Two looks using the Kat Von D Adora Palette

I got a chance to play around with the Sephora Kat Von D Adora palette a little and tried out two different looks. First, a grey look:


Without flash and with flash. I think the flash makes the plum color on the bottom show up better.

For this I used:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Glock on lid
Holy Bible on inner third of lid
Oddfellow in crease
Ace of Spades on lower lashline
Urban Decay 24/7 in Zero for liner
Cover Girl Lash Blast

I was hoping that the multicolored glitter in Oddfellow would show up, but it really didn't. There were a few stray sparkles on the lid, surprisingly no glitter fallout, but the rest of it just somehow disappeared!

To test out the purple I did this look:


Without flash and with. Basically the same look as the previous grey one I did... was hoping it would come out looking a little different!

For this I used:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Glock on the lid
Holy Bible in inner corner and lower lashline
Ace of Spades in crease
Albino in center of lid, applied very lightly to add sparkle
Crucifix cream shadow as liner
Urban Decay Lash Primer
Cover Girl Lash Blast

In the pan Ace of Spades looks like a vibrant red-purple but on the eye it's a black matte with slight red pearl which combines to make a soft plum smoke color. Not really what I was hoping for. None of the glitter shows up on the eye at all.

I was wrong about the pigmentation. The pigmentation on these is excellent and up to par with the previous palettes. The only one that gives me trouble is Albino because it's very flaky, like MAC frost pigments. The blendability of these is excellent- they blend flawlessly without washing out. They're very buttery and silky.

I am extremely disappointed that they chose to include three cream shadows in this palette. I do not like cream shadows and these are no exception. I haven't tried using these particular shades as shadow yet, but the black cream (Crucifix) works very well as a cream eyeliner. At least that's useful. I'm sure Bloodletting would make an awesome lipstick, but I'm not much of a wine lipstick wearer.

I'm also disappointed in Ace of Spades and Oddfellow. The colors look fine on the eye, quite beautiful actually, the pigmentation is good and they blend perfectly, but... The glitter doesn't show up. In the pan they look super glittery and sparkly but none of it seems to transfer to the eye at all. A little like those supremely deceptive NARS "night" series shadows. Maybe I just need to play around with them a little more. I want glittery goodness. Wah.

One more disappointment is that they never seem to include a light neutral highlight shade. I don't want to wear frosty silver, frosty white or frosty yellow on my browbone. It just doesn't look that great. I want a light color with a little shimmer for highlighting and blending. Not all this crazy shiny frosty stuff, which is good on the lid but not so good on my browbone.

But, the texture of the shadows is nice, the packaging is convenient (even though they still put in those completely useless brushes for some reason) and the colors are perfect for doing a super fast no-effort smoky eye. I like it enough not to return it, enough to use it regularly, but not enough to rave about it or call it my favorite. If it didn't have the cream shadows I'd be raving for sure. But it does, and I feel like they're just wasting space that could have been more shadows.

Maybe the next one will be better. No more smudgy, clumpy, creasing, streaking, quick to dry out cream shadows in the next palette, please!