Review & Swatches: Wet n Wild Halloween 2014 Collection Eyeshadows - Limited Edition

I was so excited to find the display housing the new Halloween 2014 Wet N Wild collection, I could barely contain myself from purchasing the entire line! I did settle on these two palettes, "A Karat in the World" and "Daring Downtown" as being the most unique to my collection and ones that I would likely reach for.

Here's a closer look:

"A Karat in the World" features a gold theme, varying in tone from bright yellow to bronze and medium brown shades. "Daring Downtown" is a gem-toned palette, which appears not to be a stand-alone since Wet n Wild didn't stamp their typical usage instruction monikers. "Daring Downtown" is probably best served with a variety of light and mid-toned shades from your collection.

Both sets of swatches turned out pretty true to color. I'm happy to report once again, such as with the Wet n Wild Fall 2014 collection, these shadows are the old, buttery Coloricon formulation! Let's all hold hands and say thank-you to Wet n Wild for listening to our pleas to return to their tried, tested, and true eyeshadows. The fact that they listened to consumers is going to make me 300% more likely to purchase more items from Wet n Wild collections.

All of the shadows are smooth, buttery and glide on like a dream. They pick up onto your brush without creating powdery fall-out, and you will be pleased with the way they transfer onto your skin. I know that these palettes may be a little hard to come by, since they may sell out quickly, but I highly recommend them.

I wanted to take a photo with flash for you to see how much sparkle is packed into these shades and how it can reflect the light. As I was taking this photo, I had an incredible revelation that the "Daring Downtown" palette is a dupe for.... Urban Decay's "The Black Palette" (LE)!!

Wet N Wild "Daring Downtown" and Urban Decay "The Black Palette"

I have them side-by-side for your viewing pleasure. You can tell that there is no dupe in the Wet n Wild palette for Barracuda (slate gray with silver sparkle) or Cobra (bold golden yellow with gold sparkle). However, you are getting a unique red shade in the Wet n Wild palette which is not featured in the Urban Decay palette.

Since "The Black Palette" retailed for $36 for 6 eyeshadows, and Wet n Wild's "Daring Downtown" retails for $3.99-4.99, you can expect that the Urban Decay shadows are more pigmented and easier to blend out. However, I do think that the "Daring Downtown" palette is a good performer, you may just need to layer the shadows on more than once to achieve the desired intensity.

"Daring Downtown" dupes for "The Black Palette":
Purple => Jet (WnW's is more black, UD's has more sparkle and is amethyst-toned)
Red is not a dupe
Black => Black Dog (WnW's has more sparkle, UD's truer black)
Blue => Sabbath (WnW's is darker, less blue, strong sapphire color in Sabbath)
Green => Libertine (UD's was darker, more black than green, highly pigmented)

Did you pick up any of the Wet n Wild Halloween palettes? Are you happy with the shadow formulation?

Product Review & Swatches: Too Faced La Belle Carousel - New Release for Holiday 2014

This is going to be an extremely picture-heavy post, so I apologize in advance but I am extremely excited about receiving the Too Faced "La Belle Carousel" after ordering it from Macys.com. The outer packaging is absolutely stunning, I love the artistic ornamental garlands surrounding the box and the scalloped golden edges of the packaging... plus it's a french carousel! What an adorable theme!

The inside looks just like a Christmas ornament, you could even hang it! The miniature palettes are held together pretty tightly by the glittery pink end-caps (these are made of a heavy duty cardboard).

Once the top is removed, inside you will find a look-book  with 4 looks: Sweet Soiree, La Belle, La Vie en Rose, and La Bonne Nuit. I always love it when companies include look-books, specifically when I'm feeling rather uninspired, I just take a peek and voila, a new look to try out!

When you pull out the individual components you will find that you have 5 miniature palettes and 1 Better Than Sex mascara (deluxe sized sample). The whole set retails for $49 but has an expected value of $282, so you're getting quite a deal!

A closer look at the opened palettes reveals 2 blush/bronzer palettes and 3 eyeshadow palettes (with 4 shadows in each - so you're getting 12 eyeshadows altogether). Let's take a closer look at the specifics of each palette.

The blush and bronzer palettes consist of Who's Your Poppy, Luminous Peach, Chocolate Soleil and Sun Bunny Dark. Who's Your Poppy is a rose red with glitter particles and Luminous Peach is a satin mid-toned orange. Chocolate Soleil is cocoa scented cool-leaning mid-tone bronzer and Sun Bunny Dark (the dark strip from the Sun Bunny bronzer) is a metallic orange-brown which reflects a lot of light.

