Tarte tartlette

Is it because I am so pale? Is it because I am new to the smokey eye? Is it because I only have 4 or 5 eyeshadow brushes? WHY CAN'T I MAKE THESE LOOK GOOD ON ME? 

Every time I try to use these eyeshadows I just look like I've been punched... I just think the tones of the shadows are all really... bruisey. They look so good in pictures and I love matt eyeshadows so much but in real life these things are dusty and chalky and meh.  

Perhaps you need to be a makeup artist to use these properly.  I am very pale so I feel colours are less forgiving on me. My skin tone shows up everything so everything has to be perfectly blended on me. Paler shades have to be super pigmented so that they show up on my skin.  All in all you need to be a super-shadow to look good on me and these just don't cut it.

Lorac unzipped

When I first received these two palettes in the post I thought I would half to ring in sick off work the next day so that I could have a day just to be with them.  They are the softest and most pigmented eyeshadows I have ever seen in my life. Ever.  Unleashed should have been called un...friggin...real. You barely touch it and suddenly you are covered in vibrant shimmering colour... it is stunning. I absolutely love the dark matte shades as they have amazing colour pay off and are easy for a newbie like me to blend.

They're not all the shadows are perfect, some of them are powdery and pale and let the side down a bit.  I think if you lifted the lighter shimmery shades out it would actually improve these palettes as they are crap and it makes the palette seem crapper than it is.  

These palettes cost me a lot. A lot a lot a lot. I am in the UK and I ordered them off Nordstrom in the USA so I had to pay shipping and handling which was almost the same price as the shadows themselves.  But what can I say? I'm a collector!

So considering how very much I paid for these I am surprised by how little I use them.  I mean, I think I have used them once.  Why is this? I have no idea at all.  Maybe I just don't see many exciting everyday looks coming out of these guys? It's probably just that I have so much makeup that they have just been pushed to the back of the shelf.  Sometimes I think I need a holiday where I have to limit the amount of makeup I can bring with me.  Perhaps if I had a week alone with these guys I would really utilise them and try hard to come up with some exciting looks?  Note to self, book holiday for me and Lorac palettes!

Chocolate bar palette

If I moaned about the Urban Decay Naked Palettes I will make up for it with how much I will rave about this palette.  This palette is honestly perfection. I have nothing bad to say about it.  It is chokka-block full of stunning browns, every colour has beautiful subtle tones and dimensions, I can make incredible beautiful looks with this palette... what else can I say?  It is just perfection!  

With the naked palettes I feel like there are only a few shadows I like enough to use, with the chocolate bar palette I want to put every single eyeshadow on at once.  When I first saw this palette in Debenhams it didn't excite me.  Looking at pictures or swatching it in the swap just doesn't do it justice.  Trust me. You NEED this,

Urban Decay Naked Palettes

Naked 1

Naked 2

Naked 3

Comments

I initially bought Naked 1 and then Naked 2 because I wanted to try doing a smoky eye.  As a newbie I wasn't all that impressed by these eye shadows.  I am not an expert with technique and I don't have loads of expensive eye shadow brushes so I can't blame it all on the eye shadows themselves.  I just thought that the shimmers worked well as highlighters or all over the lid colours packed on heavily but as soon as you try blending them out even slightly they diminish into nothing but a dirty looking colourless smudge.  

For a smoky eye you really do need the matt colours and although they have slotted in some matte nude colours that compliment the tones of the shadows in the palette, a balance for me would be 1/2 mattes with the rest beautiful shimmers and highlights to then use on top to compliment those shades as a finishing touch.   

You only ever hear such good things about these palettes so I was surprised at how underwhelmed I felt with them.  My main  complaint is how few browns there are in any of these palettes. It reduces their wearability so much! Most people's go to everyday nude look would probably revolve around browns.  Ideally I would swap all the nonsense colours pretending to be nudes for some really diverse browns. 

YDK is probably the best textured eyeshadow in all three palettes.  It is the most shimmery and creamy and goes on thickly yet it is almost colourless and unfortunately looks bland on. 

Naked 3 is probably the one I reach for the most because Liar is so lovely as an all over colour.  Although Mugshot and Factory are almost identical.

The thing is, in every palette there will be colours that you don't use that much.  But disappointingly, I can't piece together many looks I like with these palettes. 

