Anastasia Beverly Hills Want You To Want Me Eyeshadow Palette Holiday 2012 Photos

(Sent for review.)

Anastasia Beverly Hills She Wears It Well Palette Fall 2012 Swatches and Review

Everyone's hopping on the whole neutral eyeshadow palette bandwagon lately and this new palette from Anastasia is one more to add to the growing list. The Fall 2012 She Wears It Well palette is a set of nine neutral shadows (five metallics, one shimmer and three mattes) plus a full mirror and double-ended eyeshadow brush.

Anastasia Beverly Hills She Wears It Well Palette
The palette features a black faux-crocodile material on the exterior with nine eyeshadows, a large mirror (handy for travel or midday touchups) and a fairly decent double-ended eyeshadow brush on the interior.

The shadows on the left side of the palette are all shimmery, shiny metallics. The big shadow in the center, Sunset, also has a shiny metallic finish. The shadows on the right are smooth, creamy mattes with the exception of the Frosting shade, which has a slight shimmer to it.

All swatches listed left to right, taken in natural light, no primer:

Trophy, Glow, Latte, Foxy


Sunset, Frosting, Onyx, Almond, Toffee


Anastasia She Wears It Well Palette, left side, direct sunlight.
I took this sunlight picture to show the pretty metallic sheen and sparkle that the shadows on the left side of the palette have. It's not chunky or glittery, but it is shiny.


Here's a look I've been wearing using this palette. It's Almond on the lid, Toffee in the crease and on the lower lashline and just a little dab of Onyx to darken the crease color.

What I liked:

• The mattes in this palette are very nice. Normally I shy away from mattes because they tend to be chalky, patchy, streaky and difficult to blend, but these were all fantastic. They're a little powdery, but it's a soft-powdery not a gritty-powdery. They felt soft and cool to the touch and applied smoothly without streaking or looking patchy. Impressive.
• The included double-ended brush can actually be used to apply the shadows; it isn't just a throwaway. It's not the best brush in the world (it's a little scratchy) and it wouldn't be my first choice, but it is definitely useable. The flat side is great for applying lid color and blending, the pointed side is good for applying a crease color and lining underneath the eye.
• Good selection of colors. There's dark colors, light colors, shimmery colors, matte colors, and none of them are excessively frosty once applied. I like that there's a good dark crease color and a light, non-shimmery highlight color. That's always something I look for in an all-in-one palette.
  
• Fair price: $34 for the whole palette.
• The shadows contain anti-aging skincare ingredients.
• The palette is smaller and more compact than the previous palettes. The older palettes had excessively large packaging and took up too much space for how much product was inside. This one is perfectly balanced.
  

What I didn't like:

• I wish the colors were just a little more neutral. Most of them read very warm against my skin.
  
• The eyeshadow stings and makes my eyes water if I get fallout in my eye.
• The colors fade and morph a bit over time, even with primer.
  

Overall, I thought this was a great palette. The formula of all the shadows (the mattes especially) seemed even nicer than the formula in last year's holiday palette and the color selection in this is straightforward and easy to wear. On one side of the palette I have the shades to create a bronzed metallic eye and on the other half are the shades to make a matte neutral classic daytime eye. I spice it up a little with winged liner and massive amounts of mascara, of course, but if you prefer something more subtle you can just smudge some Onyx or Toffee or Foxy along the upper lashline instead.

The Anastasia Beverly Hills She Wears It Well Palette is limited edition and currently available at Sephora, $34.

(This was sent for review.)

Anastasia Beverly Hills See and Be Seen Set for Summer 2012 Swatches and Review

Here's the latest from Anastasia Beverly Hills: The See and Be Seen kit. It's small but good- have a look!

Anastasia See and Be Seen

• 2 Full size (0.07 oz) Hydrafull Glosses (Heiress and Plastic)
• 1 Full size (0.32 oz) Tinted Brow Gel in Caramel
• 1 Full Size Illumin8 Eyeshadow Duo in On Set

Contents and ingredients
(click to enlarge)

Anastasia Illumin8 Eye Shadow Duo in On Set
Shimmery peach frost, shimmery light bronze frost

Anastasia Tinted Brow Gel in Caramel
Golden bronze shimmer with gold highlights

Anastasia Hydrafull Lip Gloss in Heiress
Sheer bright coral

Anastasia Hydrafull Lip Gloss in Plastic
Sheer hot pink

Natural light, no primer. Illumin8 Eyeshadow Duo in On Set, HydraFull Gloss in Heiress, Hydrafull Gloss in Plastic, Tinted Brow Gel in Caramel.


