I've decided to review and swatch all my neutral palettes! Today, I will be doing a review of the newest addition to my palette family: the Pro Palette for Fall 2012 from Lorac! This gorgeous neutral palette features 8 matte and 8 shimmer shadows for a total of 16 wearable eyeshadows to play with!
The Pro Palette comes housed in a black cardboard box with silver sparkles. It retails for $42 and comes with a mini Behind the Scenes Eyeshadow Primer. It is available at Sephora, Ulta, and loraccosmetics.com.
The casing itself is made of light-weight, sturdy cardboard with a snap-top closure. The outside is smooth and rubberized (think thinner NARS casing!) It also includes a nice-sized mirror on the inside. The packaging looks very sleek and professional. I almost feel like a makeup artist holding it!
The packaging is also very thin; the thinnest I've seen in any of these neutral-themed eyeshadow palettes anyway! It's about 1 cm thick! The fact that this palette is so slim, compact, and seems to be quite sturdy makes it great for traveling. It would hardly take up any luggage space.
As for the shadows, each of the 16 shades are presented in small square wells, which, upon first glance, give off the appearance that you're not getting a decent amount of eyeshadow for your money. On the contrary, each shade is 0.02 oz (0.55g), which is a little less than half the size of a MAC eyeshadow (0.05 oz / 1.5 g). If you were to buy the same amount in MAC eyeshadows (~ 6 eyeshadow pans,) as found in this palette, you would be spending $70! Overall, I feel the pricing is reasonable for both the quality of the shadows and the shade variety.
Now on to the shadows! I really appreciate the layout of this palette. The palette starts from lighter nudes and beiges and ends with the darker browns, purples, grays, and blacks. The top row is all matte and the bottom all shimmer.
The matte shades are incredibly soft and smooth without being chalky. I found them to be a bit powdery, however. They are almost too soft that hastily dipping your brush into one of the shades would create a lot of loose powder and mess. This would be the only downside I've noticed with this palette.
The shimmery shades are velvety-smooth and give off a very appealing sheen; some almost seem metallic. Luckily, none of the shimmery shades contain glitter, which I think is great in preventing chunky glitter fall-out (one of my makeup peeves!) There were no real duds in this palette besides Espresso (swatched below). Except this shade, the rest performed fairly well!
These shadows can be worn wet or dry. Below are all dry swatches because that's how I assume most (myself included) will use this palette. The first half are the lighter neutrals.
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| Top: White, Cream, Taupe & Lt. Pink Bottom: Nude, Champagne, Gold & Lt. Bronze indoor lighting |
White - True white with some subtle silver micro glitter. It is the only "matte" shade that is not truly
matte!
Cream - Light nude with slight pink undertones (matte)
Taupe - Medium brown with beige undertones (matte) (not exactly what I think of when I read the
word "taupe," but pretty nonetheless!
Light Pink - Very light pink (matte)
Nude - Pinky champagne with high shine (shimmer)
Champagne - Beige champagne with subtle, silver micro glitter (shimmer)
Gold - True, metallic gold with orange/bronze undertones (shimmer)
Light Bronze - Soft, light brown (shimmer)
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| Top: White, Cream, Taupe & Lt. Pink Bottom: Nude, Champagne, Gold & Lt. Bronze with flash |
The second half of the swatches are the darker neutrals. Out of these 8, Espresso was the one with the patchiest application and needed the most layering.
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| Top: Mauve, Sable, Espresso & Black Bottom: Pewter, Garnet, Deep Purple & Slate indoor lighting |
Mauve - Cool, neutral brown with purple undertones (matte)
Sable - Rich, chocolate brown (matte)
Espresso - Dark brown (matte) This is the only shade I really had to layer on.
Black - Deep black (matte)
Pewter - Taupe with purple undertones (shimmer)
Garnet - Copper with red undertones (shimmer)
Deep Purple - Dark purple (shimmer) This shade swatched darker than it looked in the pan.
Slate - Metallic gunmetal gray (shimmer)
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| Top: Mauve, Sable, Espresso & Black Bottom: Pewter, Garnet, Deep Purple & Slate with flash |
Out of all the shades, my favorite mattes were: Cream, Taupe, Mauve, and Sable, and my favorite shimmers were: Nude, Gold, Pewter, Garnet, Deep Purple, and Slate! The palette also came with a mini Behind the Scenes Eyeshadow Primer, which I found works well with the shadows.
What is your favorite neutral palette? :)
- xx, Eviola
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