Stila In The Garden Eye Shadow Palette Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

Picked up the new Stila In The Garden palette last week. I really liked the NaturalEyes/Natural Eye/In The Light palette they did for fall last year, so I was hoping this new one would be just as nice. Turns out it is! Maybe even a little better.

The Stila In The Garden palette is a set of ten shadows plus a full sized Smudge Stick eyeliner.

The shadows are Chinois (matte creamy white), Breeze (shimmery beige), Bark (shimmery taupe), Freesia (shimmery violet blue), Rosette (metallic pink violet), Nectar (matte creamy beige), Honey (metallic bronze gold), Sage (shimmery translucent green), Moss (dark olive green with shimmer), and Juniper (deep shimmery forest green).



The Smudge Stick liner that comes with this palette is called Starfish. It's a smoky greenish-black with big chunky gold sparkles.

Closeups of the shadows, with flash and without. Please click to enlarge.

Swatched over bare skin (no primer), with flash and without. Chinois , Breeze, Bark, Freesia, Rosette.

Nectar, Honey, Sage, Moss, Juniper.


Stila Smudge Stick Eyeliner in Starfish.

And a couple looks using the products:

This was:
Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion
Stila Sage on lid
Stila Breeze patted over Sage on inner lid
Stila Forest in crease and on lower lashline
Stila Chinois as highlight
Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Demolition as liner
Stila Moss on brows

I don't know why I try to do winged liner with a pencil. I can never get it to turn out right. Besides the crappy liner application, the shadows looked great. They apply really smoothly and they smoke out perfectly. These shades were very easy to blend.


This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance Lemon Drop
Stila Breeze on lid
Stila Nectar patted over Breeze on lid
Stila Moss in crease
Stila Rosette on lower lashline
Stila Smudge Stick in Starfish as liner
Stila Jungle on brows

Again with the pencil winged liner! It didn't turn out good at all. I'm kinda embarrassed to even post that picture because my liner is so bad, but the sparkles in Starfish showed up so well in the picture that I just had to put it up. Starfish isn't very pigmented and it's not as smooth as the other Smudge Sticks I've tried (Koi and Damsel), but the sparkles really do show up on the eye. These shadows applied just as nicely as the others, no problems at all.

What I liked:

• I like the color selection better than the brown-based NaturalEye/In The Light palette.
• Shadows were soft and smooth, not as powdery as the last palette.
• Pretty good pigmentation on all the shades that I tried.
• Easy to blend.
• Perfectly suited for smoky eye looks. These shades smudge and smoke out very well.
• Comes with a full sized liner.
• Magnetic closure on the front of the palette.
• This palette doesn't contain Kitten eyeshadow! Glad to not have another duplicate color.

What I didn't like:

• The Starfish liner felt dry and didn't have very good payoff. It wasn't smooth and creamy like the other Smudge Stick liners I've tried. It tugged when I applied it and I had to go over my line multiple times to build an opaque line.
• Smudge Stick liner doesn't retract. If you twist it up too far, you're pretty much screwed. Be careful not to twist up more than you need to line your eye.
  
• A lot of the colors are frosty.
• Not really the most exciting color selection. Looked more vibrant online.

This reminds me a bit of another one of my favorite palettes, the Wet n Wild Comfort Zone Color Icon palette. They're not dupes of each other, but the theme and a lot of the colors are similar. When I want smoky, green-based earth tones, that's usually my go to palette, so that's probably why I liked the colors of this one so much. I do wish that the colors weren't so smoky and dull, though. With a name like "In The Garden" I was thinking they'd be a little more fresh and leafy. Maybe it's really supposed to be "In The Garden in February." :) Overall, though, I'm happy with the quality of the shadows and the size of the palette. These Stila palettes stack really nicely and don't take up much room even though there's ten big shadows and a full sized liner it them.

I ordered mine from Stila's website, but Sephora has this too. $39 and it is not limited edition.