Anastasia Tinted Brow Gel in Caramel on brows
The tinted brow gel was the one item in this kit I was unsure about. My natural brow color is pretty close to black, so I wasn't sure how good a golden bronze shimmery brow gel would look on them. I tried it by first filling in my brows with brow powder that was close to my natural color and then I applied the Caramel brow gel the way I'd normally apply the clear one I use. The result was surprisingly nice; it turned my brows blonde with gold shimmer highlights. This would probably work best (read: look more natural) if you have naturally light brows and hair, or if your hair is dark but highlighted.

What I liked:

• The glosses are awesome. They are the brightest colors I've seen from Anastasia and the best Hydrafull colors I've used so far. They're sheer but not colorless. The effect is a very brightly colored clear gloss, almost like a jelly nail polish in lipgloss form.
  
• The Hydrafull glosses wear surprisingly long.
• The Hydrafull formula is smooth, very thick but not necessarily sticky, hydrating, cushiony feeling, extremely shiny and scented with a light but pleasant vanilla scent. One of the nicer gloss formulas out there.
• The gloss does actually make my lips look a little more full. The effect is temporary.
• The brow gel works well to hold brows in place and doesn't look too shiny or sparkly.
• The shadows are pretty and easy to wear and the formula feels soft and smooth.
  
• Pretty good price for what's included ($80 worth of product for only $44).

What I didn't like:

• The spatula-like applicator on the glosses is so weird to use and I always make a mess with it.
• The gloss colors are great, but they're only available in this set; you can't buy them individually.
  
• The brow gel may look unnatural on people with dark eyebrows and hair.
  
• The intensity and color of the shadows fades significantly after application no matter which primer I use. They're better when used wet.

My favorite thing in here is the gloss. Both colors are awesome. Bright and shiny, comfortable to wear and long-lasting. Everything in here is nice but the glosses are really top notch. On a somewhat related note, I've just noticed that the Hydrafull glosses have come down in price since I tried them last- they used to be $21 individually, but now they're only $18. Too bad these colors aren't available by themselves!

The Anastasia See and Be Seen Set retails for $44 and is limited edition.

(This was sent for review.)

Anastasia Wish You Were Here Set Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

Anastasia Beverly Hills has a new gift set out for spring. It's a light, beachy-themed color palette and it's really quite nice. The set is called Wish You Were Here and it contains three full sized Anastasia products.

The Illumin8 shadow palette in this set is one of the eight shade ones. This one's called Pacific Coast.

Anastasia Illumin8 Eyeshadow Palette in Pacific Coast. Fluorescent light, flash and natural light. Click them if you'd like to see a closeup of the shadows. None of the shadows have names, but they are numbered on the back of the palette.



Swatched over bare skin (no primer), with flash and without. 1, 2, 3, 4.


5, 6, 7, 8.


The gloss in this kit is a full-size Anastasia Hydrafull Gloss in Guava. It has a very odd paddle applicator.

The Guava shade is interesting because it has tons of tiny rainbow-colored flecks. Click this to enlarge. Isn't that pretty?


On the lips, Guava is just a sheer/clear shade with only a hint of a warm tint. No real color on my lips. The sparkles aren't in-your-face or glittery, but they look very pretty and twinkly when the light hits them just right.

The Wish You Were Here set also includes a full-size Anastasia Clear Brow Gel. Since it's a clear gel, there's not really anything to swatch, but you can see how it looks on my brows here.

What I liked:

• The set is an excellent deal; three full sized Anastasia products for $44. That's about half of what it would cost if you bought all three individually.
• The shadow colors are really pretty and they all go together.
• The shadows are smooth, easy to blend and fairly well pigmented.
• The shadows contain anti-aging skincare ingredients.
• The brow gel holds my brows in place all day without flaking.
• The brow gel is clear and you can only tell it's on your brows by the subtle sheen it leaves.
• The gloss has pretty rainbow sparkles!
• The gloss feels cushy and hydrating.
• The gloss smells nice. A very faint fruity vanilla.
  

What I didn't like:

• The brush that comes with the palette is kinda scratchy.
• The spatula applicator on the Hydrafull gloss is hard for me to use.
• The Guava shade doesn't feel as smooth and non-sticky as the other Hydrafull shades I've tried.
• The prettiest shadow in the palette, the sparkly taupe, has the least pigment of all the shades. They can all be used wet for more payoff, though.

Overall, I like the items in the set and I think it's a good value. The palette is pretty and versatile and I like Anastasia's Illumin8 shadow formula. The gloss is sheer but adds a nice subtle rainbow sparkle. Would probably be nice over lipstick, too. And I'm a huge fan of the Anastasia clear brow gel, so that's a nice item to have in here. That stuff has been the key item for taking my brows from okay-ish to nice and now I use it every single day without fail.

Also, Anastasia is holding a contest where you can win a trip to LA for sending in your photo. Check out their Facebook contest page for more rules and details. It ends tomorrow (February 3rd 2012), so you only have a day left to enter!

The Sephora-exclusive Anastasia Wish You Were Here set is limited edition and retails for $44.

(This was sent for review.)