I seem to have fallen off the radar there for a bit, but I'm back to tell you about some recent favorites!
Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette
I received the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette recently, and it is quite an impressive item! It's a big, hefty palette shaped like a segmented chocolate bar. When you open it up, the first thing you'll notice is the tantalizing scent of chocolate. TF uses cocoa powder in their formulation -- sounds really odd at first, but if you think about cocoa powder (the unsweetened kind), you'll note that it has an incredibly smooth, finely-milled and very silky texture. Turns out, cocoa powder is loaded with antioxidants, and like I said, the texture of cocoa powder is divine, especially in this application. The palette has an assortment of 16 shimmers and mattes, in shades of "natural browns, delicate pinks and luscious plums", according to Too Faced's own description. The shadows are buttery smooth, and the colors are gorgeous and well-pigmented. The ratio of shimmer to matte is about 4:1, and the shimmer is a true shimmer, not a big, chunky glitter. One of the best things about this palette, and something I think I'm starting to see more often, is the inclusion of larger pans of highlight and lid shades. This makes sense, if you consider how much of each shade you might use, and for what you'll use them for. If you, like me, apply an all-over neutral shade first when applying shadow, then you proceed with the crease, "V" and highlight shades. Given this routine, in any given palette, I will end up hitting pan on the neutral all-over shade far in advance of hitting pan on anything else in the palette. Not with this one! Kudos to Too Faced (and others who are doing this) for such forward thinking :) It would have been nice for this to come with a brush (like the Urban Decay Naked palettes do), but in reality, this is quite a hefty palette, and I doubt you'd be toting it around with you - which means you'd probably be doing your makeup at home, with your myriad of brushes. At least I HOPE you have a myriad of brushes! ;) I ended up trading away this palette, but only because I'm finding I do much better with matte shades, for the most part.More later...
