Product Review & Swatches: Cargo Shanghai Nights (Ulta Online Exclusive)

I'm so excited! I received my Cargo Shanghai Nights Palette from Ulta and I got a chance to take photos, do some swatches & create a look to show you! I was super drawn to this palette from when I first saw the promo photos of it because it has nice shades of gold, bronze, taupe, bright blue and purple! I think there's a great variety of colors to create a multitude of looks.

Now, I have to tell you the truth, I had never touched a Cargo eyeshadow before this, but I had a hunch they may be decent because they came highly regarded by Marlena from MakeupGeek during one of her videos. And let me tell you, I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the quality, they are similar to the Lorac eyeshadows, but they feel even more smooth, buttery and richly pigmented to me, I noticed very little powdering from the mattes (this is to be expected of all mattes, though).

The packaging of the Shanghai Nights palette is to die for! It has a nice weight to it, although it's made of reinforced cardboard and its covered by a plastic overlay, it feels sturdier than some plastic palettes I own. I would feel very confident traveling with it and knowing it won't break. You are receiving a nice amount of product for $39, it contains 12 eyeshadows, each at 0.03oz (or 0.8g) - for comparison, MAC eyeshadow singles are 0.05oz full size (or 1.5g). The price here is amazing, this palette retails for $39 regularly, but I picked it up during Ulta's 21 Days of Beauty Sale for $20!

The eyeshadows consist of a wide variety of brow-bone shades (Neon, Hu), crease/transition shades (Wai Tai, Bund, Jin Mao), pops of color (Lychee, Jade, Bar Rouge, Skyline) and shades with depth to them (Street Style, Night life). 

I noticed right away that there were 4 mattes (Wai Tai, Skyline, Bund and Hu), 5 metallic shades (Lychee, Jin Mao, Street Style, Ginger, Jade), 2 satin shades (Neon, Bar Rouge) and 1 glitter shade (Night Life).

So not only is there a great variety of shades that can be used for different purposes, but there are also many finishes in this versatile palette. All of the shades in this palette are limited edition.

Bonus! It even comes with a dual-ended eyeshadow/liner brush, which I used to complete my look today. This brush is versatile because one end can be used to pack on eyeshadow and the other end can be used for more precise application under your lower lash line and above your lash line as well. The bristles are flexible and soft.

These shadows were not applied over primer, they are very richly pigmented, the only one that wasn't as vibrant as I was expecting was Skyline which appears as a gem-tone blue in the pan but swatches more like a navy. I was extremely impressed with Wai Tai and Bund, they are very rich and smooth shades, especially for mattes, and they were very easy to blend out. Jin Mao and Lychee performed very well and true to the shades in the pan and Neon was a tad sheer, but very pleasant.

Night Life was much more pigmented than the black from the Everything Nice palette I reviewed last week, and I found during application that much of the glitter doesn't really stick to the eyeshadow itself and therefore won't show up much, if at all (I'm perfectly fine with this!). Bar Rouge is a stunner, I love this fuchsia reddish purple shade. Jade was also less its namesake and more of an army green with shimmer. Hu, Street Style and Ginger looked exactly the same when applied or swatched as they did in the pan.

Here's the look that I create today with the Cargo Shanghai Nights palette:

I used a whopping 8 shades in my look and I feel that it didn't turn out muddy at all and you can see precisely where I placed each shade, even though I did some major blending! The performance of this palette was spectacular and I highly recommend it. It has treated me better than many of my higher end palettes and I am very excited to start collecting Cargo's Limited Edition palettes.

Here's a guide to show you where I placed each shadow if you own the palette and want to try out this look!

ONLINE ONLY Beauty Steal! Cargo Shanghai Nights Palette

Ulta is having their annual 21 Days of Beauty Steals massive sale, where every day there are various items that are on sale. You can check out the whole calendar on their website. The one that really caught my eye was the brand new Cargo Shanghai Nights Eyeshadow Palette, which I believe will only be released on the day of the sale, Tuesday 9/23/2014.

The deal on this palette is insane! It's literally going to be half off, it normally would retail for $39, but is on sale for $20, you won't be getting a better deal than that! Today only, you can also get the Stila In the Moment, In the Know and In the Light palette for that same deal during the beauty sale.

