Kat Von D True Romance Eyeshadow Palette in Truth

I *almost* didn't get this because the colors seemed bland online, but since I liked all the other palettes so much, I decided just to get it anyway to see if it was better in real life. It is.


The Kat Von D line always has really nice packaging. This is the outer box! It's so nice. It opens like an accordion to reveal this:


The palette, wrapped in grey metallic paper and sealed with a shiny gold sticker. My paper got a little crinkled and ripped. Aw. That's okay, you have to rip it in half to get to the palette anyway.

This is the front of the palette, almost just like the outer box. I like the old antique keys and the gold lettering. Were they going for a bit of a steampunk theme or something? I like the keys better than the previous tattoo designs.

Shadow names and ingredient label. Just realized that I should have turned this the other way because now the names are in backwards order.




The palette in artificial light and natural light. Left to right: Sugar Skull, Long Distance, Snake Eyes, Finland (cream shadow), Prague, Galeano, Rehab, Sister.



Sugar Skull, Long Distance, Snake Eyes, Finland, Prague, Galeano, Rehab, Sister.


The pigmentation is pretty good. Much better than the last palette (Adora). They're really soft and silky and easy to blend, just like all the previous palettes. Thankfully there's only one useless cream shadow in this palette, but I'd rather that number be zero.

I put together a quick look with this to test out the application, and I'm quite happy with it!


I know, I know. My brows look freaky. I'm trying to make the front part thicker so I'm growing them out.

This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Sugar Skull on inner third of lid
Long Distance on middle of lid
Prague in crease and on lower lash line
Sister on browbone
Smashbox Artificial Light
MAC Fluidline in Blacktrack (the glitter was leftover on my brush from something else I'm reviewing)
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Everything went on easily, good pigmentation, smooth texture, maybe even a little too smooth because I had a lot of powder loose in the palette after applying. Easy blending, too. The only thing that seems wrong to me is that the bright green shade, Long Distance, starts fading right after I apply it. When I first put it on my lid, it's vibrant light chartreuse, but then it starts to look less bright almost immediately after, so I find myself wanting to pack on more and more shadow to get the intensity back. I'll have to try this with Urban Decay Primer Potion to see if it's a primer issue.

This palette is really springy. The greens and blues are crisp and the purples are soft and romantic. This doesn't seem like the rest of the dark, edgy, colorful palettes Kat/Sephora have done, but it's still nice despite the change in theme. I'll have to try out the rest of the colors soon, and figure out what to do with that damn cream shadow that's taking up space in the palette.

Oh yeah, this palette comes with those weird brushes like all the other ones. They're completely useless for applying shadow, but they're GREAT as lip brushes and concealer brushes! So, I guess they're not completely useless, only useless in context.

Interestingly enough, the Truth palette isn't listed as limited edition on Sephora.com. They should just make them all permanent! You should see the dent I've put in my Gypsy palette. Should have gotten a backup.

Space Cadet-ish Eye of the Day

I absolutely love how this one turned out. It started out as pure frustration and ended up looking gorgeous. And now that I'm looking at these pictures, it reminds me of the different colors in Orly Space Cadet! It wasn't intentional. I must have Space Cadet on the brain.



I tried to get some blur on some of these to show the gorgeous duochromey sparkle in Cat's Eye but I don't think I even remotely captured the beauty of this color.

This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
MAD Minerals Cat's Eye, wet on lid
MAC Deep Purple pigment in crease and lower lashline
Kat Von D liquid liner in Romantico
Laura Geller Wonder Wand highlight
Urban Decay 24/7 in Zero
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Cat's Eye is one of the most gorgeous greens ever. I don't think I'd ever used it before this look... I was going through all of my mineral makeup samples and this caught my eye and I had to try it out. It's amazing. You have to see it in person. It is way more awesome than it looks in my picture. Deep green with olive, gold, teal.

As I said, this started out as extreme frustration. This is one of those days where I had to take off my makeup and start all over. It started out as Cat's Eye on the lid with Fyrinnae Medieval Haunting in the crease, but Medieval Haunting is one of the most frustrating colors I've used... It really seems haunted! It has the uncanny ability to un-blend itself after you've applied it! It is an incredible color in the jar- totally stunning- but no matter what I do I can't apply it well. It's patchy, the shimmer smears and turns green/gold in some spots and totally disappears in others, the black base leaves harsh lines that don't want to blend and it just does weird things on the skin. I don't know what to do. I want to wear it! It's currently in my "for eyeliner use only" pile. I can't get the hang of this one :(

Anyway, after I had to wash off that patchy black nightmare and start over, I decided I didn't want to deal with something finicky, so I reached for MAC Deep Purple Pigment. Hallelujah. I've been using so much indie/mineral makeup lately that I forgot how amazing and effortless to use MAC pigments were. Deep Purple went on like butter, blended like a dream without losing shimmer or intensity and didn't need to be applied wet or over a special base or to be futzed with for 20 minutes just to get it to look right. Man, I love MAC. I want to marry it. They may not have the greatest color selection or cool special effects as indie brands, but you can use them right out of the jar and have them look and apply great without having to jump through all kinds of hoops. That said, I like both, but each for different things.

