Chantecaille Les Fetes Trio Review and Swatches

Chantecaille released a cute little palette for the holidays called Les Fetes and I have it here to show you. "The three festive shimmer shades will inspire anyone to celebrate the Holidays with glamour. Colours glide on seamlessly and adorn your lids with a joyful glow." - Space NK

The palette contains the following 3 shades:
Moonstone - a soft pearl with hints of gold and pink highlights
Diamond - a silvery slate infused with diamond-like sparkle
Pink Sapphire - an effervescent rose to brighten the eye

The trio is actually a great little palette, very nice for a smoky eye with shimmer, perfect for a night out. Moonstone is a beautiful highlighter colour with a pinky-gold sheen, Pink Sapphire is a lovely rosy pink with a slight sheen and Diamond is a dark grey with a sequin/sparkle/stardust formula, it's a very shiny, almost wet finish.

The eyeshadows were very nice and smooth, and nicely pigmented Moonstone and Pink Sapphire especially. I found Diamond had to be packed on a bit more, but once it was on, it lasted well. I had no creasing from any of them and the look stayed vibrant for hours.

The palette also comes with a double ended brush/applicator and the compact has a full mirror in the lid. It costs £65 from Space NK, I luckily managed to buy it from eBay for around £41. You get 5 g for your money which is not huge, but decent.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Laura Mercier Petite Baked Eye Colour Trio in Golden Metallics Review and Swatches

This holiday Laura Mercier has released some very pretty palettes and I picked up this Petite Baked Eye Colour Trio. Although I'd already owned one of the shades, I thought it was still worth picking up.

The palette contains 3 baked eyeshadows in the following colours: Gold Leaf, Black Karat and Emerald. Out of the 3 only Black Karat is permanent. Because they're baked, they can be used both wet and dry, and usually look more intense when used wet. I tried Gold Leaf and Black Karat dry on the lid and then Emerald wet as eyeliner and they looked very pretty. I didn't take any pictures of the look, sorry.

Even when used dry they're nicely pigmented and there isn't much fallout from them, what little there was occured during application and not afterwards. I used them over primer (Too Faced Shadow Insurance) and they stayed creaseless all day. There's a lovely shimmer to them, but no chunky glitter, so if you like some shimmer, these could be a good choice for you. I can see this as an option for a Christmas party make up look.

You get 3 x 0.5 g of product which isn't a lot, but it's worth keeping in mind that baked eyeshadows are often lighter than non-baked ones. The palette is slightly worse value at £20 than buying the eyeshadows individually (although technically you can't anyway), because the singles cost £18.50 and you get 1.8 g for that. If you don't think you want to fork out £20 for this, then wait until the sales because I have seen other Laura Mercier palettes go on sale after Christmas, clearly they are not as limited edition as Mac products are. If you like it though, best get it now, just in case.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Sephora Moonshadow Trios in Bermuda Triangle and Dusk Till Dawn - Review and Swatches

I bought these eyeshadow trios from Sephora last month when I ordered the new Chanel Illusion D'Ombre eyeshadows and I was looking for something else to order to offset the shipping cost. I like baked eyeshadows, so I thought I'd give these a go. I have only used one of them so far, but swatched both, so I thought I'd share them with you anyway.

Bermuda Triangle,  Dusk Till Dawn

Both shadows contain 3 shades, Bermuda Triangle has yellow gold, copper and teal, and Dusk Till Dawn includes light violet, light pink and mauve. The shadows are big enough for the shades to be used separately, although you need to be quite careful when using the middle shade as the strip isn't very wide. The colour payoff for these was actually very good, which can be an issue with baked shadows. I only tried them dry, but I'm guessing the colours would be even more intense when used wet. I have only used Dusk Till Dawn on my eyes, haven't tried Bermuda Triangle, but they both swatched very nicely and when used, Dusk Till Dawn didn't have any significan fallout, other than a tiny bit during application. The colours stayed vivid and the shadows didn't crease on me at all.

Sephora recommends that you use the top shade on your lid, then the bottom shade in the crease and the middle strip to highlight the browbone. I mixed it up and used the violet shade on the lid, mauve in the crease and light pink to highlight. With Bermuda Triangle I would probably use the gold to highlight, copper on the lid and teal in the crease, I really don't think the copper would look good on the browbone. The copper strip reminded me of the Mac Red She Said mineralize eyeshadow trios but it is actually much nicer than them, although it is chunkier than the rest of the shades, it's still pretty smooth and has a great colour payoff.

The eyeshadows weight 1.8 g each and cost €14.90 each (roughly £12) from Sephora.fr. They come in 6 colour combinations.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

My Dior Spring 2012 Collection Haul

A relatively modest haul for me, I only got 3 products from the Dior Spring 2012 collection. I even surprised myself with this, because when I first saw details of the collection, I was sure I also wanted the two clutches, however after swatching them I concluded that the eyeshadows were too sheer and I didn't want to fork out all that money for them. They are very pretty and if you like sheer colours, they might suit you, but they're just not for me.

