"Take a peek at my vanity" Series - No.1 - "Your Cupcake" Essence eyeshadow palette.

Hello! How are you? Excited that the holidays are so close? I bet you are and I am too! Finally I will get some rest! I haven't had almost AT ALL free time these past 2 months! I wanted to write so many posts but I just didn't have the time to stay down for half an hour and write, so crazy! SO!

I decided to make a sort of post series with the title "Take a peek at my vanity" in  which I will basically present to you items from my collection telling you a few words about them, swatch them for you etc just for entertainment. I will make such posts once in a while usually about items that I have a long time and I didn't review them or they might have been limited edition or who knows :D

In this post, as the title says I'm gonna write about a limited edition (as far as I know) eyeshadow palette from Essence, called "Your Cupcake". Now I have to mention I am terribly confused about the availability of this palette as I knew that it was a limited edition palette back in 2012, however, I got it as a gift from my friend from Germany this year in 2014 so I'm not sure what is the deal. I read somewhere that at first this was only bought by points if you belonged at the Essence club and then they released it again as a summer edition but I don't know for sure, I'll try to get some more information from my friend and let you know.

Another bizarre thing about this palette is that the old reviews about it (back in 2012) say that the bright colors of this palette are not very strong and they fade fast and the swatches I had seen were indeed very powdery and weak but the colors in my palette are amazing, the swatch beautifully, they are pigmented, easy to blend and with great durability on the lid, so maybe they really re-released them and maybe re-formulated the shadows? NO IDEA! But enough blubbering, let me show you the palette...

This is what the palette looks like. The concept is very similar to the old Urban Decay palette "Alice in Wonderland". It is cardboard with a lid that holds a mirror and some 3D cardboard figures popping out (sort of tokidoki copies) and then there is a drawer that you pull out and there are the eyeshadows along with brushes and cream liners.

As you can see, the palette contains 12 eyeshadows, 2 brushes and 2 cream eyeliners.

Brushes: One is an eyeshadow brush (green) which is very soft and just an okay brush for applying eyeshadows. The other is an angled eyeliner brush (purple) which is not particularly practical for liner application, I find it too soft and slightly hard to control.

The eyeliners are decent, not hard to work with, the intensity is good, they are not waterproof but they last pretty well!

Let's talk about the shadows!

01: Off white almost silver, shimmery

02: Shimmery gold/champagne 

03: Flesh toned beige/orange with a velvet finish

04: light blue almost petrol color, finish is almost matte

05: turquoise shimmery

06: medium warm brown with gold tones, shimmery

07: white-blue, velvet finish

08: forest green, matte

09: dark warm brown, matte

10: baby pink, velvet finish

11: deep purple, matte

12: vibrant teal, matte

13 & 14 are the liners, 13 is a dark brown/black and 14 is gray. 

The shadows have to be applied with a primer otherwise they are not gonna show their true colors in any case. Some of them can be pretty powdery (the matte,velvety ones) but with a primer there is no problem whatsoever (at least for me). Even though they are somewhat powdery I didn't have problems with fallout (in any case I usually apply my eye makeup first and then face). They also last pretty long, I use the "I love stage" eyeshadow primer, also by Essence. I will now show you the difference on the intensity of the colors between using primer and not.

Excuse the silly face. In this look I used nr.10 and nr.8 WITHOUT a primer. As you can see the colors show but they are not super intense and you can see my skin color coming off through them.

For this look I used nr.12 and nr.9 WITH a primer (I love Stage eyeshadow primer from Essence) and you can see that the colors show way more intense and needless to say they lasted all day even after I had sweated!

Overall I ADORE this palette. To be honest when I first told my friend to look it up for me and I saw swatches from people on other blogs I thought I made a mistake wanting this but paired up with an eye primer these eyeshadows rock and I actually got a lot of compliments using this palette. I don't know if it's still available, my information about this palette is really limited and I apologize, but if you somehow can get your hands of it grab it, I can easily say it is one of my favorite palettes to use, it has so many colors that you can create tons of different looks and the quality is pretty nice.

Do you have this palette? What are your favorite palettes to use?

As always take care, especially now in the winter!

Much love!

xo Heliana xo