Sick EOTDs

Somehow I seem to have caught a cold in the middle of summer. It's either a cold or allergies, I can't tell... I'm sniffly and my eyes won't stop watering. Haven't really felt super awesome for the past few days.

And when I'm sick I rarely feel like putting much energy into my makeup, so here's a few of my lazy sick looks from this week!


This one needed a ton of pictures to show all of the amazing sparkles in these shadows. This was:

Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Aromaleigh Concrete Jungle, applied wet on lid
Stila Jewel Palette- brown shade, or purple shade? I thought it was brown but it really looks purple this time... whatever color it is, it's in the crease and lower lashline.
Fyrinnae Finnegan's Wake highlight
Black matte shade from the Cargo Wet/Dry liner palette
Urban Decay Zero 24/7
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Aromaleigh Concrete Jungle is an amazing shade. It was the first shade I tried from them and I instantly fell in love. It's a light taupe sort of shade with tons and tons and tons of sparkle. Tiny sparkles. Gold sparkles, silver sparkles. And, most importantly, BLUE sparkles. Little mini blue sparkles. This is the only picture I could get to show them, I apologize for the disturbing angle:

See the blue sparkles? Sadly, Aromaleigh is closing in less than a week so you might want to order it now if it interests you at all!

And the Stila Jewel palette shade is perfect for minimal makeup days for me. It has all the sparkle I crave but none of the effort of applying multiple shades and separate glitter. I freaking love that palette. Did I tell you I bought two backups of that palette? Eep. I know. But it's SO AWESOME.


Brown and teal. No-brainer!
This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Fyrinnae Greenman's Forest, applied wet on lid
MAC Go in crease and lower lashline
MAC Teal pigment applied wet as liner
Fyrinnae Finnegan's Wake highlight
Urban Decay Zero 24/7
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Greenman's Forest is a really sweet duochrome. It's light brown and a little goldish brown and a little green. I don't think I did a very good job of capturing the color shift, but hey, I'm sick, give me a break! :P MAC Go is one of those amazing Starflash finish shadows so it's totally buttery and effortless to blend. Starflash was amazing, I really hope they do more of them. I don't think I have them all, I have most I think, butI wish I had gotten the whole set! And of course MAC Teal is the perfect eyeliner for brown eyed girls like myself.


This one I didn't get any daylight pictures of so flash will have to do. You can see the sparkles better with flash anyway.

This was actually a cover-up job! I did one look, realized I didn't like it and immediately covered it up with different colors!
It consists of:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Aromaleigh Oberon (over MAC Vex) on lid
Aromaleigh Ambre (over MAC Club) in crease
MAC Club on lower lashline
Fyrinnae Finnegan's Wake highlight
Kat Von D liquid liner in Black Metal Love
Urban Decay Zero 24/7
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Oberon is another duochrome shade... Can you tell I love duochromes? I do. A lot. I took a blurry picture to show the sparkles of green against the taupey brown base:Blurry pictures show glitter really well. Though this isn't really glitter... it's just smooth shimmer in different colors, no flaky particles that are a different texture like real glitter is.

Ambre is also pretty cool... I used it again yesterday. It's a little tricky to work with but if I layer it I have good luck. It's a really rich smoky looking metallic gold... a little dark... gold shimmer on a smoky base. I'll post that look soon.

I've had a couple people ask me what brushes I use, so I'm going to attempt to remember to take a picture of them. My staples are MAC 219, 209SE (I like the SE way better than the normal one), Studio Gear #37 liner (I don't think they make this anymore, It's over 10 years old!), Smashbox 30, something-20 dual ended (the numbers have worn off but I can not live without this brush) and Sephora brand smudge.

Now I'm going to go make some of that awesome Traditional Medicinals Throat Coat tea... that stuff rocks. Way better than Yogi's throat tea. Random. But yay tea!

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!

Sephora Kat Von D Adora Palette Fall 2010

Super quick swatches, luckily the sun was still up this time!


The whole palette. Click to enlarge!

The best part of the palette. Glitter. Ace of Spades and Oddfellow. Not color accurate on Ace of Spades- it's too washed out in this photo. It is a rich red-based purple with lots of shimmer. Like Nars Purple Rain in eyeshadow form.

Swatches:
Left half of the palette. Albino, which is a bright white silver. Holy Bible which is a slightly darker blue-toned silver, Slayer which is a metallic silver cream shadow (and sorry for the chunk, didn't realize how melted it was and accidentally took out half the shadow!) and Glock, a metallic grey (with an awesome name.) If I recall correctly, Slayer and Glock are both in previous palettes.

