Holiday 2011: Laura Mercier Book of Nudes and NOTD OPI Meep Meep Meep

One of the things I bought for Sephora's Friends and Family sale is the Laura Mercier Book of Nudes. This palette contains 8 shadows, 1 cake liner, and 3 cream cheek products. Most of the eye shadows are smooth and buttery, but Tiger's Eye is an unpigmented, hard pressed mess. The other shadows are somewhat sheer, but very buildable. All swatches were taken in a mix of natural lighting and OTT lighting over UDPP, roughly 3 swipes each (except Tiger's Eye)

Buff is a matte beige.
Tiger's Eye is an warm brown with gold glitter. It's hard and unpigmented and easily forms a crust on top. I had to really dig in to get payoff. I think this was 6 swipes or so with my brush, and I had to really pack it on.
Sandstone is a shimmery beige pink.
Bamboo is a warm, slight antiqued bronzey taupe.
Baroque is a warm orange brown with gold shimmer
Fresco is a matte, pinked brown.
Granite is a deep, matte grey.
Cocoa Brown is a reddish brown with slight bronze shimmer. The shimmer doesn't really transfer onto the skin.
The cheek creams in the palette have a smooth, kinda oily texture. The only one I found somewhat pretty is the cheek veil which is a slightly corally peach shade. Bronzer veil reminded me kind of like baby diarrhea...it didn't look particularly pretty swatched onto my arm. Glow veil is a golden highlight shade. The only one of these I tried on my face was the cheek veil. It was easy enough to blend, but I didn't like the payoff on my face. Each of these swatches was maybe 4 swipes. They're definitely quite sheer.

I did neglect to swatch the cake liner, but you can find a swatch of it with the LM Luxe Color portfolio I swatched earlier this month if you're interested. Overall, the palette is okay, but the colors themselves don't particularly appeal to me. If you're torn between getting the luxe color portfolio or the book of nudes, my personal preference would be towards the luxe color portfolio. The Book of Nudes is quite a bit cheaper though, so if you like the colors, it's okay to get, but it doesn't excite me whatsoever.

Here's a look at yesterday's NOTD as weel; OPI Meep Meep Meep. This polish is a slightly pink red, that I found was somewhat jelly-like in color payoff (I can still see my nail line a bit after 3 coats). There's some multidimmensional shimmer to it as well that I feel like my camera didn't capture so well. This photo was taken under OTT lighting at the end of the day shortly before I removed it.

Laura Mercier Holiday 2011-- Luxe Color Portfolio

Laura Mercier Luxe Color Portfolio- retails $98
Contains: 6 eyeshadows, 3 cake liners, 2 blushes, and 3 mini brushes

Laura Mercier Luxe Color Portfolio (close-up)

Natural Lighting + OTT light over UDPP

Primrose-Warm shimmery pink.
African Violet- Warm violet shade with gold shimmer
Merlot-Deep plum shade with mild shimmer
Truffle-Warm matte brown
Topaz-silvery taupe
Stellar-shimmering beige

Indirect Natural Lighting, no base

The Luxe Color Portfolio by Laura Mercier is my favorite palette so far this season. It's really the only thing I've truly been happy with purchasing in a while (with the exception of the Guerlain 4 pan palettes) and is well worth the hefty price tag to me. All 6 shadows are smooth and blendable, and carry medium pigmentation. The mini brushes are soft, and very useable, unlike a lot of brushes that tend to come in sets. The cake liners are fairly easy to use; lightly dampen an eyeliner brush and mix with the liner. If you dampen the brush too much, you won't get a nice, pigmented line. I wouldn't really purchase the cake liners on their own, as I prefer pencil/gel liners but they're nice to have in the palette and come in very pretty colors. Ground Espresso is even a bit taupey.

I Didn't Think It Was That Bad...

...but apparently I have way too many eyeliners!

Tarte Jewelry Box

I've had these swatches sitting around for months, but never got around to uploading them on here. I figured I'd get around to it now, while Sephora was still selling these. The Tarte Treasure Chest retails for $52 and contains 32 e/s, a highlighter, a bronzer, 8, lipgloss and 5 eyeliners. The eyeshadows are less pigmented than their previous palettes, but I didn't have the same problem with them I did last year with them oxidizing on me. However, I didn't like the sheer quality of the mattes (the mattes last year were much, much nicer), or the bulky packaging of it all, so it went back to the store. I did really like the colors of the eyeliners, but it wasn't enough to get me to keep them. The eyeliners applied smoothly, but never fully set; they remained smudgeable throughout the day, but I didn't have too many problems with them as long as I didn't rub at it throughout the day. Besides the bulkiness of the packaging, I found that it had a similar problem to last year's palette where the drawer would slide out if you moved around; not exactly great for travel. I did find that the eyeliner drawer was a bit difficult to pull though. All around, this palette wasn't really worth the money to me, despite the large amount of product inside. I think I may need to accept that Tarte probably will probably never put out a palette on par with my beloved A-list palette.

Smashbox Holiday 2009- Wish for the Perfect Palette

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.

Stila Holiday Smudge Pot Set 2009, and some more Konad

This year's Stila Holiday Smudge Pot set came with 4 mini gel liners. Each pot is 0.07 oz and is half the size of a regular smudge pot set. The set retails for $32 and comes with smudge pots in Kitten, Violet, Starry Night, and Black as well as a mini brush. It's a pretty good value for the smudge pots especially since a full size smudge pot is so large that I don't think I could ever finish it. However, despite the beautiful colors of these liners in their pots, I wasn't impressed with them on my lids. Additionally, the plastic caps on the jars are flimsy and will probably break easily.Kitten is very similar to the eyeshadow it's named after and is a shimmery champagne color. It's fairly sheer applied with a liner brush, as shown below, and would seem better used as a cream eyeshadow.
Violet- a blue based purple with purple glitter. I love the color of this, but again, when applied with a brush, this was much sheerer than I had hoped
Starry Night- Navy blue with gold shimmer. This is, in my opinion, the prettiest color in the set. Unfortunately, it's also really sheer, so I was again, dissapointed with this.
Black- This was the only one that was easily opaque in the set, and therefore the only one I was satisfied with.
My overall opinion of the set is that it contains beautiful colors, but falls way short of being a must have. The swatches above were all done with my Smashbox Cream liner brush.

I posted a couple days ago that I got the giant Konad set so I decided to play around with some of the goodies in it and did this:It's plates M21 and M36 over Zoya Demi with some pink rhinestones. Excuse my hands..they're peeling a bit since I've been lazy and neglecting them.

Cargo Eyeshadow book--Wet/Dry Eyeliner Palette

The last palette included in the Eyeshadow book was the Wet/Dry Eyelining palette, which retails for $32. This palette was probably the only disappointment in the book as the colors don't quite apply all that smoothly wet and are somewhat unimpressive to me dry. You can use these as eyeshadows as well, but they're a bit chalky, so I'm not sure any of these will see much use, if any. I swatched each color wet (left) then dry (right) for comparison.