Josie Maran Palettes

Josie Maran, who's a super hot model and terrible actress, has within the last couple of years, started her own makeup brand, which is currently one of my favorite brands around. It's a great brand of neutrals made of organic products encased in cute corn plastic casing. Today I will be reviewing and swatching the two powder palettes that she has available at the moment. It's a great time for this since Josie Maran Cosmetics is currently having a Valentine's Day Sale at 30% off. You do have to sign up for their newsletter to get the poromo code, but hey..you can always unsubscribe later on :)

First up is the Favorite Powders palette:

This palette has 5 e/s, two blushes, and a bronzing powder, all of which are permanent to the collection's regular line. All of the products in this palette are soft and buttery and as an added bonus, I experience absolutely no fallout with any of the shades..even without tapping or blowing off any excess on my brushes. Unfortunately with the heavy rain out the last few days, I couldn't get good pictures of the palettes themselves.

The Favorite Powders compact contains 4 shimmer shades and 1 matte shade

Chianti- Sephora describes this as a red plum shade, however I feel that it is more of a deep red-bronze shade. Although kinda scary looking in the pan, it's really not as bad as it looks, especially there is considerably more brown in the shade than it appears in the pan and the color can be applied sheerly.

Valentine- a sheer pink shade. I usually can't wear pink shades on my eyes, but this one is miraculously okay on me.

Cinnamon- a shimmery pink chanpagne shade. This shade makes a great highlight/base shade.

Embrace- Sephora describes this as a shimmery coppery brown, but on my skin this is a shimmery bronzey gold.

Maple- the only matte shade in the palette. This shade is a tanish taupe on me. This is my least favorite shade in the palette as it is not as smooth and buttery as the rest of the shades and has poor color payoff.

There are two matte blushes and 1 bronzer in this palette. All three products are soft and buttery and require only a soft tap of the brush on the powder.

The bronzer, Beach #1, is a bit of an orangey peach and is nothing like a brozer on me. I'm actually not quite sure qhat to use it for, but maybe someone who has lighter skin can use it as a bronzer.

Both blushes are quite tiny in this palette, and a regular sized blush brush does not fit in the pan.

Fever- Sephora describes this shade as a soft brown, which is fairly innacurate.. In the pan, this color is a dull pink. On my skin, it does have a hint of brown to it, but it remains pink for the most part.

Passion is a brightish light pink.

This palette has 5 e/s, 4 of which are new shades not sold separately from this palette (at least not yet) and are not quite as soft as the e/s from the favorite powders...and maybe thus not quite as pigmented, making them soft, subtle colors that gently enhance your features (though i'm not sure why you would want the lavendar shade to be pigmented as it's a pastel shade) All of the shades have a perfect, soft shimmer that is just enough to keep the shades from being flat and dull....and again, I experience absolutely no fallout with any of the shades..even without tapping or blowing off any excess on my brushes!

The shades are:Lilac-which is a soft lavendar color with very soft glitter throughout the shade. Now I HATE glitter...and I STILL love this color. The glitter is more like larger shimmer pieces and is again very subtle...and still creates no fallout problems during application...I don't even have to use the patting/rolling method to apply this...it just sticks to the lids VERY well...no glitter on my cheeks or anything <3plum->
The "bronzing" powder in the palette is actually a highlighter called Posey and I have to say I like this quite a bit...Sephora lists this as a shimmering pink, but i feel that it's more of a light shimmering peach...and it makes a perfect base shade as an eyeshadow...and can also be used on the cheeks the give a very subtle glow.

There are two blushes in the palette:

Little Kisses is a bit of a dissapointment to me: although beautiful in the pan, it really didn't show up very well on my skin...it was kinda of a "if you look closely...there's a LITTLE bit of color there..."

Baby Cheeks- I had better luck with baby cheeks..the soft rose color...which gave me a bit of a nice healthy color that I quite like...The other reasons I removed a lippie was due to the size of the palette as well as the packaging of the palette.

These palettes are VERY small for something that cost a good $45...it has absolutely no trouble fitting into my back pocket and is roughly the same size as a pack of dentyne ice gum. While this makes for great portability...I'm not so impressed by the price to size ratio.The packaging, while sleek and chic, is also a disapointment to me for one reason: the pans are held in by what appears to be rubber cement...and are therefore quite loose... I could excuse the size for the superior product quality, but I really dislike that the pans in the palette are loose and feel like they would fall out easily. That said, I'd probably buy the full sized products of what is in these palettes as the full sized prodects seem a bit better made. It is definitely a great way to try out her products though, which I absolutely love (with the exception of the lip palettes...those were quite awful)