Loose Powder

While visiting some family friends a couple months ago in Flushing, NY, I stopped into a small beauty supply store and found a selection of NYX palettes for $6 each! I picked up this one in Aquamarine.

The inside of the compact has a mirror and a double-ended sponge tip applicator. I never use the applicators included in palettes as they are usually cheap quality brushes or sponges.

The colors are fairly pigmented, but you should definitely use a base or a primer to prevent creasing and fading. You can see from the swatch in the third photo that without primer, the color on skin looks just as good as what’s in the palette.

Overall, I think this is a great palette and I’d love to get a couple more.

NYX Trio eye shadow palettes are available at Cherry Culture, Ulta and wherever NYX products are sold. Each palette retails for $8.

Hello again! Here’s a quick look at the Wet n Wild Comfort Zone Color Icon palette.

I’ve seen this particular set reviewed on a lot of blogs and i was interested in the definer color on the right side of the palette – it’s a close dupe to the darker color in the BareMinerals Ready2.0 The Vision palette.

The Wet N Wild palette has been difficult to locate at the usual drug stores, but I found a stack of them at Ulta! At $4.99, how could I pass it up?

The one frustrating thing is that these palettes never have names for the individual colors. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s a little annoying! Anyway, the colors apply very smoothly and have good pigmentation.

I mostly bought this palette for the color in the top right of the third picture above. It’s a dark maroon/brown with a teal/aqua shimmer. Love it! Here are some swatches in direct and indirect sunlight:

This is a nice palette, especially for the price. The colors are easily workable for day and night looks.

While I don’t have many makeup palettes, I’ve really loved the Kat Von D palettes I’ve gotten from Sephora. Even though the cream shadows in this palettes are never my favorite (they dry out too quickly), the high pigmentation in these shadows is great. It’s even better when I can snag one on sale – this one was $14 on sale at Sephora.com.

Angeles is a brown and teal color palette with a cream shadow that has a blue/green shimmer. The white palette has various rosary crosses in black ink on the top and the plastic itself is rubberized. Like previous palettes, there’s a mirror on the inside of the lid and two small, double-ended brushes are included.

There is a bit of overlap with these colors and some others I have, but having them all in the same palette makes it easy to pack for a trip. It’s nice having a neutral brown set with teals and blues I can either combine with the neutrals or use on their own for a bolder look.

Morphine is the cream shadow. Out of the box, it’s a bit difficult to work with and I don’t imagine it’ll get much better as it ages. Thankfully, the rest of the shadows are soft and blend easily. Here are some more swatches under direct sunlight and indirect sunlight.

Overall, I’m definitely happy with this palette and have used it several times since purchasing it. It’s worth the $35 retail price, but at $14 it was definitely a steal!

Kat Von D products are available at Sephora.

BareMinerals loose mineral eyeshadow was the first type I started buying and using when I started to get more interested in make-up about 10 years ago. I liked the colors and the fact that they were made from minerals. However, after several years of use, I started developing a slight allergy to the loose eye shadow (as well as the foundation). My eyes would water and itch whenever I wore them and after some trial and error, I discovered it was most likely due to the bismuth oxychloride in their products – the same ingredient that they advertise  as giving you a “glow.”

A couple years ago, I tried their matte foundations, which are bismuth free. It works great and my skin doesn’t itch like it used to when I used the regular foundation. Hoping they’d also adjusted their eye shadows, I’ve been trying samples off and on to no avail.

BareMinerals recently released their READY Eyeshadow palettes. They come in palettes of two or four colors and each color is a pressed mineral eyeshadow and do not contain parabens, binders, or fillers.

I really loved the dark brown shadow with aqua duochrome in the Vision palette, but I really disliked the highlight color. Instead, I picked Showstopper, which has two colors I liked a lot, both shades of purple.

Here are some photos of the palette:

Bravo is a very light bluish-purple and Encore is a purple with a slight blue shimmer. The palette has a mirror on the inside of the lid and comes with a small sponge applicator. I never use those, so I’ll probably end up losing it or throwing it out at some point.

The set on the left is without primer and the set on the right is with. The shadows are very soft and easy to blend. Obviously, they wear much longer with a primer, but even without a base of some kind, they last quite a while.

After wearing these for several days, I’m glad to report that I had no eye irritation! These shadows do contain bismuth oxychloride, so I wonder if the pressed nature of the palette means there is less fall out to get into my eyes. I would definitely buy another one of these palettes.

BareMinerals Ready Eyeshadow palettes are available at Sephora, Ulta, QVC, and other beauty stores. The 2.0 palettes retail for $20 and the 4.0 palettes retail for $30.

Wonderful in Waikiki is Stila’s July 2011 Stila Girl Beach Palette. These $14 palettes are great for travel and each includes four eyeshadow colors, a blush, bronzer, and a mirror on the inside.

I wanted to get this palette for the coppery color – Sarong. It’s the sort of burnt orange-y color that I was on the search for and it’s a great shade!

Here are some more photos of the packaging and the makeup.

