Beauty Product Reviews

Favorite 2012 Holiday Palette

I was reluctant to buy this palette for a while because I already have the Sweet Dreams palette, which has almost all the exact same colors as this palette, but eventually I had to get it. It is gorgeous though, and the shadows seem to be much better quality than the sweet dreams. Not only that but it includes one of my favorite blushes Papa Don't Peach. Too Faced not being an evil greedy company, always includes a FULL SIZED Shadow Insurance (sooooo nice of them), which is also my primer of choice. So it's basically amazing.

Best full coverage foundation. Period.

Most people don't like feeling like they have makeup on at all, and I say you're asking too much. Haha, just kidding. Well if you have a lot of serious acne or scarring to cover up, yeah you kinda are asking for too much, and you need this stuff. It smells a bit like and feels a bit like paint, because that's how you should think of it, and that's exactly how it's advertised. "To create a perfect, blank canvas." And that's exactly what it does. I very much dig it.

I haven't had great experience with department store eye shadow palettes that weren't from either Urban Decay or Too Faced, so I was really surprised that I actually love this palette. The shadows are not chalky and stay on all day (with a primer of course), and the neutrals have become some of my favorite go-to colors. Way to go, Stila :)

I love this stuff, it covers up my pretty bad acne well, so long as I use it UNDER a foundation. I don't actually expect concealer sticks to work on their own, so I'm not sure if this one is meant to, but neither concealer nor any foundation works perfectly enough alone for me. It is a bit on the yellow side, but i find that if i blend it in well it doesn't look very yellow. Anyway I like it because it covers without clogging my pores AND treats my acne with salicylic acid.

This is a really nice, inky liquid pen eyeliner. I find liquid brush eyeliners difficult for precision and so pens like this are my favorite. This eyeliner is good for exactly what it says, getting in between lashes and creating a perfect black line through the lashes, which is good because I sometimes get holes in between my lashes with some pens. Unfortunately for me, this eyeliner is a little difficult to create a long cat-eye wing, which I do every day, it's a little fat for that. I realize most people don't do that every day though, so other than that its nice.

So if I'm being honest this palette is probably the worst quality that UD has ever come out with. I was super excited to get this when I heard about it because I pretty much buy every Urban Decay palette that comes out, they're one of the few brands that make such fantastic quality eye shadows in really good value sets. I read on the Sephora website that a few people were disappointed in the shadows being so chalky, but I bought it anyway because I figured I could handle it. They were right, I'm not sure what corners were cut here, the shadows SWATCH great, but dip a brush in them and they are everywhere and super hard to work with. I really don't mind, that's how much I love Urban Decay, the colors are gorgeous (although to be fair, they are called "exclusive shades" and look just like a lot of their other colors) so I can always find ways to use these (over bases, wet etc.), but Urban Decay IS better than this.

Absolutely love this stuff! I've on and off used the loose mineral powder for years and it covered okay, but A: I was using the lightest shade and it was still too dark for me, B: It was totally messy to use and C: I had to use like a third of the jar to actually cover up all my acne. But this stuff runs very light (I ALWAYS have to use the lightest shade of foundation but not this one), its mess free and easy to throw in your makeup bag and it covers just as good as a cream or liquid and without using much! I never thought I'd get this much coverage out of a powder compact foundation but I love this one :)