Holiday 2011: Dior Couture Golds

Dior was a bit late in releasing their 5 color eyeshadows for this season, but I snagged one yesterday at my local Nordstrom counter. This was swatched in indoor OTT lighting.
The quint is of the newer formula and is a bit harder pressed than the usual irridescent quints. It still applies fine though

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.

Dior Holiday 2011--Celebration Collection Deluxe Palette and Eye palette

The last couple of years, Dior has managed to sucker me into purchasing their deluxe palette. This year I got suckered into the eye palette as well. The packaging for these was too adorable for me to pass up.

Dior Holiday Eye palette (outside)

Dior Holiday Eye Palette (inside)

The eye palette contains 3 eyeshadows and an eyeliner and comes packaged with intructions for creating certain looks with the palette. The eyeshadows themselves a beautifully pigmented and silky in texture. Each of these only took a single swipe to photograph well on my arm. The eyeliner is a cream liner that I'm not all that fond of. It stays creamy and never really seems to set, even if you press the dark brown eyeshadow over it to set it. Unfortunately, this means I had smudgy eyeliner under my eyes by the end of the day. I really wish Dior had gone with a 4th eyeshadow instead. I do however, really love the eyeshadow colors that were in this palette. They're shimmery without really being frosty this time. I'd say the lighter gold-brown shade is more metallic than a frost this time. I fell in love with it when I wore it. The darker brown is also beautiful. The eye palette retails for $44 (pretax)

Dior Holiday Eye palette over UDPP, natural+OTT lighting

This year's deluxe palette features 3 eyeshadows, a cream liner, 1 lipstick, 1 gloss, a lip balm, a miniature Diorshow Iconic, and a miniature Diorskin sculpting powder (020). My honest opinion on this one is that the eye shades are similar enough to last year's palette that you probably don't need this one if you bought last year's. Unfortunately for me I got suckered into this one for the adorable packaging, and ended up really liking the lip shade (Rouge Dior 644).

The eye shades are a pink-beige shade, a lilacky taupe, and a smoky plum shade. The eyeliner is a soft black, and unfortunately, like the one in the eye palette, smudgy. I probably would only use this liner in a pinch. The insert that comes with the palette gives you directions for 2 eye looks, as well as directions for using the sculpting Powder. The sculpting powder has 3 sections; the top section, which is lighter is for hightlighting. The middle shade is supposed to be for contouring, and the bottom shade is for setting/blending. It seems like it'd be a cute product, but unfortunately, with the powder being the size that it is, it's virtually impossible to use this powder the way it was intended. I attempted to just swirl it all together and use it as a setting powder, but the powder sits lower in the palette instead of at the surface, making it even more difficult to use. The lip balm, Creme de Rose, is decent; it's nothing special in my book, and carries a light rose scent. This probably would have been better if it had a more portable option. Either way, it was nice for Dior to add this in as I find the regular lipstick line kind of drying. The lipgloss (Ultra-gloss Reflect 246) is practically clear. It has a tiny bit of a peachy tint to it, but on my lips it might as well be clear gloss. I definitely wish Dior had chosen a different shade, as I can't really tell the difference between the gloss and the lip balm on my lips.

Dior Holiday Deluxe palette (outside)

Dior Holiday Deluxe palette (outside)

Dior Holiday Deluxe Palette over UDPP, natural+OTT lighting

I do like the big palette overall, and it's a nice little splurge if you don't already have a lot of Dior, but I don't really consider it a must-have. There's definitely other nice things that you can spend your money on this holiday season, but if you want to shell out the $77 for it, it's not a bad purchase either.

Chanel Holiday 2011--Beige Lame Single

Chanel Beige Lame

I've been a bit MIA for a while, but I've decided to tentatively wiggle myself back into blogging now that I have the time for it. My local Chanel counter just got in the holiday collection so I wandered in to check this out, since there's been some buzz on the new highlighter they're releasing with the collection. Luckily for my wallet, I didn't find it that interesting; the shimmer is just an overspray on the highlighter. After the overspray is rubbed off, it's sort of just a satiny texture, and while I like subtle highlighters, this one was just a little TOO subtle for me to want to shell out the money for it. Originally, I had also been interested in the gold single, as the gold used on the model in the promo pics was gorgeous, but it turned out to be far too yellow for my liking. The beige lip gloss was very nice, kind of a pinky beige, but I left it alone for now. (I may go back for it later though). What I did come home with, was the single eyeshadow in Beige Lame.

Beige Lame is a dark, warmish beige with multicolor sparkle. The texture is similar to Fauve, which was released in the previous collection, but instead of silver sparkles, you get multicolor sparkles. The shadow is not quite as sparkly on my lids/arm as they are in the pan, but you still get some.

Closeup of the sparkles...yummy!

Swatched on my arm, mix of natural lighting and OTT light, no base

OVerall, I really like this single, but the price tag is pretty hefty for the color itself ($28.50 pretax). I don't feel like the base color is all that unique, but I do like the multi-color shimmer that this shadow has, so I'm thinking I'll keep it in my stash.