The eye colors in the palette are:

• Wahine (sandy shimmer)
• Sarong (coppery bronze)
• Coconut (brown with slight gold shimmer)
• Surf (bright matte blue)

You also get cheek colors in North Shore (orange-y blush) and Hanauma Bay (bronze orange).

From left to right: Wahine, Sarong, Coconut, Surf, North Shore, Hanauma Bay.

The quality of these shadows is nice and much improved on last year’s palette collection. They apply smoothly and blend well and, with a primer, last all day. I’m probably not getting any of the other collections this year as I don’t think the colors in them are good for my skin tone, but I would recommend them to anyone who wanted to try them out.

Stila Girl Beach Palettes are available from Stila’s website as well as Amazon and Zappos.

Last year summer, Stila issued four $10 travel palettes and is issuing four more this summer! The $14 Beach Palettes each contain four eyeshadows, a cheek color, and a bronzer/highlighter.

The first of these palettes is Stunning in Sayulita, which was issued in April. This palette has some very lovely neutrals and I was hoping the eyeshadow formulation was better this time around.

These are the colors in the palette:

Eye Shadows:
- Starfish
- Sandbar
- Getaway
- Palm Trees

Cheek Color (powder blush):
- Playa

Highlighter/Bronzer:
- Banderas Bay

The eye shadows from top left, clockwise are: starfish, sandbar, getaway, and palm trees. The top rectangular color is the cheeky color (playa) and the bottom one is the highlighter (banderas bay).

Here are some swatches:

From left to right: Playa, Sandbar, Getaway, Palm Trees, Playa, Banderas Pay.

These colors were a lot nicer to apply than the last Stila travel palettes. The eye shadows are not as chalky, but they’re still not that pigmented. However, for $14, these are some great neutrals and I like the powder blush a lot more than the cream convertible color form last year.

Stila Beach Palettes are available from the Stila website, Sephora, and Zappos.com.

Here’s another product from Korean cosmetics company Holika Holika! This eye shadow palette is from the Face2Change collection and is Palette 01.

I like the design on the front of the palette that’s printed with holographic and metallic elements. I also appreciate that the included applicator has both a sponge and brush end, but honestly the brush is too small to really be useful to me.

The colors in the palette, from left to right, are gold, silver, peach, aqua, purple, and black. The eye shadows have a slightly powdery texture and they have fair pigmentation. I would definitely use a primer for bolder colors.

I have been using mostly neutral colors lately, so I haven’t gotten a chance to use this palette much, but I really like the aqua and purple shadows. It’s a nice addition to my makeup collection!

This VOV Castledew DiaCut palette is another great makeup item sent to me from South Korea.

The palette itself is highly polished and I like the stylized shape. There is a mirror on the inside of the lid and the palette comes with two eyeshadow applicators.

Here’s a closer look at the shadows and some swatches. The colors have rather strange names, though… from top left to right, it’s: skin gold, natural peach, soul silver, khakish, brownish, navish, blackish khaki, blackish brown, and blackish black.

I don’t think the shadows are very pigmented, but with a primer, you get decent color pay off.  They are definitely sparkly, though!

Back with another Kat Von D palette review! This time, it’s Ludwig, which I picked up during another sale at Sephora in JC Penney.

Here’s a look at the packaging:

Like all the other palettes, the packaging for this unfolds like an accordion and is wrapped in gunmetal tissue paper, with a black foil sticker.

The front of the rubberized palette has the same rose design as the front of the box and the back has a label with the colors and ingredients.

There’s no cream shadow in the palette, which is fine with me because I didn’t really use the ones in the other palettes. I picked up this palette for the neutral browns and greens which are suitable for daily wear.

Swatches:

From left to right: Lucifer, Orbi, Dimebag, Tequila, Clay, Downtown, Baroque, Leather.

Tequila and Clay are very light colors when applied dry with no primer, but either wet or with Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy, you get more color pay off.

Colors are easy to work with, but there is a lot of powder on the palette when you use a brush:

It doesn’t seem to affect the shadow (ie: make it chalky), but it could get a little messy.

Overall, I’m as happy with this palette as I was with the previous Kat Von D eye shadow palettes.

Last month, I reviewed Kat’s Memento Mori palette and mentioned that I picked up the True Love palette while Sephora still had them on sale.

Let’s start off with a look at the packaging:

This box also unfolds like the others and the palette is wrapped in gunmetal tissue with a metallic purple sticker.

The front and back of the rubberized palette looks just like the outside box. The eye shadow colors and ingredients are listed on the back. Here’s a look at the colors in the palette:

The cream shadow in the palette is the gold-colored, Benji. It hasn’t dried out after having been opened the last couple months, so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about that. All the colors in this palette are great and suitable for both day and  evening looks.

Swatches:

From left to right: Peanut, Benji, Rebekah, Lucifer, Cholita, Shiba, Babe, Missy.

Like the Memento Mori palette, the colors are easy to blend and work great with Fyrinnae’s Pixie Epoxy. I’m quite a fan of these palettes now that I’ve used them for a while and would definitely buy others.