Anastasia Contour Book

Here in the UK it is super hard to get your hands on the ultra coveted Anastasia Contour Kits. I am a self confessed contour addict and have wanted to get my hands on one for ages. You can imagine my envy when I found out that some bloggers were sent a contour book containing all the contour colours available but that these books were for promotional use only and not for sale. So I was so excited when finally they were for sale on the Anastasia website! They are apparently 'super limited edition' but they are also super pricey. This bad boy cost me roughly £100 not including p & p. You do get 29 colours for that price so they work out as under £4 each. If you consider that you would have to pay about £40 to get the original kit containing just 6 of the colours here in the UK, there is definitely an argument that it is good value for money. I was also very impressed with the service and delivery. It was sent the next day and arrived with me within a week of being sent via USPS. Tracking was great and there were no customs issues.

These colours are not meant just for one skin tone, they are the full range, designed to suit all skin tones.  This means that this palette would be amazing for a makeup artist! It is light and you can remove the powders to put in one of the smaller palettes if you want to.

I myself am not a makeup artist. I am just obsessed with makeup!  I was very aware when I purchased this book that a lot of the colours would not be right as contours for me. I bought it because I really wanted to play around and see what different things I could do with all the colours.  Also they are pretty versatile and can be used as blush and eyeshadows and for when I do friend's makeup.  I did buy this product for personal use and therefore can only review it against how useful it is for me. I am super pale so my opinions are probably only going to be useful to you if you are also super pale like me.  If not, hopefully my pictures will still be useful for you!

Contour Colours

Being from sunny LA where I assume most people have beautiful tans, I don't think that Anastasia really understands how very light skin can get here in the UK.  I say this because, although this palette is lovely and would be amazing on most people, my Mac Studio Fix NW10 (I kid you not) complexion is very fussy about what you put on it.  The most cool looking colours turn instantly orange against my skin.  And while there are some relatively cool colours in this book, none of them compare to the genuine shadow look that more grey based products such as NYX Taupe give me. So a word of warning for the super pale - none of these colours are going to work for you.

Just to really drive this point home, I have done some awkward face swatches:

Left to Right: Anastasia Fawn, NYX Taupe. Illamasqua Hollow

As you can see in the picture, even the coolest of the Anastasia bunch, designed especially for light skin, is very stark and brown against my pale skin.  The product I have actually contoured with is NYX Taupe which I find is blends to look just like a shadow.  It has the same tones as my own skin.  I'm not going to dwell on this because I have a lot of contour products which I will review in a separate contour blog.  This is just going to be a Anastasia Contour book blog entry, however, I do think it is necessary to make some product comparisons to really show what the products are like.

                                         Highlight Colours

The same issue can be said about the highlight colours.  For a pale girl, there is not a lot here that you can really use to highlight.  But to be honest, I am yet to find any product that I can use as a highlight.  Since I did a mini product comparison for the contour colours, I will do the same with the highlight colours.  Here is how the palest of the two highlight colours compare to Mac Emphasise:

                                             Left to right: Mac Emphasise, Anastasia Champagne, Anastasia Vanilla

Size wise I was actually a little surprised and disappointed at how small they were.  I didn't look at the size of each pan before I purchased it and even if I had, the numbers probably wouldn't have meant that much to me because I wouldn't know what average is.  All I do know is, here is how the size compares to the Mac single pans (sorry about the chipped nail polish):

They actually look like eyeshadows in comparison!

Anastasia Beverly Hills Dip Brow Blonde Vs Taupe

If you are naturally blonde like me, you probably get as excited as I do when you find a blonde eyebrow product which looks natural.  There is a big hype about Anastasia Dipbrow right now.  It has been reviewed everywhere so I am not going to talk much about the product itself.  This is just going to be a colour comparison for any blondes out there wondering whether to get the Taupe or the Blonde.

Left: Taupe, Right: Blonde

In the above picture, Taupe looks more brown and blonde looks more clay.  This is not exactly a true reflection of the colours.  Here they are swatched:

Two swatches at the bottom: Taupe.  Two at the top: Blonde.

I would say that they are so similar it is difficult to see much of a difference.  However, if you look at the more blended swatches, the Blonde is more yellowy where the Taupe is more clay. 

Conclusion: I pretty much think that I could leave the house with one brow of each colour and nobody would even notice that my eyebrows were two different colours.  If you have already purchased one, you don't need to worry the other would have been better because honestly there is not a massive difference between them.  

If you are yet to purchase then if you have very bleached and yellow toned hair and want the eyebrows to match then go for Blonde.  If you have more ashen toned hair or if you don't want sightly yellow toned eyebrows, go for Taupe.  

I find the Taupe more natural and next time I purchase that will be the one I go for.  It is also the one I reach for in the morning.