Right half. Crucifix, a black cream shadow, might make a good eyeliner. Bloodletting, a burgundy-red shimmer cream shadow which would probably make a better lipstick than an eyeshadow, Ace of Spades, a red-based purple with lots of glittery shimmer and Oddfellow, a black matte base with tons of blue-teal-green-silver glitter.

I haven't used this yet, but so far the pigmentation doesn't seem as good as previous palettes. Will report back with pictures when I've done a full test run!

My Kat Von D Gypsy Look on Sephora's Blog!

Woohoo!  I'm featured today on Sephora's Beauty and The Blog!  

On an unrelated note, I did manage to get some decent pictures of Zoya Truth and Dare, I'll try to get them posted either later today or tomorrow morning.

Kat Von D Gypsy Palette

I did a little Sephora hauling on my birthday- I got a couple polishes (Sephora by OPI 212-Sephora, Sephora Fusion), my Sephora Beauty Insider birthday gift and this awesome palette!


Here's the outer box. It has some sketch-like artwork on the front.

Such a nice touch. It's wrapped in metallic black paper with a Kat Von D monogram! Note Kat's signature stars on the inside upper lid.


Here's the front. Same artwork as the outer box, but this is more filled in. The palette has a rubberized feel.


Here's the back of the palette. "A smoky eye adds an instant air of mystery." Shade names are: Lucifer, Stryker, Frankie, Hawkwind, Brass Knuckles, Birdcage, Ego Sum, Gunner.


Lucifer (matte black), Stryker (green/brown duochrome), Frankie (warm brown mauve shimmer), Hawkwind (iridescent green/white), Brass Knuckles (gold metallic creme), Birdcage (soft lime), Ego Sum (medium grass green), Gunner (sparkling deep emerald).



These are out of order. Lucifer, Hawkwind, Frankie, Stryker. Note the green iridescence/duochrome on Hawkwind and Stryker.

Brass Knuckles (creme shadow), Birdcage, Ego Sum, Gunner.

Here's a quick look I did with this palette:



Outdoors, late afternoon warm sunlight. The lighting is causing it to skew a bit warmer than it is in real life.


Indoors, no light, total shade.


Hawkwind all over lid, Birdcage from middle third to outer crease, Ego Sum in crease blended out and Gunner to darken crease and line under eye.

Kat Von D Autograph Liquid Liner in Black Metal Love (hell yeah!). It's matte black, absolutely no shine, but with tiny flecks of silver microglitter. I admit, I bought this just for the name but I find myself using it almost every day. I'm almost finished with it! I never finish things!

I LOVE this palette. The colors all go so well together. The thing I like the most about it is Hawkwind eyeshadow- it's a white that flashes bright green. When you layer other colors on top of it, or you layer it on top of other colors, it adds a vivid bright green flash. It's so amazing. Reminds me of an old Urban Decay shadow... Fluorescent maybe? I don't remember the name. I wish they would sell Hawkwind all by itself, I foresee myself hitting pan on this color!

I also adore Gunner. It's so rich and sparkly. It's the emerald green I've been looking for! It looks like black with green glitter in the pan, but once you put it on your skin it becomes a bold, deep, dark emerald green with bright green sparkles. So amazing.

Like the other palettes from Kat Von D, they include two totally useless brushes. They're basically double-ended lip brushes. Soft, shiny, slippery, tiny bristles. They're impossible to apply shadow with- maybe liner would be okay but... Yeah. Don't really see the point of them. Even sponge-tip would have been more useful.

The pigmentation of everything is okay, not as pigmented as MAC but definitely not bad. They're soft and silky. Not overly-silky powdery messy frosty like Stila, more Urban Decay Deluxe type silky. Lasting power is good when used with Too Faced Shadow Insurance, Urban Decay Primer Potion or MAC Paint Pots (I used all three this week).

I love the names she picks for everything. They're so metal! Ego Sum had me a little confused at first, I thought it said Ergo Sum, which would make sense... I like the name because it makes me think, "Ego sum via veritas et vita", but I'm not sure what her inspiration for the name was. Either way, awesome.

The other thing I love a whole lot about Kat Von D's palettes is that they look good on brown eyed girls. THANK YOU!!! It's like they were designed for us. Every single color in them is flattering on brown eyes. I love seeing a brown-eyed girl like Kat promoting makeup. I always feel left out because all I see are these beautiful, icy blue-eyed models that look good in everything... There is so much contrast between blue eyes and dark eye makeup and it looks so stunning... But it's a look I'll never be able to have. So FINALLY seeing brown-eyed models in makeup ads makes me feel better.

I also picked up the Sephora Beauty Insider birthday gift, and in case anyone was curious, here's what they look like:

Bronzed Beauty, Rosy Glow, Precious Pink.

The glosses are the standard Sephora gloss formula. A little sticky, smooth, sheer, noticable unidentifiable fruity scent. Very nice, but a little perfumey. I can see these colors being flattering on everyone. I think they look beautiful.