I couldn't find any more photos of the palette online but I did find this graphic which shows the colors:

I'm a huge fan of the color selection, there's a good variety of colorpop (Lychee, Ginger, Hu, Skyline, Street Style and Bar Rouge) along with a wide variety of cool-toned and warm-toned neutrals (Wai Tai, Bund, Jin Mao, Neon, Jade, Night Life)! You can create so many looks with this mixture of shadows. I'm definitely going to try to pick this up online during the sale!

If you want to know what similar Cargo palettes look like, last year they released the "Let's Meet in Paris" palette, which was a very similar format - this was sold for the 2013 holiday season and was very limited in quantity:

Cargo Palette: Let's Meet in Paris, courtesy of www.makeupgeek.com

They also released a palette called "Vintage Escape" which is in the same format in the fall of 2013:

Cargo Palette: Vintage Escape, photo courtesy of www.15minutebeauty.com

New Product Alert - Too Faced A La Mode Eyes

Too Faced is fast becoming one of my favorite makeup brands with their creativity, color selection and shadow pigmentation. A new eye palette is out for their summer collection, it's called the A La Mode Eyes palette.  This palette is available at Ulta for $36 (this is the standard price for Too Faced's 9-shadow sets).

The layout of the palette features the lightest 3 shades (which can also be used as highlighters) in much larger quantity than the rest of the shadows. I'm a little disappointed with the color selection because the colors St. Tropez and La Croisette appear very similar - they could have added another shade, such as a gold. 

I don't physically have this palette yet but I wanted to show you some swatches:

Credit: http://daniellecaliforniaa.blogspot.com/2014/03/too-faced-la-mode-eyes-summer-eye.html

I wouldn't call this palette a must-buy but I would suggest it if you couldn't get your hands on any of their holiday eyeshadow sets (a lot of the colors are very similar there, even the fuschia) and you like to experiment with color during the spring/summer. I like that this palette features 2 nice transition browns, I do think it's lacking some sort of a grayish shade but the theme of this palette is definitely warm-toned.

Black Friday madness

So, after am enormous Thanksgiving meal, those of us dedicated to shopping, haul our fat butts out the door and waddle on to our store destinations. We do this, hoping against hope that we'll be amongst the first ones there. This is almost never the case, as people have been camping outside of the most popular stores (like Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy) for days in advance even in suburban localities outside of Seattle. So without any hope of ever reaching a cash-register within the next 12 hours at any of these stores, my husband and I moved onto ULTA. This store was the complete opposite, it had cutesy deals, very few ladies inside, no pushing or shoving, and we could easily reach the cash register. To me, the decision was simple, I'm a much larger fan of cosmetics than I am of technology anyway, so I picked up a few things.

They had this collection of items which were all just $1, so I grabbed 5 CHI Silk-infusions bottles for $5 because I love the way these make my hair feel (a small bottle usually retails for $14). Then, I purchased a mint lip-balm, swirl lipgloss and 3 ULTA nail polishes for another $5. Most of the items are $3 each, so the savings is of 66%. I purchased two Stila eyeliners in a pack, one being gold (named Koi) and one being silver (named Silver Dollar) as this was on special for $10 when the regular value is around $40, you can still get this deal here. I thought it was a great deal and Stila's smudge stick eyeliners are absolutely fabulous. The pigmentation is strong and they glide on very smooth and easily, they are absolutely perfect for the holiday season. I spent $20 in total on these items and ULTA gave me $5 Bonus Cash, which can be redeemed on the next $25+ purchase at their store. I was very happy with the overall experience.

Colors: The Jungle Look, Alter Ego, Scene Steel-er

I was drawn to the nail polish because the color was very pigmented and festive, also the price was right and I was looking for more colors to perform my 'water-marbled nails' look! This is a fun and funky way to set yourself apart from everyone else.

The next day, armed with new ambition and rigor, we headed out to Southcenter Mall in Renton, Washington. This place was controlled chaos. The parking lot was chock full of cars, there were tons of security guards throughout the mall, but if you can stand feeling claustrophobic, it was a fine shopping experience. The lines to cash out were not that long, especially at MAC. I went to use their BACK2MAC program where I recycled 12 containers and got 2 eyeshadows of my choice, in the colors Brown Script (matte2 finish) and Swish (frost finish). These colors are both very beautiful, and best of all, they were free! The color pay-off is great, as with all MAC eyeshadows and you can de-pot them (which I did) and then recycle these containers as well when you have 6. I only purchased a 15-color palette to house my colors.

MAC's Brown Script (Matte2)

MAC's Swish (Frost)

I hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving and I would love to hear about your Black Friday deals! Stay tuned for our IKEA haul in an upcoming post!