Some of the shades in this range are re-promotes. Yule Log is a re-promote from last year's "Joy to the Girls" holiday palette and I find that they have the exact same consistency and performance. Sugar Plum Fairy also appears to be a re-promote of Sugar Plum from that same palette, it may be half a shade darker but they both suffer from pretty serious pilling in the pan due to the amount and size of glitter. Christmas Tree could be a shade close to Evergreen from the "A Few of my Favorite Things" Holiday 2013 palette, but I do not own that palette so I can't confirm it. Haute Chocolate is a re-promote from the Chocolate Bar palette as well, I don't see any difference between the two shades.

All of the shades performed well, though I want to make note that Frost is essentially an "overshadow" color that provides just some sparkle and glitter, but will not really provide much of a color on its own. I like that they included Tufted Suede in the palette (it's hard to see in my swatches since it is very close to my the color of my tanned skin). Santa's Boots was the only color I found to be chalky and rather hard to blend, also the black was not very pigmented and didn't travel easily when swatching. Some standout shades that I think are an absolute success in this palette are: Tin Soldier, Christmas Tree, Boxes & Bows, Angel Hair, Haute Chocolate (this one was my absolute favorite) and Yule Log.

I absolutely love this set and I think it would make a wonderful gift for any makeup lover! What a wonderful set, full of some new shades and a couple of re-promotes of successful holiday shades from last year. The eyeshadows feature a range of colors from highlighting colors to transition shades, darker crease shades and even pops of color. I love the size of the blushes and bronzers, you're getting a decent amount of product and all of the colors are very wearable on almost any skin-tone.

Is this set on your wishlist for the holidays?

 

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 Release & Sneak Peek: Too Faced La Belle Carousel & Everything Nice (A Few of my Favorite Things 2)

Too Faced - La Belle Carousel set from Macys.com

This set is absolutely breathtaking from the promos, and since I know how fast Too Faced's holiday sets sell out, I decided to order a set! It retails for $49, but you can find Macys.com coupons that might apply to it.

Too Faced - La Belle Carousel set from Macys.com 

I love the packaging, it really looks high-end and Too Faced always does an amazing job specifically with their holiday sets - their products really get me into the holiday spirit! I'm squealing with joy as I'm writing this post!

Rumoured contents of Too Faced - La Belle Carousel found on Dermstore.com

3 Eyeshadow Mini Palettes (4 colors each - 12 shades total):
For the Macys.com set: 1 confirmed palette will consist of Frost (metallic bright silver), Tin Soldier (gunmetal gray shimmer), Christmas Tree (forest green shimmer) and Santa's Boots (shimmery black)
Unsure of 2 palettes - it appears there are 2 variants of this set - maybe sold in different stores? We'll find out soon!

2 Blush & Bronzer Mini Palettes (2 colors each, 4 shades total):
For the Macys.com set: Who's Your Poppy Blush and Chocolate Soleil Bronzer
Unsure of shades in 2nd palette

Deluxe "Better Than Sex Mascara" comes with the set

Sneak Peek Courtesy of trendynailsrd on Instagram - not sure if this is the set released on Macys.com, it appears to differ from the set on Dermstore.com where I got the previous preview.

I ordered the set from Macys.com so as soon as I get my hands on it, I'll take photos and inform you of the colors! Update to come soon, happy holiday shopping!


PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Sneak Peek: Too Faced Everything Nice Palette (A Few Of My Favorite Things 2)!!!! Just to get you excited!

Found this on: The Sunday Girl blog - check out the post for a first impression

Wet 'n Wild Fall 2014 ColorIcon Eyeshadow Palette Collection

The new Wet 'n Wild Coloricon eyeshadow palettes have arrived for the Fall 2014 collection, I was able to find these at Walgreens in the LA area this week. I picked up 3 of the 4 palettes released (Melrose at Night, Smoke and Melrose, Angels in Aubergine), I was not drawn to High Waisted Jeans because I'm not a big fan of blue eyeshadow, I don't find that it's the most flattering on my amber/brown eyes and fair skin tone.

Originally, I was skeptical about the performance of these quints because I have heard rather poor reviews of the permanent collection of quint eyeshadow palettes from Wet 'n Wild's new formulation, but I am so happy to announce that these shadows seem to be the old formulation!!! I hope you get a chance to pick these up if you're a fan of the old, phased-out, color icon shadow palettes. All of the shades are buttery smooth, ultra-pigmented, and have little fall-out.

