Hey there! I know I haven't been posting much lately, but I had to deal with finals and all that kind of junk, so now I'm finally FREEEEEE!!!!!!! Yay! Only for a few weeks, but it's better than nothing! I need this time away soooo badly, you have no idea. But anyway, I thought I'd give a post on something I think would make a great Christmas gift, or gift in general. I haven't had a lot of time to come up with a lot of gift ideas, so sorry this is kind of cutting it close, and that it might also be the only one. Onward!
SO, this post is going to be about makeup palettes and/or sets from Ulta. When I say "from Ulta", I mean by the brand, since Ulta does sell lots of brands. As you can see in the photo above, my palette is well loved. I've used it for a looong time, and it's really come in handy quite often. I got mine when I was really starting to get into makeup, and I think it's great for that kind of girl--either someone who's just now starting to take interest in makeup, or someone you'd like to see branch out when it comes to color/neutrals or something like that. Let's get more into the palette.
So when you lift the lid, you have a transparency that has the names of the shadows contained. And when you remove the transparency and slide the eye shadow trays open...
... it looks like this! In this particular palette there were 64 eye shadows, 23 lip colors, 3 blushes, 1 bronzer, and 1 face powder. It's a pretty good collection from the line to give a good idea of the products they have to offer. I use the eye shadows the most.
The feature I like most about the Ulta sets is that they give you the names of the eye shadows, so if you find some you really like in the palette, you can purchase the single of the shadow. For comparison I swatched my palette, the singles I've bought, and some quads my mom got in a kit sometime ago.
The top two are my oldest singles. Swatching order from left to right is palette, single, and Truffle's third swatch is from a quad. The middle row of swatches are shadows from the quads swatched against shadows from the palette. I just wanted to see if Ulta's sample shadows are the same quality, no matter what form you get them. The swatching order from left to right is quad then palette. The bottom row is of swatches of my more recent single shadow purchases. You can see from the image below that there's a difference in packaging style. There was quite a long time between purchases. They're swatched in the same order as the first row.
So from the swatches, the older shadows (the two on the left in silver packaging) are less pigmented than the newer shadows. But the newer shadows still took a little effort to get as rich and pigmented as the shadows from the palette. It seems that the shadows have a kind of film or barrier to scrape off before their true potential is available. That was true for Twilight and Organza, and kind of for Stardust. Not really for In the Buff. That shade's just awesome, by the way. I am not really happy with the quality of the quad shadows, though. In most cases, they're pretty flakey. I don't think they're a great motivator for people to try the "real" shadows. The great thing about Ulta is that they have tester shadows out so you can see the color you'll be buying. Really, I think they get better with use.
Sooo, all in all, I really like these palettes, especially for those not too familiar with makeup. It's a great introduction. Every time one of my friends who doesn't have a lot of makeup experience sees the palette, they're like, "Ooh, what's that?" Ulta is constantly creating different sets, and you can usually find one for $20 or less. Right now, you can check out the palettes they have for the holiday season here. I hope this was helpful. Happy holidays and merry Christmas!
~Stacie
No comments:
Post a Comment