B.A.E. beauty has it all and it’s an amazing, complete launch! That’s how you should launch a new brand in my opinion. People want it all so they don’t have to wait. There was so much to choose from that it was very hard to make a little selection to give a go.

This is everything I picked up this time (there’s still so much else I want to try so there will be a part 2 for sure): eyeshadow palette, eyeshadow stick, concealer, liquid lipstick, blush in a tube and a face gloss.

First up: the B.A.E. eye shadow palette sunset. It has nine warm shades, all with some kind of shimmer. The back of the palette says that you can wet the shades for a different finish.

These are the dry swatches. You can see that some shades are amazing (like the orange and pinkish/red shade) and some are mweh. I do really love the color selection, it goes amazing together and truly covers the whole sunset theme.

Some of the shades are very creamy, smooth and pigmented well. Others are dry and with those it’s very hard to pick up product from the pan.

When I dig in with a brush there is quite some kick back and when I’m applying it dry on the eyes, there’s fall out everywhere. But, spraying some MAC Fix+ on the brush after picking up the product, makes a huge difference. No more fall out and the shades get so much more intense and pigmented!

These shades dry are mweh… but wet they are very beautiful and nice to work with. I loved the look that came out of this. One big down side to these eyeshadows though: even when applied wet, the bright colors faded and after a couple of hours I was not impressed with my soft, faded eye look.

I picked up the B.A.E. 8h shadow in a stick in the shade 05 bronzebeam. It’s a gorgeous shimmer and bright shade. It pencil is pretty hard so I do have to warm it up first before poking my eye out ;P.

I did not wore this shadow as long as 8 hours but I do believe that it will stay put for a long time, because it’s creamy when warmed up but not gliding around and I had to put in some effort to remove the product from my eyes. Very promising!

The two swatches on the left are from this eyeshadow stick. Such a gorgeous shade, right?

This is the B.A.E. blush in a tube in 03 sweetie pie. It’s a cute little tube that reminds me of the average K-beauty liquid blush.

The two swatches in the middle are from the blush. It’s more purple and brown than I expected from the packaging but it is a very pretty shade. However: it’s not dewy, it’s straight up shimmery. I looks more like a liquid metallic shadow than a dewy blush to be honest.

It was alright to apply on the face, the blending did not go so well on all spots of my cheeks. Even though the product is so shimmery, on the face it does not look like a disco, luckily. The glow it gave was actually pretty nice. However, this blush faded very quickly so you either have to go heavy handed, making you look like a disco ball, or you go light handed but don’t really see the blush.

Love the shade, don’t love the product. I might be using it on the eyes or lips though!

I already knew I wasn’t going to like the B.A.E. face gloss in a tube because I just hate it when something feels sticky or oily on my skin. I really wanted to try something of a highlighter as well (the palettes didn’t swatch so nice and the lightest illuminator ‘stick’/’ball’ was sold out already) so I went with this cute holo packaging of the 02 glitter glass (Glossier Birthday Balm dot com, anyone?).

The swatch on the far right is from the face gloss. It looks pretty epic though: it gives this gorgeous glossy glow just like you’d expect and the tiny white/silver glitters add to the glow.

However, you guys, this stuff is STICKY AND OILY wow. It did not dry down whatsoever (might not even be meant to though) so I couldn’t endure this on my face for more than five minutes. Definitely not a product for me, but I do think that if you like a face or eye gloss, that these face glosses are great!

The B.A.E. no more spots concealer and the B.A.E. shake up foundation are a bit of a disappointment for me to be honest. It’s amazing that HEMA included lots of complexion products, but they missed the point because they only came out with five shades of concealer and six foundation shades. There’s only one shade for very fair people and only one shade for people with deep skin tones. The shades in between are almost completely similar to each other.

I think they could’ve done the shade range selection way better, especially when you are coming out with a collection that’s based on all the recent trends in beauty land. Non inclusive shade ranges have been named and shamed and for a good reason. I hope HEMA will come out with a bigger shade range soon!

I thought the lightest shade would be too pale for my skin tone so I went for number two, but you can see very clearly that it’s wayyyyy to deep and orange for me, haha. On my face I mixed it with a Fenty Beauty concealer that’s to fair for my skin tone and the result was alright, but I didn’t got a change to have an opinion on the B.A.E. no more spots concealer though. Next time!

Last up is the B.A.E. dry matte liquid lipstick which I picked up in the shade 03 true kiss. The name covers it all: it is a very dry, matte, liquid lipstick.

The application is easy, the products feels a bit like a liquid mousse. The applicator also allows you to apply the products precisely. The lipstick has a scent to it but nothing too strong. The lipstick dries very quickly and it’s a liquid lipstick like the ones that were booming right when the liquid lipstick was becoming a thing.

I do not like this formula on my lips but that’s a true opinion thing, because everyone loves a different formula. To me this is way to drying and feeling a bit uncomfortable on the lips, but the finish is opaque, matte and pigmented well so it does do what a good matte liquid lipstick should do. This lipstick does exactly what the name promises.

The lipstick is a cool mauve shade. When dried down on the lips it turns a little more brown/grey than the purple/pink you can see in the swatch.

For this look I outlined my lips first with the Kylie Jenner Posie K lip liner. And yeah I know… I overlined my lips majorly and it was not on purpose, haha.

The liquid lipstick is close to completely transfer proof when it has dried down completely.

So to summarize this long blogpost:

Eyeshadow palette: gorgeous shades, look great when wet but fade quite quickly.
Eyeshadow stick: love the shade, love the formula when warmed up. Recommend!
Liquid blush: love the shades but for me personally too sparkly on the cheeks.
Face gloss: probably a great face gloss but I despise the stickiness. Gives a great wet glow!
Concealer: not sure what to think about it yet because I mixed it with another concealer!
Liquid lipstick: great pigmentation and coverage. Very matte and drying.

I will be picking up some more products from B.A.E. beauty because it did seek my attention. So more to come on Weeks of Beauty!

For my Dutch readers: did you try any of the B.A.E. products yet? Any favorites or requests you’d like me to try?