These quints also feature a variety of glitter, metallic, mostly matte and satin eyeshadows, with Melrose at Night and Smoke and Melrose featuring many dupes of the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette.

Melrose at Night is a perfect daytime look palette if you're looking for a no muss, no fuss, palette. It's great for work or night time, you can always add more of the definer shade in the outer-V of your eye for increased dramatic effect. The Crease shade is my least favorite because it was probably the least pigmented shade out of all of the palettes, but still a better-than-average shadow.

The Smoke and Melrose palette is my absolute favorite, the Browbone shade is as perfect crease transition shade for me and I absolutely adore it (it is a dupe for Nooner from the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette). Smoke and Melrose is a darker, more warm-leaning palette than Melrose at Night, with the crease shade being much more metallic than the rest.

Angels in Aubergine features a wonderfully pigmented Base color, a nice pop of color in the browbone shade and a great way to create a few variations of the smokey eye palette with aubergine (maroon-purple) undertones. This was my least favorite of the palettes, only because I am less of a fan of smokey eye looks than other variations - that isn't to say you couldn't create a rather usual look with just the Browbone, Base and Definer shades. The crease color seems to have the most chunky glitter of all the shades in this range.

Product Review: Urban Decay Pulp Fiction Palette (Limited Edition)

Urban Decay Pulp Fiction Box Packaging

When it comes to cool packaging and unique ideas for palettes, Urban Decay definitely takes the cake. They're a company that's always thinking out of the box and creating unique, trendy packaging and products. The Urban Decay Pulp Fiction palette was released as a limited edition product, along with their entire Pulp Fiction line, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie.

The front and back of the packaging are very informative and even have a little blurb about Mrs. Mia Wallace and why she was chosen as the inspiration for the palette. I especially like the blood red double-ended brush and the little band-aid at the bottom of the packaging.

Urban Decay Pulp Fiction Box Packaging - Back

Samuel L. Jackson's (aka Jules Winnfield) famous quote is even included on the packaging (this is somewhat of a strange decision though because his character isn't really connected with Mia Wallace's in the movie, so it's cool but seems a little out of place).  Regardless, it's an amazing quote that my husband has memorized from the movie!

Urban Decay Pulp Fiction Palette Packaging

When you open the packaging up, it has a very grungy chaotic feeling of paint splatter and blood stains (very reminiscent of the movie)1. The palette consists of 5 eyeshadows and 1 double-ended miniature brush.

To see a look created with this palette, refer back to my Mrs. Mia Wallace Eyes of the Day - this post went into the look card which came in the box and how to re-create Uma Thurman's look in the movie.

You can easily use this palette for every day looks and this palette, upon first glance, looks fairly similar to the Naked Basics palette. However, upon further inspection, Vengeance (Pulp Fiction) is more bronze than the taupe-leaning Faint (Naked Basics), Anger (Pulp Fiction) is more silver than cream-based Venus (Naked Basics) and Righteous (Pulp Fiction) is lighter and less peachy than W.O.S. (Naked Basics).

I think if you were to own both Naked Basics and Pulp Fiction palettes (like I do) that you wouldn't be disappointed. I particularly love the color Tyranny since it's a perfect caramel for warming up the crease or transitioning between shades.

I love the quality of the cruelty-free synthetic dual sided brush, it has one end as a shadow-packing brush and another for precise inner corner or brow-bone highlighting (or even defining your eyebrows).

I think if you have the extra $34 and you're a big fan of Urban Decay, this is a palette you could pick up, enjoy and not be upset about how much you spent. However, if the price is a little steep or you're not a Pulp Fiction fan (and then you must clearly not be a child of the 90's!) then you can easily make do with the Meet Matt(e) palette from theBalm, Physicians Formula Matte Eyeshadow Quad (in Canyon Classics), or Urban Decay's Naked Basics. If you own Naked 1 and 2 you probably already have a large quantity of neutral eyeshadows as well and this wouldn't be too unique in your collection.

Most Loved: Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette

Welcome to all of your childhood dreams of Willy Wonka chocolate bars. This Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette is something I *really* tried my hardest to avoid purchasing. At first, when it came out, the packaging was rather bulky and the tester in my local Sephora was so beaten up and abused by fellow beauty swatchers, that I really had no interest. Even when I saw the HSN promo for it, I was tempted but I held back... they even had an insane deal for the palette (regular retail is $49 at Ulta or Sephora). Alas, the packaging was too bulky and it would have taken too much space in my already over-flowing collection.