I ended up buying the two eyeshadow quints, Garden Roses and Garden Pastels and one of the eyeshadow trios, Smoky Violet. Well, what can I say? The quints are just gorgeous. I just love the design and the colours, although admittedly I haven't actually been brave enough to swatch them as I love the design more, but I will eventually and in fact I have at the counter and they are gorgeous. I did swatch the trio as there's no gorgeous floral design the destroy (make sure you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post for the swatches!).

A few words about the trio. It is quite unusual in the way that the compact doesn't open like normal compacts do, you have to slide the lid to open it and a little mirror then pops up from inside the compact. Not too sure why as I'd personally prefer a nice full size mirror int he lid, but I guess it's a bit quirkier this way. Inside you get 3 eyeshadows, they are labelled as Base, Soft Smoky and Couture Smoky. Dior recommends that you use the base colour all over the lid and then one of the darker shades for the outer corner, lid and along the lashline for a smoky eye look. One of the darker shades is matte, the other is shimmery (which is the main reason why I got this palette, it's so pretty). I personally could see myself using all 2 shades, but I guess if you're not very experienced at applying eyeshadows, this is a good tip. Dior also included a joke size double ended brush and a sponge applicator which are frankly no use if your hands are bigger than a 2-year-old's.

Funnily you actually get more product in the trio (5.5g instead of 4.8g in the quints), not sure why. The quints cost £41 each and the trio costs £32, so definitely the better deal of the two, BUT can you put a price on prettiness? Because the quints are just so pretty, they win hands down.

See more pictures after the jump!

Swatching My Stash: My Boots 17 Eyeshadow Trios

As promised, here are my Boots 17 eyeshadow trio swatches. I own 5 of them, so might not be available for sale anymore as they may be a tad old. Before I got into high end make up (about 3 years ago), I used to buy quite a lot of high street make up and 17 was definitely one of them. I have since got rid of quite a lot of my old make up, but I couldn't toss these lovelies as they are really good quality eyeshadows.

I own Costa Rica, Galactic, Neptune, Purple Heart, Pretty In Pink. Costa Rica is a very summery trio with teal, blue and bronze, I believe it was a limited edition trio last year (or the year before). Galactic and Neptune Starry Eyes trios are new, they are currently available in Boots for £4.99 each, but there's often a 3 for 2 offer on or something similar. I believe there's 4 colours available. Bizarrely the older regular trios cost £5.49 (50p more), I have Pretty In Pink and Purple Heart of those, although my Purple Heart has a slightly different (older) design. I don't know if the eyeshadows are the same quality, probably are, but worth checking them out for yourselves. These trios appear to be available in 12 shades on the Boots website, I don't think I've ever seen that many in stores though.

Quality wise I love the new Starry Eyes trios the best as they really are excellent, buttery, soft, pigmented eyeshadows. I like all the others too, but some of them are less pigmented or a bit harder (might be their age though). Anyway, here are the swatches for you, see for yourselves! Do you own any of these or other 17 trio eyeshadows?

See more pictures and swatches after the jump!

Accessorize Baked Trio Eyeshadows Review and Swatches

I am really happy with my recent Accessorize purchases and today I would like to show you the baked trio eyeshadows that I'd already talked about in my video (check it out if you haven't yet). There are 8 new baked trio eyeshadows in the range and I have 4 of them to show you. These are absolutely massive at 12.5 g each, so you don't have to worry about not being able to pick out the individual colours with your brush. As usual, they come in the lovely butterfly decorated compact.

The four shades I bought are Astonishment (greens), Blown Away (blues), Shameless (pinks) and The Good and The Bad (browns). If I remember correctly there was a lighter brown trio, a grey one, a purple one and one with bright pink, purple and white. All very pretty, but to me these stood out. (I also loved the purple one, but I managed to pick up a duo with a gorgeous purple none of the shades in the purple trio could compete with, so I passed on it. I will show you the duos tomorrow, but you can also see them in the video.)

I really like these baked trio eyeshadows. They seem quite hard in the pan, but despite that they have a good colour payoff and apply very easily. The swatches you'll see below are all one-swipe swatches. I have only used them dry so far, but they can be used wet too. The eyeshadows are quite frosty and some of them have some very fine glitter too. I have not really experienced any fallout with them (I have so far used 3 of them), if there was a bit, it was only during application (they are quite powdery), but absolutely none later. I also didn't experience any creasing either (I wore them on top of my Barbara Daly eyeshadow base).

In the video I'm wearing Blown Away, and I have also included some pictures of the look I created with Astonishment. I wore Shameless yesterday and really liked the look (medium pink on the lid, dark mauve in the crease and light pink on browbone to highlight), but didn't managed to take pictures as I had my children at home and it was so hot anyway that my face wasn't too photogenic with all the sweating. The eye makeup stayed pretty much flawless despite the heat though.

As I said above these are massive at 12.5 g and cost £6 each. Available from Superdrug and Accessorize. They're not on the Accessorise website yet, but hopefully they'll appear soon.

See more pictures and swatches after the jump!