NARS Essential Eye palette

NARS released TWO eye palettes this fall, and unlike the Modern Love palette, I'm totally in love with this one. The Essential Eye palette retails for $55 and is available on the NARS website as well as Neiman Marcus. Unlike NARS's past eye palettes, this one contains a cream eyeshadow and 5 powder ones encased in NARS's regular rubbery packaging.
The shades are as follows:
Unconditional Love- a nice light peachy bronze. Putting this under one of the powder shadows intensifies the color. It's similar to Nepal, which is also in the palette. I've heard that NARS cream shadows crease on a lot of people though, so it may be something you might want to consider if you're tempted by this palette.
Night Star- golden nude with shimmer. This is probably the only shade I liked in the Night Series palette, so I'm kind of glad to have it back since I swapped away the Night Series palette due to its chalkiness.
Galapagos- brown with gold sparkle. I've seen a lot of shades like this summer, but it doesn't make this one any less pretty.
Nepal- peachy bronze nude
Ondine-taupey purple
Thunderball- matte grey based blue

Overall I really like this palette. Yes, 3 of the shades are really similar, but I like all of the shades in the palette and the palette is easily wearable. It's well worth what I paid for it.

Stila Madagascar Agate palette

The Stila swatch frenzy continues with what is probably my favorite Stila palette, the Madagascar Agate palette. I bought this palette by accident at the Stila Warehouse sale last December for about $12. (I meant to get the Laguna Agate palette, but didn't notice that the box behind the display palette was filled with Madagascar palettes, and unfortunately all sales were final...I don't think there were actually any Laguna palettes there so I feel a bit miffed, but it turned out well in the end) The palette doesn't look like anything special at all, but I like the nice easy everyday sort of look it gives. Plus, it contains the one Stila blush I actually LIKE. The base shade is a cream colored shadow with slight shimmer. Like all the base shades in Stila palettes, it's a nice wash color. The lid shade is a warm bronze color, and the darkest shade is your standard dark brown color. All 3 colors are smooth and buttery. The blush is a great peachy pink shade with gold shimmer. It applies quite smoothly unlike the other Stila blushes I've owned


Swatches (natural lighting, no base). The dark brown doesn't actually have a funky texture like the swatch might suggest, my skin was reacting funny to the massive amount of swatching I did that day)Swatches in warmer, indoor lighting. I chose to post a 2nd pic because this one brings out the golden shimmer in the blush better.
None of the colors are really unique or must have, but put together, this palette is very very nice. It's the sort of palette that you have around as a staple if you had a small stash (or makes a great gift for someone who isn't super crazy about mu, but wears a little from time to time) Additionally, it's small size makes it ideal for travel (I wrap my hand around this one quite easily)

Stila Glacier Ice palette

I'm powering through old swatches tonight so up next is the Stila Glacier Ice palette. I was lucky enough to receive this palette in a swap, but I never reached for this, so away it went to a new home. Like most of Stila's 4 pan palettes, this came with 3 shadows (labeled base, crease, and liner) and a blush.

The base shade is a nice shimmery pinkish cream. Nothing special, but it's a nice color for a wash/highlight.
The lid/crease shade is a nice silver color that from what I remember, pulled a tiny bit green on me.
The liner shade is a kind of boring shimmery black shadow. I'm not sure if it was a full on black, I think it was more of a muted black color.
The blush was a soft pink color, which I thought was kind of nice, but slightly chalky. I'm not a big fan of Stila's blushes though.

Zero's a fan of participating in my swatching/blogging activities...

Stila Palettes--My collection and Stila Blanc

I still have a couple of Bobbi Brown palettes, but since I don't have those swatched yet, I'll give you guys swatches of my Stila palettes...which should keep me busy for oh...a week or less :] (I've swatched and labeled most of these think I've swatched them all already so this should go quickly)
Here they all are...
I never did swatch the contouring trio before I got rid of it...but oh well. First up is the Stila Blanc palette, which seems to be a board favorite on MUA, particualrly amongst the paler ladies. It contains 3 eyeshadow shades (base, crease, and liner) and a blush. The palette is definitely nice, but I'm not in love with it at all...
The base shade is nothing too special, just your basic shimmery yellowy cream shade. it's a nice all over/highlight shade.
The "crease" shade is a soft, shimmery warm golden brown. Although this is labeled as a crease shade, I prefer using this on the lid
The liner shade is my favorite out of the 3. It's a darker brown with some olive tones to it and glod shimmer. I tend to use this one in the crease instead of the crease shade.
The blush in this palette is the real reason why I'm not in love with this palette. It's a beautiful coral colored blush in the pan, which unfortunately, for some reason, gives my skin kind of a toasty sunburnt look.
Swatches in somewhat warm indoor lighting

I'm not entirely sure what this palette retailed for, but I got this one for $12 (plus expensive shipping) off beautycrunch. It was releleased last year in a kit at Ulta as well.

Benefit Spring 2009 Creaseless Cream eyeshadows

The second part of my mall swatching experience involved heading into Sephora. The SAs there told me I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the store, so no product photos. (I'm not sure what the problem is really..it's not like I'm stealing) Either way, I decided to just swatch these today since there were 2 SAs hovering over me while I was in the store, which made me a little uncomfortable. They didn't ask me if I needed help, just kind of sneered at me. As such, I'll probably keep swatching trips to Sephora down to a minimum (though the SAs at this Sephora have always been particularly snarky) I will probably be eventually swatching Josie Maran stuff since it's not readily available in a lot of places (luckily I own about 1/2 the perm colors of e/s already so I can do that at home.) Anyways...here's the 3 limited edition cream shadows Benefit put out this year, applied kind of heavily for swatching, though it didn't come out quite as pigmented as it was rl. Sippin' n dippin' is a peach and gold duochrome. It looks a bit odd in the pot, but it's kind of pretty on. Samba-dy loves me is kind of a weird color to describe for me, maybe a milkyish slightly warm brown?, it mostly just boils down to a nice satiny slightly warm neutral shade. Flyin' down to fits it's description..it's a soft orchid color. The picture was taken in cool lighting and then color adjusted a bit so the temperature of the picture may be a bit off.