This year, Smashbox has once again, put out a "blockbuster style" palette containing 64 eyeshadows, 8 lip glosses, 8 cream liners, a brow tech palette, 2 blushes, 2 highlighters, and a bronzer. The palette retails for $59 is an Ulta exclusive and can be found at Ulta and Smashbox's website only. In my excitement, I of course ordered one, despite having last year's with the reasoning that the colors in this year's are different from last year's...which they are. This year's palette is certainly a lot brighter than last years, which for me unfortunately meant that the palette as a whole was a lot less wearable than last year's. Additionally, I noticed that this year's palette was scented..which tends to bother me, but luckily the scent doesn't transfer to my face. There were some improvements over last year's..like the brushes for example, but they don't increase my excitement for the palette by much.
The eyeshadows in this year's palette are a lot brighter and warmer than last year's palette, which was very neutral; EVERY shade in last year's palette was wearable, which to me is no small feat since there were 70 eyeshadows in last year's palette. Consequently, I found that the majority of the shades would not work super well on me. The other thing I noticed when swatching the colors is that the quality of the eyeshadows this year are inferior to that of last year's. Last year's palette was smooth, buttery goodness, while this year, only a few were buttery, and a few were downright chalky and hard to scrape any real color from. Swatches were again done in columns...
The blushes in the palette, however, are nicer than last year's. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good pic of these swatched..for some reason all the swatches after I finished swatching the eyeshadows came out impossibly warm..for this reason the cheek colors came out way more orange/brown than they should be.
The cream liners in this year's palette are also an improvement over last year's. For some reason, they were difficult to work with in last year's palette as they were significantly drier than their normal texture. This year's are nice and creamy
The lip glosses are also an improvement from last year's and are my favorite part of the palette. They're fairly nonsticky and don't have any scent or flavor, unlike last year's, which had a disgustingly sweet taste to them.
Overall, I'd say it's a palette I have very mixed feelings over, some of it is really nice, but to me, it's not really worth paying $59 + tax for. Then again, my stash is a monstrousity and I have a LOT of palettes...but in general I'm finding myself kind of disappointed with this year's holiday releases (with the exception of one...but you guys will see that later). The other thing that bothers me about the palette is the way it opens up..it came apart one already when I was sliding it open. It didn't break exactly..just came apart. It was easily fixed (it snapped back together), but it just left the feeling of very cheap quality.
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