Viseart Editorial Brights Eye Shadow Palette ::: Review & Shadows!!!

Today, I am talking about Viseart Editorial Brights palette!

I actually do not think I really need to specifically talk about it! If you follow me on Instagram (find me here) you may already know how much I adore this palette. I got it sometime last year and I have been using it in a lot of looks. And of course have been talking about the palette on my IG posts non-stop!

I love vibrant colors and I have desired this palette for a long time. And I knew that I will love it. But it is definitely becoming one of the most loved products in my makeup collection! If a materialistic item could make me TRUELY happy, this palette would be among the top five item in my life; I know it is a dramatic statement but I am only expressing my feelings. 

Onto the review -

Color Story: This is one of the very classic palettes offered by Viseart! As the name suggests, it is full of vivid colors - pinks, reds, blues, greens and purples. And there is also a white which is quite convenient cause you can mix white with the other colors to create pastel versions of the colorful shades. One thing that bugs me a little bit is how the colors are arranged (they seem random to my eyes) but these are removable pans so you can easily interchange and arrange them per your choice. Let's talk about the colors one by one -

White: Beautiful white shade, it shows up on my olive Indian skin-tone. It also mixes well with other shades so definitely a very useful shade in the palette. 

Pink: Beautiful vivid pink, very easy to work with as well. Pinks are not my go to choice for colors, but I do love using this one.

Red: Great red shade - easy to work with as well. My complaint with this one is that once you start blending this, it tends to turn into more of dark pink than red! It is still a great shadow to work with but I just hoped it would be more of a true red, may be more blue leaning then pink!

Lime Green: This is such a pretty lime green shade! Very comfortable to work with as well. 

Orange: This is a very bright, very coral type of orange. It is one of my fav colors in general to experiment with! So I of course, love it.

Magenta: This is the color in the palette that I don't gravitate towards much. It does not appear too different than the red and the purple. I mean, it works perfectly fine but it is not that interesting to me.

Bright Green: Another beautiful green. I expect this type of color to be a little difficult to work with but the one in this palette does not give me any difficulty with blending or while placing it strategically in a definite spot on my eyelid!

Yellow: Aah, this is one of my MOST favorite shades in this palette. It is such a happy yellow. And the great thing is that, it shows up as vibrant against my skin-tone as it appears on the pan. Using this color just makes me happy. 90% of time when I am using this palette, I invariably end up using this shade.

Purple: Another one of my MOST favorite shades. It is so vibrant and so easy to work with. I just simply love to use this color.

Sea Blue: I would have loved to have a little more sky blue type of a shade. This shade looks like the mixture of the Bright Green and the next blue. It also sometimes gives me a little bit of difficulty from time to time when I try to blend it. I can sometimes see harsh edges which gets a bit difficult to blend. So, I don't use this a whole lot.

Bright Blue: In general, blue is one of my favorite colors to wear on my eyes. So I was definitely harboring a lot of expectation from the blues in this palette. But these blues were not as perfect as I hoped them to be. This one also creates a bit difficulty from time to time while blending, and I can see harsh edges sometimes which is a little bit annoying. They are not bad at all, but my Viseart standard I would have wanted them to be just a little bit more smooth and easy to get a seamless to blend.

Dark Blue: Same experience as the other two blues. It also feels a little bit rough on the skin than the rest, I feel it when I swatch it but on the eyes it is not that detectable. I love this color though.

I know I am complaining about the blues, but I am only complaining because I love Viseart mattes and I am kind of spoiled by that. So by that standard, these blues could have been a bit more smoother. But I do know that they are much better than some other blue matte shades I have in my collection from different brands.

Formula and Staying Power: I love Viseart! And I just LOOOOVE their mattes. They are so easy to work with; needs very little effort in blending and depending on the force and pressure I am using on my brush, I can get different depths of the same color. Typically, I will need a lot of time doing this with other brand's shadows but for Viseart the effort required is much much minimal. I also love the  staying power. I do use primer every time I work with any eyeshadow. And these stays on all day. 

Packaging: As you can see, the packaging of Viseart 12-pan regular size palette has a minimalistic industrial look. I find it very neat. The packaging is made of sturdy plastic material. There is no mirror and the lid is clear which makes it easier to see the shades inside. It makes complete sense because these were built compact and easy-to-work-with in a professional environment for makeup artists. A mirror would have come in handy for an everyday user like me but I actually absolutely love this no-nonsense type of packaging. Their newer packaging are much thinner and the pans are removable which makes it even more flexible. I can interchange this with my other Viseart palettes which will come in handy to build custom color stories when I am travelling. 

Price & Availability: These 12-pan regular size palettes by Viseart is priced at $80. It is an expensive palette but for me personally it is totally worth it. I also bought it directly from Viseart during their Labor Day sale so I got it at a discounted price. I would definitely recommend to wait for some good sale. You can buy the palette from Viseart, Sephora (currently unavailable), Muse Beauty Pro, Beautylish, Camera Ready Cosmetics and Frends Beauty.

Here are some of the looks I created using this palette. What do you think?