Cue the new, updated, summer packaging:

This packaging is literally half the thickness (girth?) of the previous one. My husband insisted on purchasing it for me when we were away on our summer vacation... and how could a girl resist, am I right?

And let me tell you... the scent... oh the smell is far better than you read or hear about. It's almost like a freshly opened truffle doused in cocoa powder. It's desirable and infectious, it makes opening this palette an absolute delight in the morning when I'm groggy, it wakes me right up in the most pleasant of ways!

The names of the colors are unique and ingenious, Too Faced is always very creative with their branding. I really did think that there would be duds in this palette in terms of pigmentation since I had heard from various blog/vloggers that Candied Violet and a few of the lighter shades were rather chalky or lacking pigmentation. I haven't noticed any product kick-up (though I don't typically go beast-mode hard into my shadows with my brushes) or patchiness upon application. I like that Too Faced decided to give us more of the highlight shades White Chocolate (matte finish) and Champagne Truffle (metallic finish), since these get used most frequently when creating looks.

You can really achieve a very subdued look or a more glamorous night-time look... you can even do a dark, goth look if you're feeling in the mood! So whether you're a bronze goddess or a child of the night, this palette really does have it all covered, the only caveat is that the shades are mostly warm-toned with the exception of Gilded Ganache, Triple Fudge, and Candied Violet.

Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette Swatches (No Primer, Ambient Lighting)

Matte: White Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Triple Fudge, Salted Caramel, Semi-Sweet, Strawberry Bon Bon
Matte with Fine Glitter: Gilded Ganache, Black Forest Truffle, Cherry Cordial
Pearl with Fine Glitter: Candied Violet
Metallic: Marzipan, Amaretto, Hazelnut, Creme Brulee, Haute Chocolate, Champagne Truffle

I'm so happy with the pigmentation of these shadows, they perform very well, have great color payoff and I don't feel that I need to pack on too much of the shadow to get full opacity. There's such a good variety of matte, satin/shimmer (metallic) and more glittery shades. Salted Caramel is an absolute brilliant color for warming up the crease and transitioning darker shades. Candied Violet performs a lot better than I expected, and I really find that the glitter isn't too intense once you blend the shadow out. I think the most unique shade of the bunch is Cherry Cordial and I don't have anything else in my collection that looks similar to it (that's saying a lot!)

I highly recommend purchasing this if you apply eyeshadow on a daily basis and need to come up with wearable daytime or nighttime looks. This palette will be your best friend if you want a neutral palette with a little extra oomph. I reach for this palette more than I do my LORAC Pro, Kat Von D Saint palette, or my Urban Decay Naked 1, 2 and 3 combined because it's fun and I get the added bonus of a unique color selection and a waft of cocoa when using it!

Kawaii Chocolate Bar by Rooshoo, Click here.

Product Review: Smashbox Full Exposure Travel Palette

The Smashbox Full Exposure Palette is one I've constantly looked at in Sephora but have never purchased because the packaging wasn't gimmicky enough to draw me in or there was always something else I was coveting more. However, when I learned that Macy's had a travel sized version of the palette featuring 8 shades from the original 14 of the palette, I was thrilled! This was exactly what I wanted - to dabble in the palette and avoid colors I may not be incredibly fond of (such as some of the repeating nudes and grays).

The travel-sized Smashbox Full Exposure palette is so small it fits in the palm of my hand (and I have small hands) and it retails for $22 (Macy's often has discounts, however so I got mine for $15). The full sized palette features 14 colors and retails for $49. The travel palette features 8 shades at .02625oz each versus the 0.035 oz sized shadows of the original palette. The travel palette is sleek, can fit in any purse and seems quite resilient as it is made out of plastic - it even contains a miniature mirror for any on-the-go touch-ups.

Top Row: Chocolate brown with golden pearl, soft gold with gold and silver pearl, light tan with gold and silver pearl, midtone slate with silver pearl

Bottom Row: Matte warm chocolate brown, soft matte midtone tan, creamy matte beige, ashy dark brown

Here are my swatches of the palette. I'm incredibly happy with this travel-sized palette as I don't think I would have splurged on the full size and this really satisfies my craving for this line. I really think this palette is fairly similar to the Lorac Pro Palette but it is a travel friendly version. The shadows are buttery, perform well and are easy to blend... I find that this would be particularly useful for someone who wants an easy look or is new to eyeshadow combinations.