NARS Essential Eye palette

NARS released TWO eye palettes this fall, and unlike the Modern Love palette, I'm totally in love with this one. The Essential Eye palette retails for $55 and is available on the NARS website as well as Neiman Marcus. Unlike NARS's past eye palettes, this one contains a cream eyeshadow and 5 powder ones encased in NARS's regular rubbery packaging.
The shades are as follows:
Unconditional Love- a nice light peachy bronze. Putting this under one of the powder shadows intensifies the color. It's similar to Nepal, which is also in the palette. I've heard that NARS cream shadows crease on a lot of people though, so it may be something you might want to consider if you're tempted by this palette.
Night Star- golden nude with shimmer. This is probably the only shade I liked in the Night Series palette, so I'm kind of glad to have it back since I swapped away the Night Series palette due to its chalkiness.
Galapagos- brown with gold sparkle. I've seen a lot of shades like this summer, but it doesn't make this one any less pretty.
Nepal- peachy bronze nude
Ondine-taupey purple
Thunderball- matte grey based blue

Overall I really like this palette. Yes, 3 of the shades are really similar, but I like all of the shades in the palette and the palette is easily wearable. It's well worth what I paid for it.

NARS Modern Love palette.

Originally a Nordstrom Exclusive, the NARS Modern Love palette retails for $55 and is available on NAR's website now that Nordies has sold out of the palettes. The palette contains 6 shades;

Alhambra--a frosty peachy nude. I'm not entirely sure why this is so popular. I feel like it's pretty dupeable.
Jezebel--a brownish red.
India song--shimmery neutral brown
Tokyo--purple tinged white. This shade's practically white on my skintone
Habanera-- greyed purple. This is the prettiest shade in the palette, but it pulls mostly grey on me and the purlpe doesn't really show through.
Pandora--matte black. As far as matte blacks go, this is one of the more vibrant blacks. I'm not a big fan of black eyeshadow though as I don't really have any use for it since I prefer gel liners

All around, the colors in the palette are pretty indivually, but I can't seem to combine them in a way that makes me happy, so as a palette, I don't really like it. It's probably still worth the price if you like the colors though.

Too Faced Natural Eye Neutral Eye Palette

Ok, so I got forced to work downstairs on a computer at work, except I'm all caught up on my work, so here's some swatches for you guys of the TF Natural Eye palette. This palette comes in a box like palette that coses via magnet and has a little pull out drawer with a dual ended sponge applicator in it and 3 look cards tucked into their own pocket in the lid of the palette (which is a GREAT idea..Tarte should take notes on this because I always lose the look cards that come with their palettes) The palette contains 9 shades, with the "base" shades in the palette being like 3-4x the size as the other colors, which is nice, but I personally would have preferred it if the other colors were a bit bigger.

Heaven- a matte light yellowy beige color. It's a nice, all over color, albeit a bit light for my skintone maybe.

Velvet Revolver- matte taupe

Sexpresso- Matte dark brown, the most boring shade in the palette

Silk Teddy- Shimmery peachy pink with gold shimmer

Push-Up- golden bronze color, metallic finish

Erotica-dark grey taupe

Nude Beach- golden peach with LOTS of glitter.

Honey Pot- Gold

Cocoa Puff- warm brown with gold shimmer

Look cards: I've tried 2/3 of these so far and I kind of like both of them. (I've tried Day and Fashion) I had been extremely wary of this palette until I'd tried it, since A Musing of a Muse's rendition of these looks looked quite frosty, but they were fine when I tried them myself. I think the difference was that she used a much heavier hand than I did when applying.
Day is a nice, matte subtle look, though I feel like it's probably meant for lighter skintones. It still works on mine (about NC30 or so) but it's definitely pushing its limits.

The "Classic" look..is a nice bronzey look that I think is kind of nice for summer. It's definitely very metallic and shimmery, but it's not anywhere near as bad as I was expecting. I wouldn't really have called it a classic neutral eye myself, but oh well. Silk Teddy is your standard peachy champagne wash. Depending on how much you apply, it can be a more or less shimmery shade. Push up, when pressed onto the lid as instructed, was a metallic coppery bronze color, While Eriotica is a deep satiny brown.

Fashion was the look that I was the most wary of, because even just looking at Nude Beach in the palette it looks like frosty hell. However, overall, the look was fine, minus Nude beach, which had a ton of glitter in it, which also means that it had a ton of fallout. This is probably the one shade in the palette that will see little or no use, but being able to use 8 out of 9 in a palette isn't too bad.

Honey pot is a really beautiful gold color, and was apparently just the gold I'd been searching for this summer, so I'm really quite happy with it. Cocoa puff is really pretty as well.

So, I bought this palette expecting to hate it and return it instantly, but it looks like this one's staying in my stash, as I can find very little wrong with it. The packaging is a smidge bulky for what it is (because who really needs the sponge applicator, let alone a pull out drawer for it), but overall the shades in the palette are very nice, and I love the sort of "Makeup for Dummies" feel to look cards. I think it's worth the $30 or so I paid for it.

Tarte Femme Naturale palette

I haven't made a Sephora order in a while, but I decided to last week and I got two things; the Tarte Femme Naturale palette and the Too Faced Natural Eye palette (I'm a huge sucker for neutrals) and I got both of these suckers this week. I generally like Tarte's palettes in theory because they come with handy little look cards for the colors inside the palette. This palette came with 10 shades of eyeshadow, a dual ended eyeliner, and a dual ended brush. The colors inside this palette are quite pretty as well, and comes in a mix of matte and shimmer shades encased in a reuseable magnetic palette.
For the most part, these shades have decent pigmentation (some are on the sheerer side) and blendability, but the two middle shades in both rows had a somewhat grittier texture, which I think shows in my swatches. On the lid, however, they aplly and blend just fine, but it kind of reminds me of some of MAC's grittier pigments. (and yes, I spelled the name of the palette wrong, but was too lazy to change it)

The look card: click for full size

I actually forgot to swatch the eyeliners in this palette..and I'll add them in later,but both colors are smooth and pretty, and the dual ended brush is a really nice brush as well (it's really soft). Overall, I think it's a pretty decent deal for 10 full sized eyeshadows, eyeliners, and a brush. However, I just cant pull off the darker pink, and I kind of felt that it would look better on lighter skintones (I'm currently NC30-35). Additionally, the quality of the shadows in the palette suck in comparison to Tarte's permanent ones (though still decent), so mine's going back.