I am ABSOLUTELY in love with this palette! After using it for more than a year now, I know that I will be constantly using and loving it for days to come :-)

Love,

~Arrru

Review and Swatches of deep, rich "04-Dark Matte" Eyeshadow Palette from Viseart!!!

Over these past few days I have been trying to come up with the perfect opening line to this post – something that can right away tell how much I have been loving the ”04-Dark Matte“ palette from Viseart. Before we start digging deeper, here is what you need to know about the brand-

• Viseart Cosmetics’ roots lie in the trend setting Marais District of Paris.
• It is an artisan brand with products created keeping professional makeup artists in mind.
• The founding partners’ revolutionary sustainable approach fuses quality with integrity and innovation to build a quality health-conscious makeup line.
• Their products are made without petroleum, parabens, silicons, butylene, glycol or propylene glycol, phthalates or artificial dyes.
• Viseart is cruelty-free; they don’t test on animals

There are a few 12-shade palettes that Viseart offers; each with a particular color scheme. They have Cool Mattes, Neutral Mattes, Bridal Satins and so forth! They retail at a regular price of $80 for a total 0.84 oz. of products. It definitely seems like a high cost but let’s compare the price with some similar products in the market.

Product	Price and Size	Price per oz. ($)
MAC single pan	10$ for 0.04 oz.	250
Makeup Geek single pan	$6 for 0.064 oz.	93.75
IT Cosmetics Naturally Pretty Matte Vol. 1 palette	$42 for 0.456 oz.	92.10
Urban Decay Naked Original palette	$54 for 12x0.05 oz.	90
Viseart 12-shade palette	$80 for 0.84 oz.	95.23

As you can see, it’s definitely of good value when you compare the size of the product you are getting. I consider it a good investment, personally for me! You can buy Viseart products from Sephora, Muse Beauty, Frends Beauty and Beautylish. Even though I think $80 is a justifiable price for the quality, I will still advise you to wait for some sale (e.g., Sephora’s 20% off VIB sale or Holiday Gift Card for beauty insiders, Frends Beauty also has sales frequently)!

The packaging is very neat and is made of sturdy plastic material. The lid is clear which makes it easier to see the shades inside. There is no mirror but that makes sense because these were built compact and easy-to-work-with in a professional environment for makeup artists. A mirror would have come in handy for an everyday user like me but other than that I love the no-nonsense type of packaging.

Ok, finally we are at the most exciting part of the review. The eyeshadows itself! I love colorful shadows and all these shades are very beautiful on their own. However, together in one single palette they are just stunning to look at! I have never seen such a peculiar assortment of gorgeous shades like these in a single palette before. That’s why this particular palette immediately caught my attention when I first became aware of the brand and I am happy to report that I have not been let down by this.

The blendability of these shadows is unbelievable. Being so rich in pigment I thought they will need a bit of blending! But no; you put them on your eyes, it takes 5 seconds to blend yet they don’t blend away or vanish unlike a few highly blendable shadows from different brands. For this reason it is easier to layer one color on top of the other and create custom shade. For the first look down here, I put at least 4 layers of 2-3 shadows and all of them still maintained their own strength and vibrancy. Also because of the ease in blendebility I can easily control the intensity of the color I want! That makes it so much easier to incorporate these shades into my everyday work-appropriate look. I have been testing this palette for 2-3 months now and I have to say that I can create many different looks with this palette itself. From time to time I have used lighter shade from other palette to blend out the crease area but I have to emphasize that I can easily use this palette alone to create wearable or vibrant looks. Staying power of these shadows depends on how you apply it. When I wear them to work, I often apply thin layers to get less-rich pigmentation and I have noticed that it starts to fade ever so gracefully after 6-7 hrs. of wear! That is pretty normal. However whenever I wear them in heavy layers it stays on for 10-12 hrs. e.g., for the first look shown here I applied my makeup at noon and after a busy day of cleaning the house, a dinner with a friend and 1-2 hrs. in the kitchen the eyeshadows maintained their rich pigmentation and vibrancy till I removed my makeup around 1 am at night :-)

The colors don't have individual names hence I am going to name them myself. It helps me to describe them a bit better plus it’s fun that way :-)

1-Warm Brown: Very beautiful slightly warm brown. Very smooth and easy to blend.

2-Cool Brown: This is another brown but it is slightly cooler and deeper than 1. Same consistency and same “ease” to work with!

3-Muted Red-Brown: Gorgeous warm but very deep muted red-brown. These reddish shades on the right top corner look really similar especially when applied on the eyes. I love it all.

4-Warm Orangey-Red-Brown: I love this type of warm reddish brown! Very lovely crease shade, I particularly love to pair them with dark shades like navy blue, grey and purples. It brings so much warmth and vibrancy to the eyes!

5-Muted Purple: The purples in this palette are very deep and muted. It’s not very vibrant and I like it because with a little bit of tweaking, I can easily make them wearable to work!

6-Muted Eggplant: This is a tad bit brighter & more purple and I like it a tad bit more than 3. All these five shades are very consistent in formula and texture.

