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!