7-Brilliant Orange: Beautiful shade. Orange works as gorgeous substitute for crease in place of everyday brown or taupes. This shade is a bit dry and rough to touch and a bit gritty! However on the crease it works just fine. I LOVE, love this shade on the crease!

8-Burnt Red Orange: This is a shade that’s meant for me! These type of shade looks quite flattering on my skin tone. Very smooth and so very easy to blend.

Although I love every single shade in here, I am a bit biased towards this row! It has the “blues” – what more could I want!

9-Midnight Blue: An atypical shade of blue. This easily satiates my crave to wear blue eyeshadow on a daily basis :-) I sound like a broken record but I am a die-hard fan of blue eyeshadows and I always want to wear them. These two here are very muted and hence it’s easier to wear around the outer V without looking too much glam for every day wear :-)

10-Deep Denim Blue: Another beautiful shade. It has more darkness and black in it than 9. They look very different on the swatch however upon application on the eyes; they don’t show drastic difference. In any case, I love both of these. This shade feels a bit gritty just like 7.

11-Everyday Emerald: This shade has so pleasantly shocked me. I love wearing colorful shades; apart from my generic interest in green as a colorful shade, I don’t feel particularly excited about it and automatically assumed that this will be just an ‘ok’ shade. But I have to accept that I am picking these more than the blues. It has such gorgeous pigment to it! Every single swipe and you get a beautiful shade of green, it’s like a stripped down version of a gorgeous shimmery emerald. It is a beautiful shade and muted enough to wear on the crease.

12- Pukey Green: :-) Another surprise favorite! I don’t believe I have a similar shade in my collection. Basically I never knew I would like it. I have been pairing it with all the other shades in here especially on the inner part of the lid.

Here are few looks I did with this palette; this one above being my absolute favorite. I put 9-Midnight Blue on the outer corners deepened with 10-Deep Denim Blue on the very outer corner, 11-Everyday Emerald on center of the lid and 1-Warm Brown, 3-Muted Red-Brown as transition shades on the crease. I also added a bit of 6-Muted Eggplant on the lower lash line.

If I have to mention any flaws in this palette, I would say that being a “dark matte” palette it needed a black shade. It also needed a lighter transitional skin-tone shade to blend out the crease a bit more! That would have made this my perfect matte-palette. However, Viseart has another palette called "Neutral Mattes" and it has all the crease shade along with black and brown in it. So I can understand why they did not include a black.

I bought this palette at a reduced price during Sephora’s VIB Sale few months back and I am really enjoying it. Over the past few years of my beauty addiction I have come to a realization that even though I absolutely enjoy wearing glittery-shimmery shades, my true joy lies with the mattes. I fell in love with the Naturally Pretty Matte Vol 1 from IT Cosmetics two years back and it is still a Holy Grail palette. I am pretty sure this Dark Matte palette is also going to be a must-have staple piece in my makeup collection.

If you love dark, rich shades like me go, grab this palette! You would not repent it :-)

Love,

~Arrru

Quick Look: Smashbox "On The Rocks Photo Op Eye Shadow Palette"

Today, I have a very quick and crisp review about another limited edition item :-) I was exploring Sephora the other day for some gift ideas for one of my friends and found the Smashbox "On The Rocks Photo Op Eye Shadow Palette" at $18, I immediately knew it is an awesome value for a eyeshadow palette from Smashbox.

It has a total of 12 very vibrant shimmery-glittery shades each of 0.04 oz. The original price for a total of 0.48 oz. was $36. The packaging is absolutely lovely. It is compact and very very elegant to look at. Specially when you photograph it, it shines like diamonds. I really LOVED it. And I love the jewel-toned shade range. If your collection is filled with neutral shades, this will be a perfect palette to add a boatload of colors. The possibility of creating different eye look is huge. 

The performance overall was "ok". They are very smooth and there is a little bit of fallout, but nothing unmanageable! They are easy to blend too. I am not HUGELY impressed by the wear time of these though. I have tried with different primers like MAC Paint Pot and Urban Decay Primer Potion, but both of the time it started to crease (ever-so-slightly) after 3-4 hrs of use. I really expected better. 

So here is my quick take on the palette

Pros:

• Stunning range of beautiful shade; you get neutrals along with blue, green and purple! 
• Compact packaging.
• The sale price $18 is an absolute bargain.
• It is often impossible to find a palette which has the prefect wearable blue, purple and green shade. This has all of them.
• The eye look booklet definitely helps.

Cons:

• Not-so-impressive wear time. 
• I do feel the need of a matte brown shade to act as a crease color. If that color would have been added, this palette would be perfect for travelling.
• Limited edition.

Because I already have a few colorful eye shadows which looks almost the same as the colors in this palette, I am most likely returning this. However, if you are still looking for some last-minute holiday gifts this is perfect for anyone who enjoys makeup. If you have a teenager cousin or anybody who is just stepping into the world of cosmetics, I highly recommend this. This will definitely make them giddy with happiness. :-) The palette is still available in Ulta, Nordstrom and Smashbox website.

Hope you all are having awesome holidays with your friends and families, I am spending some quality time with some very old friends here in Seattle; it is a beautiful city!! :-)

Love,

~Arrru